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Jack Powers is the author of Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar. His poems have appeared in Rattle, Poet Lore, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. He recently retired after teaching special education in Redding, Connecticut for 38 years. Visit his website: https://www.jackpowers13.com/poetry/.
From Jefferson Carter: I live in Tucson, where I’m a passionate supporter of Sky Island Alliance, a regionally-based environmental organization. I’ve had work in such journals as Carolina Quarterly, Barrow Street, Cream City Review, Rattle, and New Poets of the American West. Chax Press (Tucson, AZ) published my ninth collection, Get Serious: New and Selected Poems, which was chosen as a Southwest Best Book of 2013 by the Tucson/Pima County Public Library. Birkenstock Blues is now available from Presa Press (Rockford, MI).
From Anca Vlasopolos: My credentials: the award-winning novel The New Bedford Samurai; the award-winning memoir No Return Address: A Memoir of Displacement; four collections of poems, Often Fanged Light (Adelaide Books, 2019), Cartographies of Scale (and Wing) (2015), Walking Toward Solstice (2012), and Penguins in a Warming World (2007); three poetry chapbooks, a detective novel, Missing Members, and over three hundred poems and short stories in literary journals. I write, read, garden, and pot on Cape Cod. Should you be interested in biographical details or links to my published work, please see www.vlasopolos.com.
Cat Dixon is the author of Eva and Too Heavy to Carry (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2016, 2014) and The Book of Levinson and Our End Has Brought the Spring (Finishing Line Press, 2017, 2015), and the chapbook, Table for Two (Poet’s Haven, 2019). Recent poems have appeared in Parentheses Journal, Lowecroft Chronicle, and SWWIM Every Day. Website: www.catdix.com.
Tina Schumann is a Pushcart nominated poet and the author of three poetry collections, Praising the Paradox (Red Hen, 2019) which was a finalist in the National Poetry Series, Four Way Books Intro Prize, and the Julie Suk Award, Requiem. A Patrimony of Fugues (Diode, 2017) which won the Diode Editions Chapbook Competition and As If (Parlor City, 2010) which was awarded the Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize. She is editor of the IPPY-award winning anthology Two Countries. U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents (Red Hen, 2017.) Schumann’s work received the 2009 American Poet Prize from The American Poetry Journal, finalist status in the Terrain annual poetry contest, as well as honorable mentions in The Atlantic and Crab Creek Review. She is a poetry editor with Wandering Aengus Press, and a graduate of the Rainier Writing Workshop. Her poems have appeared widely in publications and anthologies since 1999, including The American Journal of Poetry, Ascent, Cimarron Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Nimrod, Parabola, Palabra, Poetry Daily, Poemeleon, Rattle, Verse Daily, and read on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac. www.tinaschumann.com
Beth Gordon is a poet, mother and grandmother currently living in Asheville, NC. Her poems have been published in numerous journals including RHINO, Passages North, EcoTheo Review, Into the Void, Yes Poetry, Pretty Owl Poetry and SWWIM. She is the author of two chapbooks: Morning Walk with Dead Possum, Breakfast and Parallel Universe (Animal Heart Press) and Particularly Dangerous Situation (Clare Songbird Publishing). Her book, This Small Machine of Prayer, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2021. She is Managing Editor of Feral and Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press.
Anne Marie Wells (She/Her) of Hoback Junction, Wyoming is a queer poet, playwright, and storyteller navigating the world with a chronic illness. Anne Marie’s poems have appeared or will appear in The Alchemy Literary Journal, Brain Mill Press, Changing Womxn Collective, In Parentheses, Lucky Jefferson, Meniscus Journal, Muddy River Poetry Review, Other Worldly Women’s Press, Poets’ Choice, Passengers Journal, Soliloquies Anthology, Unlimited Literature, Variant Literature, and The Voices Project. She was selected as a 2020 Brain Mill Press National Poetry Month Editors’ Pick poet and a 2020 Community Literature Initiative participant. She recently earned the Milestone Award presented by Wyoming Writers, Inc.
Luanne Castle‘s Kin Types (Finishing Line), a chapbook of poetry and flash nonfiction, was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award. Her first poetry collection, Doll God (Aldrich), was winner of the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she studied at University of California, Riverside (PhD); Western Michigan University (MFA); and Stanford University. Her writing has appeared in Copper Nickel, TAB, Glass, Verse Daily, American Journal of Poetry, Broad Street, and other journals.
Juleigh Howard-Hobson’s poetry has appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Mobius, The Lyric, Able Muse, Capsule Stories, Poem Revised (Marion Street), Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea (Great Weather for Media), Weaving the Terrain (Dos Gatos) and other places. Nominations include Best of the Net, Pushcart, Rhysling and an Elgin. Her latest book is the Elgin nominated Our Otherworld (Red Salon).
Subhaga Crystal Bacon the author of two volumes of poetry, Blue Hunger, 2020 from Methow Press, and Elegy with a Glass of Whisky, BOA Editions, 2004. A cis-gender, Queer identified woman, she lives, writes, and teaches on the east slope of the North Cascade Mountains in Twisp, WA. Her recent work appears in the Bombay Review, the River Heron Review, Humana Obscura, and Plum Recruit. Read more of her work on her website www.subhagacrystalbacon.com.
Avital Balwit studies politics and philosophy. She writes short stories, essays, and poetry. She has work forthcoming in Addition Magazine, World Weaver Press, The Society of Misfit Stories, and Pop Up UK. She has been a finalist in essay contests for the New York Times and The Economist, and she won The Atlantic’s 2020 poetry contest. She was born (and temporarily resides) in Portland, Oregon.
