Amita Basu’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in over sixty magazines and anthologies including The Penn Review, Bamboo Ridge, Another Chicago Magazine, Funicular, and Gasher. She’s a review editor for Bewildering Stories and a submissions editor for Fairfield Scribes Microfiction. She lives in Bangalore, has a PhD in cognitive science, likes Captain Planet, and blogs at http://amitabasu.com.

Rachel Becker’s poems most recently appear or are forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, New World Writing Quarterly, Barely South Review, Tiny Spoon, Ghost City Review, The Shore, Portland Review, Tusculum Review, and RHINO. A sometimes-correspondent for the Boston Globe, she teaches high school English and Creative Writing in Newton, MA. She lives in Boston but hails from Richmond, VA.

Bernadette Benda is a writer of nonfiction, poetry, and fiction, living in her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. She is a performer and choreographer of ballet and modern dance, a visual artist, and a freelance photographer.

Originally from Miami, Florida, Dominic Blanco currently resides and works in Chicago. He’s a big fan of taking walks that lead to nowhere through the city’s endless streets & alleys. At the moment he is completing a low-residency MFA at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA.

Vian Borchert is an established award winning expressionist artist. Borchert has exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions nationally within the US and internationally in museums and key galleries in major cities such as: NYC, LA, Washington DC, London and Berlin. Borchert’s artwork has been on display in prestigious venues such as Times Square on Broadway in NYC, United Nations in NYC, The SAM museum in PA, The National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia,The BMFA Museum in Texas, along with world embassies, hospitals and corporations. Vian is a graduate and “Notable Alumni” from the Corcoran College of Art & Design George Washington University, Washington, DC. Borchert’s art has been vastly featured in press / interviews such as the esteemed Museum Week Magazine, ARTPIL, VoyageLA magazine, Oxford Public Philosophy Journal, SHOUTOUT LA, The Washington Post, OFF TOWN Magazine, and on the front covers of “ROIDX”, “MOEVIR” and “FIENFH” Paris based French style magazines, and literary journals like “PENSIVE”. Borchert is also an art educator teaching fine art classes to adults in the DC area. Borchert’s work is available at world marketplaces with auctions”1stDibs” and “Artsy”. www.vianborchert.com

I’m Shayna Bruce, a visual artist and photographer based in Kentucky. Creativity, for me, is a refuge—a personal journey inspired by themes of duality and the ongoing rhythm of life and death. Surrealism captivates me, and I enjoy blending and manipulating images to create something entirely new. Art, to me, is an ever-changing expression, a tribute to the intricate dance of life’s contrasting elements. I love exploring the profound beauty found within the subtle chaos of existence.

Stephanie Buck is a writer living in Sacramento, California. She has reported on technology, culture, and history for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vogue, TIME, and more, and has directed editorial strategy for international digital media. She graduated with an M.A. in magazine writing from NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Now she produces patient and physician stories for a major academic health care system, while finishing her first YA novel. Stephanie loves to explore with her son, dance with abandon, and watch horror movies.

Allisa Cherry’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal, TriQuarterly Review, The Maine Review, Nine Mile Magazine, Rust + Moth, High Desert Journal, and The Account. She lives in the Pacific Northwest where she completed her MFA at Pacific University, teaches workshops for immigrants and refugees transitioning to a life in the United States, and is an associate poetry editor for West Trade Review.

Sebs Corrigan has an undergraduate degree in Japanese Studies and an MFA in fiction writing, but they are currently working in Molecular Diagnostics as a Technical Laboratory Assistant.

Chanice Cruz is originally from Brooklyn, NY, however, credits Richmond, VA, for introducing her to the slam poetry world. She is currently an Open Mic coordinator at Kew & Willow Books in Queens, NY and is a co-host for The Poet & The Reader Podcast. She received her bachelor’s degree in English at Queens College. Her poems have been published in Newtown Literary, Sinister Review, Periphery Journal, and several other literary magazines.

Jeff Dingler is an Atlanta-based writer. A graduate of Skidmore College with an MFA in creative writing from Hollins University, Dingler has written for New York Magazine, Washington Post, Salmagundi, Newsweek, and The Hollins Critic, and Two Hawks Quarterly. He’s currently at work on his first novel, Mother of Exiles, named runner-up in The Writers College’s 2021 Global Novel Writing Competition.

Megan Doney is a writer and English professor in Virginia. Her work has been published in New Limestone Review, Creative Nonfiction, Earth & Altar, and Inside Higher Ed, as well as in the anthologies Allegheny and If I Don’t Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings. Her essay “The Wolf and the Dog” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She was a Fulbright scholar in South Africa in 2007 and returned there in 2015 to study reconciliation and violence. Megan earned an MFA from Lesley University.

Tara A. Elliott’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Wildness, Passengers Journal, and Ninth Letter, among others. Community outreach includes her role as Executive Director of the Eastern Shore Writers Association (ESWA) and Chair of the Bay to Ocean Writers Conference. A former student of Lucille Clifton, she is a recent winner of Maryland State Arts Council’s Independent Artist Award for Literature.

