Rachel Cloud Adams is a poet, editor, and collage artist from Baltimore, Maryland. She is the lead editor at a child welfare-focused advocacy nonprofit and the founder/editor of the journal and small press Lines + Stars. Her poetry and visual art has appeared in The North American Review, Big Muddy, Salamander, Blueline, The Conium Review, Arkana, Gulf Stream, Memoir, and elsewhere. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of three poetry collections: What is Heard (Red Bird Press, 2013), Sleeper (Flutter Press, 2015), and Space and Road (Semiperfect Press, 2019). She lives in Baltimore and received her MA in writing from the Johns Hopkins University.

Learn more about Rachel here.

What Is Heard

Carolyn Agee is an actress, author and spoken word performer living on the Puget Sound. When she isn’t suffering from existential depression, she enjoys petrichor, unknown forest trails and intimate gatherings of kindred spirits.

Her publication credits include the Ever Silence Menacing (Mount Analogue -- Political Pamphlet Series, 2016) and the forthcoming YA novella The Ambiguous Tides of Saudade (Wolfsinger Publications, 2017).

Learn more about Carolyn here.

Drowning Ophelia

Stories by Jeanne Althouse (she/her) have been published in numerous literary journals, most recently in Catamaran Reader, Connotation Press, The Penman Review, Digging Through the Fat, Potato Soup Journal and The Plentitudes Journal. She is grateful her work has won several awards, been collected into a Chapbook, and twice nominated for a Pushcart. She likes reading, writing, and walks with favorite husband.

Boys in the Bank

E. Kristin Anderson is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author who grew up in Westbrook, Maine and is a graduate of Connecticut College. She has a fancy diploma that says “B.A. in Classics,” which makes her sound smart but has not helped her get any jobs in Ancient Rome. Once upon a time she worked for the lovely folks at The New Yorker magazine, but she soon packed her bags and moved to Austin, Texas where she works as a freelance editor and writing coach. Wearer of many proverbial hats, Kristin an editor at NonBinary Review, helps make books at Lucky Bastard Press, and is a poetry editor at Found Poetry Review. Kristin is the co-editor of the DEAR TEEN ME anthology (Zest Books, 2012), based on the website of the same name. Her YA memoir THE SUMMER OF UNRAVELLING is forthcoming in 2017 from ELJ Publications. As a poet she has been published in many magazines including Juked, [PANK], Asimov’s Science Fiction, Hotel Amerika, Room and Cicada and she has work forthcoming in Plath Profiles and The Quotable. Kristin is the author of six chapbooks of poetry: A GUIDE FOR THE PRACTICAL ABDUCTEE (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), A JAB OF DEEP URGENCY (Finishing Line Press, 2014), PRAY, PRAY, PRAY: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press, 2015), ACOUSTIC BATTERY LIFE (forthcoming from ELJ Publications), FIRE IN THE SKY (forthcoming from Greybook Press), and SHE WITNESSES (forthcoming from dancing girl press). She hand-wrote her first trunk book at sixteen. It was about the band Hanson and may or may not still be in a notebook in her parents’ garage.

Find E. Kristin Anderson on Twitter here.

A Guide for the Practical Abductee

José Angel Araguz, Ph.D. is the author of Rotura (Black Lawrence Press, 2022). His poetry and prose have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Poetry International, The Acentos Review, and Oxidant | Engine among other places. He is an Assistant Professor at Suffolk University where he serves as Editor-in-Chief of Salamander and is also a faculty member of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program. He blogs and reviews books at The Friday Influence.

Learn more about Jose on his blog The Friday Influence or on Twitter.

The Divorce Suite

A journalist and fiction writer, I've written or co-written six books. My first, a novel, The Road to Tamazunchale (1975), was nominated for a National Book Award, followed by Five Against the Sea, a true survival saga (1988); Healing from the Heart, with Dr. Mehmet Oz (1998); Moving Target: A Memoir of Pursuit (2002); White’s Rules: Saving Our Youth, One Kid At A Time, with Paul D. White (2007), and The Wetback and Other Stories (2016).

Read a review of My Life as a Pencil here.

My Life as a Pencil

I’ve had a number of other stories fiction and non-fiction published in recent years, including pieces in Channel magazine, Parhelion Literary Magazine, Jellyfish Review, Digging Through the Fat, Okey Panky, One Story, Exquisite Corpse, Cleaver, Oyster River Pages, The Portland Review, Prime Number magazine, Every Writer’s Resource, Hanging Loose, The Writer, and The Sycamore Review, among others. My short story “Coney on the Moon” was published in early September 2017 in a stand-alone, illustrated Redbird chapbook. Xynobooks published my novel “Double” in ebook-only form in 2012 and my novel “The Vanishing Point” was published as a physical book by Cactus Moon Publications in October of 2021.

I teach creative writing for Gotham Writer’s workshop and Zoetrope Magazine, administered out of New York City, and live in Albuquerque, NM.

Coney on the Moon

An emerita professor of Spanish at Lake Forest College, Lois Baer Barr is a literacy tutor at Forging Opportunities for Refugees in America. Her poetry chapbooks include BIOPOESIS and TRACKS: POEMS ON THE "L" (coming fall 2022 from Finishing Line Press).

Lope de Vega’s Daughter

Martin Barkley's fiction, poetry and reviews have appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Texas Observer, Arcadia Press, Work Literary Magazine, and Queen Mob's Teahouse. He lives in Austin, Texas.

The Lovesong of Smith Oliver Smith

Joe Baumann’s fiction and essays have appeared in Phantom Drift, Passages North, Emerson Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Iron Horse Literary Review, Electric Literature, Electric Spec, On Spec, Barrelhouse, Zone 3, and many others. He is the author of Ivory Children, published in 2013 by Red Bird Chapbooks. He possesses a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. He was a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction. His debut short story collection, Sing With Me at the Edge of Paradise, was chosen as the inaugural winner of the Iron Horse/Texas Tech University Press First Book Award, and his second story collection, The Plagues, will be released by Cornerstone Press in 2023. His debut novel, I Know You’re Out There Somewhere, is forthcoming from Deep Hearts YA. He can be reached at joebaumann.wordpress.com.

Ivory Children

Brian Beatty is the author of five poetry collections: Magpies and Crows; Borrowed Trouble; Dust and Stars: Miniatures; Brazil, Indiana: A Folk Poem; and Coyotes I Couldn’t See.

In 2021 he released Hobo Radio, a spoken word album with original music by Charlie Parr.

Coyotes I Couldn’t See

Nicole Beck (she/her) lives and writes in Philadelphia, where she went to study art and never left. Her flash fiction has appeared in Rue Scribe, Passengers Journal, The Cafe Irreal, F3LL, Tempered Runes, and Landing Zone. She also writes book reviews of science fiction and fantasy for Strange Horizons.

angel tiger sleeper dante

Madeleine D. Beckman is a poet, fiction, and nonfiction writer. She is the recipient of awards and grants, from among other places, the Poetry Society of America, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Irish Arts Council (IE), King’s College (UK), and St. Petersburg Artists Residence (RU).

She is the author of three poetry collections: Hyacinths from the Wreckage (Serving House Books), No Roadmap, No Brakes (Redbird Chapbooks), and Dead Boyfriends (Limoges Press). Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction is published in journals, anthologies, and online.

Madeleine is a Contributing Reviewer with the Bellevue Literary Review, and teaches in the Division of Medical Humanities/NYU School of Medicine, and Denver University’s Graduate Professional Writing Program.

http://writedowntown.com

madeleinebeckman.com

Carol Berg’s poems are forthcoming or in Crab Creek Review (Poetry Finalist 2017), DMQ Review, Hospital Drive (Contest Runner-Up 2017), Sou’wester, Spillway, Redactions, Radar Poetry, Verse Wisconsin and Zone 3. Her chapbooks, Her Vena Amoris (Red Bird Chapbooks), and “Self-Portraits” in Ides (Silver Birch Press) are available. She was winner of a scholarship to Poets on the Coast and a recipient of a Finalist Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Read the full review here.

Read Carol’s blog here.

Her Vena Amoris

Randon Billings Noble is an essayist. Her essay collection Be with Me Always is forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press in 2019, and her lyric essay chapbook Devotional was published by Red Bird in June 2017. Her work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, listed as Notable in The Best American Essays, and appeared in the Modern Love column of The New York Times, The Massachusetts Review, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, and elsewhere. A Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellow, she has been a resident at The Millay Colony for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. Currently she is a nonfiction editor at r.kv.r.y quarterly, Reviews Editor at Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and a freelance reviewer for The A.V. Club. To learn more about the author visit: Website, Facebook, or Twitter.

Devotional

Andrea Blancas Beltran is from El Paso, Texas. Her writing has recently been selected for publication in About Place, A Dozen Nothing, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Fog Machine, Gramma, Pilgrimage, & others. Recent visual work was selected for the Transborder Biennial/Bienal Transfronteriza at the El Paso Museum of Art and Mueso de Arte de Ciudad Juárez. You can find her @drebelle. To learn more about the author, visit: Website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Re—

Andrew Bode-Lang earned his MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona. His short stories and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including Epoch, The Greensboro Review, Harpur Palate, New Orleans Review, Passages North, Poetry East, and Rattle. He lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife, Katie, and their daughter.

