listed alphabetically

Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah, who is an algebraist and artist, works in mixed media. He is the author of the works, without deceit (Haiku), e ═ 5 (Tanka), Pantomine (Senryu), The Interpreter’s House (Sedoka), Storyscape (Ryuka), Metonym (Sijo), A Hopeful Worship (Gogyoshi). His individual Japanese, Chinese and Korean and related short form poetry are widely published in journals around the world. He lives in the southern part of Ghana, in Spain, and the Turtle Mountains, North Dakota. 

Leah Baker resides in Portland, OR and teaches writing at a public high school. Her writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Pointed Circle, For Women Who Roar, and Voice Catcher. She is a feminist, gardener, yogi, sound healer, and world traveler. You can find her at www.OpalMoonAttunement.com.

Helena Barbagelata (b 1991) is a fashion model and multidisciplinary visual artist who develops work in painting, illustration and photography. Her artworks combine mixed media, acrylics, ink and watercolor techniques and have been displayed in the United States, South America and Europe. Helena is also a researcher, author and curator in several literary publications.
FB:  https://www.facebook.com/barbagelatahelena, DISPLATE:  https://displate.com/helenabarbagelata , Saatchi:  https://www.saatchiart.com/helenabarbagelatasimoes  

Artist’s Statement: In ancient Greek mythology, ‘Dryads’, were woodland nymphs whose skin and bodies were fused with trees. Ancient cultures held a fundamentally different view of their relationship to the natural world, perceiving their existence as being within nature rather than our modern industrialized separation between humanity and other sentient beings. My work is an examination of the personal forms this mythological view takes. I use expressionist portraiture to communicate the sensitive experience of femininity, captured in the spontaneous dance and movement of watercolors.

Jane Beal, PhD is a poet. She has created many collections of poetry, including Sanctuary (Finishing Line Press, 2008), Rising (Wipf and Stock, 2015) and Song of the Selkie (Aubade Publishing, forthcoming) as well as three audio recording projects: “Songs from the Secret Life,” “Love-Song,” and “The Jazz Bird.” She also writes magical realist fiction, creative non-fiction, literary criticism, and music. She teaches at the University of La Verne in southern California. See http://janebeal.wordpress.com.

William Blackburn, currently based in OH (USA), still struggles to find his car keys. His work appears in SCRAWL, Emerald Press, Route 7 Review, Edify Fiction, and Abstract Contemporary Expressions. His work will soon appear in The Blue Mountain Review and Castabout Anthology. He is a contributor to Adirondack Center for Writing’s PoemVillage 2019/2020.

Sasha Blakeley is a poet from Vancouver, Canada. Her work focuses on the apocalyptic interplay between light and dark, and the urgent necessity of hope in times of crisis. She is currently teaching English in Taiwan, and in future she hopes to be a part of sustainable agriculture movements. sashablakeley@gmail.com

Hannah Cajandig-Taylor resides in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where she is an MFA Candidate at Northern Michigan University and an Associate Editor for Passages North. Her prose and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Snapdragon, Tulane Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Sidereal Magazine, and Rising Phoenix Press, among others. Additionally, she will be reading at River Styx’s Hungry Young Poets Series in mid-July.

Austin Carroll is an American artist, poet, and musician currently living in La Pine, Oregon. To see more from Austin you can find him on instagram at instagram.com/floretpuce and his current music project can be found on soundcloud at soundcloud.com/floretpuce.

Brigid Cooley is a native of San Antonio and avid poet. Her love for the art of poetry began as a child and continues to grow. She frequently attends local poetry readings, sharing her passion for the written and spoken word with anyone willing to listen. When not writing poetry, Brigid can be found reporting for The Mesquite, Texas A&M University-San Antonio’s newspaper, and directing/acting in theater productions.

Sean M. Corrado is a candidate for admission to the New York Bar who has supplemented his legal studies with a passion for poetry and prose. In 2019, Sean received his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, where he was the Senior Writing & Research Editor of the Fordham Intellectual Property Media & Entertainment Law Journal. Sean received his B.A. in English Writing & Communications Rhetoric from the University of Pittsburgh in 2014, where he received a Heinz Fellowship Grant to further the practice of creative writing in professional settings.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-corrado-011807138

Charles Darnell is a poet in San Antonio, Texas. He is a member of The Sun Poet’s Society and his work has appeared in many journals, magazines, anthologies, and newspapers. His chapbook, Water, Tongues, Earth, and Blood was published by Finishing Line Press in 2018. His full-volume manuscript of poems, Towards Human, has recently been submitted to publishers for consideration.

David Davies has recently had poems published in Toho Journal, Rise Up Review, and The Showbear Family Circus and his short stories appear in Ripples In Space and The Underwood Press. He is a two-time winner of the King Edward Youth Prize for poetry, and an active member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association. Find him @5linestogo on Twitter where he writes a political/topical poem daily.

RC deWinter’s poetry is anthologized in Uno: A Poetry Anthology (Verian Thomas, 2002), New York City Haiku (NY Times, 2017), Cowboys & Cocktails: Poetry from the True Grit Saloon (Brick Street Poetry, April 2019), Havik (Las Positas College, May 2019), Castabout Literature (Dantoin/Hilgart, June 2019) The Flickering Light (Scars Publications, June 2019), Nature In The Now (Tiny Seed Press, August 2019),in print in 2River View, Down in the Dirt, Genre Urban Arts, Meat For Tea: The Valley Review, Pilcrow & Dagger, Pink Panther Magazine,, Scarlet Leaf Review, The New York Times and in numerous online literary journals.

Leslie Ferguson has just finished her first book-length work, When I Was Her Daughter, a memoir about how grit, hope, and luck lead one lost girl to the place she was always meant to be. Leslie’s work has been published in San Diego Writers’ Ink’s A Year in Ink, Volume 9 and Coffin Bell, and is forthcoming in anthologies from Vault Publishing and Acorn Publishing. She earned her MA in English Literature and MFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University. Current projects include a novel and more poetry, always more poetry. After two decades of teaching, she has settled in San Diego, California, where she lives happily with one husband and two cats.

Renoir Gaither writes from Saint Paul, MN. He listens to jazz, speaks psycho-politics, and favors anarcho-syndicalism. His work has appeared in Crab Fat Magazine, Soliloquies Anthology, Berkeley Poetry Review, and Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora.

Ken Gierke started writing poetry in his forties, but found new focus when he retired. It also gave him new perspectives, which come out in his poetry, primarily in free verse and haiku. He has been published at Vita Brevis, Tuck Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Amethyst Review, and Eunoia Review. His work can be found at his blog: https://rivrvlogr.wordpress.com/

Charlotte Hamrick’s poetry, prose, and photography has been published in numerous online and print journals, most recently  including MORIA, The Citron Review, and Flash Frontier. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and a menagerie of rescued pets. You can find her online at Twitter @charlotteAsh and on her website Zouxzoux.wordpress.com

N.Y. HAYNES holds a Masters in Physiology, with a concentration in cardiovascular disease. She is an emerging writer, a poet and playwright, as well as an avid athlete currently residing in New York.  Please direct all questions and comments to:  1greatfulgoddess@gmail.com

Erin Jamieson holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University of Ohio. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in After the Pause, Into the Void, Flash Frontier, and Foliate Oak Literary, among others, and her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  She currently teaches English Composition at the University of Cincinnati-Blue Ash College and works as a freelance writer.

Belynda Jones holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Long Island University – Brooklyn, as well as a BFA from Brooklyn College. Her focus is mainly poetry, but also loves to write short fiction and plays. A native of New York City, she currently lives in Queens, New York with her son. Some of her work can viewed online, in issues of Downtown Brooklyn, Belladonna Series and Boog Reader. Find her on Tumblr here and on BoogCity here. Read her Belladonna Series here.

Caroline Knickmeier is an artist and writer dedicated to making art and love. carolineknickmeier.com

Joyce Kung is a queer Chinese-Canadian currently studying in her final year of computer science at the University of Waterloo. ‘restless’ is the first piece she has published with a literary journal, and she is so glad to have shared it with *fws: journal of literature and art. You can find her online at https://thejoycekung.github.io where she talks about software development and literature, and see her older works on Medium @thejoycekung.

