Alfredo Aguilar is the son of Mexican immigrants. He is the author of the chapbooks What Happens On Earth (BOAAT Press 2018) & Recuerdo (Yesyes Books 2018). His work has appeared in The Shallow Ends, The Iowa Review, Best New Poets 2017 & elsewhere. He lives in North County San Diego. 

Leslie Marie Aguilar originally hails from the heartland of Texas. She received her MFA from Indiana University, where she served as the Poetry Editor of Indiana Review. Her work has been supported by the National Society of Arts and Letters and the Fine Arts Work Center. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, Hobart, Ninth Letter, Rattle, Sonora Review, and Washington Square Reviewamong others. She is the author of Mesquite Manual (New Delta Review, 2015), and currently works as the Editorial Assistant for Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, at Smith College.

Ashia Ajani is a writer/environmental justice activist hailing from Denver, CO. She was awarded honorable mention in the National Young Arts Foundation’s poetry section in 2015. She has been published in Rigorous Magazine, Atlas & Alice Magazine, TRACK//FOUR Journal, Hot Metal Bridge Magazine, Pilgrimage Press, Sage Magazine, Brushfire Literature & Arts, and The Hopper Magazine. She released her first chapbook, We Bleed Like Mango, in October of 2017. She currently resides in Boston, MA. 

Josette Akresh-Gonzales is working on her first book and was a finalist in the 2017 Split Lip Turnbuckle Chapbook Contest. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart and has been published or is forthcoming in Rattle, The Pinch, Breakwater Review, PANK, and many other journals. She co-founded the journal Clarion and was its editor for two years. Josette lives in the Boston area with her husband and two boys and rides her bike to work at a nonprofit medical publisher. You can find her on Twitter @Vivakresh.

Pamela Alexander is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Slow Fire (Ausable/CopperCanyon). Earlier books won the Yale Younger Poet and Iowa Poetry Prizes. Her work has appeared in many periodicals, including the New Yorker, Atlantic, Boston Book Review, Orion, TriQuarterly, and Poetry. After teaching creative writing at M.I.T. and Oberlin College for many years, she now writes poetry and nonfiction while traveling the continent in an RV with her cat. Her essays have appeared in Cimarron Review and Denver Quarterly. Until recently she served on the editorial board of Field. She also writes mystery novels under the pen name Pam Fox.

A writer and book artist working in both text and image, Kristy Bowen is the author of a number of chapbook, zine, and artist book projects, as well as several full-length collections of poetry/prose/hybrid work, including Salvage (Black Lawrence Press, 2016) and Major Characters in Minor Films (Sundress Publications, 2015). She lives in Chicago, where she runs dancing girl press & studio, dedicated to publishing work by women authors. Her new collection, Sex & Violence, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2020.

Poet and photographer, Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press, 2015). Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Ronda is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant, a May Swenson Poetry Award finalist, and former editor for Crab Creek Review. Her journal publications include Sycamore Review, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Public Radio KUOW’s All Things Considered, and forth-coming in Blackbird. 

Rick Bursky’s most recent book, I’m No Longer Troubled By The Extravagance, is out from BOA Editions. His next book, Let’s Become a Ghost Story, is also forthcoming from BOA. He teaches poetry for The Writers’ Program and UCLA Extension. 

Taylor Byas is a 23 year old Chicago native. She’s spent her last six years in Birmingham, Alabama, where she received both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is preparing to begin her PhD program in Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati in the fall. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Sanctuary, High Shelf Press, and New Ohio Review.

Anne Marie Champagne is a writer, educator, and artist living in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She is the managing editor of the American Journal of Cultural Sociology and a doctoral candidate in sociology at Yale University. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southern Review. 

Michael Dhyne received an MFA from the University of Virginia where he was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Denver Quarterly, River Styx, Salt Hill, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. He was born and raised in California.

Patrick Dundon lives, writes, and teaches in Portland, OR. He is a graduate of the MFA program at Syracuse University where he served as Editor-in-Chief for Salt Hill Journal. His work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, BOAAT, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Collagist, Hobart, Sixth Finch, Birdfeast, DIAGRAM, Vinyl, and elsewhere.

M.K. Foster is a poet and Renaissance literature scholar from Birmingham, Alabama. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Columbia Review; Boston Review; Best New Poets 2017; Crazyhorse; Gulf Coast; Rattle; and elsewhere. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Alabama. For additional details, please visit her website: marykatherinefoster.com

Samiah Haque is a Bangladeshi-American Kundiman fellow, was raised in Saudi Arabia, and is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming from Prairie Schooner, The Collagist, Santa Clara Review, Nashville Review, Paper Darts, CURA, Twelfth House, Cimarron Review, Winter Tangerine Review and elsewhere. She works at the University of Michigan Medical School, coordinating a revision of the curriculum.

Christina Harrington received her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. She has since worked in the comics industry, first at Marvel Comics and now at AfterShock. You can find her work in The Boiler Journal, Glassworks Magazine, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and others.

Andrew Hemmert is a sixth-generation Floridian living in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Baltimore Review, Bat City Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Washington Square Review. He won the 2018 River Styx International Poetry Contest. He earned his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and currently works at Lakeside Academy as a case manager.

Emily Jaeger is the author of the chapbook The Evolution of Parasites (Sibling Rivalry Press). She was the 2017-2018 Olive B O’Connor Fellow in Poetry at Colgate University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Indiana Review, B O D Y, TriQuarterly, and Passages North. Emily has received support from LAMBDA, TENT, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute and holds an MFA from UMASS Boston.

