Jessica Ambrose is a poet, writer, and faculty member at her alma mater, the Baltimore School for the Arts. Her essays, poems, nonfiction, and fiction have appeared in literary journals, and she was featured as Maryland Artist of the Month in January 2026. She is a recipient of the Denis Diderot Emerging Artist Grant and a 2027 International Artists and Writers Residency at Château d’Orquevaux in France. Jessica is a 2026 semifinalist for the Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship, and she was awarded the Founders Award to attend Goucher College in Maryland. Website: jesscrowley.com 

Kelsey Austin is a New Jersey playwright and prose writer. She holds an MA in Literature: Theatre and Drama from Essex University. Her plays have been developed through residencies and staged readings nationally. Kelsey’s flash fiction is featured in The Closed Eye Open.

Melina Charis is a poet born and raised in Southern California who writes at the intersection of grief, womanhood, and the natural world. Her work has been published in The Faoileánach Journal, and she is currently working on her first poetry collection. Website: melinacharis.com

Steph Coelho lives in the Greater Montreal area. Her work has been published in McGill University’s literary magazine, The Veg, Tidewater Press’ 2025 Emerge Anthology, and Bright Flash Literary Review. Her microfiction piece “I’ll sew you socks if you stay” was recently shortlisted for Fractured Lit’s 2025 Micro Prize. She also publishes the weekly creative writing Substack, Prompted.

Annick Cottom is a retired nurse and escaped southerner living on the edge of the Peak District, United Kingdom. She is passionate about the environment and birdwatching and will join in the fight to protect local and national areas of endangered natural landscapes. She has had the privilege of having her art published in the first edition of Altar Literary Magazine. Instagram: @annick_cottom

David Eileen lives in the mountains of Virginia. Their writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, The Atlantic, Diagram, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Best of the Net. A big fan of talking to your neighbors, their work and letters are concerned with queer resilience, labor rights, solidarity, and care for our planet. They would love to talk to you. Website: david-eileen.com

Amanda Emilio is a musician and poet from Long Island, New York. Her work appears in Amethyst Review, Overgrowth Press, and shoegaze literary, among others. She currently serves as a reader for Epiphany. Website: amandaemilio.com

Erica Miriam Fabri is a Brooklyn-based poet and the author of two books: Morphology (Write Bloody Publishing) and Dialect of a Skirt (Hanging Loose Press). Morphology was the winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Award, and Dialect of a Skirt was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and was included on the bestseller lists for Small Press Distribution and the Poetry Foundation. She teaches writing at Pace University and College of Staten Island. Website: ericafabri.com

Will Falk is a poet, attorney, and community organizer. He writes poems while traveling across the U.S. to offer free legal services to communities fighting against extractive projects like mines, pipelines, and clear-cuts. His first poetry collection is When I Set the Sweetgrass Down (Wayfarer Books, 2023). Instagram: @will_falk35

Hanna Gelwix earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from UNC Greensboro. She has been a practicing fine artist for the past 10 years, with a concentration in photography and a focus on surrealism. Her work explores the intersection of memory, material, and process, using photography to examine themes of presence and impermanence. She is drawn to tactile and experimental approaches, allowing the physicality of each medium to shape the narrative of her work. A selection of her digital and film photography can be viewed at hannagelwix.com.

Dual citizen of the Republic of Ireland and the United States, D. Walsh Gilbert lives in Connecticut on a former sheep farm at the foot of Talcott Mountain. Most recently, she published a trio of Irish historical fiction stories-in-verse: Finches in Kilmainham, Misneach: A Story of Kidnap, Enslavement, and Colonialism, and From the Altar of the Land (Grayson Books, 2024-5). Alumna of Wesleyan University, class of 1979, she now serves with Riverwood Poetry Series and is co-editor of Connecticut River Review.

Lindy Giusta is a queer artist and writer who hails from the sunny shores of California. They have had their writing in various lit mags, including Dark Poets Club, Bottle Cap Press (chapbook, My Heart on a Platter), Unleash Lit, Trash Wonderland, and have had their art featured in various lit mags, including the cover of Weird Lit Mag. When they are not creating art or writing, they love playing mandolin, doting on animals, going on adventures, and always drinking copious amounts of coffee. Say hello to them at @lindydoesart.