Mashaal Sajid is a Female Poet from Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Her work has appeared and is forthcoming in Girls Right The World Journal, Siyaah Qalam Akhbar, The RIC Journal, The Desi Collective Magazine, Body Language Zine, Papeachu Review and other poetry Anthologies.

SaraSwoti Lamichhane comes from Alberta, Canada and is a nature photographer, a poet and a mom to two beautiful daughters. Her poems have been published in a few journals in the U.S., Nepal, and Canada and her recent poem Fort McMurray has appeared in Tint Journal. During the day, she works as a clinic manager with Alberta Head & Neck Surgery Clinic. She is actively working as a board member with Parkland Poets.

Dotty LeMieux’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such the anthology, purifying wind (Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press, 2020), Rise Up Review, Beautiful Cadaver Social Anthologies Series, Poets Reading the News, Gyroscope, MacQueen’s Quinterly and others. I have had three chapbooks published, and have one forthcoming from Finishing Line Press, entitled Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune. In the 1980’s, I also edited the eclectic literary magazine Turkey Buzzard Review, in Bolinas California. I have studied at the New College of California Poetics program and with poets Joanne Kyger, Edith Jenkins and Thomas Centolella. My day jobs are running political campaigns, mainly for progressive women, and practicing environmental law in Marin County California, where I live with my husband and two dogs.

Kendra Preston Leonard, PhD is a poet, lyricist, and librettist whose work is inspired by the local, historical, and mythopoeic. She is especially interested in addressing issues of social justice, the environment, and disability through poetry. Her work appears in numerous publications including vox poetica, lunch, These Fragile Lilacs, and Upstart: Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed, among other venues. Leonard collaborates regularly with composers on works for voice including new operas and song cycles. Her chapbook Making Mythology is forthcoming from Louisiana Literature Press.   she/her: kendraleonard@pm.me, https://kendraprestonleonard.hcommons.org Executive Director, The Silent Film Sound & Music Archive director@sfsma.org, www.sfsma.org

Darlene Logan: Spending most of her professional life in the humanities, Darlene taught a broad assortment of English classes, thirty years in the Land of Enchantment at New Mexico Military Institute where she also sponsored an annual Shakespeare Festival and hosted many, many poets to read and workshop with cadet-students. Retired a dozen years and now living on a pretty half acre in Lakehills with her partner Lad, she reads much, writes a little, engages in hearty discussions, and often entertains four grandsons and a multitude of friends and family.

Mario Loprete is an internationally acclaimed artist with myriad shows to his credit.  He has been interviewed by and written about in art and literary journals and magazines worldwide.  www.marioloprete.com, https://it-it.facebook.com/mario.loprete.5, www.linkedin.com/in/mario-loprete-7aa22529, www.instagram.com/marioloprete/,

Artist’s Statement:  “I live in a world that i shape at my liking, throughout a virtual pictorial and sculptural movement, transferring my experiences,  photographing reality throughout my filters, refined  from years research and experimentation.

Painting for my is the first love. An important, pure love. Creating a painting, starting from the spasmodic research of a concept with which I want to send a message to transmit my message, it’s the base of my painting. The sculpture is my lover, my artistic betrayal to the painting. That voluptuous and sensual lover that gives me different emotions, that touches prohibited cords…

The new series of works on concrete it’s the one that is giving me more personal and professional satisfactions. How was it born? It was the result of an important investigation of my work, the research of that “quid” that i felt was missing. Looking at my work in the past ten years I understood that there was the semantics and semiotics in my visual speech, but the right support to valorize the message was not there.

The reinforced cement, the concrete, was created by two thousand years ago by the Romans. It has a story that pervades millennia, made of amphitheaters, bridges and roads that have conquered the ancient and modern world. Now it’s a synonym of modernity. Everywhere you go and you find a concrete wall, there’s the modern man in there. From Sidney to Vancouver, from Oslo to Pretoria, the reinforced cement it’s present and consequently the support where the “writers” can express themselves it’s present.

The successive passage was obvious for me. If man brought art on the streets in order to make it accessible to everyone, why not bring the urban in galleries and museums? It was the winning step  to the continuous evolutionary process of my work in that “quid” that i was talking about before and that is what is making  me expose in prestigious places and is making me be requested from important collectors. When the painting has completely dried off, I brush it with a particular that not only manages to unite every color and shade, but it also gives to the art work the shininess and lucidity that the poster ,that each and every one of us had hanging on the wall, has.

For my Concrete Sculptures I use my personal clothing. Throughout some artistic process, in which I use plaster, resin and cement, I transform them in artworks to hang. My memory, my DNA, my memories remain concreted inside, transforming the person that looks at the artworks a type of post-modern archeologist that studies my work as they were urban artifacts.

Cara Lorello is a writer and poet who began her career as a journalist in Spokane, Washington. Her work appears in past issues of Noble-Gas Quarterly, Vending Machine Press, SlushPile, The Sun, SnapDragon Journal, and the Spokane-based poetry anthology Railtown Almanac (Sage Hill Press). She currently resides in Spokane, Washington.

Simone Maffescioni has a passion for poetry, particularly as a means to connect with people and ease their sense of isolation. Much of Simone’s poetry relates to expressing emotional sentiments and vulnerabilities of the human condition that are often avoided within society but commonly experienced; fostering human connections.

Don Mathis’ life revolves around the many poetry circles in San Antonio. His poems have been published in a hundred anthologies and periodicals and broadcasted on local TV and national radio. In addition to poetry, he has also written policy and procedures for industry, case histories for psychological firms, and news and reviews for various media. A sampling of his work can be found at the Rivard Report and the Good Men Project. He can be reached at dondon213@hotmail.com, https://therivardreport.com/author/don-mathis/, https://goodmenproject.com/author/don-mathis/

Michele Mekel lives in Happy Valley and wears many hats of her choosing: writer and editor; educator and bioethicist; poetess and creatrix; cat herder and chief can opener; witch and woman; and, above all, human. Her work has appeared invarious academic and creative publications, including having her poetry selected and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. She is also a co-principal investigator for the Viral Imaginations: COVID-19 project (viralimaginations.psu.edu). Michele can be found on Instagram @ShaktiEnergy.

Brittany Micka-Foos is a writer and editor residing in La Conner, Washington. A former victim’s rights lawyer in Washington, DC, Brittany turned to writing after the birth of her first child.  She has published a smattering of poems and short stories in various publications, including CC&D and Blanket Stories (Ragged Sky Press). She earned her BA in English at the Evergreen State College. Her blog is https://boringanddangerous.wordpress.com.

Donna Faulkner nee Miller drinks tea without sugar , mochas with marshmallows and vodka and orange juice in a tall glass with no ice . Other than writing , she loves the feeling of riding on the back of her husband’s Harley. Experiencing the sensation of moving between the space that connects everything. Donna is English born and lives in New Zealand with her husband Victor. She has three kids – teenagers all , two dogs and a one eyed cat called Bella. Donna has had work published in fws: journal of literature & art, Skin Issue, Vol.1 No. 2, 2019 and poetry included in Havik : The Las Positas College Journal of Arts and literature. Visit Donna on Instagram @lady_lilith_poet 

Francesca Moroney is a writer, anti-bias activist, and health advocate living and working in Edwardsville, Illinois, with five teenagers and three large dogs.

Leah Mueller is an indie writer and spoken word performer from Tacoma, Washington. She has published books with numerous small presses. Her most recent volumes, Misguided Behavior, Tales of Poor Life Choices (Czykmate Press) and Death and Heartbreak (Weasel Press) were released in October 2019. Leah’s work also appears in Blunderbuss, The Spectacle, Outlook Springs, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, and other publications. She won honorable mention in the 2012 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest. Her new chapbook, Cocktails at Denny’s (TV Party Press) will debut in November 2019.  www.facebook.com/leahmuellerwriter, www.twitter.com/leahsnapdragon

m.f. nagel was born in Anchorage, Alaska. Her Athabaskan and Eyak heritage has given her a love of poetry. m.f. now lives and writes near the banks of the Matanuska river in the Palmer Butte, Alaska, where the moose, wild dog~ roses and salmonberries provide unending joy and inspiration.

