CONTRIBUTORS

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Alex Averbuch, a Ukrainian poet, translator, and scholar, is the author of three books of poetry and an array of literary translations among Hebrew, Ukrainian, English, and Russian. His poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. His English-language publications appear in, or are forthcoming from, The Manhattan Review (Pushcart nominated), Copper Nickel, Plume, Birmingham Poetry Review, Words Without Borders, and Common Knowledge. His latest book, Zhydivs’kyi korol' (The Jewish King; English transl., Lost Horse Press, 2024), was a finalist for the Shevchenko National Prize, Ukraine’s highest cultural award.

 

Albert Abonado is the author of the poetry collection JAW (Sundress Publications, 2020) and Field Guide for Accidents (Beacon Press, 2024), selected by Mahogany Browne for the National Poetry Series. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Albert is the current artist-in-residence at SUNY Oswego. His writing has appeared in Bennington Review, Colorado Review, Poetry Northwest, Zone 3, and others. He lives and teaches in Rochester, NY. 

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Jodi Balas is a neurodivergent poet from northeast Pennsylvania. Her poetry has been accepted in Hole in the Head Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Bluestem, Wild Roof Journal, and elsewhere. Her poem “Bone Density” won the 2023 Comstock Review Muriel Craft Bailey Award judged by Danusha Lameris. Jodi is in the process of developing her first chapbook to market to the poetry world. You could follow her musings on Instagram @jodibalas_. 

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Gaylord Brewer has been a professor at Middle Tennessee State University for three decades. The most recent of his 17 books of poetry, fiction, criticism, and cookery is a just-published collection of brief nonfiction, Before the Storm Takes It Away (Red Hen Press, 2024). 

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Erica Dawson is a neurodivergent African-American poet living in the Baltimore-DC area. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, When Rap Spoke Straight to God (Tin House, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Orion, The Believer, VQR, and other journals and anthologies. She loves her dog Stella, Wu-Tang Clan, and anything cooked with cardamom. 

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José del Valle is a Cuban-born writer. His poems and stories have appeared in Triggerfish Critical Review, Drunk Monkeys, Gravel, Crab Creek Review, Barnstorm, Frontier Poetry, Carve, The Saranac Review, The Acentos Review, Modern Haiku, The Mainichi (Japan), Contemporary Haibun Online, The Heron's Nest, the late Jane Reichhold's Lynx, and other small haiku pubs. 

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Alexey Deyneko is a pacifist who lives in Sydney, Australia. His micro-chapbook Non-Fungible Token is published by the Origami Poems Project. His work has appeared in Jersey Devil Press, 82 Star Review, Molecule, #Ranger, and elsewhere. 

 

Fay Dillof’s poetry has appeared in Best New Poets, Ploughshares, Gettysburg Review, Spillway, New Ohio Review, Field, Rattle, and elsewhere. A recipient of scholarships from Bread Loaf and Sewanee, Fay has been awarded the Milton Kessler Memorial Prize in Poetry and the Dogwood Literary Prize. Fay lives with her husband and daughter in northern California where she works as a psychotherapist. 

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Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Pink Lady (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025), Second Story (2021), and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In Which (2024) is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, she is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami. 

 

Taylor Franson-Thiel is a Pushcart-nominated poet from Utah, now based in Fairfax, VA. She received her master’s in creative writing from Utah State University and is pursuing an MFA at George Mason University. Her debut collection Bone Valley Hymnal is forthcoming in 2025 from ELJ Editions. She is an editorial reader for Poetry Daily, the assistant poetry editor for phoebe, and the editor in chief of BRAWL. She can be found on Twitter @TaylorFranson. 

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Violeta Garcia-Mendoza is a Spanish-American poet, teacher, and suburban wildlife photographer. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, and in 2022, she received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She is a member of the Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops at Carlow University. Violeta lives with her husband, teenage children, and pack of rescue dogs on a small certified wildlife habitat in western Pennsylvania. Songs for the Land-Bound is her debut collection, out from June Road Press in 2024. VioletaGarciaMendoza.com 

 

Susan Grimm has been published in The Cincinnati Review, South Dakota Review, and Field. She has had two published chapbooks. In 2004, BkMk Press published Lake Erie Blue, her full-length collection. In 2022, she received her third Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant. 

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LC Gutierrez is a product of many places in the South and the Caribbean. An erstwhile academic, he now writes, teaches, and plays trombone in Madrid, Spain. His work is published or forthcoming in Notre Dame Review, Autofocus, Hobart, Rogue Agent, Rougarou, and other wonderful journals. 

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Lisa Higgs is a poet, gardener, sometimes youth soccer coach, and recipient of a 2022 Minnesota State Arts Board grant providing creative support for individual artists. Her third chapbook, Earthen Bound, was published by Red Bird Chapbooks in 2019. Her poetry has been published widely, and her reviews and interviews can be found at the Poetry Foundation, Kenyon Review Online, Adroit Journal, and Colorado Review. Her dog Galileo is such a fan of her work, he encourages her creative process by sitting in her lap when she revises at her computer. At 35 pounds, he is a bit much for a lap dog. 

 

Emma Hyche is a poet and essayist whose work appears in Apartment, LIT, Peach, Entropy, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Picnic in the Abbattoir was released in 2021 by dancing girl press. She lives and writes in Chicago with her partner and a cat named Dario Argento.

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Kasey Jueds is the author of two collections of poetry, both from the University of Pittsburgh Press: Keeper, which won the 2012 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and The Thicket. She lives in a small town in the mountains of New York state with one human and one spotty dog. 

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Bob Kotyk is the cowriter of Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015 and won the Rogers Prize, the Bildrausch Ring of Film Art, and was nominated for Best Picture at the Canadian Screen Awards. His first film as director, Spirit Workers Union, was released in 2017 and won awards at the Canada Shorts Film Festival and the Sudbury Underground Film Festival. His poetry has appeared in Otoliths and Reverie. He lives in Toronto. 

 

Michael Lauchlan has contributed to many publications, including New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Louisville Review, Poet Lore, and Lake Effect. His most recent collection is Trumbull Ave., from WSU Press. 

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Kara Lewis is a writer and editor based in Minneapolis. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Permafrost Magazine, I-70 Review, SWWIM, Rogue Agent, Sprung Formal, Stirring, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the John Mark Eberhart Memorial Award and the Joel Oppenheimer Award, as well as a Best of the Net nominee. Her work was recently anthologized in Stained: An Anthology of Writing About Menstruation, published by Querencia Press. She serves as an editor for the socialist art and poetry zine On the Left Bank. 

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Jennifer Martelli is the author of The Queen of Queens, winner of the Italian American Studies Association Book Award and named a “must-read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book and My Tarantella, also a “must-read,” and finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Tahoma Literary Review, Folio, Jet Fuel Review, Tab: A Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. Jennifer Martelli has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. JennMartelli.com 

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Edward Mayes is the author of five books of poetry, including First Language (University of Massachusetts Press, Juniper Prize for Poetry) selected by James Tate, and Works & Days (University of Pittsburgh Press, AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry) selected by Marvin Bell. To Remain (The Heyeck Press, Gesù Award) selected by J. D. McClatchy and Magnetism (The Heyeck Press, Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award (BABRA)). He is coauthor, with Frances Mayes, of three books: In Tuscany (Broadway Books, 2000), Bringing Tuscany Home: Sensuous Style From the Heart of Italy (Broadway Books, 2004), and The Tuscan Sun Cookbook: Recipes from Our Italian Kitchen (Clarkson Potter, 2012).

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Owen McLeod is author of the poetry collections Before After (Saturnalia Books, 2023) and Dream Kitchen (University of North Texas Press, 2019), winner of the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry. His poems appear in Copper Nickel, Massachusetts Review, Missouri Review, New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, Yale Review, and many other places. He teaches philosophy at Lafayette College in Easton, PA. OwenMcLeodPoetry.com

 

David Moolten's last book, Primitive Mood, won the T. S. Eliot Prize (Truman State University Press, 2009). His forthcoming chapbook The Moirologist won last year’s Poetry International Winter Chapbook Competition. He lives in Philadelphia. 

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John Muellner is an LGBT writer from St. Paul, MN. His work can be read in Denver Quarterly, New Delta Review, Emerson Review, Harpur Palate, Court Green, and elsewhere. He’s currently a departmental poetry fellow in NYU’s MFA program. 

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Paula Reed Nancarrow's poems have appeared in Hole in the Head Review, Ibbetson Street Magazine, and The Southern Review, among other journals. She is a past winner of the Sixfold Poetry Prize and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Find her at PaulaReedNancarrow.com. 

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Lance Newman teaches literature, media, and writing at Westminster University. His poems have appeared in print and web magazines in the US, UK, and Australia, including 1913, Action Spectacle, BlazeVOX, Dusie, International Times, No Tell Motel, Otoliths, Queen Mob's Teahouse, saltfront, Stride, West Wind Review, and Zyzzyva. He has published two chapbooks: Come Kanab (Dusi-e/chaps Kollectiv, 2007) and 3by3by3 (Beard of Bees, 2010). For more information, see LanceNewman.org. 

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John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Hopkins Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, 32 Poems, and The Southern Review. He won the Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is an associate professor of English at Salisbury University and an editor of The Shore Poetry. 

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Kate Northrop’s recent collections are Homewrecker (New Letters vol. 88, 2022) and cuntstruck (C & R Press, 2017). She teaches at the University of Wyoming. 

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David O’Connell is the author of Our Best Defense (Červená Barva Press) and the chapbook A Better Way to Fall (The Poet’s Press). His work has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, and Southern Poetry Review, among other journals. More of his work can be found at DavidOConnellPoet.com.

 

basil payne is a poet-artist living in Logan, UT. Their work can be found in the literary magazine Sink Hollow and Utah State University's Projects Gallery.

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Joyce Peseroff's sixth book of poems, Petition, was named a "must-read" by the 2020 Massachusetts Book Awards. She is the editor of Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake and Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon. Her poems and reviews appear in Arrowsmith Journal, On the Seawall, Plume, and on her blog, So I Gave You Quartz, JoycePeseroff.com. She directed the MFA program at UMass Boston in its first four years. 

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Annie Przypyszny is a poet from Washington, DC, pursuing an MFA in poetry at the University of Maryland. She has poems published or forthcoming in Bear Review, Jet Fuel Review, Cola Literary Review, Tampa Review, Atticus Review, Tupelo Quarterly, The Main Street Rag, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, SoFloPoJo, The MacGuffin, The Madison Review, and elsewhere. 

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Eli V. Rahm is a queer writer from Virginia. Eli is the recipient of the 2023 Mary Roberts Rinehart Poetry Award and the 2020 Joseph A. Lohman III Award in Poetry. They’ve attended the Berlin Writers Workshop, the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and the Tin House Winter Workshop. Eli’s work is featured or forthcoming in Door Is a Jar, Passages North, Bellingham Review, The Cortland Review, and The Academy of American Poets, among others. You can find them at Elisaurus.Carrd.co. 

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Michael Robins is the author of five collections of poetry, including People You May Know (2020) and The Bright Invisible (2022), both from Saturnalia Books. He lives in Lake Charles, LA, where he serves as an assistant professor in the MFA program at McNeese State University and editor of The McNeese Review. 

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Laurel Roth (she/they) is a queer poet from Albuquerque, NM. She holds an MFA from Colorado State University where she worked as an editorial assistant for Colorado Review. Their work has appeared in or is forthcoming in F(r)iction and Passengers Journal, and they have attended Tin House, Aspen Words, and the Bread Loaf Environmental Writer’s Conferences. 

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Carey Salerno is the executive director and publisher of Alice James Books. She is the author of Shelter (2009) and Tributary (2021). Her poems, essays, and articles about her work as a publisher can be found in places like American Poetry Review, NPR, and The New York Times. She serves as the cochair for LitNet: The Literary Network and occasionally teaches poetry and publishing arts at the University of Maine at Farmington. In 2021, she received the Golden Colophon Award for Independent Paradigm Publishing from CLMP for the leadership and contributions of Alice James Books. CareySalerno.com 

 

Leona Sevick’s recent work appears in Orion, Birmingham Poetry Review, Blackbird, The Southern Review, and The Sun. Leona serves on the advisory board of the Furious Flower Black Poetry Center and is provost and professor of English at 

Bridgewater College in Virginia, where she teaches Asian American literature. She is the 2017 Press 53 Poetry Award Winner for her first full-length book of poems, Lion Brothers. Her second collection of poems, The Bamboo Wife, is published by Trio House Press. 