Sarah Harley is a writer and high school teacher from the United Kingdom who supports refugee students in telling their own stories. Her work has appeared in Mud Season Review, Sonora Review, Bluestem Magazine, and other journals. She’s currently working on a novella, The Age of Consent. Website: sarahharley888.com

Jan Elaine Harris is a professor of writing at Lipscomb University. Her chapbook, Isolating One’s Priorities, was published by Finishing Line Press. Recent poems have appeared in Spirit Lake Review, Abridged, Susurrus, Tiny Spoon, Feral, Stone Poetry Journal, American Writers Review, and West Trade Review. Jan loves running, swimming, and meditation almost as much as she loves poems. She lives in East Nashville with her two perfect German shorthaired pointers, Malloy and Astrid-June.

Maggie Rue Hess is a PhD student living in Knoxville, Tennessee, with her partner and their crusty white dog. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Connecticut River Review, SWWIM, and other publications; her debut chapbook, The Bones That Map Us, was published by Belle Point Press in 2024. She likes to share baked goods with friends and can be found on Instagram @maggierue_.

Alexa Brockamp Hoggatt is a poet and programmer from Tacoma, Washington. Although there is endless machine to rage against, Alexa writes poetry as a sort of running list of reasons humans deserve to go on existing: the tenderness, the shared experience, the soft parts. Her poems have been published in Sky Island Journal, Inscape Journal, Gather Literary Magazine, Silly Goose Press, and Wildscape Literary Magazine, among others. She was selected as a Garden Poet for Lakewold Gardens’ 2024 “Poetry in the Garden” event. You can find her on Instagram as @alexa.hoggatt and on her Substack, A Case for Continued Existence.

Rebecca Keith’s poetry, fiction, essays, and interviews have been featured on WNYC and appeared in Narrative (as a poetry contest finalist), The Rumpus, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence, curated and hosted the MIXER Reading & Music Series on the Lower East Side for 11 years, and sings and plays guitar and keyboards with her bands, Little Hustle and the Roulettes. Born and raised in New York City, she has taught high school English and dual credit college courses at public schools in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and now Manhattan. Instagram: @littlehustlenyc & @theroulettesnyc

Robb Kunz hails from Teton Valley, Idaho. He received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Idaho. He currently teaches writing at Utah State University and is the Art and Design Faculty Advisor of Sink Hollow: An Undergraduate Literary Journal. His art has been published in Peatsmoke Journal, Phoebe, and Reed Magazine. His art is upcoming in Blue Mesa Review and Thin Air Magazine.

Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Mark LaMonda is an artist and writer who currently lives in Santa Clarita, California. His work has appeared in Tough Poets Review, SoFloPoJo, Autumn Sky, Painted Bride Quarterly, and is forthcoming in Elysium Review, Still Here, and Blue Unicorn. He can be found on Substack @marklamonda.

Jackie Leishman grew up in Georgia, moving to the Los Angeles area after completing her MFA from the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Originally trained as a photographer, she now works as a mixed-media painter. Using traditional and non-traditional materials, including fragments of old projects, Leishman explores the dichotomies she witnesses. Leishman’s work has been featured in Feel Free Magazine, Penumbra, Flyway, Whitefish Review, Voyage LA, Artemis Journal, and others. She has been awarded grants and residencies, including the Anderson Center and Prairieside Outpost. She recently completed a large commission for Stream Realty for their Regions Plaza commercial building in Atlanta, Georgia, designed by Gensler.

Camille LeFevre crafts poetry and creative nonfiction from the unceded lands of the Hisatsinom, Yavapai, and Apache in Northern Arizona. Her essay, “Body Topography,” published in The Dodge, was selected for the 2026 Best of the Net Anthology. Her first poetry collection, Sandstone and Kin, will be published in Fall 2026. Her work also appears in Poets for Science, Wildscape Literary Journal, and Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art. Instagram: @camille.lefevre.writer

Özge Lena is an internationally published poet who appears in The London Magazine, Oxford Climate Society Blog, Mslexia, International Times, and in numerous magazines and anthologies. She recently presented her poetic approach, “Catapoetics: Poetry of the Catastrophe,” at the International Conference on Poetry Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, following the publication of her catapoetry article in Modron Magazine. Her poetry has received nominations for Pushcart Prize, Editor’s Choice Award, The Best Spiritual Literature Award, and Best of the Net, and she was shortlisted for the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition, The Plough Poetry Prize, Ralph Angel Poetry Prize, and the Black Cat Poetry Press Nature Prize.

Sandra Beth Levy has published poetry and creative nonfiction in the U.S. and internationally with literary magazines, journals, and anthologies. Two of her poems were shortlisted for the 2026 Rough Diamond Poetry Prize. She was nominated for Best of the Net by The Orange Rose and awarded The Unforgettable Line Panel Award by Three Panels Press. She has pieces with Anomaly Poetry, Arcana Poetry Press, A Curious Moon, SHINE Quarterly, Viridine Literary, Azarao Literary, The Poetry Lighthouse, Quillkeepers Press, Cosmic Daffodil, Wild Willow, and Nettle Literary, among others. Her debut poetry chapbook with Finishing Line Press will launch in February 2027. She is a retired psychologist who passionately practiced the healing arts or psychotherapy for over forty years and is now pursuing her dream of immersion in creative writing. Sandra explores themes of love, loss, motherhood, intergenerational trauma, sexuality, aging, and awe of nature in her writing. Instagram: @slevy43

Robert McGuire is a Chicago-area photographer working exclusively with film and traditional photographic processes. His interest in photography began in childhood and developed through formal instruction, darkroom work, and several years working in a camera store as a teenager. He maintained a home darkroom throughout a 30-year career in information technology with Fortune 500 companies. Following early retirement, McGuire has rededicated himself to photography, considering it a new vocation rather than a hobby. Influenced by Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, William Gedney, and Eugène Atget, he photographs landscapes, architecture, and everyday places, emphasizing light, form, atmosphere, and observation.

Alexandra McKay is a writer living in Toronto. Her work explores themes of modern hope, the trajectory of tenderness, and middle spaces. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in The Ex-Puritan, Prairie Fire, The Globe & Mail, Pinhole Poetry, Archetype, Funicular, and various other North American publications. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph and is working on her first novel.

Hikari Leilani Miya is an LGBTQ disabled Japanese-Filipina American who graduated from Cornell University in 2019 with a BA in English, and from the University of San Francisco with an MFA in Poetry. She is a scholarship-awarded doctoral candidate in Florida State University’s PhD program, studying and teaching animals, the nonhuman, and ecology across different genres. She is a Best of the Net nominee, and her poems have been published or are forthcoming in dozens of literary journals, including Sonora Review, Strange Horizons, Wildscape Literary, Chestnut Review, Broadkill Review, and Cobra Milk. She is the first-place poetry prize winner of Silk and Ink Magazine’s Spring 2026 issue, a 2021 semi-finalist for the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize, and author of Do Not Feed the Animal (Cornerstone Press, 2024). She is the current “Animals” section editor for Honey Literary Magazine. She is a herpetologist with a special interest in disabled animals; she volunteers at the Tallahassee Museum specializing in reptile care and handling, as well as care for Florida native species.

Chelsea Muir is a writer and lawyer, living and working along the southern border in El Paso, Texas. Her work has been published in IO Literary Journal, and she is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets University Prize from UC Berkeley.

Lisa Nicoll is a writer and multidisciplinary artist whose work involves the liminal and the belief that all space is sacred. Her dramatic work and musical compositions have been performed at The York Theatre, Backstage at 54 Below, and the Oxford Playhouse (UK). Her poetry and fiction have appeared in journals including The Metropolitan Review, and her visual art is in private collections in the US and UK. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, grew up in Massachusetts, and lives in Brooklyn. Website: lisanicoll.com / Instagram: @lisa.k.nicoll

Léni Paquet-Morante is a multi-disciplinary artist interpreting landscape through painting, drawing, sculpture, and monoprint projects. The Imagined Still Life series (2025-26) of twenty pigmented ink drawings projects narratives about transient memory through groups of objects ostensibly collected as mementos through a journey. Solo exhibitions include Princeton University Art Museum’s Art@Bainbridge in 2025. She has been awarded residencies at Virginal Center for Creative Arts 2026, Wheaton Art Glass Center 2025, Vermont Studio Center 2024, and Peter’s Valley 2023. She was awarded a 2024 NJ State Council on the Arts Finalist grant and is listed in Women Artists of America National Directory. Her work is held in private, corporate, and institutional collections internationally.

