Michael Hemery teaches English near Cleveland, Ohio, earned his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and served as the nonfiction editor for Hunger Mountain. His book, No Permanent Scars, published by Silenced Press, illuminates an honest working-class existence, offering both the sober realities of class discrimination and the humor and love of family. Intertwined with serious issues such as suicide, alcoholism, abuse, religion, and immigration, Hemery also endures a painfully slow and often naive coming of age (he once mistook an obvious prostitute for an office supply store employee). His individual essays have appeared in Drunken Boat, Los Angeles Review, The Los Angeles Review, Lumina, New Plains Review, Passages North, The Portland Review, Post Road Magazine, Redivider, Slice, sub-TERRAIN, The Tusculum Review, and the book Fearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to Memoir.