Elspeth Jensen earned her BA in Creative Writing from Western Washington University, and her MFA from George Mason University. Her writing can be found or is forthcoming in journals such as The Bellevue Literary Review, Rabbit Catastrophe, The Midway Review, and elsewhere. She is the Poetry Editor for Sweet Tree Review. She also loves dogs and tiny things.

Emily Jern-Miller studied at The Evergreen State College, The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and California College of the Arts, where she received an MFA in Writing. She’s the author of You Are Not a Bird (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has appeared in journals such as Poor Claudia, Greying Ghost, and Fine Line Magazine. She writes poems and postcards near the town where she grew up.

Molly Sutton Kiefer is the author of the full-length lyric essay Nestuary (Ricochet Editions). She has published three poetry chapbooks, and has work in Orion, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Passages North, The Rumpus, Tupelo Quarterly, Fiddlehead Review, Ecotone, South Dakota Review, and The Collagist, among others. She is publisher at Tinderbox Editions and founder of Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She lives in with her family in Minnesota where she teaches.

Elizabeth Langemak lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2018), which won 2nd Place in the Elgin Awards. She was selected by Marilyn Nelson as winner of Poetry By The Sea’s inaugural sonnet competition. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, West Branch, and elsewhere.

Jessica Lee’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in BOAAT, Missouri Review, The New Yorker, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, THRUSH, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Poetry Editor for the Nashville Review and an MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University. 

Alejandro Lemus-Gomez was born in Miami, the son of Cuban exiles, and now lives in the rural Appalachian Mountains. He was a 2019 fellow at the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets, the 2017 and 2018 recipient of the Rhina P. Espaillat Award from West Chester University, and the 2018 winner of Agnes Scott Writers’ Festival in poetry. He studied English and philosophy at Young Harris College. A Davies-Jackson scholar, he will read at the University of Cambridge in the fall. His poetry has appeared in StorySouth, The Indiana Review Online, and other journals.

Jami Macarty is the author of Instinctive Acts (Nomados Literary Publishers, 2018), Mind of Spring (No. 22, Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award, and Landscape of The Wait (Finishing Line Press, 2017). She supports the work of other writers and artists by teaching poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University; by editing the online poetry journal The Maynard; by writing the blog series: Peerings & Hearings–Occasional Musings on Arts in the City of Glass. Her own work has been supported by the Arizona Commission on the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and the editors of journals such as Arc Poetry Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, EVENT, Interim, The Rumpus, and Volt.   

Alicia Mountain is the author of the collection High Ground Coward (Iowa 2018), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Thin Fire (BOAAT Press 2018). She is a lesbian poet and artist based in New York and the University of Denver Clemens Doctoral Fellow. Keep up with her at aliciamountain.com and @HiGroundCoward.

Jeff Musser’s first job after graduating from The School Of The Art Institute Of Chicago was designing Happy Meals for a now defunct ad agency in Chicago. The job paid well, but he was artistically miserable. He learned very quickly that he could not be creative for someone else during the day and keep his painting practice going at night. Something had to give. So when the rumor of layoffs within the agency started to circulate, he greeted the gossip with hope. When the layoffs became reality, he was suddenly free to pursue his love of painting. On the downside he now had to deal with issues of surviving, and how to overcome the much-romanticized notion of a starving artist. His painting style has changed dramatically over the years, but his love for portraiture and narrative figurative painting has always been at the heart of his practice. Some highlights from the last few years include: 50+ exhibitions, 6 of them solo, in museums and galleries all over the United States and abroad, representing the USA at Shandong Art Biennial (Jinan, China), placing his work in the permanent collection of The Amsterdam Tattoo Museum (The Netherlands), Siena Art Institute (Siena, Italy), Art House Sketch Book Library (Brooklyn, New York), American River College (Sacramento, California), and paintings in numerous corporate and private art collections around the United States, most notably, Oprah Winfrey, as well as private collections in France, Italy, Asia, Canada, Europe, and South Africa.

Alison Prine’s debut collection of poems, Steel (Cider Press Review, 2016) was named a finalist for the 2017 Vermont Book Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Field, and Prairie Schooner, among others. She lives in Burlington, Vermont where she works as a psychotherapist. Visit her at alisonprine.com.

Ryan Reed‘s fiction has appeared in Menacing Hedge and Chautauqua Literary Journal. He is currently at work on a novel. 

l. reeman is an interdisciplinary archivist and the author of forthcoming chapbooks Baited Memory (Ghost City Press) and Invention of the Mouth (Dream Pop Press). They have been nominated for multiple Best of the Net, Pushcart, and Bettering American Poetry prizes, and they want to hear about your favorite bridge. For inquiries/ascensions: elrpoetry@protonmail.com

Sara Saab was born in Beirut, Lebanon. She now lives in North London, where she has perfected her resting London face. Her current interests are croissants and emojis thereof, amassing poetry collections, and coming up with a plausible reason to live on a sleeper train. Sara’s a 2015 graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Her poetry has recently appeared in Wasafiri and is upcoming in Glass Poetry. In 2018 she was a finalist for the Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Prize. You can find her on Twitter as @fortnightlysara and at fortnightlysara.com.

Rob Shapiro received an MFA from the University of Virginia where he was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, The Southern Review, Ecotone, and Prairie Schooner, where his work received the Edward Stanley Award. He lives in New York City. 

Leigh Sugar is a writer and movement artist based in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA in poetry from NYU, where she was a Veteran Writers Fellow, and is currently editing an anthology of writing by artists who’ve taught in prisons.

Anthony Sutton‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Oversound, Puerto del Sol, Prairie Schooner, Grist, Passages North, Cosmonauts Avenue, Third Coast, and elsewhere. 

Ryan Teitman is the author of the poetry collection Litany for the City (BOA Editions, 2012). His awards include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.