Founding Editor Sena Jeter Naslund, PhD, MA, University of Iowa, is the author of the critically-acclaimed, national-bestselling novels Ahab’s Wife, Four Spirits, Abundance: a Novel of Marie-Antoinette, and six others. Naslund served as the first director of creative writing at the University of Louisville, where, in 1976, she and two students launched The Louisville Review, and where she was awarded the first Distinguished Teaching Award, as well as the university-wide President’s Award for Creative Activity; she also served as founding Program Director of the Spalding MFA in Writing, 2001-2017, now the Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann Graduate School of Writing. She continues as Founding Editor of the independent TLR and its book press, Fleur-de-Lis. Naslund has taught at the University of Montana, University of Indiana-Bloomington, and Vermont College, and has held Distinguished Visiting Professor positions at the University of Alabama-Huntsville and at Montevallo University. A recipient of writing grants from the NEA, the Kentucky Arts Council, the Kentucky Women Writers’ Association, and a recipient of the Harper Lee Award and the Hall Waters Southern Prize, Naslund has been inducted into the Writers Hall of Fame in both Alabama and Kentucky, where she also served as a Kentucky Poet Laureate. A graduate of Birmingham-Southern College where she won the B.B. Comer Medal in English, she was recently recognized as a distinguished alum.
Editor and Executive Director Flora K. Schildknecht, PhD, MFA, served as Associate Editor of The Louisville Review and Fleur-de-Lis Press from 2020-2024. Before joining The Louisville Review as Associate Editor, Schildknecht’s debut fiction collection, Megafauna, was published by Fleur-de-Lis in 2018. The title story of the collection has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her fiction has appeared in Sisyphus, 2nd and Church, The Chaffin Journal, The Louisville Review, and the Anthology Food, Migration, and Diversity: The Many Flavors of the Short Story. Her essays have appeared in The International Journal of Social, Political and Community Agendas in the Arts, The Harold Pinter Review, and other journals. From 2016-2024, she served as an instructor Bellarmine University where she taught courses in fiction, creative nonfiction, playwriting, and literature. Schildknecht is a graduate of Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing where she studied fiction and dramatic writing, and she earned a doctorate in Comparative Humanities at the University of Louisville, where she teaches courses in humanities.
Assistant Editor Jonathan Weinert is the author of A Slow Green Sleep (2021), winner of the Saturnalia Books Editors Prize, In the Mode of Disappearance (2008), winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize, and Thirteen Small Apostrophes (2012), a chapbook. He is co-editor of Until Everything Is Continuous Again: American Poets on the Recent Work of W.S. Merwin (2012). Ghost Smoke, a hybrid book-length poem written in collaboration with H. L. Hix, is forthcoming in 2026 from SMU Project Poëtica/Bridwell Press. A graduate of Brandeis University and the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University, Jonathan lives and works in Stow, Massachusetts.
Guest Genre Editors for poetry and fiction change with each issue. Previous guest editors include Kentucky Poet Laureates Maureen Morehead, Frederick Smock, Frank X Walker, and Crystal Wilkinson, as well as notable authors including Diane Aprile, Beth Ann Bauman, Debra Kang Dean, Drēma Drudge, Wanda Fries, Frye Gaillard, Kirby Gann, Paul Griner, Nathan Gower, Roy Hoffman, Juyanne James, Ellyn Lichvar, Robin Lippincott, Elaine Orr, Greg Pape, Tammy Ramsey, Robert Sachs, Charley Schulman, Jeanie Thompson, Jonathan Weinert, and many others.
Cornerstone Editor Betsy Woods, MFA, serves as Editor for Cornerstone, The Louisville Review’s showcase for original poetry from young writers in grades K-12 from the U.S. and abroad. Her novel, Strong Moon Tonight, is forthcoming from TouchPoint Press. Her work has appeared in The Louisville Review, The New Orleans Review, The Trunk, Alive Now, Literally Stories, The Times-Picayune, ACRES USA, Sophisticated Woman, Citizen’s Together, The Burningword Literary Journal, the Children's Literature Association, and others. Woods has served as a writer and researcher for The Louis Armstrong House Museum, and she is writer-in-residence at The Waldorf School of New Orleans. She is a graduate of Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing. New Orleans is her home, she grew up on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain and on the edge of Doubloon Bayou where she listened to alligators bark. She shares a rooted heritage with the wetlands. They intermingle in her, like lily pad roots.