Field Trips with Exceptional People

Justin Bond was born and raised in rural Oklahoma. He may or may not hold the record for the most dropouts from regional, state, and private colleges and universities by any one individual in Oklahoma history. He is an alumnus of the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain, where he studied with the poets Ruth L. Schwartz, Judith Taylor, and Donald Hall. A contributing editor for The Found Poetry Review, Justin currently lives and works in Tulsa, OK.

Going Native

A professor of English and pedagogy, Kirstin Ruth Bratt descends from immigrants and maintains an interest in the literature and linguistics of migrant history. She loves her sweet and thoughtful children, traveling abroad, passionate readers and writers, the theater of complex and interesting playwrights, the music of good listeners. She is especially grateful to her children, Sha-Narah and Gabriel, for their many thoughtful ways. Kirstin’s fiction, poetry, and non-fiction has been published in Barrelhouse Magazine; Turn up the Volume (Poets for First Amendment in Wisconsin); Talking Stick Journal; Lake Region Writers Review Journal; Hitherto Journal; Penumbra; Prairie Wolf Anthology; Stony Thursday Book; Tribe; Labletter; Retort; Broadkill Review; Cold Noon; The Muse; Pomona Valley Review; Five Poetry Journal; OneTitle Magazine; Eunoia Review; Poetry for the Masses; Radius; Kite; Redactions; Extract(s); Piker Press; Thumbnail; Adroit Journal; Thick Jam; Two-Thirds North Anthology; Ginger Piglet Press; Marco Polo; Kudzu Review; Montreal Review. In 2013, she won the Brainerd Writers Alliance fiction contest and was nominated for a Pushcart prize. Her novel, Ashwak, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag.

Her other publications include: Feet of Clay (forthcoming novel), Flying Goats in Agadir (Dahlia Publishing 2016), andVitality and Dynamism: Interstitial Dialogues of Language, Politics, and Religion in Morocco's Literary Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 2015; Leiden University Press, 2014).

Kristin and her work have been recognized for the following: Muslim Writing Awards finalist (UK), 2017 Man Booker Prize nominee​, 2017​ Pen-Faulkner nominee, 2017 Minnesota Book Awards nominee, 2017 Republic of Consciousness nominee, 2016 Miller Scholar, 2016 Emerging Artist of Central Minnesota Arts Board, 2012 & 2014 Pushcart Nominee.

These Temples Are Not In Ruins

JoAnn Bren Guernsey is the author of nineteen books for children and young adults, both fiction and nonfiction. In addition, she collaborated with photographer Jim Brandenburg to write four award-winning children’s books. Her short stories have appeared in journals and anthologies, including The Best American Erotica of 1997. She received a McKnight Artist Fellowship in 2003 for the novel-in-progress that, after years of revision, became Glass Asylum, published in 2011 by North Star Press.

Tangled Strings

Jolene is an M.F.A. creative writing graduate student at University of Montana where she teaches first-year composition and serves as poetry editor for the literary magazines Cutbank and Camas. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Carolina Quarterly, Postroad, Belleville Park Pages, and elsewhere. Her Red Bird chapbook won the 2015 Merriam-Frontier Award. Learn more about Jolene at her Website and Twitter.

Peregrine

Charlie M. Broderick graduated from Hamline University with an MFA in creative writing. She now lives in the Twin Cities area and is looking for agent representation for a commercial upper age YA / NA saga. Her portfolio includes literary short stories, commercial screenplays, CNF essays, and commercial novels. Some of her writings appear in Sleet, Revolver, and Fiction Depot.

Tree In Winter

Taylor Brorby is the author of Boys and Oil: Growing up gay in a fractured land, Crude: Poems, Coming Alive: Action and Civil Disobedience, and co-editor of Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Book Critics Circle, the MacDowell Colony, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Mesa Refuge, Blue Mountain Center, and the North Dakota Humanities Council.

Taylor’s work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Orion Magazine, The Arkansas International, Southern Humanities Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and has appeared in numerous anthologies. He is a contributing editor at North American Review and serves on the editorial boards of Terrain.org and Hub City Press.

Taylor regularly speaks around the country on issues related to extractive economies, queerness, disability, and climate change. He is the Annie Tanner Clark Fellow in Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah.

Don Brunnquell is a psychologist and bioethicist as well as poet. He believes reading and writing poetry has helped him remain centered in the abundant experiences of living.

A Little Book of Abundance: Poems for Thanksgiving Throughout the Year

Laura Budofsky Wisniewski lives and writes in a small town in Vermont. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hunger Mountain Review, Calyx, Blueline, Saranac Review, Confrontation and other journals. She was a finalist for the 2017 New Millenium Literary Award, 2017 Fear No Lit Fellowship, and 2017 Paper Nautilus Chapbook competition. She is winner of the 2014 Passager Poetry Prize.

How to Prepare Bear

Jamie Lynn Resneck-Buehner is a mom and English teacher living in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where she enjoys being outside and spending time with family.

Jeff Burt grew up in rural and small-town Wisconsin, with a boyhood dominated by fields and water, Lake Superior, Lake Mason, the Fox River and its tributaries, Long Lake, and the Mississippi. After stints in Texas and Nebraska, he has lived with his wife in Santa Cruz County, California, for most of his adult life, where his children grew and were released into the wilds of other places.

A Filament Drawn So Thin

Kevincareywriter.com

James Cato is an environmental organizer and flips over logs in his spare time. Look for him in SmokeLong Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, and Daily Science Fiction, among others. He tweets humbly @the_sour_potato and his work lives on his website.

Becoming Roadkill

Nancy Chen Long lives in the forested hills of south-central Indiana. She received a BS in Electrical Engineering Technology and an MBA, worked as an electrical engineer, software consultant, and project manager, and more recently earned her MFA. As a volunteer for the local Writers Guild, she helps coordinate a reading series for poets and works with other writers to offer free poetry workshops. To learn more about Nancy, visit her blog or on Twitter.

Clouds as Inkblots for the War Prone

After retirement, Nancy Christensen took a writing survey course at The Loft Literary Center and got hooked on poetry. She considers the discipline of the writing group and the support of fellow writers a wellspring of immeasurable benefit in honing craft.

Little Book of Abundance: Poems for Thanksgiving Throughout the Year

Kaye Cleave began her career as a teacher in Australia and has taught in a variety of settings including a Comprehensive School in London, a Buddhist Monastery in Berkeley and a maximum security prison in California. For twenty years she was a management consultant and professional speaker. Her book on emotional intelligence—Once More With Feeling—has sold in countries around the world; her chapbook of poems—Cartwheels of Love and Loss—was the alternate winner in the Minerva Rising Press Dare to Speak contest; her children's picture book—A Kangaroo Tale—helped raise funds to build a school in a remote village in Western Nepal in memory of her daughter; her memoir—My Beautiful, Reckless Girl—was a finalist in the Panther Creek Book Award. Kaye has an MFA from the University of San Francisco, a PhD from the University of Adelaide, and was a research scholar at UC Berkeley. She co-leads Grief & Healing Retreats at Laguna Writers in San Francisco and has recently completed her first feature length documentary—Catherine’s Kindergarten—a story about love, loss and resilience of the human spirit.

Cartwheels of Love and Loss

Paula Cisewski's fourth poetry collection, ​Quitter, won the Diode Editions Book Prize. She is also the author of The Threatened Everything, Ghost Fargo (Nightboat Poetry Prize winner, selected by Franz Wright), Upon Arrival, and several chapbooks, including the lyric prose Misplaced Sinister. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from organizations including the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Oberholtzer Foundation, Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts, and House of Helsinglight. Her poems have been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and for Best of the Net.

Cisewski's work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including ​Superstition Review, Posit, Poetry Northwest, Salt Hill Journal, Bennington Review, the tiny, Tammy, Prompt, Vinyl, Brevity, ​Ping Pong, failbetter, and the BOMBlog. Her poems have been featured on Verse Daily and included in the anthologies Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics, 78: A Tarot Anthology, Rocked by the Waters: Poems of Motherhood, Rewilding: Poems for the Environment, and New Poetry from the Midwest.She lives in Minneapolis, where she teaches writing privately and academically, makes things at Yew Who Studio and Beauty School Press, and collaborates with fellow artists and activists. Her website is www.paulacisewski.com.

Born in Leicester, England, Clive Collins has spent the greater part of his life working as a teacher in Ireland, Sierra Leone, and Japan. He is the author of two novels, The Foreign Husband (Marion Boyars) and Sachiko's Wedding (Marion Boyars/Penguin Books). Misunderstandings, a collection of short stories, was joint-winner of the Macmillan Silver PEN Award in 1994. He was a short-listed finalist in the 2009 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.

