Mark Ari is a writer, musician, and visual artist. He is the author of The Shoemaker’s Tale, a novel (Zephyr Press), and publishes short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and music journalism. He and collaborators, Ginger Andro and Chuck Glicksman, recently exhibited, “Not In My Country,” an installation in the show, Walls and Borders, curated by Bruce Weber (Westbeth Gallery and the Sculptors Guild, NYC) featuring a video of the erasure poem “Loss.” He is editor and producer of EAT Poems, a series of audio chapbooks, creative nonfiction editor for Flock Literary Journal, Editorial Advisor to The Talon Review. A three-time MacDowell fellow, Ari has also received fellowships from Hermitage Artist Retreat, Ragdale Foundation, and Fundacion Valparaiso. He is a multi-award winning teacher at the University of North Florida where he is Asst. Professor of Creative Writing and Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program. New works include “Santa’s House on Sunrise Highway” for the upcoming Paycock Press anthology, Gigs Gone Wrong, and “Via Brooklyn Bridge” an in-transit installation combining poetry, sound, video, scent, and more in an immersive experience delivered to individual addresses by the United States Postal Service.
Greg Bayer taught philosophy, mostly at St. John’s College, Santa Fe. Though he’s published several papers in academic journals, his unpublished novel Story from Baghdad (in which “God Knows Why” appears as a chapter) is his first real foray into fiction. Like Richard Stillman in the novel, he worked at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in 2006-7 as Fulbright program manager—helping to send many Iraqi scholars to study in safety in America. He shares Stillman’s doubts about both diplomacy and academic life, and has a love-hate relationship with Spinoza and Nietzsche. He lives with his wife in Italy.
Jane Blanchard lives and writes in Georgia (USA). Her poetry has appeared previously in Assisi and recently in The French Literary Review, The Lyric, and The Seventh Quarry. Her latest collection is Never Enough Already (2021).
Lorraine Caputo is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear in over 300 journals on six continents, such as Prairie Schooner (US), Revista Máquina Combinatoria (Ecuador), StepAway (UK), Erothanatos (India), Cordite Poetry Review (Australia) and Bakwa (Cameroon); and 19 chapbooks of poetry – including On Galápagos Shores (dancing girl press, 2019) and Escape to the Sea (Origami Poems Project, 2021). She also pens travel pieces, with stories appearing in the anthologies Drive: Women’s True Stories from the Open Road (Seal Press) and Far Flung and Foreign (Lowestoft Chronicle Press), and articles and guidebooks. Her writing has been honored by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2011) and nominated for the Best of the Net. She has done over 200 literary readings, from Alaska to the Patagonia. Ms Caputo journeys through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her travels at: www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer or https://latinamericawanderer.wordpress.com.
MaKenzie Jean Copp is a writer, reader, photographer, painter, and artist of many other forms. She was born in Cumberland, Maine, and graduated with a double major in English and Writing/Publishing from Saint Joseph’s College of Maine. She has been previously published in Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts & Letters, and was the recipient of the 2020 Edward J. Rielly Writing and Publishing Award
Jodi Filan is a self-taught artist, born 1992 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Tim Gavin is an Episcopal priest, serving as a chaplain. Prolific Press recently released his chapbook, Lyrics from the Central Plateau. His poems have appeared in many journals and most recently in The Anglican Theological Review, Blue Heron, Blue Lake Review, Blue Mountain Review, Cape Rock, Chiron Review, Evening Street Review, Screech Owl Review, Poetry Quarterly, Poetry South, and others. He lives with his wife in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.
Michael Gessner has authored 14 books of poetry and prose. His work has been included in American Letters & Commentary, American Literary Review, The French Literary Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Kenyon Review, North American Review, (Hearst Finalist,) Oxford Review (UK,) Pacific Review, Sycamore Review, Verse Daily, The Yale Journal of Humanities and others. He is a contributing editor of Verse-Virtual, and a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle. For more information: www.michaelgessner.com, or https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/michael-gessner.
Robyn Hunt once ran printing presses and owned a small bookstore in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is grateful for her Southwestern lineage of confident women who sang in the choir. It is there she learned to praise. Today she lives with her husband in her native New Mexico where she continues to write poetry while also working as a Development Director for a social services agency in Santa Fe. Her collection of poems, The Shape of Caught Water, was published in 2013. Her work also appears on her blog, As Mourning Doves Persist (mourningdovespersist.blogsopt.com).mourningdovespersist.blogsopt.com
Erin Jamieson holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University of Ohio. Her writing has been published in over fifty literary magazines, and her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Sarah Law lives in London and is an Associate Lecturer for the Open University. She has poems in The Windhover, St Katherine Review, America, Presence, Psaltery & Lyre, Heart of Flesh and elsewhere. Her latest collection, Thérèse: Poems, is published by Paraclete Press. Her novel, Sketches from a Sunlit Heaven, is forthcoming from Wipf & Stock. She edits Amethyst Review, an online journal for new writing engaging with the sacred. Follow her on Twitter @drsarahlaw.
Mitch Levenberg has published fiction and non-fiction in journals and magazines such as Fiction, The Saint Anne’s Review, Local Knowledge, The Same, The Cream City Review, Fine Madness, Literary Vegan, Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts and Letters, The Common Review, and others. He teaches Writing and Literature at St. Francis College in Brooklyn.
DS Maolalai has been nominated nine times for Best of the Net and seven times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019).
Tonya Russell is a Texas photographer whose work has been published in numerous literary journals.
Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and The Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.
Laura Voivodeship writes erasure poetry and creative nonfiction while masquerading as a teacher in the Middle East. Her most recent work, a collection of sestinas, was published by Stairwell Books. In 2020 she received nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions.