Mihir Bellamkonda is a DC-based poet. They were a finalist for Black Lawrence Press’s St. Lawrence Book Award and have work published or forthcoming in Variant Lit, The Offing, and Painted Birde Quarterly, among other journals. They can be found on socials @MihirWords. They are either very large or very small, depending on your perspective.

 Grzegorz Białkowski (1932-1989) was a Polish poet and physicist. His  poems and prose appeared in prestigious literary journals such as Współczesność, Odra, and Twórczość. Seven collections of his poetry were published by leading presses Czytelnik and Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza.  “The Lark,” titled “skowronek” in the Polish original, is from Białkowski’s eighth, posthumous book, Figury z piasku (Figures in the Sand), published in Poland in 2015. Danuta’s three other translations of poems from this book appeared in Tupelo Quarterly and ANMLY.

Before retirement, Tony Brinkley taught literature at the University of Maine (Orono). His poetry and translations have appeared in Mississippi Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cerise Press, Drunken Boat, Four Centuries, Hinchas de Poesie, Hungarian Review, Ma yDay, New Review of Literature, Puckerbrush Press, Poetry Salzburg Review, Otoliths, Shofar, Metamorphosis, OPEN, Collateral and World Literature Today. Recent translations include poetry by Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Valéry, Rainer Maria Rilke, Osip Mandelshtam, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, and Anna Akhmatova. Brinkley is the co-editor (with Keith Hanley) of Romantic Revisions (Cambridge University Press). 

H.M. Cotton is the managing editor of Birmingham Poetry Review, contributing editor for NELLE, and production manager for both journals. Her writing appears in places such as Raleigh Review, storySouth, and SmokeLong Quarterly. She is an MFA student at Warren Wilson and teaches at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. As a 2023 Alabama State Council on the Arts poetry fellow she kayaked 180-miles of the Cahaba River and details the adventure at thecahabaproject.substack.com. 

Melissa Crowe is the author of Dear Terror, Dear Splendor (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) and Lo (University of Iowa Press, 2023), winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, New England Review, Poetry Northwest, and The Rumpus, among other journals, and she coordinates the MFA program at UNCW, where she teaches poetry and publishing. 

Chelsea Dingman’s first book, Thaw, won the National Poetry Series (UGA Press, 2017). Her second book, Through a Small Ghost, won The Georgia Poetry Prize (UGA Press, 2020). Her third collection is I, Divided (LSU Press, 2023). She is also the author of the chapbook, What Bodies Have I Moved (Madhouse Press, 2018). She is pursuing her PhD at the University of Alberta, and her current work draws on research supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada. Visit her website: chelseadingman.com.

Esumi Fujimoto (she/her) was born and raised in California’s Central Valley and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in The Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s digital magazine, The Margins, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.

Barney T. Haney is an associate professor at the University of Indianapolis. Winner of the Chris O’Malley Prize, his work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Cola Literary Review, and Barely South Review, among others.

Andrew Hemmert is the author of Blessing the Exoskeleton (University of Pittsburgh Press) and Sawgrass Sky (Texas Review Press). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various magazines including The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, and The Southern Review. He earned his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and currently lives in Thornton, Colorado.

Claire Jiménez is a Puerto Rican writer who grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island, New York. She is the author of the short story collection Staten Island Stories (Johns Hopkins Press, 2019) and What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez (Grand Central, 2023), Winner of the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She received her M.F.A. from Vanderbilt University and her PhD in English with specializations in Ethnic Studies and Digital Humanities from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. In 2019, she co-founded the Puerto Rican Literature Project, a digital archive documenting the lives and work of hundreds of Puerto Rican writers from over the last century. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of South Carolina.

 Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka is the author of two collections: Face Half-Illuminated (Apprentice House) and Oblige the Light  (CityLit Press), winner of the Clarinda Harriss Poetry Prize. She is  also the translator for four books by Lidia Kosk. Danuta has translated  into English works by five other Polish poets, including Ernest Bryll,  Grzegorz Białkowski, Stanisław Lem, Marcin Świetlicki, and Wisława  Szymborska. Her English to Polish translations of poems by Maryland  Poets Laureate Josephine Jacobsen, Lucille Clifton, Linda Pastan, and  Grace Cavalieri as well as Paul Sohar, have appeared in Poland.  Interviewed for the Library of Congress “The Poet and the Poem 2020-21  Series.” She serves as the Poetry Translations Editor for Loch Raven Review. More at: danutakk.wordpress.com

Isaac George Lauritsen’s acts of writing, drawing, and living most often take place in his hometown of Chicago, IL. His recent poems can be found or are forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, Rubbertop Review, Trampoline Poetry, and elsewhere. More picto-poems are in Afternoon Visitor, fugue, HAD, Red Noise Collective, and TILT, a subdivision of Tilted House. You can look at his photos and photos of his drawings on Instagram: @ig_laurit

Betsy Mitchell Martinez holds an MFA from the University of Michigan. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Northwest Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Sugar House Review.

Kristina Martino is a poet and visual artist. Winner of a 2022 92Y Discovery Prize, her poems have appeared in Poem-A-Day, Paris Review Daily, Best New Poets, and Ninth Letter. She has received fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Playa Summer Lake, and Yaddo.

Taylor De La Peña is a mixed Filipina-American author. She has an MFA in fiction from Rutgers University – Camden and lives in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Fiery Scribe Review, and miniskirt magazine. You can find her on Twitter at @tdlp17.

David Joez Villaverde holds an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. A CantoMundo fellow, he is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize. His poetry has appeared in Best New Poets, The Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, and is forthcoming in AGNI, Adroit, and New England Review. He lives in New York and can be found at schadenfreudeanslip.com