James B. Nicola’s poetry and prose have appeared in the Antioch, Southwest, Green Mountains, and Atlanta Reviews; Rattle; Barrow Street; Tar River; and Poetry East, garnering two Willow Review awards, a Dana Literary award, and six Pushcart nominations. His full-length collections are Manhattan Plaza (2014), Stage to Page (2016), Wind in the Cave (2017), Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists (2018) and Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond (2019). His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice award. A Yale grad, he is facilitator for the Hell’s Kitchen International Writers’ Roundtable at Manhattan’s Columbus Library: walk-ins welcome.

Jason O’Toole is an Andover, MA based poet and author of two collections published by The Red Salon, Spear of Stars (2018) and Soulless Heavens (2019) which contains the Rhysling Award nominated poem “Samsara.” Further, he contributed two poems to the anthology, Purifying Wind (Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press, 2020).

Wonyoung Park lives in New York.  As an emerging artist, he has received awards in art competitions such as the Scholastic Art and Writing competition and Bow Tie Gallery competition. His work Ignorant Monsters has been selected for publication and will appear in the literary magazine Daphne in late 2019.

Artist Statement: Geometry of the Self is an exploration of the more analytical side of my personality. I have an interest in the math field, and the chaos of lines and shapes helps to represent the interaction between geometry and art. The brightly colored background represents a burning question that has yet to be resolved. In the end, this piece is an exploration of my identity, trying to find the connection between art and math.

Holly Pelesky is a lover of spreadsheets, giant sandwiches, and handwritten letters. Her essays have recently appeared in Jellyfish Review, Roanoke Review, and The Nasiona. Her poems are bound in Quiver: a Sexploration. She holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska. She cobbles together gigs to get by, refusing to give up this writing life. She lives in Omaha with her two sons. https://hollypelesky.com, https://twitter.com/hollypelesky

Melissa Rendlen is a semi-retired urgent care physician now living in a log cabin built by her grandfather ninety years ago. It is on a lake in northern Wisconsin where she enjoys kayaking, swimming, hiking and listening to the loons. She has had several poems published in journals such as The Missing Slate, Nixes Mate, Poets Reading the News, Underfoot Poetry, and her first chapbook will be out this summer by Clare Songbirds Publishing.

Rod Carlos Rodriguez (formerly Stryker) has been writing for over 37 years. His first book, Exploits of a Sun Poet (Pecan Grove Press, February 2003), was awarded the San Antonio Barnes and Noble/Bookstop Author-of-the-Month (Feb. 2003) and the San Antonio Current Best Book (2005). His other two books include Lucid Affairs (Sun Arts Press – 2012) and Native Instincts (Human Error Publishing – 2016).Rod founded the Sun Poet’s Society in 1995, which is South Texas’ longest running weekly open-mic poetry reading. Rod was nominated for the San Antonio Poet Laureate in 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English/Creative Writing from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Deborah Rosch Eifert is a poet and clinical psychologist. Her poetry has been published in Whiskey Island Quarterly (under a different name), The Gateway Review, the ‘Poets of Maine 2018’ anthology, and the anthology “Exhuming Alexandria,” among others. She is a past recipient of the Cleveland State University English Department Undergraduate Creative Writing Award, a semifinalist in the 2018 Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition, and First Runner-up in the 2018 Esthetic Apostle Chapbook Contest. Dr. Rosch Eifert focuses on transformation and empowerment, trauma and recovery, feminist themes, and the intersection of nature and consciousness. She lives and writes in Maine.