Carried Away and Other Stories

Elinor Cramer’s first poetry collection, was published in 2011. She is the author of a chapbook, Canal Walls Engineered So Carefully They Still Hold Water. Elinor holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Warren Wilson College and a Master’s in Psychology from Roosevelt University. She lives in Syracuse where she practices psychotherapy. To learn more about Eilnor, visit her website or on FaceBook.

Mayflower

In the fall of 2016, when this chapbook was about to be published, James M. Croteau was living and working in Kalamazoo, MI where he had been a professor at Western Michigan University since 1990. Jim had grown up gay and Catholic in the south. In times of rapid change, he believed that remembering history was important, especially how we carry our history in tow. Sadly, Jim died unexpectedly of a heart attack on September 18, 2016. He is survived by his partner of 31 years, Darryl Loiacano, and their two Labrador retrievers. Jim’s poems have appeared in Chicago Literati, Melancholy Hyperbole, New Verse News, Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry, Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South and others.

His collection, It's All Tangled in the Sweat on My Neck, was published posthumously with the help of Jim’s partner, Darryl, and his poetry mentor, Denise Miller.

It’s All Tangled in the Sweat on My Neck

According to Anne Curtin, “Writing is like my legs––I need it to hold me up.”

A Little Book of Abundance: Poems for Thanksgiving throughout the Year

Molly Curtis has an MFA from The University of Montana, where she received a 2010 Academy of American Poets Prize. She is the author of two chapbooks, Mouths Full of Glass in the Abandoned Bathhouse (Zero Ducats Collective, 2009) and After Touring the Body Room (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Her poems have also appeared in numerous literary journals. Born and raised in Montana, she has moved frequently between various cities and towns of the American West and currently lives in the beautiful city of Prague in the Czech Republic.

Balsamroot

Natalie is a lover of books in all forms. She writes them, reads them, designs them, builds them by hand, and repairs them once they start to fall apart. A native of southern Illinois, she now lives in Albuquerque, where she is learning to nurture a garden in the desert. And she surveys prehistoric Puebloan sites in the Southwest, collecting evidence of astronomy in ancient buildings and lives.

Looking to the Sky

Born in Calcutta and raised in New Delhi, Sayantani Dasgupta teaches at the University of Idaho. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Phoebe, and Gulf Stream, among other magazines and literary journals. Honors include a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and a Centrum Fellowship. Sayantani edits nonfiction for Crab Creek Review and her debut collection of essays Fire Girl: Essays on India, America, & the In-Between has just been released.

The House of Nails: Memories of a New Delhi Childhood

Jaydn DeWald (he/they) is the author of The Rosebud Variations and Sheets of Sound, both from Broken Sleep Books. They serve as managing editor of COMP: an interdisciplinary journal and are Assistant Professor of English & Director of Creative Writing at Piedmont University.

7 Miniatures

Elizabeth Dingmann Schneider is a writer and editor. She earned her MFA from Hamline University, and she also completed a one-year poetry fellowship with Commons Magazine. Her work has appeared in Commons Magazine, The Saint Paul Almanac, Mosaic, Sleet, the What Light Poetry Contest, and others.

Blood

Holly Dowds discovered poetry late in life, following a brain injury, and credits her abundant writing with helping the healing process. Six of her poems appear in literary publications.

A Little Book of Abundance: Poems for Thanksgiving throughout the Year

Meg Eden is a 2020 Pitch Wars mentee, and teaches creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College. She is the author of the 2021 Towson Prize for Literature winning poetry collection “Drowning in the Floating World” (Press 53, 2020) and children’s novels, most recently “Selah’s Guide to Normal” (Scholastic, 2023).

Find her online at www.megedenbooks.com or on Twitter at @ConfusedNarwhal and Instagram at @meden_author.

The Girl Who Came Back

Paige Edenfield is a writer currently living in Gilbert, Arizona and working at a mobile device forensics company. She is a survivor. A hiker. A black coffee drinker and a Reese's Peanut Butter Cups from the freezer enthusiast. She is the author of Splinters (Red Bird) and The Stars That Guide Us Home (Running Wild Novella Anthology Volume 2: Part 1). And she isn't done yet.

Splinters

Eva Eliav's poetry and short fiction have been published in numerous literary journals both online and in print, including Room, The St. Ann’s Review, Emrys Journal, The Ilanot Review, Flashquake, The Apple Valley Review, Horizon Review, The Enchanted Conversation, Constellations, and Fictive Dream.

"Beautiful, wonderful, gentle, intelligent poems"

—Helen Bar-Lev

Eve

Anita is an author and artist. Her recent short story collection, Butterfly Moon, was published by the University of Arizona Press. Her work has been translated into 10 languages and taught around the world. She won the Bumbershoot/Weyerhaeuser Award, a Washington State Governor’s Writing Award, and a GAP Award for her poetry. She collaborates on art projects with a small group of women. An altered book project on the value of art in Latin America is being archived at the Smithsonian after an exhibit in Phoenix, AZ. She has also worked on an altered book about Don Quixote. She is half-European (Slovenian, German, and Italian) and half Yaqui (a nation native to Mexico). She has MS and is house bound. Learn more about Anita here,

Breaking Edges

A Thousand Branches

Anika Fajardo was born in Colombia and raised in Minnesota and is the author of a book about that experience: Magical Realism for Non-Believers: A Memoir of Finding Family. Her books for middle-grade readers include the award-winning What If a Fish, Meet Me Halfway (forthcoming), and the Disney tie-in novel Encanto: A Tale of Three Sisters. She lives with her family in Minneapolis, where she teaches at Augsburg University’s MFA program. Learn more about Anika here and on Twitter.

The Scene As I Imagined It

MJ Gabrielsen is a writer and an editor for East on Central Literary Journal in Highland Park, IL. Her nature poetry has been published by The Avocet and described as a voice that conveys intriguing images and beauty. She was a writer-in-residence at Write On Door County, WI in 2017. She credits her grasp of craft to authors, Marilyn L. Taylor and James Mihaley in many years of retreat settings.

Watching Earth

Fierce Lament is an anthology that brings together over 30 poets, essayists, artists, and activists who were asked to respond to the query, “How do we sustain ourselves and our communities in the face of intense uncertainty fueled by global climate change, growing nationalism and political extremism fueled by social media and the Internet?” Learn more about all the contributors here.

Growing up a Yankee in Charleston, South Carolina, Margot moved slowly north and west to settle in Minneapolis/St. Paul, not far from her mother’s North Dakota hometown. On her father's side, his Italian heritage has exerted a powerful tug at her. Language and place inhabit everything she's published—from two books of poetry, a chapbook The Country’s Way with Rain (Kutenai Press) and a full-length collection, Between the Houses (Laurel Poetry Collective)—to five books of nonfiction. These include two nominated for the Minnesota Book Award: Up to the Plate: The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (Lerner) and an oral history memoir of Minnesota’s premier Ojibwa artist George Morrison: Turning the Feather Around (Minnesota Historical Society Press). Two others were published by Teachers & Writers Collaborative in New York: The Story in History and Circuit Writer. Finally, comes Stop This War (Lerner), based on her husband’s refusal of the draft during the Vietnam War. Learn more about Margot on her blog and website.

The Heartbeat of Wings

James R. Gapinski’s fiction has previously appeared in The Collapsar, Juked, Monkeybicycle, Psychopomp, SmokeLong Quarterly, Word Riot, and other publications. He’s managing editor of The Conium Review, associate faculty at Ashford University, and an instructional specialist at Chemeketa Community College. James lives with his partner in Portland, Oregon.

Messiah Tortoise

Donald Gecewicz is a writer and translator and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. His most recent appearance as a translator was to read his new versions of Vivaldi’s sonnets for The Four Seasons, accompanying Oistrakh Symphony of Chicago, at a concert at the Art Institute of Chicago. His play All-American Boy was a finalist in the 2016 Great Gay Play and Musical contest, after being a semifinalist in the 2015 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Red Bird Chapbooks published a small book of his epigrams, entitled Rosehill. He and Kristina Schramm cowrote a four-episode comedy of antiquity called The Romans, in which he acted as a household god. Magic Lantern was part of In the Works playwright residency program of the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. From 2007 to 2012, he was an artistic associate of the poetic Caffeine Theatre. Caffeine Theatre produced his play, Like the Moon behind the Clouds, adapted from the literary/travel memoir of Carla Vasio, which opened at the Chicago Cultural Center. His play Night Battles premiered at Live Bait Theater in Chicago (nomination, Joseph Jefferson citation for best new work). His translation and adaptation of Colette’s Chéri premiered at Live Bait Theater (nomination, Joseph Jefferson citation for best adaptation). In January 2001, Gecewicz was awarded an individual fellowship in translation by the National Endowment for the Arts to support work on contemporary Italian poet Giovanni Raboni. From 1997 to 2006, he was administrative advisor to Live Bait Theater and then served on the board of directors. For ten years, he was a network playwright at Chicago Dramatists and was also appointed a senior network playwright there. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago.

