Michael Zap­a­ta is a found­ing edi­tor of MAKE Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zine. He is the recip­i­ent of an Illi­nois Arts Coun­cil Award for Fic­tion, the City of Chica­go DCASE Indi­vid­ual Artist Pro­gram award and a Push­cart nom­i­na­tion. As an edu­ca­tor, he taught lit­er­a­ture and writ­ing in high schools ser­vic­ing dropout stu­dents. He is a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa and has lived in New Orleans, Italy and Ecuador. He cur­rent­ly lives in Chica­go with his family.