Daphne Fauber (she/her) is a queer writer, Best of Net nominated artist, and microbiologist based out of West Lafayette, Indiana. When not reading books or agar plates, she can be found playing too many video games. Her work has been published in the Brave New Girls Anthology, Permafrost Magazine, Diet Milk Magazine, and Pile Press, among others. She can be found on Instagram at @daphne.writes, Chill Subs at Daphne Fauber, or at her website www.dank.pizza.

Caroline Fox is an MFA student in fiction writing at Brooklyn College, where she is a Truman Capote Fellow. Originally from Washington, D.C., Caroline has also lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and in Berlin, Germany. She graduated from the University of Virginia in 2022.

Katherine Gekker is the author of In Search of Warm Breathing Things (Glass Lyre Press).

Her poems have appeared in numerous journals. She serves as Assistant Poetry Editor for Delmarva Review. Gekker’s poems, collectively called “…to Cast a Shadow Again,” have been set to music by composer Eric Ewazen. Composer Carson Cooman has set a seasonal cycle of her poems, “Chasing the Moon Down,” to music. Gekker was born in Washington, DC. She founded a commercial printing company in 1974 and sold it thirty-one years later. She lives with her wife in Arlington, Virginia, and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

Guiseppe Getto is a Zen Buddhist, a poet, and an Associate Professor of Technical Communication at Mercer University. His first chapbook is Familiar History with Finishing Line Press. His individual poems can be found in journals such as Sugarhouse Review, Reed, Eclectica, and Harpur Palate, among many others. Visit him online at: http://guiseppegetto.com/poetry.

Al Graham grew up on an apiary, became an attorney, and has done pro bono work for people fleeing conflict zones. Al lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and their cats, Lennie and George.

Raye Hendrix is a writer, photographer, and disability scholar from Alabama. Her debut poetry collection, What Good Is Heaven, is forthcoming from Texas Review Press (2024). Raye is the author of two chapbooks and the winner of the Keene Prize for Literature (2019) and the Patricia Aakhus Award (Southern Indiana Review, 2018). Their work appears in American Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, 32 Poems, and others. Raye is the poetry editor at Press Pause Press and co-editor of DIS/CONNECT: A Disability Literature Column (Anomalous Press). She is a PhD candidate and Oregon Humanities Center Dissertation Fellow at the University of Oregon.

Thomas Holton is a Florida-born writer and poet living in Chicago. His poems have appeared in Red Ogre Review and HU the zine.

Hope Houston (she/they) is a fat, disabled Jewish writer from Cleveland, Ohio. Hope received her MFA in Writing from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, where she worked as co-editor of the River Volta Review of Books. In February 2023, her poem, “Expecting,” placed second in the Lorain Public Library System’s Toni Morrison Poetry Contest—Morrison’s hometown and former employer. Her work’s recently appeared in Washington Square Review, Passengers Journal, and The Fieldstone Review. She has work forthcoming in Ad Hoc Fiction’s Flare anthology on chronic illness. Find her at www.hopehoustonauthor.com.

Molly Sutton Kiefer is the author of the lyric essay Nestuary as well as three poetry chapbooks. You can find her work in Orion, The Journal, The Colorado Review, among others. Molly is working on her PhD in literature, where she will focus on queer ecopoetics. She is the founding editor of Tinderbox Poetry Journal and runs the nonprofit press Tinderbox Editions. Molly currently teaches in Minnesota, where she lives on three acres of woods with her family.

Persephone King is the pseudonym of Sarah Daniels. She is a former newspaper reporter and a current graduate student in the MFA Creative Writing and Publishing Arts program at the University of Baltimore. She lives in Baltimore with her spouse, two teenagers, and a poodle.

H.L.M. Lee is a writer, amateur astronomer, electronics engineer and owner of a small high-tech company. Besides numerous technical publications, he has also had articles and essays published in Sky and Telescope; Salon.com; the Cognoscenti column of WBUR.com, Boston’s NPR news station; and the anthology Nature’s Healing Spirit. H.L.M. Lee lives in the Boston area.

Bryanna Licciardi is an educator and writer, with an MFA in poetry and a doctorate in education. She’s the author of poetry chapbook Skin Splitting (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and a forthcoming full-length collection, Fish Love (Alternating Current Press, December 2023). When not teaching, her favorite roles include cat mom and technical supporter for a local reading series, Poetry in the Boro. You can find her work in journals such as Poetry Quarterly, BlazeVOX, Peacock Journal, and Cleaver Magazine. Or just check out her website at www.bryannalicciardi.com.

Dayna Hodge Lynch (she/they) is a poet from North Carolina. Dayna is a Black femme who writes to explore life. Dayna received their B.A. in English, a minor in African and African-American Studies at Loyola University of New Orleans, and their MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. Her work can be found in Rattle and Kissing Dynamite and on DaynaHodgeLynch.com.