Kelli Simpson is a mother and poet living in Norman, Oklahoma. She has published poems in Lamplit Underground, Rabid Oak, The Avenue, Ghost City Review, and The River.
“Catfish” John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he works as a licensed social worker and adjunct professor. He has been featured in the Philadelphia based Moonstone Poetry series, West-Chester based Livin’ on Luck series, and Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM. He serves as the Local Lyrics contributor for the Mad Poet Society blog. Recent publications: Toho, Glassworks, The Tule Review, Patterson Literary Review, The Poeming Pigeon, and Schuylkill Valley Journal. Find out more at: www.catfishjohnpoetry.com
Seth Leeper is a queer poet. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in otoliths, Gertrude Press, Noisemaker Magazine, Xenith Magazine, and Mythic Circle. He holds an M.A. in Special Education from Pace University and B.A. in Creative Writing and Fashion Journalism from San Francisco State University.
Mary K O’Melveny began writing poetry after retiring from a long career as a labor rights lawyer. She lives with her wife in Washington DC and Woodstock NY. Mary’s work has appeared in many print and on-line journals and on blog sites such as The New Verse News and Writing in a Woman’s Voice. Mary is a Pushcart Prize nominee and her poetry has received other award recognition. She is the author of A Woman of a Certain Age and MERGING STAR HYPOTHESES (Finishing Line Press 2018, 2020) and co-author of the anthology An Apple In Her Hand (Codhill Press 2019). Mary’s collection Dispatches From The Memory Care Museum is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2021.
Annette Sisson, who lives in Nashville, TN, has published poems in journals and anthologies, including Nashville Review, Typishly, One, HeartWood Literary Magazine, Psaltery & Lyre, and others, as well as a chapbook A Casting Off (2019, Finishing Line). She was named one of seven 2020 BOAAT Writing Fellows, received honorable mention in Passager’s 2019 national poetry contest, and won The Porch Writers’ Collective’s 2019 poetry prize. Recently, she finished a book-length manuscript of poetry and is questing for a publisher.
Lorna Wood is a violinist and writer in Auburn, Alabama, with a Ph.D. in English from Yale. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the 2020 Great Weather for MEDIA anthology, Leaves of Loquat V (2nd prize, Loquat Festival poetry contest), Poetry South (2018 Pushcart nominee), and Luminous Echoes (poems shortlisted for Into the Void’s 2016 poetry contest), among others. In 2019 she was long listed for the Erbacce Prize. She has also published fiction, creative nonfiction, and scholarly essays, and she is Senior Editor of Gemini Magazine. Her Amazon author page is at amazon.com/author/lornawood.
Maria Schiza is a freelance writer and translator from Thessaloniki, Greece. She has graduated with a master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Nottingham and is currently a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, studying ekphrastic poetry. Her work has previously appeared in Persephone’s Daughters, on the website of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, in Voices, and others.
About Tassos Schizas: The photographs these poems respond to are part of Tassos Schizas’s “Johatsu/Ανάμεσα” series. More of his work can be found here.
Divya Mehrish is a writer from New York. Her work has been longlisted by the National Poetry Competition and commended by the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award. She has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Writing Awards and the UK Poetry Society and has won the Gannon University National High School Poetry Contest, the Arizona State Poetry Society Contest, and the New York Browning Society Poetry Contest. Her work appears in PANK, Prairie Margins, Blue Marble Review, Polyphony Lit, Ricochet Review, Tulane Review, Sienna Solstice, The Kenyon Review Young Writers Anthology, Sandcutters, and Amtrak’s magazine The National, among others.
KD Leslie is a Baltimore-based writer. For money, she practices law. For further survival, she reads and swims.
Nikolai B. writes surreal, energetic, sometimes rhythmic narratives, and usually about the city. He is currently an Associate Professor of English in the Imperial Valley, and runs a writing workshop in downtown El Centro, called Workshop on 5th (www.workshopon5th.com). From the author: A lot of my narrative content revolves around my experiences navigating the city. I try to give voice to the overlooked, outsider, the delinquent, oversexed, the youth raised by single parents in troubling neighborhoods, all the above for whatever reasons. As far as the aesthetic of my writing is concerned, I still feel invested in things like ‘voice’, and creating imagery that allows my readers to ‘see’. Hopefully my work reflects my early influences, such as Phillips’ Black Tickets, or Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn, as well as my relationship with Hip-Hop.
From Michael Campagnoli: In the past, I taught writing and literature while studying for a PhD and worked at a variety of jobs including house painter, journalist, fisherman, and short-order cook. Currently, I proofread/line-edit the local newspaper and coach schoolboy baseball.
Robert Runté, PhD, is Senior Editor at EssentialEdits.ca, and former Senior Editor at Five Rivers Publishing, a small Canadian press. A former professor, he has three Aurora Awards for literary criticism, which is slightly odd because he wasn’t a professor of literature. His own fiction has appeared in a variety of anthologies and magazines, and three of his stories have appeared in “best of” collections. “The Hidden Elephant” originally appeared in They Have to Take You In, Ursula Pflug, ed. Brighton, Ontario: Hidden Brook Press, 2014. ISBN:9781927725139
Lisa Lebduska teaches academic writing and works with colleagues to incorporate writing into their teaching at Wheaton College, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in such publications as Lunch Ticket, The Gateway Review, bioStories, Narrative, and Nature’s Healing Spirit: Real-Life Stories to Nurture the Soul. Her short story “Waiting for Steven Spielberg” was awarded first place in the 2017 Stories through the Ages short story contest. She lives in Salem, Connecticut, just off Witch Meadow Road.