Corey Ruzicano is a producer/writer/educator from the San Francisco bay area. While pursuing her BFA at Emerson College, she went through the creative producing program under P. Carl and David Dower, and continues to write for Howlwound. She has completed apprenticeships at The Lark, The Orchard Project and the 52nd street project. She has been the creative projects manager of Jeanine Tesori’s studio, Siena music and on Broadway, where she also teaches writing and leadership to young women. She has managed the intern program at Second Stage Theater and fellowships and awards for new dramatists and aids in making space for writers of all kinds and created community engagement programs for Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. She is the executive producer of Words on White, an art and conversation initiative. With all her work, she seeks to empower voices and stories that encourage more empathic communities and a better understanding of one another.

Sunita Sahoo works as a Senior Software Engineer. She hails from Odisha, India and loves writing poems of all genres. Her works have been published in Indian Periodical, Eleventh Transmission, Poesis and Poets Choice Zine. Most of her poems are based on her real life experiences, profound reflections of human mind, dreams and burning social issues. She loves writing inspirational and motivational poems and tries to spread the optimism to the larger mass never to give up! https://www.facebook.com/sahusunita167

E. Samples is one part West Virginia Mountain Blue ink, two parts Kentucky Bluegrass Black ink, and a medicinal dash of Tennessee Red-inked Whiskey. Currently living in Southern Indiana, her spectrum is shifting to include accents of cardinal, sunflower, and sweet corn. She is happily shacked up with her better-mate-soul-half and forever partner LP. They share space with three cats named Gypsy, Dot, & Black-and-White, and one very small dog called Yoshi. This is her first publication.  She is on twitter @emilysamples and instagram @eesamples

Jeanie Sanders is a poet and artist.  Her poems have been published in multiple anthologies,The Texas Observer, Voices de la Luna, and The San Antonio Express News. She is a member of the Sun Poets of San Antonio. Her new book, The Book of the Dead is available at the Twig Bookstore in San Antonio, Texas.

Gerard Sarnat, MD has been meditating for a quarter century, is a longtime retreatant and founding board member of the Insight Meditation Center. Gerry has won prizes and been nominated for Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards, authored four collections, is widely published including recently by Stanford, Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Virginia Commonwealth, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and in Gargoyle, Margie, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, MiPOesias ,Voices Israel, Tishman Review, Suisun Valley Review, Burningwood Review, Fiction Southeast, Junto, and Tiferet. Harvard/Stanford educated, Gerry’s worked in jails, built/staffed clinics for the marginalized, been a CEO of healthcare organizations and Stanford Medical School professor. Married since 1969, he has three children, four grand-kids.

Kirsten Ismene Schilling was born in Eastern Pennsylvania. She moved to California in her early twenties and has never left.  An artist and a writer for over twenty-five years, she has a bachelor’s degree in Art History from Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, and a master’s certificate from Antioch University, Los Angeles in Publishing.  Her first collection of short stories, My 23rd Birthday and Other Stories is forthcoming (Autumn, 2019).  Visit more of Kirsten’s work www.kirstenismeneschilling.com

Zara Shams is a writer based in the South of England and in Scotland, where she is pursuing a History MA at the University of Edinburgh. Her work has appeared in publications including Noble/Gas Qtrly, Sonder Midwest, and Visual Arts Collective’s All Roads Will Lead You Home. Zara’s poem there is no such thing a woman was the first prize winner of Ankita Saxena’s protest poetry challenge held by The Poetry Society, and her chapbook of the same name was published by Zoetic Press in 2018.

Merril D. Smith is a historian and poet. She is the author/editor of several books on history, sexuality, and gender. Her poetry and stories have appeared recently in Vita Brevis, Streetlight Press, Ghost City, Twist in Time, Mojave Heart Review, Wellington Street Review, Blackbough Poetry, and Nightingale and Sparrow. You can find her online at https://merrildsmith.wordpress.com/; on Twitter @merril_mds, and on Instagram mdsmithnj

Sandi Stromberg’s most recent poems appear in Purifying Wind (Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press, 2020) and Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing. Her work has appeared widely in small journals and anthologies, including Crossing Lines (Main Street Rag), Weaving the Terrain (Dos Gatos Press), The Weight of Addition, Enchantment of the Ordinary, and Improbable Worlds (Mutabilis Press), as well as online in The Ekphrastic Review (http://www.ekphrastic.net/apps/search?q=Sandi+Stromberg). For 10 years, she served on the board of Mutabilis Press and edited its fourth anthology, Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston. She has been a juried poet in the Houston Poetry Fest 11 times.

Sarah Joy Thompson was raised in the Philippines, where her parents dedicated their lives to missionary work. As a teenager, Sarah’s love for poetry blossomed while she was working at the Rise Above Foundation, Cebu. When she was 19, Sarah moved to Texas to pursue her studies and earned a BA in English from UTSA. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Sagebrush Review Volume XI, the Enigmatist, 100 Thousand Poets for Change San Antonio: Women SPEAK!, Voices de la Luna, Visions International, For Women Who Roar, and Through Layered Limestone: A Texas Hill Country anthology of place.  Visit Sarah on Instagram @sarah.in.motion or her website ohsnapsarah.com.

Greg Turlock is a published poet, author and photographer. His credits include  “Rivers of Life”, award-winning poem from the 2019 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards,  “Heartstrings” published in the Parkland Poets II anthology,  cover photo for the anthology,  “A Work of Heart – Woven in the Willows”, self-published anthology of his poems, short stories and photos and “From the Deep End”, a column that ran in the Edmonton Journal’s Country Asides from 2002 until 2010.  A graduate of NAIT, Greg resides near Stony Plain, Alberta www.gregturlockcreative.com, https://www.facebook.com/gregturlockwriterphotographer/?modal=admin_todo_tour

Yael Veitz is a New York-based poet and professional empath. Her works, which have appeared in Tilde, The Ogilvie, The Showbear Family Circus, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Castabout, reflect her geographically-diverse background, her work in mental health, and, occasionally, her love for her cats. Her work can be found on her nascent website,yaelveitz.com and at www.facebook.com/yaelveitz

Nellie Vinograd is a poet currently based in Denver, CO. Her writing often explores routine and tradition in order to see what we desire from our repetitions. Her work has been published by the Stirling Spoon and is forthcoming in THAT Literary Review. She was a featured poet in the Woman Made Gallery’s reading series, “Consumerism and the Stuff of Consumption.” She is proudly serving as an AmeriCorps member with City Year Denver for the 2019-2020 school year. You can follow her on Instagram @nellievinograd to keep up with her latest projects and interests. 

Rowan Waller graduated from Regis University in Denver after studying psychology and English. She grew up in Oklahoma, but was drawn to the mountains of Colorado from an early age. She now spends her time writing, guiding backpacking trips, and climbing through all seasons in Durango, CO.

Yvonne  was the first poetry editor of two pioneer feminist magazines, Aphra and Ms. She has received awards for poetry (NEA 1974, 1984) and fiction (Leeway 2003). Recent print publications include: Home: An Anthology (Flexible), Bryant Literary Review, Pinyon, Nassau Review 2019, Bosque Press #8, Foreign Literary Journal #1, Quiet Diamonds 2019 & 2018 (Orchard Street), 161 One-Minute Monologues from Literature (Smith and Kraus). Verse memoir excerpts are online at American Journal of Poetry, Stonecrop Review, Not Very Quiet, AMP, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Poets Reading the News, Headway Quarterly, Rigorous, Collateral, WAIF Project, Brain Mill Press’s Voices, Cahoodaloodaling, Edify Fiction.

Bänoo Zan is a poet, librettist, translator, teacher, editor and poetry curator, with 180+ published poems and three books: Song of Phoenix: Life and Works of Sylvia Plath (2008); Songs of Exile (2016), shortlisted for Gerald Lampert Memorial Award by League of Canadian Poets; and Letters to My Father (2017). She is the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Toronto’s most diverse monthly poetry reading and open mic series (inception: 2012). It is a brave space that bridges the gap between communities of poets from different ethnicities, nationalities, religions, ages, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, and styles. https://www.linkedin.com/in/banoozan/, https://www.facebook.com/banoo.zan , https://twitter.com/BanooZan, https://www.instagram.com/banoo.zan/