Rosehill

Karen George's chapbooks include Inner Passage (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), Into the Heartland (Finishing Line Press, 2011), and The Seed of Me (Finishing Line Press, 2015). Her full-length collection, Swim Your Way Back, was published by Dos Madres Press in 2014. She has received grants from Kentucky Foundation for Women and Kentucky Arts Council, and her work appears in Memoir, Louisville Review, Permafrost, Nagatuck River Review, Blue Lyra Review, and on the Tupelo Press 30/30 Website. She holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University, reviews poetry and interviews poets at Poetry Matters blog, and is co-founder and fiction editor of the online journal Waypoints Learn more about Karen on her website.

Inner Passage

Kennedy Gisege is incarcerated at Stillwater Prison in Minnesota where he is serving a 40-year sentence. He is a writer and poet with three published eBooks: Fingers, Lies and Omens; Dear Bo; and Nelson Mandela: The Goodest Person Ever under the pen name Ken Amen.

The Liturgy of Smell

Howie Good, a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz. has published widely online and in print. His poetry collections include Gunmetal Sky, Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press), and The Bad News First (Kung Fu Treachery Press).

Learn more about Howie on his blog.

Flammable Until Dry

Danger Falling Debris

Living is the Spin Cycle

Echo’s Bones

Eirik Gumeny is the [insert superlatives here] author of the cult-favorite Exponential Apocalypse series. He’s written for WIRED, Cracked, Nerdist, a couple of medical textbooks, and even The New York Times once. To learn more about Eirik, visit his website and Twitter.

Storybook Romance

Sandra Gustin, a family physician by training, has lived and worked overseas and cross-culturally for more than 25 years. Her poetry has appeared in the Rio Grande Review, the Anglican Theological Review, and the anthology of the 2013 Houston Poetry Fest, where she was a juried poet. She has benefited from the stillness and observation required by both birdwatching and poetry.

This Treasured View

After a childhood spent roaming the hills and orchards of her native California on horseback, Susan Harvey studied philosophy and music in Canada. She had a long career as a professional harpsichordist, earned a PhD in musicology from Stanford University, and taught on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for many years. Returning to her roots, Susan now lives with her husband on a ranch in Northern California. Her poems have appeared in reviews nationally and she was nominated a the Pushcart XLV Prize.

Colloquies

Margaret Hasse receives great joy from guiding the poetry workshop for the good people and talented writers featured in this chapbook. Nodin Pess brought out Between Us, her fifth collection of poetry, in 2016.

A Little Book of Abundance: Poems for Thanksgiving Throughout the Year

Sarah Hayes is a writer and visual artist currently living in Saint Paul, MN. She enjoys writing most days - especially poetry, creative non-fiction, and mixed-genre works exploring a wide range of subjects and forms. She is equally as non-specific in her artmaking: exploring and mixing digital photography, collage and the book arts.

Sarah earned an MFA from Hamline University and studies at the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts – both as treats to herself after years of learning grown-up things. In her past life she has been a transportation executive, a number cruncher, an airplane mechanic, and at one point she even spent her afternoons eagerly waiting at the mailbox for the next installment in the How and Why Science Library.

Sarah served as Executive Director and Editor in Chief for Red Bird Chapbooks until 2020. Her chapbook, The Heart of Everything That Is, launched the Red Bird Chapbooks Editor Series. Her poems have also appeared in Zenith City Arts, The Muse, Verse Wisconsin and Dust & Fire.

The Heart of Everything That Is

JD Hegarty is a lawyer, a poet, and essayist, who lives in Saint Paul with two loud grey cats and plays Dungeons and Dragons on alternating Tuesdays. JD is a new graduate of Hamline's MFA program. Their work can be found in White Stag and in the Red Bird Chapbook, On Passing.

On Passing

James C. Henderson lives in New Brighton, Minnesota, with his lovely wife, Athena.

Chasing Delight

Joey Hedger is author of the novel, Deliver Thy Pigs (Malarkey Books). A former Floridian and amateur birder, he currently lives in Alexandria, Virginia. You can find his other writing at www.joeyhedger.com.

In the Line of a Hurricane, We Wait

Don Herzberg was born in California, raised in Texas, and  moved around for years with his wife Vickie and their children  Jill and David, before settling in Vermont in 1980. He has  practiced medicine in both academic and private settings.  In 2004, he received an MFA from New England College’s  poetry writing program under the guidance of Gerald Stern.  He has published poems in various magazines and was a finalist  in Comstock Review’s 2009 poetry contest. In 2017, he and  Vickie self-published Body Language, which included 15 of her  prints from life drawing sessions and the poems he wrote in  response to each of them. A few years later, Don self-published  a book of his poetry, Dancing on Earth.

The Things She Said

Lisa Higgs is the recipient of a 2022 Minnesota State Arts Board grant providing creative support for individual Minnesota artists. Her third chapbook, Earthen Bound, was published by Red Bird Chapbooks in February 2019. Her poetry has been published in ZYZZYVA, Folio, Rhino, Sugar House Review, and WaterStone Review, among others, and her poem “Wild Honey Has the Scent of Freedom” was awarded 2nd Prize in the 2017 Basil Bunting International Poetry Prize. Her reviews and interviews can be found at the Poetry Foundation, Kenyon Review Online, the Adroit Journal, and the Colorado Review.

To learn more about Lisa, visit her website or blog.

Unintentional Guide to the Big City

Earthen Bound

Sharon Hilberer is a long-time teacher of English as a Second Language who finds abundant inspiration with writers, activists, and children. Often beginning with shreds of remembered or overheard conversations, her poems lead to unexpected places.

A Little Book of Abundance: Poems for Thanksgiving Throughout the Year

As a young man, Andy Hjelmeland spent many years in correctional facilities. He first began to write in prison, and has published articles in Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, The Nation, Mother Earth News, Mpls-St Paul Magazine, and Sports Literate. His books for young readers include Drinking and Driving, Kids in Jail, and Prisons. He lives in Minneapolis Minnesota.

Misfit

On the Run

Emily Hockaday's first full-length collection, NAMING THE GHOST, is available for preorder with Cornerstone Press (https://secure.payconex.net/paymentpage/enhanced/index.php?action=view&aid=120615451501&gid=000000177821&id=135421&fbclid=IwAR1h99Y8fIm6rxBmxriDczUJ82XZz-9DlE0HiA0g4Bcc6_J0DEtO3jCmpIE).

She is the author of five chapbooks, most recently BEACH VOCABULARY with Red Bird Chaps. She was a 2022 Bethany Arts Community poetry fellow and a Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation grantee. She can be found on the web at www.emilyhockaday.com and on Twitter @E_Hockaday.

Chip earned a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Kansas, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Missouri in St. Louis, and is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. His fiction has appeared in Bourbon Penn, Rosebud, Podcastle, Daily Science Fiction, Writer’s Digest, Every Day Fiction, the Weird Dream Society anthology, and various other markets. He’s a principal at a small architectural studio in St. Louis populated by amazing humans on whom he often inflicts early drafts of his stories and the frequent and odd little illustrations that emerge from him. Find out more at chiphouser.com.

Dark Morsels

After earning English degrees from James Madison University in Virginia and the University of Minnesota, Donna Isaac received her MFA from Hamline University in 2007 where she was awarded Best Poetry Thesis for her capstone, Sustenance. She taught junior high, high school, and college English and writing in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, retiring from full-time work after 40 years. In 2009, Red Dragonfly Press published her chapbook entitled Tommy, elegiac poetry for her little brother who died from a rare form of cancer. In 2012 she was the first writer to be published with Red Bird Chapbooks with her poetry Holy Comforter and a broadside "Bathing." She helped start the literary group Cracked Walnut and now serves on the Board for this branch of the League of Minnesota Poets, organizing community readings and free workshops. Pocahontas Press from Virginia published her first full collection of poetry, Footfalls, a paean to her formative years in or near the Appalachians and to American folk music especially as collected by the Lomaxes in 2018. She helped found the reading series, Literary Lights, hosting at Next Chapter Booksellers in St. Paul, now merged to form Literary Bridges. She continues to teach at the Loft and through Cracked Walnut. In 2019, Finishing Line Press published her chapbook, Persistence of Vision, a collection of poetry about movies. Her work appears in over 50 literary journals. She believes in the power of poetry to transform and uplift especially in lyrical and narrative work. Her professional website is donnaisaacpoet.com.

To learn more about Donna, visit her website.

Holy Comforter

Andrew Jarvis is the author of Sound Points (Red Bird Chapbooks), Ascent (Finishing Line Press), and The Strait (Homebound Publications). His poems have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry, Evansville Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Tulane Review, and many other magazines. He was a Finalist for the 2014 Homebound Publications Poetry Prize. He also judges poetry contests and edits anthologies for Red Dashboard LLC. Andrew holds an M.A. in Writing (Poetry) from Johns Hopkins University. To learn more about Andrew, visit his website or FaceBook.