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Ryan Tracy's poetry and fiction have appeared in Pank (2019 Pushcart Prize nomination for fiction), The Hyacinth Review, Chronogram, The New Engagement, K.G.B., The Gay and Lesbian Review, California Quarterly, and Calliope. Essays and criticism have appeared in The American Reader, The New York Press, and The Brooklyn Rail. Ryan is currently visiting assistant professor of English at Knox College in Galesburg, IL. His first collection of poems, Tender Bottoms, was released in 2022. Ryan has a husband, a dog, and a home in upstate New York. 

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Tony Tracy is the author of three poetry collections: The Christening, Without Notice, and Welcome To Your Life. He has work forthcoming or recently published in Oakwood, The Pinch, I-70 Review, North American Review, Poetry East, and Painted Bride Quarterly, among other magazines and journals. He lives in central Iowa with his wife and two dogs. 

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Hannah Treasure is a lecturer in the department of English at Clemson University. She received her MFA in poetry from Brooklyn College in 2020. Her work appears in The Brooklyn Rail, Ghost City Review, Sonora Review, No Dear, Volume Poetry, and elsewhere.

 

Born in Mexico, Natalia Treviño is the author of Lavando La Dirty Laundry (Mongrel Empire Press) and VirginX (Finishing Line Press). Natalia has won several awards for her poetry and fiction including the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, the Menada Prize from the Ditet e Naimiet Poetry Festival in Macedonia, and the 2024 Ambroggio Award for translation from the Academy of American Poets. Her next collection of poetry, Socorro, is out fall 2025, and her first novel, a fictional testimony of an immigrant mother's journey to make a life in the US while separated from her daughter, will come out from Arte Publico Press in spring, 2026. 

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Angela Voras-Hills' first book, Louder Birds (Pleiades 2020), was awarded the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Sun, Kenyon Review Online, Prairie Schooner, Best New Poets, and New Ohio Review, among other journals and anthologies. She has received support from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Key West Literary Seminar, and Writers' Room of Boston. She lives with her family in Milwaukee, where she is a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin and runs the Book Drop Reading Series.

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Sara Moore Wagner is the author of three prize-winning, full-length books of poetry, Lady Wing Shot (winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize, 2024), Swan Wife (Cider Press Review Editors Prize, 2022), and Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize, 2022); and of two chapbooks, Tumbling After (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022) and Hooked Through (2017). She is also a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, 2021 National Poetry Series finalist, and recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including Gulf Coast, Smartish Pace, Waxwing, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Cincinnati Review. In 2023, she became the managing poetry editor of Driftwood Press. 

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Kieron Walquist (he/they) is a queer, neurospicy poet + visual artist from mid-Missouri. He holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis + is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Utah. Their work has received support from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Monson Arts, + Vermont Studio Center. LOVE LOCKS, their first chapbook, is out with Quarterly West. He lives in Salt Lake City. 

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Abby Wheeler lives in Cincinnati. She is a 2022 Pushcart nominee and has work published in Grist, The Free State Review, the anthology I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio's Appalachian Voices, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, In the Roots, is available from Finishing Line Press. 

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Derek JG Williams is an American writer and the author of Reading Water, selected by Eduardo Corral as the winner of the 2023 Lightscatter Press Prize, and Poetry Is a Disease (Greying Ghost, 2022). His poems and prose are published in Pleiades, The Writer’s Chronicle, Plume, Banshee, Salamander, Best New Poets, and Prairie Schooner, among others. He earned a doctorate in English and creative writing from Ohio University, and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He lives in Zürich with his family. 

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Erin Wilson's poems recently appeared or are forthcoming in Manhattan Review, Chiron Review, Lake Effect, Verse Daily, and Pembroke. Her first collection is At Home with Disquiet; her second, Blue (whose title poem won a Pushcart), is about depression, grief, and the transformative power of art. She lives in a small town on Robinson-Huron Treaty Territory in Northern Ontario, Canada, the traditional lands of the Anishnawbek, devoted to a handful of things, all of them poetry. 

 

Holli Zollinger is a self-taught artist who made a career of her talents: drawing, painting, and surface design. She is continually inspired by her surroundings living in the desert town of Moab, UT, and motivated by the art of creativity and incorporates color, texture, and pattern from the world around her. HolliZollinger.com

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A native of Utah, Shari Zollinger divides her time between her work as a professional astrologer and independent bookseller. She has published work in Sugar House Review and Redactions. Her book Carrying Her Stone is a collection of poems based on the work of Auguste Rodin.

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