Kirsten Abel is a writer from Steilacoom, Washington. She has an MFA from Columbia University and currently lives in Seattle. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Two Peach, Cosmonauts Avenue, FIELD, Columbia Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
Rachel Atakpa is a poet and an undergraduate student & researcher at the University of Kansas. Her work engages with questions of the body politic, materialism, and futurity and believes in intuition, love, and healing. Atakpa is the 2018 recipient of the Langston Hughes Award for Creative Writing in Poetry and 2018 recipient of the Jack and Lavon Brosseau Creativity Award for Writing. Her poetry and prose has appeared in Kiosk Magazine and The Shade Journal, and is forthcoming in Women, Gender, and Families of Color and Asterism.
Rose Auslander’s book Wild Water Child won the 2016 Bass River Press Poetry Contest; her chapbooks include Folding Water, Hints, and The Dolphin in the Gowanus; and look for her poems in Tupelo Quarterly (TQ9). Rose has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has read her poems on NPR. She is Poetry Editor of Folded Word Press, and earned her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson.
Colleen Baran is a Canadian artist, designer and writer. Baran’s art work has exhibited in eleven countries and been published in a few more. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry is Dead, Golden Walkman, The Impressment Gang and Room Magazine.
Daniel Benjamin is a PhD candidate in English and Critical Theory at UC Berkeley. His dissertation explores how poets like Dorothy Wordsworth, Amiri Baraka, Jack Spicer, and M. NourbeSe Philip make space for multiplicity in their writing. He is the co-editor of The Bigness of Things: New Narrative and Visual Culture (with Eric Sneathen) and Active Aesthetics: Contemporary Australian Poetry (with Claire Marie Stancek).
Brandon Brown is the author of five books of poetry, most recently THE FOUR SEASONS (Wonder, 2018), THE GOOD LIFE (Big Lucks, 2016) and TOP 40 (Roof Books, 2014) as well as three volumes of Christmas poetry co-written with J. Gordon Faylor, including 2017’s THE CLOTH BAG. Poems and prose have recently appeared in The Believer, Art in America, Open Space, Fanzine, Art Practical, New American Writing, The Poetry Project Newsletter, and Best American Experimental Writing. He is an editor at Krupskaya and occasionally publishes small press materials under the imprint OMG! He lives under the long shadow of little Albany Hill in El Cerrito, California.
dezireé a. brown is a black queer woman poet, scholar, and social justice warrior, born and raised in Flint, MI. They are currently an MFA candidate at Northern Michigan University, and often claim to have been born with a poem written across their chest. A Poetry and Non-Fiction Editor for Heavy Feather Review, their work has appeared or is forthcoming in BOAAT, Kweli, Cartridge Lit, Anomaly, RHINO, and the anthology Best “New” African Poets 2015, among others. They tweet at @deziree_a_brown.
S Cearley is a former professor of philosophy and AI researcher in computer-derived writing. He currently lives eight inches above a river watching ducks, otters and herons. Find @scearley on twitter and mastodon, or visit futureanachronism.com.
Sean Collins is a poet and former choirboy living in Philadelphia, where he co-organizes the Charmed Instruments Reading Series. His writing can be found in Berkeley Poetry Review, Lung Poetry, and the short anthology FuturePresent.
Ayokunle Falomo is: a Nigerian, a TEDx speaker, an American, the winner of the 2018 Stacy Doris Memorial Award and the author of kin.DREAD & thread, this wordweaver must! As a poet, his singular mission is to use his pen as a shovel to unearth those things that make us human. He and his work have been featured in print (Local Houston magazine, Glass Mountain) and online (The New York Times, Houston Chronicle, Houston Public Media, Hive Society, Squawk Back, Pressure Gauge Press, Write About Now, Mantra Review and elsewhere.) His work has also taken him to venues and stages around and outside of Texas. You can find more information about him and his work at www.kindreadbook.com
Lo Ferris is a poet and translator living in the East Bay. Their work can also be found in Fence, Bombay Gin, and The Atlas Review.
Renoir Gaither loves the tenor of the late Ted Joans’ invitation to drive around town slinging paint at happy-looking people—and shovels into church windows. He surrounds himself with newspapers, jazz recordings, warm blankets, and questions about contemporary art. His work recently appeared in The Birds We Piled Loosely, The Write Launch, and Thin Air.
Rae Gouirand is the author of two collections of poetry: Open Winter, winner of the 2011 Bellday Prize, and Glass is Glass Water is Water, forthcoming in October from Spork Press. Her chapbook Must Apple (from which ‘Fig Suite’ is taken) was the winner of the 2018 Oro Fino Competition and is forthcoming this summer from Educe Press. She has founded numerous longrunning workshops in poetry and prose in northern California and online, and lectures in the Department of English at UC-Davis.
Adam Greenberg‘s poems and translations have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Chicago Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Witness, and Asymptote, among others. He holds an MFA in poetry from Brown University and currently teaches writing at George Mason University and American University.
Benjamin Gucciardi‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Poetry Journal, Forklift Ohio, Indiana Review, Orion Magazine, Terrain.org, upstreet, and other journals. He is a winner of the Milton Kessler Memorial Prize from Harpur Palate, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize and contests from The Maine Review and The Santa Ana River Review. He works with refugee and immigrant youth in Oakland, California.
