Allison Adair’s poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Georgia Review, Copper Nickel, Threepenny Review, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, North American Review, Subtropics, and ZYZZYVA, among other journals; and have received the Pushcart Prize, the Florida Review Editors’ Award, the Orlando Prize, and first place in the Fineline Competition from Mid-American Review. Her first collection, ‘The Clearing’, was chosen by Henri Cole as the winner of Milkweed’s Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. Originally from central Pennsylvania, She now lives and work in Boston.

Rachel Grimm is a writer and professor in Cincinnati, Ohio. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University and her BA in English with a Creative Writing Emphasis from Allegheny College where she earned the Ione Sandberg Shriber Young Writer Award. She currently teaches writing at the University of Cincinnati Clermont and is at work on a speculative fiction novel about how to find joy in a world that can feel like a literal dumpster fire, the first pages of which were honored as runner-up by the 2024 SCMF-SWF Ohio Writers Scholarship. You can find her at rachelgieselgrimm.com. 

Aiden Heung (He/They) is a Chinese poet born in a Tibetan Autonomous Town. After years of working as a traveling salesman, he recently relocated to St. Louis, USA. His poems are published in The Kenyon Review, The Australian Poetry Journal, The Missouri Review, The Yale Review, The Harvard Review, etc. His poetry debut All There Is To Lose is the winner of Levis Prize in Poetry, it will be published by Four Way Books in 2026. He holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. 

Grace Spulak (she/they) is a queer writer based in her home state of New Mexico and the author of the forthcoming story collection, Magdalena is Brighter Than You Think (April 2026), winner of the Autumn House Press Rising Writer Prize. Their writing has appeared in Southwest Review, Witness Magazine, and the Ploughshares Blog, among other places. She has received support from New Mexico Writers and Trillium Arts, and she holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. 

Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, Fractured Lit, JMWW, Normal House, and Maudlin House, among other journals. His stories have been selected or nominated for such anthologies as the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. He is currently at work on his first novel in Philadelphia and Amsterdam: www.sarpsozdinler.com.

Heidi VanderVelde is a pediatrician residing in Auburn, Alabama. She is an MFA candidate in fiction at Warren Wilson College. Heidi is the recipient of the Robert Hughes Mount Jr. Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the winner of the Sand Hills Literary Magazine 2024 Poetry Contest, and a finalist in Breakwater Review‘s Peseroff Poetry Contest. She has also been published in Passengers Journal, Poetry South, and Epiphany. 

Russell Karrick is a poet and translator who lives in Colombia. His collection, The Way Back, won the 2023 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Award. He is a recipient of World Literature Today’s Student Translation Award and Lunch Ticket’s Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multilingual Texts. His poetry has appeared in Redivider, The Offing, Bat City Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others. 

Natalia Prusinska (she/her) is a queer poet. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, BOOTH, Cream City Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. She lives with her partner in Los Angeles. Twitter: @NataliaGodyla 

Diana Keren Lee is the author of How to Cast a Beautiful Animal, winner of the 2025 Poetic Justice Institute Editor’s Prize for BIPOC Writers (Fordham University Press). A National Poetry Series finalist and Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship winner, her work has appeared in Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, The New Republic, Prairie Schooner, Wildness, and elsewhere. She has received awards from MacDowell and Yaddo. 

Adam Houle is the author of Stray (Lithic Press), a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. His poems have appeared in AGNI, Guesthouse, Artful Dodge, and elsewhere. He lives in South Carolina, where he teaches at Francis Marion University.