Sound Points

Alice-Catherine Jennings is a Poet-Reader-Medievalist based in Texas and the author of Katherine of Aragon: A Collection of Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her poetry has appeared in various publications worldwide. Learn more about Alice-Catherine on her website.

Notations: The Imagined Diary of Julian of Norwich

Ethan Joella teaches English and psychology at University of Delaware. He is a 2008 Eric Hoffer finalist (that story appears in Best New Writing 2008) and a 2010 Robert Olen Butler Award finalist. Additionally, his work has appeared in The International Fiction Review, The MacGuffin, Rattle, Berkeley Fiction Review, River Teeth, and The Collagist. His chapbook Where Dads Go won second honorable mention and was published by Finishing Line Press.

A Prayer for Ducks

Sonja Johanson attended College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, ME. She has recent work appearing in The Albatross, Redheaded Stepchild, and Off the Coast, is a contributing editor at the Found Poetry Review, and is the 2015 recipient of the Zero Bone and Kudzu Poetry Prizes. Sonja divides her time between work in Massachusetts and her home in the mountains of western Maine. To learn more about Sonja, visit her blog, FaceBook or Twitter.

Trees in Our Dooryards

In her senior years, Joan Johnson resumed writing––forsaken during child rearing and career building. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, close to her family, and looks forward to her first chapbook, An Alphabet for Aging, from Red Bird Chapbooks in 2016.

A Little Book of Abundance: Poems for Thanksgiving Throughout the Year

An Alphabet for Aging

Barbara Jones has been writing since high school, with a little digression into the practice of law. She is grateful for all health care providers and the abundance of support she receives from fellow writers, friends and family.

A Little Book of Abundance: Poems for Thanksgiving Throughout the Year

Dan Julian was born in Tucson, Arizona (though he tells folks, "South of Phoenix"). He started writing stories when his parents bought a typewriter, and his early work was almost certainly awful. He now lives with his wife and children in Málaga, Spain, where he teaches theology and writes in his free time. His stories have previously appeared in Lunch Ticket, Zetetic, and Spartan Lit.

Strange Spain

Deborah Keenan is author of ten collections of poetry, and one book of writing ideas. She recently retired from 30 years as professor in the MFA Program at Hamline University. She teaches privately, and at The Loft, a writing center in Minneapolis. Mom of four, grandmother of four, she lives close to the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers in beautiful, mysterious St. Paul.

so she had the world

Merie Kirby grew up in California and now lives in North Dakota. She teaches at the University of North Dakota. She is the author of two chapbooks, The Dog Runs On and The Thumbelina Poems. Her poems have been published in Mom Egg Review, Rogue Agent, Orange Blossom Review.

To learn more about Merie, visit her blog.

The Thumbelina Poems

Kathleen Kirk is the poetry editor for Escape Into Life. She is the author of five previous poetry chapbooks, including Interior Sculpture: poems in the voice of Camille Claudel (Dancing Girl Press, 2014), commissioned by Columbus Dance Theatre for the world premier of Claudel. Kirk’s poems and stories appear in many print and online journals, including Arsenic Lobster, Confrontation, Eclectica, Menacing Hedge, Nimrod, Poetry East, Puerto del Sol, RHINO, Quarter After Eight, and Waccamaw. To learn more about Kathleen, visit her blog.

Spiritual Midwifery

ABCs of Women’s Work

Michael Lambert is author of Circumnavigation (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), loosely based on self-propelled travel in North America. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Spirit Lake Review, Timber Journal, and Bayou Magazine. A graduate of the University of Alabama M.F.A. program in creative writing, he lives and works in Wisconsin.

Learn more about Michael on his website, Facebook, and Twitter.

Circumnavigation

Michael Lambert is author of Circumnavigation (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), loosely based on self-propelled travel in North America. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Spirit Lake Review, Timber Journal, and Bayou Magazine. A graduate of the University of Alabama M.F.A. program in creative writing, he lives and works in Wisconsin.

Where It Leads

Bethany Lee is an assistant professor of English at Purdue University Northwest, where she teaches creative writing, theatre, professional writing, and composition. An active member of her community, she directs and performs in a variety of theatrical productions, facilitates recording and archiving of oral histories, helps to organize poetry readings and competitions, edits a student literary journal, and co-directs a writing and arts camp for area middle schoolers, among other activities. She lives in Valparaiso, Indiana with her husband and sons.

With Our Lungs in Our Hands

Vicky Lettmann grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina. She graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with a degree in English. She went on to earn an M.A.T. in English (UNC-Chapel Hill), an M. A. in Comparative Literature (Indiana University), and an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing (Warren Wilson College.)

Vicky’s writing has appeared in Twenty-six Minnesota Writers as well as other publications. She is a recipient of a Loft-McKnight Fellowship. Her poems can be found in Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude, and From Glory to Glory: An Anthology by Poetry in the Cathedral. Her essay, “Dolls, Death, and Pleasing Decay,” appeared in Minerva Rising. With Carol Roan, she is the co-editor of When Last on Mountain: The View from Writers over 50. She has published three collections of poetry: The Beach, What Can Be Saved, and most recently, Listening to Chopin Late at Night.

Learn more about Vicky on her blog.

What Can Be Saved

Su Love is the author of six collections of poetry, some published as Su Smallen, including Buddha, Proof, a Minnesota Book Award finalist and Weight of Light, a Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award nominee. Her work has been recognized with the Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize and international publications, fellowships, and residencies from, notably, Vermont Studio Center, the Jerome Foundation/Tofte Lake Center, St. Croix Watershed Research Station, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Unamuno Author Series in Madrid, Spain, and Salmon Literary Centre in County Clare, Ireland. Su was a founding member of Laurel Poetry Collective, a small press that published handsome books and broadsides for ten years. She taught in the graduate creative writing program at Hamline University and has been a visiting artist at several colleges and universities. Su was a professional dancer and choreographer, and her poetry has served as scores for dance and film. Learn more about Su on her website.

Wild Hush

Bob Lucky is the author of Ethiopian Time (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), Conversation Starters in a Language No One Speaks (SurVision Books, 2018), My Thology: Not Always True But Always Truth (Cyberwit, 2019). His work has appeared in Rattle, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Otoliths, and other journals. He lives in Portugal.

Ethiopian Time

Kelly Magee is the author of Body Language (UNT Press 2006), winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Short Fiction, The Neighborhood (Gold Wake Press 2016), and several collaborative works, including With Animal (Black Lawrence Press 2015) and The Reckless Remainder (Noctuary Press 2017), written with Carol Guess. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Gulf Coast, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, Booth, Indiana Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and others. She teaches creative writing and queer literature at Western Washington University. Learn more about Kelly on her website, FaceBook, and Twitter.

A Guide to Strange Places

Matt Mareck lives and writes in the Twin Cities.

A Sleep and A Forgetting

Bunny Hill

Jayne Marek's poetry and art photos appear in Women’s Studies Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, 3Elements, Silk Road, Sliver of Stone, Sin Fronteras, Cold Mountain Review, Peacock Journal, About Place Journal, Spillway, Camas, Central American Literary Review, Flying Island, Tipton Poetry Journal, and New Mexico Review, among others. She has a chapbook, a co-authored collection, and a new full-length poetry book, In and Out of Rough Water (Aldrich Press, 2017), with a second full-length collection, The Tree Surgeon Dreams of Bowling (Finishing Line Press 2017). She makes her home in the Pacific Northwest, where she writes, takes photographs, and learns about natural history. Learn more about Jayne on FaceBook.

River Triptych

Brent Martin is the author of three chapbook collections of poetry - Poems from Snow Hill Road (New Native Press, 2007), A Shout in the Woods (Flutter Press, 2010), and Staring the Red Earth Down (Red Bird Press, 2014), and is a co-author of Every Breath Sings Mountains (Voices from the American Land, 2011) with authors Barbara Duncan and Thomas Rain Crowe He is also the author of Hunting for Camellias at Horseshoe Bend, a non-fiction chapbook published by Red Bird Press in 2015. His poetry and essays have been published in the North Carolina Literary Review, Pisgah Review, Tar River Poetry, Chattahoochee Review, Eno Journal, New Southerner, Kudzu Literary Journal, Smoky Mountain News, and elsewhere. He lives in the Cowee community in western North Carolina and is currently serving as the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for the West. Learn more about Brent on FaceBook and read a review of Staring the Red Earth Down here.

Staring the Red Earth Down

Hunting for Camellias at Horseshoe Bend

Beth Mayer’s fiction has appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Sun Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a finalist in The Missouri Review’s 2016 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize contest in fiction. Beth is a Loft Mentor Series Winner in Fiction for 2015-16. Her short story collection was named a 2015 finalist for the Many Voices Project with New Rivers Press. Beth holds an MFA from Hamline University, coordinates the Creative Writing Certificate at Century College, and lives in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Niagara Falls

Wendell Mayo is the author of seven collections of short stories, including What Is Said about Elephants and Survival House, winner of Texas Association of Authors Award for Best Book of Short Stories and short list for the International Rubery Book Award in Fiction. He is a recipient of an NEA fellowship and a Fulbright to Lithuania. Over one-hundred of his short stories have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including Yale Review, Harvard Review, Manoa, Missouri Review, Boulevard, and others. His latest book, Twice-born World: Stories of Lithuania, will be published in 2022.