Paige Passantino is a Salter Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, where she also earned her MFA in poetry. She is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets’ Anne Bradstreet Prize and the Benjamin T. Sankey Fellowship Prize, selected by Joy Priest. Her work appears in Poets.org, The Florida Review, The Mississippi Review, Shō, and elsewhere. She was a nominee for 2026 Best of the Net, an honoree in the 2023 Adroit Prizes, and has received support from Tin House. Paige also teaches workshops for incarcerated individuals with Project Poetic Justice.

Steven L. Peck is a professor of evolutionary biology at Brigham Young University. He is an ecologist and has published over sixty papers in Evolutionary Ecology and Philosophy of Science. Steve is also a novelist, essayist, and poet. His novel, King Leere: Goatherd of the La Sals (BCC Press), based on Shakespeare’s King Lear, was a semifinalist in the Black Lawrence Press early novel prize, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, and was a Montaigne Medal finalist and a semifinalist for the John Hoffer Award. His other novel, Scholar of Moab (Torrey House Press; Gilda Trillim Round Fire Books), and his short stories have won major awards. His poetry has appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Crescendo, Dialogue, Flyway, New Myths, Pedestal Magazine, Penumbra, Prairie Schooner, Red Rock Review, Wayfare Magazine, Whitefish Review, and elsewhere. Aldrich Press published his first poetry collection, Incorrect Astronomy. Signature Books published his second poetry collection, Experiments in the Fading Light, in March 2025.

Joan Lauri Poole is a writer, animal lover, philosophy student, and amateur gardener who divides her time between an apartment in Manhattan and a little house in the Catskills. She holds a master’s degree in creative writing from NYU, where she received the Galway Kinnell Fellowship. She has been a resident at the MacDowell Colony and Edward Albee Barn. Her first collection, Bed of Crimson Joy, was published in 2012, and generous selections of her work appeared in the anthology This Full Green Hour, Shenandoah, Mississippi Review, Third Wednesday, The Dewdrop, ducts.org, and other magazines have published her work. Website: joanlauripoole.com

Residing in Kansas City, Missouri, Anthony Procopio-Ross stewards youth at a local nonprofit and teaches night classes. His poems, photos, and collages appear or are forthcoming in Birdcoat Quarterly, Kansas City Review, I-70 Review, Bear Review, MemeZine Lit, Inflectionist Review, Wild Roof Journal, Outskirts Lit, McNeese Review, Laurel Review, and others. He can often be found photographing and writing about fellow residents and visitors of Charlotte Street Foundation. He’s been awarded residencies and grants from organizations including ArtsKC, Tallgrass, Art Farm Nebraska, and MU Extension.

Matthew Pullar is a poet and teacher based in Melbourne, Australia, where he lives with his wife and three children. He has been published in places like Amethyst Review, Poets in the Pines, and Fare Forward. His latest collection, This Teeming Mess of Glory, was published in 2025 by Wipf & Stock. Website: mpullar.com / Instagram: @matthew.pullar

Joshua Ray is an educator and poet who lives in Portland, Oregon with his partner and their beloved cat. In his free time, he enjoys playing disc golf, listening to a wide variety of strange music, and playing unnecessarily long board games with friends. He was raised in Coos Bay, Oregon before attending Linfield College and has been living in the Portland area since 2008.

Danielle Salerno is a queer ace writer and Jersey girl currently sweltering in Southwest Florida. Her work has been featured in Prudence Dispatch, Azarão Lit Journal, Four Tulips Press, Arcana Poetry Press, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Moss Puppy Magazine, and elsewhere. When her nose is not firmly planted in her notebook, she can be found singing with the Fort Myers Symphonic Mastersingers and chasing her loved ones around with a Tarot deck. Instagram: @xfild.poetry

Lisa López Smith is a mother and farmer based in Mexico. Her poems and essays have appeared in over sixty literary journals and have been nominated for the Pushcart, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net. Her collection, Hallelujah Anyhow, is forthcoming from Nightwood Editions in Fall 2026.

Heather Swan is the author of two nonfiction books: Where the Grass Still Sings: Stories of Insects and Interconnection and Where Honeybees Thrive. She also has two collections of poetry, Dandelion and A Kinship with Ash. She is the winner of the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award, the August Derleth Award, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, and the Muriel Craft Bailey Fellowship. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Emergence Magazine, Aeon, The Hopper, Poet Lore, Terrain, and Catamaran, among others. She teaches writing and environmental literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also keeps bees. Website: heatherswan.net

Rowan Tate is a Romanian creative (poet, essayist, visual artist, songwriter) whose work probes identity, memory, and the ways we construct reality.

John Tessitore is a writer, poet, and liberal arts advocate. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals, he has published several chapbooks and two novellas, and he hosts Be True, a literary podcast. He has been a journalist and biographer, taught history and literature at colleges around Boston, managed national policy studies on education and civil justice, and directs a national language-education association. He serves as Co-Editor Across the Pond for The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press. Website: johntessitore.com

Brianna Thompson has taught English at universities, colleges, and high schools. She’s a weightlifter, a cook, an avid reader, and has published on nineteenth-century American women’s literature and contemporary authors like Octavia Butler. Her fiction and reviews have been featured in or are forthcoming from Fish Barrel Review, Blue Villa, and Necessary Fiction. Instagram: @dr.bbwrites

Lucinda Trew writes from the pine forests and red clay heart of North Carolina’s Piedmont. Her debut collection, What Falls to Ground (Charlotte Lit Press, 2025), traces the fault lines between science and spirit, loss and renewal. Her work, honored with Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations and Boulevard’s 2023 Award for Emerging Poets, appears in Cagibi, North Carolina Literary Review, storySouth, Burningword Literary Journal, Trace Fossils Review, Susurrus, and other journals and anthologies.

Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician, mother of three, and lifelong New Englander. Her poetry explores the intersections of family life, memory, work, and the small moments that quietly shape us. Her work has appeared in One Art, Rust & Moth, The Berlin Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook The House as Witness (Quillkeepers Press, 2026). Veronica lives in New Hampshire with her family and two dogs. Website: veronicatuckerwrites.com / Instagram @veronicatuckerwrites

Christy Umberger is a poet currently based in San Francisco with her partner and cat. Her work has appeared in Wild Roof Journal, Anodyne Magazine, and The Closed Eye Open, among others. When Christy’s not writing or editing, you can likely find her on a walk, practicing restorative yoga, creating paper collage art, reading with a cup of peppermint tea, or traveling. Connect with Christy on Instagram @christyumber or subscribe to her weekly Substack, In the Middle, to read more of her poems and essays.

Mindy Wara is an AuDHD artist, writer, designer, and educator based in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She graduated from UW-Oshkosh with a BS in Education, with emphases in creative writing, literary analysis, and theatre. Working across media, she draws on personal archives, ancient myths, and natural materials to explore the patterns that connect personal experiences to our natural world, history, and present context. Guided by ethical repurposing, her process sees potential in what might otherwise be discarded and in deconstructing distinctions between finished/unfinished, art/craft, personal/political. Wara co-founded the Neurodivergent Artist-Mother Collective and applies creative storytelling to her design and education work with mental health organizations, amplifying issues surrounding neurodivergence and perinatal mental health. Her work has been exhibited locally and nationally, featured in Neurokind Magazine, HNDL Magazine, and Neighbors of Windsor DeForest Magazine, and recognized with a 2022 ATHENA Award nomination. Website: mindywara.com

Sarah Weir is a multidisciplinary visual artist working across painting, drawing, photography, ceramics, and mixed media. She is currently pursuing a BFA at the USC Roski School of Art and Design. Her work explores the body as both a physical and psychological space, often fragmented, observed, or transformed. Through imagery that draws on distortion, repetition, and symbolism, she investigates control, vulnerability, and the tension between what is seen and what is hidden. She is a Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Gold and Silver Key recipient whose work has been presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA, as well as published in The Perch, Vol. 7. In addition to her studio practice, Weir has created original and licensed artwork for film productions including Mean Girls (Paramount Pictures, 2024), Kiss of the Spider Woman (Artists Equity/Lionsgate, 2025), Office Romance (Netflix, 2026), and the upcoming Netflix film The Last Mrs. Parrish. Instagram: @sarah.rose.arts 

Kat Zagaria  is a writer and curator focusing on the intersection of contemporary art and family. Her work blends the personal and the art historical to arrive at new understandings of identity, motherhood, and daughterhood. A recovering academic, Kat’s creative prose has been published in effy literary mag and HEAL Zine: The Warrior Issue by JustBirth Space. Kat lives in Portland, Maine, where she runs an art gallery and serves on her city’s Public Art Committee.