Marwa Helal is the author of Invasive Species (Nightboat Books, 2019). Helal is the winner of BOMB Magazine’s Biennial 2016 Poetry Contest and has been awarded fellowships from Poets House, Brooklyn Poets, and Cave Canem. She has presented her work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Studio Museum in Harlem and Brooklyn Museum. Born in Al Mansurah, Egypt, Helal currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Helen Hofling is a writer, editor, artist, and teacher. Her work has recently appeared (or soon will) in Barrow Street, Columbia Journal, Hobart, PANK, Passages North, Prelude, and elsewhere. She lives Baltimore, Maryland, with a nice girl and two bad cats.
Brandon Krieg is the author of two poetry collections, In the Gorge and Invasives, a finalist for the 2015 ASLE Book Award in Environmental Creative Writing. He lives in Columbia, MO.
Dong Li was born and raised in P.R. China. He has poems in Cincinnati Review, Conjunctions, Kenyon Review, and others. His works have been translated into German have appeared in manuskripte (Austria) and Neue Rundschau (Germany).
Dr. Tamara MC is an Applied Linguist and focuses on issues related to language, culture, and identity in the Middle East and beyond, specifically her hybrid and juxtaposed identity of growing up simultaneously Jewish and Muslim. She has various publications in journals such as, Sand Script, Poetica Magazine, Driftwood Press, Sling Magazine, and Blue Guitar. She has been awarded residencies at The Iowa Writers’ Workshop Summer Program, BreadLoaf, Sewanee, Summer Literary Seminars in Lithuania, and Naropa. She has also been awarded fellowships at Ragdale, Los Angeles Review of Books/University of Southern California Publishing Workshop, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and others. She has taught as full-time faculty at the the University of Arizona, both ESL and teacher training classes. When she isn’t teaching or writing, she is creating three-dimensional art with found materials or running marathons.
Holly Mitchell is a poet from Kentucky. A winner of an Amy Award from Poets & Writers and a Gertrude Claytor Prize from the Academy of American Poets, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and a BA in English from Mount Holyoke College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Baltimore Review, Juked, Narrative Magazine, and Paperbag, among other journals.
Heather Nagami is the author of Hostile (Chax Press). A Kundiman fellow, her poems have recently appeared in Discover Nikkei, Hawai’i Review, and The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide. Born and raised in Southern California, Heather currently resides in Arizona, where she has recently completed her second poetry manuscript. Visit her at http://www.heathernagami.com.
Goldie Negelev is a poet living in Oakland. Her work has been published in Powder Keg Magazine, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Poor Claudia and other journals.
Jax NTP holds an MFA from California State University, Long Beach. Jax teaches critical thinking, literature, and composition at Golden West College, Irvine Valley College, and Cypress College. Jax edits fiction and poetry for The Offing Magazine, Indicia Lit, and By&By Poetry. Jax’s words have been featured in various publications including San Diego Reader, Apogee Journal, and The Cordite Review.
Kiyoko Reidy just graduated from UW-Madison with a degree in Philosophy and Creative Writing. She loves writing poetry, making music, and running around outside with her dog. Publications include Spires, the Albion Review, and Driftwood Press.
Eric Schmaltz is a Toronto-based artist, writer, and educator. His work has appeared in Jacket2, The Capilano Review, Poetry is Dead, Lemon Hound, and Open Letter. He is the author Surfaces (2018), a book of poetry and text-art published by Invisible Publishing. More at ericschmaltz.com or find him on Twitter: @eschmaltzzz.
Maxwell Shanley is the author of There Are Trees (Drop Leaf Press, 2017). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in New American Writing, DIAGRAM, CutBank, Border Crossing, Camas: The Nature of the West, Slipstream, Transfer Magazine, The Burden of Light: Poems on Illness and Loss, Four Ties Lit Review, and has been performed by Theatrikos Theatre Company. He currently lives in San Francisco.
Ada Smailbegović is an Assistant Professor of English at Brown University. Her writing explores relations between poetics, non-human forms of materiality, and histories of description. She is a co-founder of The Organism for Poetic Research. Her poetic works include Avowal of What Is Here (JackPine Press 2009), Of the Dense and Rare (Triple Canopy 2013), The Forest / or (On Waiting) (Doublecross Press 2017), and her critical articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Art in the Anthropocene, Angelaki and differences. She is currently at work on a critical-theoretical book Poetics of Liveliness: Soft Matter of Molecules, Liquids, Tissues, Clouds and a poetry collection The Cloud Notebook.
Originally from outside Toronto, Ontario, Claire Marie Stancek now lives in Berkeley, California. She is the author of MOUTHS (Noemi, 2017), and with Lyn Hejinian and Jane Gregory, she edits Nion Editions. These poems are taken from her second book of poetry, Oil Spell, which is forthcoming from Omnidawn in spring 2018.
Sarah Thompson‘s poetry and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Oxidant Engine, Yemassee, Gigantic Sequins, New Delta Review, Asymptote, and Duende. She lives and teaches English to high school students in the Denver area.
Anastacia-Renee is Civic Poet of Seattle and former 2015-2017 Poet-in-Residence at Hugo House. She is the author of four books: Forget It (Black Radish Books), (v.), (Gramma Press), Answer(Me) (Argus Press), and 26 (Dancing Girl Press), and her poetry, prose and fiction have been published widely.
Magdalena Zurawski is the author of The Bruise (a novel) and Companion Animal (a poetry collection). The poems published here are from a recently-completed manuscript called The Tiniest Muzzle Sings Songs of Freedom. She teaches at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia.