Amy Ash is the author of The Open Mouth of the Vase, winner of the Cider Press Review Book Award and the Etchings Press Whirling Prize post-publication award for poetry. Recent work can be found or is forthcoming in Rogue Agent, Tipton Poetry Journal, Shō Poetry Journal, SWWIM, and Ninth Letter. She is an Associate Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Indiana State University.
Fez Avery is an MFA candidate in Poetry at Virginia Tech, where they also teach. They are a recipient of two Hopwood Awards and a University of Michigan alum. During summers, they teach poetry, spoken word, and creative nonfiction at Interlochen Arts Camp. They are an Associate Editor for the minnesota review and are currently at work on their first full-length book.
Skyler Arden Barnes grew up in Kansas City. She holds a BA in English & Creative Writing with a publishing concentration from University of Iowa. Her work has been featured with or is forthcoming in Second Factory, Eclectica Magazine and 86 Logic, among others. She lives in Columbus and serves as Managing Editor for The Journal
Jessica Bell (she/her) is an emerging writer living in Southwest Virginia with her dog and two ferrets. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University and is currently mostly interested in hybrid writing that explores the inherited grief of women. Her work can be found in Anti-Heroin Chic, Midsummer Magazine, Nightshade Lit, Londemere Lit, and Discretionary Love. In her free time, she can often be found outside, drawing and covered in oil pastel, or reading fantasy novels.
Emma Bolden is the author of a memoir, The Tiger and the Cage: A Memoir of a Body in Crisis (Soft Skull Press, 2022) and the poetry collections House Is An Enigma (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2018), medi(t)ations (Noctuary Press, 2016) and Maleficae (GenPop Books, 2013). The recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA, her work has appeared in such journals as Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, The Seneca Review, The Rumpus, StoryQuarterly, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, and Shenandoah. She currently serves as an editor of Screen Door Review: Literary Voices of the Queer South.
Leila Chatti is a Tunisian-American poet and author of Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), winner of the 2021 Levis Reading Prize, the 2021 Luschei Prize for African Poetry, and longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, and four chapbooks. Her honors include multiple Pushcart Prizes, grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and Cleveland State University, where she was the inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Publishing and Writing. Her poems appear in The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Atlantic, POETRY, and elsewhere. She is a Provost Fellow at the University of Cincinnati and teaches in Pacific University’s M.F.A. program.
Ja’net Danielo is the author of This Body I Have Tried to Write, winner of the MAYDAY 2022 Poetry Micro Chapbook Editors’ Choice Award, and The Song of Our Disappearing (Paper Nautilus, 2021). A recipient of a Courage to Write Grant from the de Groot Foundation, a Professional Artist Fellowship from the Arts Council for Long Beach, the Telluride Institute’s Fischer Prize, and an honorable mention in the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in swamp pink, Diode, The Maine Review, Frontier Poetry, and In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (Black Lawrence Press, 2024), among other places. Originally from Queens, NY, Ja’net lives in Long Beach, CA, where she facilitates Word Women: Poetry Heals, a free virtual poetry workshop series for cancer patients and survivors. You can find her at www.jdanielo.com.
Lillian Emerick Valentine (she/her) is a poet and organic farmer from Oregon. She currently lives in Missoula, Montana where she is an MFA candidate and instructor. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Ecotone, The Fjords Review, Salamander, and other literary journals. Her favorite bird is a kingfisher.
CD Eskilson is a trans poet, editor, and translator. Their debut poetry collection, Scream / Queen, is forthcoming from Acre Books.
Adam J. Gellings is the author of the poetry collection Little Palace, & his poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Copper Nickel, The Louisville Review, Willow Springs & elsewhere. He lives in Columbus, Ohio & teaches at the low-residency MFA program at Ashland University
grace (ge) gilbert is the author of Holly (YesYes Books 2025).
Lesley Jenike’s work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, West Branch, Image, The Iowa Review, The Colorado Review, and The Rumpus, and was cited as “notable” in Best American Essays 2023. She’s the recipient of Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards in poetry, nonfiction, and criticism, and her first book of essays was chosen as runner-up for OSU press’ 2023 Gournay Prize. It will be published in Mad Creek Books’ 21st Century Essays series next year. She teaches writing and literature courses at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio.
Amelie Langland is a queer, trans artist who grew up in Alabama. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Arkansas where she was awarded the Carolyn F. Walton Cole Fellowship. She currently serves as an associate editor in poetry at Iron Horse Literary Review. A Pushcart nominee, her poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Best New Poets 2018, RHINO, the minnesota review, NELLE, Bayou Magazine, Measure Review, Susurrus, Texas Review Press, and Poetry South among others. When she is not gardening or teaching, she is most likely watching PBS.
Katherine Plumhoff writes short fiction. Find her work in X-R-A-Y, Quarter After Eight, Flash Frog, Gone Lawn, and Heavy Feather Review. Her story “The Bread of Life” was selected for Best Small Fictions 2024. Say hi at @kplumhoff or katherineplumhoff.com.
Martin Piñol is a librarian and coauthor of the chapbook Everything in the Speaking of It (Alley Cat Books, 2019). His work has appeared in 3:AM Magazine, About Place Journal, Asymptote, The Los Angeles Review, and The Maine Review.
Nicholas Samaras is from Patmos, Greece (the “Island of the Apocalypse”) and, at the time of the Greek Junta military dictatorship (“Coup of the Generals”) was brought in exile to be raised further in America. He’s lived in Greece, England, Wales, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, Jerusalem, thirteen states in America, and he writes from a place of permanent exile. His first book, Hands of the Saddlemaker, won The Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His current book is American Psalm, World Psalm (Ashland Poetry Press, 2014). He is completing a new manuscript of poetry and a memoir of his childhood years lived underground.