Director of Operations Ron Schildknecht, MFA, is a screenwriter, independent filmmaker and video artist working in both narrative, documentary and experimental form. His work—The Legend of the Pope Lick Monster (a cult classic), My Porcelain Past, and Borderlines—often explores local history and culture. Schildknecht’s multi-channel film installation Fragments of a German American Mind: The Films of Konrad Mueller was exhibited at the Kentucky College of Art & Design, and his short film Children Without a Voice has been screened during live performances of the Louisville Orchestra. He currently teaches filmmaking, video art, and screenwriting at Spalding University and Bellarmine University. Schildknecht is a graduate of Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing where he studied dramatic writing. He is a two-time recipient of the Al Smith Fellowship in Media Arts from the Kentucky Arts Council. An excerpt of his feature-length screenplay, True Detective, was published in The Louisville Review in 2014.
Board of Directors Member Cindy L. Brady was born in Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from the University of Tennessee and holds a Master of Arts in Business from Mercer University as well as a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Spalding University.
She worked as a professional tennis coach, and in 1973, she was the second woman in the United States to become certified as Professional One, the highest level the United States Professional Tennis Association offered at that time. Her players reached as high as twenty-fourth in the world, with many landing in the top fifty and top one hundred. In her early career, she worked for Dennis Van der Meer, founder of the Professional Tennis Registry, and was Head Professional at his and Billie Jean King’s TennisAmerica camps in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.
Upon graduating from Spalding University’s MFA program, she founded the Mann-Driskell scholarship for aspiring fiction writers. A few years later, she funded the naming of the MFA program at Spalding, The Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann School of Writing, for its founders.
She serves on the Board of Directors of The Louisville Review Corporation and resides in Cedar Mountain, North Carolina.
Board of Directors Member John David Morgan is an Army Veteran, a CPA, and a Kentucky Colonel. He has an accounting degree from Bellarmine University and an MBA from Vanderbilt.
His business experience includes roles as an auditor with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Controller for Dollar General Corporation, and Associate Vice-President and Division CFO with Humana, Inc.
John retired from Humana in 2022 and began writing fiction. His work has been published in The Saturday Evening Post, The Louisville Review, and Trajectory. He earned an MA in English from the University of Louisville in 2024 and is currently enrolled in the Bluegrass Writers Studio Low-Residency MFA program at Eastern Kentucky University.
Board of Directors Member Ben Smock is a Search Consultant with Gilman Partners, an executive search and leadership development firm in Cincinnati and Louisville. With over 10 years of experience in nonprofit leadership, Ben has a wealth of knowledge in fundraising, organizational growth, and community impact. His previous experience includes leading Canopy KY as Director of Development, where he helped position the organization as a statewide leader in social and environmental impact. He has also served as President of Venture Connectors, fostering inclusive entrepreneurship in Louisville.
In 2023, Ben was recognized as one of the Louisville Business First Forty under 40. He holds his MBA from the University of Louisville and bachelor’s degree in business management from the University of Kentucky.
University Ambassador (Fall 2025 - Spring 2026) Grace M. Long is proud to serve as this year’s University Ambassador for The Louisville Review at Bellarmine University. Grace is passionate about the literary arts and has served since fall 2024 as co-president of Ariel Literary Society, a registered student organization founded in 1989, and she is co-editor-in-chief of Ariel, the annual spring magazine of creative writing and visual art by Bellarmine students, faculty, and staff. As a University Ambassador, Grace will connect The Louisville Review with Bellarmine’s literary community by encouraging submissions to TLR from students and faculty, facilitating special-rate subscriptions for the Bellarmine campus community, and fostering connections between The Louisville Review and Ariel. Grace will graduate from Bellarmine University in May of 2026 with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication with minors in both Creative Writing and Digital Media.