Michael McCarthy’s work has appeared in Barzakh Magazine, The Adroit Journal, and Prairie Schooner, among others. His debut chapbook Steve: A Gift is available from the Moonstone Arts Center.

Mrityunjay Mohan is a queer, trans, disabled writer of color. Mrityunjay’s work has been published or is forthcoming in The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Indianapolis Review, Oyster River Pages, The Masters Review, and elsewhere. He’s been awarded scholarships by Sundance Institute, Tin House, The Common, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere. He was a Brooklyn Poets Fellow. He was a semi-finalist for the Copper Canyon Press Publishing Fellowship. He has worked as a guest editor, a reader, and an intern at various literary journals. Currently, he’s an editor for ANMLY, and he’s a reader for the Harvard Review and The Masters Review.

Kai Moku-Jones is an indigenous Hawaiian, an ethnic Pacific Islander, and an emerging author. A product of the University of Montana, Kai recently relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she works part-time for the local newspaper and teaches creative writing classes. Kai is currently working on a first short story collection.

Meg Muthupandiyan is a writer, visual artist, and public humanities scholar. The founding director of Poetry in the Parks (poetryintheparks.org), her work celebrates the development of ecological consciousness. Two of her chapbook manuscripts have been semi-finalists for Wolfson Press’s poetry prize and her poems, illustrations, photographs, and nature essays have appeared in over thirty journals and anthologies. Her illuminated poetry volume, Forty Days in the Wilderness, Wandering, was published in 2021.  Connect with her and her work at meganmuthupandiyan.com.

Gina Nilce is a multi-passionate creative from the hills of the Blue Ridge. She’s currently embarking on a yearlong multi-media project that aims to blend song, poetry, and visual art, you can follow along on Instagram @nilce.music. She’s also developing a line of herbal products that range from the ceremonial to the medicinal and everything blended between. You can find her alter ego throwing pies with Jackleg Pizza, raising 3 kids, and always trying something new. 

Amy Searle grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, and subsequently moved to Manchester in the United Kingdom to pursue a degree in Physics. She now lives in Oxford. She is interested in writing Poetry and Creative Nonfiction, and in the case of Nonfiction her work aims to address, or just observe, some of the tensions and ironies of our modern society. She is particularly interested in the function of Art and Science in society.

Lynn Sloan is a writer and a photographer. Her novel Midstream (Fomite 2022) was called “luminous” by Foreword Reviews and her Principles of Navigation was chosen for Chicago Book Review’s Best Books of  2015. She is the author of the story collection This Far Isn’t Far Enough (2018). Fortune Cookies, her flash fiction using fortune cookie fortunes, was produced as an art book by Lark Sparrow Press in 2022. Her short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares and been included in NPR’s Selected Shorts. Her photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work can be found at www.lynnsloan.com.

Adam Straus is a Marine veteran. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, The Hopkins Review, Pithead Chapel, JMWW, trampset, Superstition Review, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. Adam holds an MFA from Rutgers-Camden.

Sara Streeter (she/her) is a transracially adopted Korean-American, mother, and designer. By sharing her story, Sara hopes to raise awareness about the inherent complexities of adoption. She has been published in Hippocampus Magazine, Longleaf Review, Peatsmoke Journal and Cutleaf Journal, among others. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. Find her at sarajstreeter.com.

Lucia Trujillo  (she/her) is a seventeen-year-old artist and writer from Indiana. Her work has previously appeared in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, as well as the American Library of Poetry.

Angelica Whitehorne is a writer living in Durham, NC with published / forthcoming work in Rattle, Fourteen Hills, Meetinghouse Magazine, JMWW, and Poetry South, among others. She is the author of the chapbook, The World Is Ending, Say Something That Will Last (Bottle Cap Press, 2022). Besides being a devastated poet, Angelica is a Marketing Content Writer for a clean energy loan company. You can find more of her work on Instagram at a.w.ords and on her website: angelicawhitehorne.com.

Dr. Ernest Williamson III has published creative work in over 600 journals. Williamson has published poetry in over 200 journals, including The Oklahoma Review, The Roanoke Review, Pamplemousse, formerly known as The Gihon River Review, The Copperfield Review, The Penwood Review, and Wilderness House Literary Review. Some of his visual artwork has appeared in journals such as Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, The William & Mary Review, New England Review, The Tulane Review and The Wisconsin Review. Williamson has an M.A. from the University of Memphis and a Ph.D. from Seton Hall University. He lives in Tennessee.

John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery and still lives in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he teaches social work at Stockton University. He serves as the Local Lyrics contributor for the Mad Poet Society blog and has been featured on Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM. Recent or forthcoming publications include: Rattle, Split Rock Review, Soundings East, West Trade Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. He is the author of the chapbook Roadside Attractions: a Poetic Guide to American Oddities. Find out more at: www.johnwojtowicz.com.