Burning Mount Diablo

Janet McCann is an old Texas poet who has been teaching at Texas A&M since 1968. Journals publishing her poems include Kansas Quarterly, Parnassus, Nimrod, Sou'wester, New York Quarterly, Tendril, Poetry Australia, etc. She has won five chapbook contests, sponsored by Pudding Publications, Chimera Connections, Franciscan University Press, Plan B Press, and Sacramento Poetry Center. Her most recent full-length collection is The Crone at the Cathedral (Lamar University Press, 2013.) She is interested in art and animals—especially together.

The Dancing House

Kindra McDonald is the author of Concealed Weapons (ELJ Publications, 2015). Her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, The Camel Saloon, Liturgical Credo and various anthologies. She teaches poetry to children and adults at The Muse Writers Center and teaches the not as exciting kinds of writing to undergraduate students. She graduated from Virginia Wesleyan College and has an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She can be found writing, baking and cat wrangling with her husband in Norfolk, VA.

Elements and Briars

Kyle McGinn is a poet. His work has appeared in Outrageous Fortune, Poetry City, USA, and Prologue. In 2012 he placed as a semi-finalist for the Norman Mailer College Poetry Award. He published a chapbook, Pennies, with Red Bird Chapbooks in 2014. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Pennies

Kat Meads is the author of 20 books and chapbooks of poetry and prose. Her short plays have been produced in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and elsewhere. A native of North Carolina, she lives in California and teaches in Oklahoma City University's Red Earth MFA program. Kirkus Reviews described her latest fiction, Miss Jane: The Lost Years, set in the 1970s, as a "sharp and tightly crafted tale . . . Incredibly relevant to today's reckoning with powerful men's sexual abuse of the women around them." Learn more about Kat at her website.

Watering

Jenn Monroe is the author of In Anticipation of Grief and Something More Like Love. Her work has been published in a number of literary journals, both in print and online. She is the editor-in-chief of the literary blog Extract(s): Daily Dose of Lit and teaches at New England College and Southern New Hampshire University. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and their daughter. Learn more about Jenn on her website, FaceBook, and Twitter.

In Anticipation of Grief

Alison Morse’s prose and poetry have appeared in Press 53 Open Awards Anthology, Water~Stone Review, Natural Bridge, Rhino, The Pedestal, The Potomac and mnartists.org, among other journals and anthologies. Her story, “The Truth About ‘The Lead Plates at the Romm Press,’” won the 2012 Tiferet Fiction Award. The Women Peacemakers Program at the Joan Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice published three of her non-fiction narratives. For ten years, Alison ran TalkingImageConnection, a reading series that brought together writers, contemporary visual art and new audiences in Twin-Cities galleries. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband.

If You Wave a Chicken Over Your Head

Victoria Bosch Murray’s poetry has appeared in Field, Greensboro Review, Salamander, Phoebe, and elsewhere. She has a chapbook of poems “On the Hood of Someone Else’s Car” (Finishing Line Press) and an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College. Although she has moved 23 times, she now lives and teaches in Boston, Massachusetts, her heart home.

Prayer for Plum and Sinew

Arlene Naganawa’s poetry has appeared in numerous magazines, including Crab Orchard Review, Pontoon/Floating Bridge Review, Calyx, Caketrain, The Seattle Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review and others. She is a featured poet on Seattle’s Poetry on Buses and was the recipient of two Seattle Arts Commission Literary Artist Awards. She teaches humanities and creative writing in the Seattle area. Learn more about Arlene on FaceBook.

The Scarecrow Bride

Rodney Nelson's work began appearing in mainstream journals long ago; but he turned to fiction and did not write a poem for twenty-two years, restarting in the 2000s. So he is both older and "new." See his page in the Poets & Writers directory for a notion of the publishing history. He has worked as a copy editor in the Southwest and now lives in the northern Great Plains. Recently, his poem "One Winter" won a Poetry Kit Award for 2011 (U.K.); it had appeared in Symmetry Pebbles. His "Upstream in Idaho" received a Best of Issue Award at the late Neon Beam (also England). The chapbook Metacowboy was published in 2011; another title, In Wait, in November 2012. Bog Light and Sighting the Flood have just appeared. The chapbook Fargo in Winter took second place in the 2013 Cathlamet Prize competition at Ravenna Press, Spokane. Directions From Enloe won third in the Turtle Island Quarterly contest. Nelson's chapbook of prose narratives, Hill of Better Sleep, is out from Red Bird Chapbooks. Mogollon Picnic, poems (Red Dashboard), is already in print; and the poetry ebook Nodding in Time (Kind of a Hurricane Press) is "up." The full-length Felton Prairie has appeared at Middle Island Press. Red Dashboard has brought out another, Words For the Deed. The latest: Cross Point Road. Recent poetry book and chapbook titles are The Western Wide, Billy Boy, Ahead of Evening, and Winter in Fargo.

Hill of Better Sleep

Sophie Panzer is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer from New Jersey. She was a finalist for the 2017 Quebec Writers’ Federation Literary Prize for Young Writers, a 2016 Pushcart Prize nominee, and the winner of a 2015 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards National Silver Medal. She served as a fiction editor for the 2015-2016 edition of Scrivener Creative Review and attended the 2014 Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Gingerbread House, Fearsome Critters, Pulp Literature, the Claremont Review, Soliloquies Anthology, Blue Marble Review, carte blanche, Inklette, and YARN (Young Adult Review Network). She enjoys musicals and long walks in the woods.

Survive July

Elizabeth Paxson is a poet, writer and visual artist who resides in Northern Michigan among mutable trees and elusive waters near the 45th parallel. She owes much gratitude to a now-deceased aunt who led her to the well of words and taught her to drink deeply. Her first chapbook, Always Birds, is with Red Bird Chapbooks (June 2019). Her poems have appeared in collections such as “Peaceable Kingdom,” “Poet’s Night Out,” 2016-18, Pangolin Press, Squirrel Cane Press, Tiny Seed Journal and a short story with Night Picnic Press, a bilingual journal (2019).

Elizabeth believes poetry is meant to be heard. She hopes readers will find a quiet place in which to read these poems out loud, as there is a music imbedded in the use of words and the sounds they make together that enrich the depth and meaning of the poems.

Always Birds

Daniel Pereyra is a Phoenix, AZ based writer of poetry and fiction whose work has been featured in The Artists Catalogue, Westward Quarterly, Poetry Quarterly, The Avalon Literary Review, Five Poetry, Third Wednesday, and more. His first poetry chapbook, Sunday Morning Ponderings, was published by Flutter Press in August 2015.

yes i know you can’t drive across the world

Jason Magabo Perez is a Filipino American writer, performer, & scholar. Perez is the author of This is for the mostless. (WordTech Editions, Forthcoming 2017), & You Will Gonna Go Crazy (2011), a multimedia performance commissioned by Kularts SF & funded by a Challenge America Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Perez’s writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in Witness, TAYO Literary Magazine, Eleven Eleven, Mission at Tenth, vitriol, & The Feminist Wire, & was nominated for the Best of Net 2015. Formerly a featured artist at the New Americans Museum, Perez has performed at several college & university campuses across the U.S., & at venues such as the National Asian American Theater Festival, the International Conference of the Philippines, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Asian Art Museum SF, & the La Jolla Playhouse. For the past several years, Perez has taught writing, performance, & ethnic studies at various colleges & universities in San Diego. Perez received an MFA in Writing & Consciousness from New College of California & is an alumnus of the Voices of Our Nation (VONA) Writing Workshops for Writers of Color. Currently, Perez is completing a dual PhD in Ethnic Studies & Communication at the University of California, San Diego. In September 2016, Perez will begin an appointment as Assistant Professor of Fiction Writing in the Department of English at California State University at San Bernardino.

Phenomenology of a Superhero

Karl Plank’s writing has been published in journals such as Notre Dame Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Zone 3, New Madrid, Briar Cliff Review, and has been featured on Poetry Daily. He is the author of the recent poetry chapbook, A Field, Part Arable (Lithic Press, 2017). A past winner of the Thomas Carter Prize and a Pushcart nominee, he is the J.W. Cannon Professor of Religious Studies at Davidson College. He believes what David Foster Wallace said is true: “If you spend enough time reading or writing, you find a voice, but you also find certain tastes. You find certain writers who when they write, it makes your own brain voice like a tuning fork, and you just resonate with them. And when that happens (it) becomes a source of unbelievable joy. . . Lucky people develop a relationship with a certain kind of art that becomes spiritual, almost religious, and doesn’t mean, you know, church stuff, but it means you’re just never the same.” To learn more about Karl, visit his website.

Boss

Samantha Priestley is a writer from Sheffield, England. She won the H E Bates competition and The Tacchi-Morris Prize for short stories. Her chapbooks, Dreamers and Orange Balloon, are published by Folded Word. Her first novel was published by Pioneer Readers and her second novel, Reliability of Rope, is published by Armley Press. Her third novel, A Bad Winter, was published by Armley Press in 2017.

The Letters

Remi Recchia is a trans poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a Ph.D. candidate in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Cimarron Review and the Reviews Editor for Gasher Journal. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi's work has appeared or will soon appear in Best New Poets 2021, World Literature Today, Columbia Online Journal, Harpur Palate, and Juked, among others. Two of his poems have won prizes from the Academy of American Poets. He has been a featured reader in the Sundress Reading Series and was awarded a Thomas Lux Scholarship in 2022. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University. Remi is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021)

Learn more about Remi here.

Sober

Jessica Roeder was born in Chicago and lives in Duluth, Minnesota. Her stories, poems, and essays have appeared in magazines including Threepenny Review, American Poetry Review, Third Coast, and AGNI. Honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, and a McKnight Artist Fellowship. She teaches writing and dance.

Staircases Will Outnumber Us

Brian Rogers lives and writes in southern California.

Inhabitants of the Earth

Maggie Rosen Briand lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her poems have been published in Little Patuxent Review, Waccamaw, Cider Press Review, RiverLit, Blood Lotus, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Barely South, and Conclave, among other publications. Her poetry chapbook, The Deliberate Speed of Ghosts, was published in 2016 by Red Bird Chapbooks. An essay on teaching during the pandemic appeared in March 2021 in Bethesda Beat Magazine. She works as a teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). To learn more about Maggie, visit her website.

The Deliberate Speed of Ghosts

Shaun Rouser's stories have appeared in Colloquium and a chapbook collection of his short fiction, Family Affair, was published by Red Bird Chapbooks in 2013. He is also co-editor-in-chief of online publication The Blackstone Review, a journal of cultural observation and critique featuring works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and artwork. He was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, and currently bides his time in Chicago, though, to his surprise, he considers himself a Southerner, uneasily through and through. Learn more about Shaun on his website.

Family Affair

Craig Ruhland is a poet and all around creative spirit. He's built art sleds for the Powderhorn Art Sled Rally; acted in and supported movies for the 48-hour Film Festival; and wrote Sweet on America: the Twin Cities, a travel guide to bakeries in the Twin Cities.

In the Space Between

Miriam Sagan is the author of 30 published books, including the novel Black Rainbow (Sherman Asher, 2015) and Geographic: A Memoir of Time and Space (Casa de Snapdragon), which just won the 2016 Arizona/New Mexico Book Award in Poetry. She founded and headed the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College until her retirement in 2017. Her blog, Miriam’s Well, has a thousand daily readers. She has been a writer in residence in two national parks, at Yaddo, MacDowell, Colorado Art Ranch, Andrew’s Experimental Forest, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Iceland’s Gullkistan Residency for creative people, and another dozen or so remote and unique places. Her awards include the Santa Fe Mayor’s award for Excellence in the Arts, the Poetry Gratitude Award from New Mexico Literary Arts, and A Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa.

Llama Mountain

44⁰N 69⁰W is Belfast, Maine, on a working harbor on the Midcoast, where Ellen Sander lives and writes, hosts a weekly poetry workshop, a poetry radio program and local chickadees, downy woodpeckers, finches and nuthatches who visit the feeder outside her study window. A mom and a grandmother, a skier and paddler with a rock ‘n’ roll heart, her grandchild Ezra is the light of her life.

Aquifer

Rory Say is a Canadian writer of short fiction from Victoria, British Columbia. His stories have appeared in an array of print journals, e-zines, chapbooks, as well as on podcasts. He is currently at work on a full-length collection. Learn more by visiting his website: rorysay.com

The Marksman

Shannon Schenck earned an MFA from Hamline University in 2006 and an MA in Psychotherapy and Counseling from Adler Graduate School in 2013. She currently works in the behavioral health field as an Employee Assistance Consultant. Resurfacing is her first published book.

Resurfacing

Dorothy Schlesselman was born in Iowa, raised in Kansas City, Missouri, and educated at Macalester College and the University of Minnesota Department of Art. Schlesselman has been inspired by Lake Superior’s wild beauty ever since her first year at Macalester, when she spent a snowy May weekend in Duluth. Lake Superior is featured in many of the poems in her chapbook, This Wild Country, published in 2015 by Finishing Line Press. Dorothy’s poems also appear in A Little Book of Abundance, released by Red Bird Chapbooks in 2016. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

A Little Book of Abundance: Poems for Thanksgiving Throughout the Year

Ann Schroeder discovered her love of words, language and literature in college. Taking the poetry plunge with Margaret Hasse and friends has been a wonderful way to stay connected to her writer-self and publish poems in Soundings and Whistling Shade.

A Little Book of Abundance: Poems for Thanksgiving Throughout the Year

Nancy Shih-Knodel grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and received her education at Oberlin College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, The Examined Life Journal, and Yellowjacket Review. She is a faculty member in the English Department at North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.

The Landscape of the Body

Sharon H. Smith, a poet-writer and former book designer, lives in San Francisco with her husband and frequent collaborator, architectural photographer David Wakely. She is curious, seeks out new experiences, and has a drive to share them. She fills her heart weekly as a volunteer with Food Runners and champions Creativity Explored. She has long participated in Laguna Writers San Francisco, hosted writing retreats and workshops at her home in West Sonoma County, and produces the Birdland Journal. She is currently working on a poetic travel photo memoir project with her husband, and her work has appeared in Haunted Waters Press, Juddhill, Gravel Literary Journal, Tell Us a Story, Eunoia Review, KQED Perspectives, and other publications. Learn more about Sharon on her website.

Held: a father lost and found

Samuel Snoek-Brown is the author of the fiction chapbook Box Cutters (sunnyoutside 2013), the novella In the Pulse There Lies Conviction (Blue Skirt Press 2017), and the historical novel Hagridden (Columbus Press 2014), for which he received a 2013 Oregon Literary Fellowship. He also has been shortlisted in the Faulkner-Wisdom competition, twice for short fiction and once for his novella, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The first story in Where There Is Ruin, “Lightning My Pilot,” was a finalist in the 2013 storySouth Million Writers Award. Snoek-Brown was born in Oklahoma but raised mostly in Texas; he’s also lived in Oregon and Wisconsin, and he’s traveled to Mexico, Turkey, Canada, Scotland, Austria, The Netherlands, and Thailand. He recently spent two years living in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. He currently lives in the Tacoma, Washington, with his wife, Jennifer, and two cats, Ibsen and Brontë. Learn more about Samuel on his website, his blog, FaceBook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

Where There Is Ruin

Susan Solomon is a freelance paintress living in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/Saint Paul. She loves working with writers, painting their words. She is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Susan is currently the editor and cartoonist for Sleet Magazine, an online literary journal.

A Cabal of Angels

Bat

Call the Moon

Catalpa

Clotheslines

Genius

so she had the world

Tree in Winter

Andrea Spofford writes poems and essays, some of which can be found or are forthcoming in Redactions, Red Paint Hill Quarterly, Sugar House Review, Vela Magazine, Revolver, Town Creek Poetry, and Kudzu Review, among others. Her first chapbook, Everything Combustible, is available from Dancing Girl Press. A native Californian transplanted to the South, Andrea is poetry editor of Zone 3 Press and Assistant Professor of Poetry at Austin Peay State University.

Frost and Thaw

Qiqiktagruk: Almost an Island

Noah Stetzer is a graduate of The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and also a scholarship recipient from the Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging LGBT Writers & from the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. Born & raised in Pittsburgh PA, he currently lives in the Washington DC metro area. Learn more about Noah on his website and Twitter.

Because I Can See Needing a Knife

Jan Stinchcomb is the author of Find the Girl (Main Street Rag). Her stories have appeared in Black Candies: The Eighties, Whiskey Paper, Atticus Review and Monkeybicycle, among other places. She is featured in The Best Small Fictions 2018 and is a reader for Paper Darts. Jan lives in Southern California with her husband and children. To learn more, visit Jan Stinchcomb’s website here.

The Blood Trail

Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. His chapbook based on the last words of Texas Death Row inmates, Justice for all, is forthcoming from Conversation Paperpress (UK). Without Dorothy, There is No Going Home is also forthcoming from ELJ Publications. Most recent releases include an e-chapbook From an iPod found in Canal Park; Duluth, MN from Right Hand Pointing and John Berryman is Dead from White Sky e-books. He has been the recipient of five Pushcart nominations.

A Cabal of Angels

Amy Strauss Friedman teaches English at Harper College and at Northwestern’s Center for Talent Development. She earned her MA in Comparative Literature from Northwestern University. Amy is a regular contributor to the newspaper Newcity and a staff writer at Yellow Chair Review. Her work has appeared in Kentucky Review, Red Paint Hill, FLAPPERHOUSE, Lunch Ticket and elsewhere. Learn more about Amy on her website.

Gathered Bones are Known to Wander

Laura-Gray Street is the author of Pigment and Fume (Salmon Poetry, 2014) and co-editor of The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press, 2013) and A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia (forthcoming University of Georgia Press). She has been the recipient of poetry prizes from The Greensboro Review, the Dana Awards, the Southern Women Writers Conference, Isotope: A Journal of Literary Science and Nature Writing, and Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments. Her work has appeared forthcoming in The Colorado Review, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Gargoyle, ISLE, Shenandoah, Blackbird, The Notre Dame Review, and elsewhere; and been supported by fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Artist House at St. Mary's College in Maryland. She has most recently collaborated with the London visual artist Anne-Marie Creamer as a part of Land2’s In the Open exhibition in Sheffield, UK. Street holds an MA from the University of Virginia and an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She is an associate professor of English and directs the Creative Writing Program at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Shift Work

Norma Tilden is Teaching Professor of English at Georgetown University, where she has taught literary nonfiction and creative nonfiction writing for many years. Her essays have received recognition and awards from numerous publications, including The Yale Review and Biography.

Animal Watch

Francine Marie Tolf has published two full length poetry collections, Rain, Lilies, Luck (North Star Press of St. Cloud) and Prodigal (Pinyon Publishing), as well as a memoir and five chapbooks including Eighteen Poems to God and a Poem to Satan by Redbird Chapbooks of Minnesota. Her essays and poems have been published widely in journals including Water-Stone, Poetry East, Under the Sun, Christian Century and Contrary Magazine. She has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board; Barbara Deming / Money for Women; and the Elizabeth George Foundation. Francine lives and works in Minneapolis. Her latest book is a collection of essays, Joliet in My Blood (Port Yonder Press, 2015).

Eighteen Poems to God and a Poem to Satan

The Rough Edge of Joy

Jeanie Tomasko is the author of a few books of poetry, including most recently, The Collect of the Day and Dove Tail (both from Bent Paddle Press), Violet Hours (Taraxia Press) and Small Towns Along the Coast (Dancing Girl Press). She can be found walking her very large grand-dog in Middleton, WI, or at home with her husband, Steve. She endeavors to always have a bottomless honey jar, garlic from the garden, and bees in the front yard hyssop. Jeanie is a registered nurse and works in home health. Learn more about her writing and artwork on her website.

dear little fist

Insects seem to creep their way into Steve Tomasko’s poems (even his love poems). He doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. His wife, Jeanie, long ago stopped screaming when a dragonfly lands on her. She doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. But they both still get creeped out by spiders. Steve and Jeanie edited the 2015 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar. Steve has had poems published in various journals including: Anthills, The Aurorean, Corvus, Echoes, The Fiddlehead, Hummingbird, Right Hand Pointing, and Verse Wisconsin. He’s also been rejected by some of the best journals around. He shares a corner of his wife’s webpage. He hopes to never have a Facebook “presence.”

and no spiders were harmed

Meg Tuite is the author of two short story collections, Bound By Blue (2013) Sententia Books and Domestic Apparition (2011) San Francisco Bay Press, three chapbooks and a poetic prose/poetry chap w/ David Tomaloff coming out in 2015. She won the Twin Antlers Collaborative Poetry award from Artistically Declined Press for her poetry collection, Bare Bulbs Swinging (2014) written with Heather Fowler and Michelle Reale. She teaches at the Santa Fe Community College, is fiction editor for Santa Fe Literary Review, a featured column at Connotation Press and a column at JMWW. She lives in Santa Fe with her husband and menagerie of pets. Learn more about Meg on her website.

Her Skin is a Costume

Shaun Turner writes in West Virginia, where he is fiction editor for Cheat River Review. His work can or will be found in Crack the Spine, Cleaver Magazine, Bartleby Snopes, Blue Lyra Review, and Word Riot, among others.

The Lawless River

Paul Van Dyke is an Army veteran of Iraq and a recipient of the Purple Heart. His work has appeared in Water~Stone Review, War, Literature, & the Arts, O-Dark Thirty, and Revolver. He is currently working on a memoir about his time in Iraq, and a novel about professional wrestling.

A Thousand Sunsets

Peter Vanderberg is the founding editor of Ghostbird Press. He served in the US Navy from 1999 – 2003 and received a MFA from CUNY Queens College. Recent work has appeared in CURA, The Harpoon Review, The Manhattanville Review, LUMINA and in collaboration with his brother James’ paintings in their book, Weather-Eye. He teaches art and creative Writing at St. John’s Preparatory School and Hofstra University. Learn more about Peter on Twitter.

Crossing Pleasant Lake

Donna Vorreyer is the author of A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications, 2013) as well as six chapbooks, most recently Encantado, a collaboration with artist Matt Kish (Red Bird Chapbooks). She is a poetry editor for Extract(s), and her second collection Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in late 2015. She resides in the Chicago area with two large dogs and a regular-sized husband. Learn more about Donna on her website, blog, FaceBook, and Twitter.

The Imagined Life of the Pioneer Wife

Encantado

Robert Walicki's work has appeared in Stone Highway Review, Pittsburgh City Paper, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Transient Publishing. Most recently, he has won second runner up in Finishing Line Press' Open Chapbook Competition in 2013. He lives in Verona PA where he curates a monthly reading series, VERSIFY.

A Room Full of Trees

Richard Walker is a journalist of Mexican/Yaqui ancestry living in Kitsap County, Washington. He is editor of the North Kitsap Herald in Poulsbo and is a regular correspondent for Indian Country Today Media Network. He is the author of the book, Roche Harbor, and the text for a set of 15 historic Roche Harbor images published as postcards (Arcadia Publishing, 2009). He is the author of the poetry chapbook, The Journey Home (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2012); and is co-author of the Indian Country Stylebook / For Editors, Reporters and Writers (Kindle, 2014). Much of his poetry is about the struggles of people of multicultural background to hold onto their indigenous identity and traditional lifeways. In addition to his chapbook The Journey Home, his poetry has been published in Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought (Southwest Minnesota State University) summer 2011 and fall 2013 and on IndianCountryTodayMediaNetwork.com. He and his wife, Molly, a citizen of the Samish Nation, enjoy cultural events, outdoor activities and exploring the great Pacific Northwest. Learn more about Richard here , FaceBook, and the Poems for Las Vegas reading in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting.

The Journey Home

Lillo Way's poetry collection, Lend Me Your Wings, described by Ellen Bass as “rich in music and in imagination…a celebration and a joy”, was released in July 2021 by Shanti Arts Publishing. Her chapbook, Dubious Moon, won the Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Contest. Her poems have won the E.E. Cummings Award and a Florida Review Editors’ Prize. Her writing has appeared in such journals as New Letters, Poet Lore, Tampa Review, Louisville Review, Poetry East, and in many anthologies. Way has received grants from the NEA, NY State Council on the Arts, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation for her choreographic work involving poetry. See more at her website.

Flying: Trapeze Poems

Miriam Weinstein lives near Minnehaha Creek in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 2016, Finishing Line Press is publishing her chapbook, Twenty Ways of Looking. Her poetry is included in The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home, among other publications.

A Little Book of Abundance: Poems for Thanksgiving Throughout the Year

Kurt Westley is author of Basho's Cormorant (Red Bird Chapbooks) and Sleeping Bear (Red Moon Press). His haiku have also appeared in Modern Haiku.

Basho’s Cormorant

Joe Wilkins is the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers: Growing up on the Big Dry, winner of the 2014 GLCA New Writers Award and a finalist for the 2013 Orion Book Award, and two collections of poems, Notes from the Journey Westward and Killing the Murnion Dogs. He is also the editor of The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre: An Anthology of Explorations in Creative Nonfiction. A Pushcart Prize winner and National Magazine Award finalist, his work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Harvard Review, Ecotone, The Sun, Orion, and Slate, among other magazines and literary journals. Born and raised on the high plains of eastern Montana, Wilkins has called the Mississippi Delta, the mountains of Idaho, and the prairies of Iowa home. He now lives with his wife, son, and daughter in western Oregon, where he teaches writing at Linfield College. Learn more about Joe on his website.

We Had to Go on Living

Rich Youmans’ haiku, haibun, and related essays have been published internationally in various journals and anthologies, and he currently serves on the editorial team of Haibun Today. His collection of linked haibun with Maggie Chula, Shadow Lines, won a Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America in 2000. His most recent collection, All the Windows Lit, was a 2015 Snapshot Press eChapbook Award winner. He and his wife, Belle, live on Cape Cod.

Head On

Laurie Zupan is a parent, teacher, poet and writer. Laurie has had writing work published in anthologies and magazines including Writer's Digest, Lost and Found; Plymouth Writer's Group, Ginosko, www.downtownster.com, Mamas and Papas On the Sublime, and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting. In 2001, Laurie earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from Antioch University. Laurie lives in Long Beach, California where she is inspired by beautiful scenes in nature as well as cities, and she loves to take photos.

Elemental Long Beach