Rachel Calnek-Sugin is a writer, educator, and activist committed to the expansiveness of the soul in all its forms! She writes stories, creative nonfiction, and plays about the weird, vast lives of women and girls, the aliveness of natural things, and people trying to make life bearable on this violent and beautiful earth. Rachel currently lives in Brooklyn, teaches writing workshops to middle schoolers, and is halfway through their Masters in Social Work.

Alex Chertok has poems and essays published in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review Online, The Missouri Review, The Massachusetts Review, Copper Nickel, and Best New Poets 2016. He was runner-up in the North American Review’s 2019, and finalist in the 2021, James Hearst Poetry Prize, as well as finalist in the 2020 Third Coast Poetry Contest, 2021 Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Open Prize, and 2021 Missouri Review’s Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize. He currently teaches through the Cornell Prison Education Program.

Julia Kolchinksy Dasbach emigrated from Ukraine as a Jewish refugee in 1993, when she was six years old. She is the author of three poetry collections: The Many Names for Mother, winner the Wick Poetry Prize (Kent State University Press, 2019), finalist for the Jewish Book Award; Don’t Touch the Bones (Lost Horse Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 Idaho Poetry Prize; and 40 WEEKS, forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2023. Her poems appear in POETRY, Blackbird, American Poetry Review, and The Nation, among others. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation, Lyric Witness: Intergenerational (Re)collection of the Holocaust in Contemporary American Poetry, pays particular attention to the underrepresented atrocity in the former Soviet territories. She is the Murphy Visiting Fellow in Poetry at Hendrix College and recently relocated to Little Rock, Arkansas with her two kids, cat, dog, and husband.

Robin Gow (they/he/ze) is a trans poet and YA/MG author. They are the author of several poetry collections, an essay collection, and a YA novel in verse, A Million Quiet Revolutions. Gow’s poetry has recently been published in POETRY, New Delta Review, and Washington Square Review.

Mikko Harvey is the author of Let the World Have You (House of Anansi, 2022) and Unstable Neighbourhood Rabbit (House of Anansi, 2018). He lives in Western Massachusetts.

Christen Noel Kauffman is the author of the lyric essay chapbook Notes to a Mother God (2021), which was a winner of the Paper Nautilus Debut Chapbook Series. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays (University of Nebraska Press), Nimrod International Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, Willow Springs, DIAGRAM, Booth, Smokelong Quarterly, Hobart, and The Normal School, among others.

Yume Kitasei (www.yumekitasei.com) lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her stories have appeared in publications including Catapult, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Baltimore Review. Her debut novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep Sky, is forthcoming from Flatiron Books in 2023. She chirps occasionally @YumeKitasei.

Scott Lambridis’ stories have appeared in Slice, Fence, Cafe Irreal, and other journals, and his short story “Blind Sticks” is currently nominated for a 2021 Pushcart award. He completed his MFA from San Francisco State where he received the Miriam Ylvisaker Fellowship and three literary awards. Before that, he earned a degree in neurobiology, and co-founded Omnibucket.com, through which he co-hosted the Action Fiction! performance series. Read more at scottlambridis.com.

Alejandro Lucero is a writer from Sapello, New Mexico by way of Denver. His chapbook, Sapello Son, was named a semifinalist for Beloit Poetry Journal’s Chad Walsh Prize. Recent work appears/is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Booth, The Offing, The Pinch, Salamander, and Salt Hill, where he was a finalist for the Philip Booth Prize judged by Matt Rasmussen. He serves as an assistant editor for Copper Nickel.

Nana Yaw Oduro is a Ghanaian photographer born in 1994 and based in Accra. He graduated from the business class of the University of Ghana in May 2017 and started photographing in 2015. Nana Yaw Oduro’s photos provide fictional self-portraits in which his models are like actors, playing a biographical role.

Kasey Peters has been a small-scale farmer and occasional school teacher for a decade, and is now pursuing her Master’s in Creative writing at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Her work can be found in Pinch, McNeese Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and Blue Mesa Review, and her book reviews are forthcoming with The Chicago Review of Books. She co-hosts a podcast with poet Katie Marya called “The Tell Don’t Show.”

Melissa Studdard is the author of two poetry collections, I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast and Dear Selection Committee, and the chapbook Like a Bird with a Thousand Wings. Her work has been featured by PBS, NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and has also appeared in periodicals such as POETRY, Kenyon Review, Psychology Today, New Ohio Review, Harvard Review, Missouri Review, SWWIM Daily, and New England Review. Her Awards include The Penn Review Poetry Prize, the Tom Howard Prize from Winning Writers, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and more.

Matthew Tuckner is a writer from New York. He is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at NYU where he is Poetry Editor of Washington Square Review and teaches in the Undergraduate Writing Program. He is the recipient of a University Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and was a finalist for the inaugural Prufer Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 32 Poems, Colorado Review, Pleiades, The Missouri Review, Bennington Review, Bat City Review, Image, New Ohio Review, Poetry Northwest, and Sixth Finch, among others.