Poets
Jay Brecker (Instagram, Facebook) walks and writes in southern California. His poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Kestrel, San Pedro River Review, Abstract Magazine, Dialogist, Panoply, Poor Yorick, Sonora Review, The MacGuffin, Rattle Poets Respond, The Shore, Permafrost, Lily Poetry Review, Ocean State Review, RHINO Poetry, and elsewhere. His manuscript, blue collar eclogue, was awarded the 2024 Marsh Hawk Press Rochelle Ratner Prize.
Arlene DeMaris is a freelance writer living in Avon, Connecticut with her husband, Michael, and elderly cat, Pearl. Her poems have been published in Naugatuck River Review, Rust & Moth, Tupelo Quarterly, Connecticut River Review, Door Is A Jar, and Rattle, and upcoming in Maine Review (Fall 2025). She received a 2023 Nutmeg Award in Poetry (third place) and a 2024 Connecticut Poetry Award (first place) – both from the Connecticut Poetry Society. Arlene holds an MFA in Writing & Literature from Bennington College.
Mk Smith Despres (Instagram) writes, teaches, and makes art in Massachusetts. Their poems appear or are forthcoming in Frozen Sea, Hunger Mountain, Meat for Tea, and Thimble. Mk also writes for kids. Their picture book, Night Song, was a finalist for the 2024 New England Book Award.
Sarah Giragosian (Instagram) is the author of Queer Fish, winner of the American Poetry Journal Book Prize, and The Death Spiral. In 2023, the University of Akron Press released the craft anthology, Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems, which she co-edited. She also wrote Mother Octopus, a co-winner of the Halcyon Prize. Her writing has appeared in such journals as Orion, Tin House, Pleiades, and Prairie Schooner, among others.
Jimmy Kindree (he/him) (Website, BlueSky, X) is a queer Minnesotan writer living and teaching in western Norway. His fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Ecotone, Electric Literature, Raritan, The Hopkins Review, Chautauqua, Oyster River Pages, Sycamore Review, Hunger Mountain, J Journal, and Pif Magazine. He also spins yarn and knits with it, makes pottery, cheese, and bread, and plays the banjo.
Kelli Lage (Website, Instagram, X) is an assistant poetry editor Bracken Magazine and a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominated poet. She is the author of Early Cuts and I’m Glad We Did This. Lage’s work has appeared in Common Ground Review, Stanchion Zine, Maudlin House, and elsewhere.
Deirdre Lockwood’s (Website, Instagram, Bluesky) debut collection, An Introduction to Error, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in September 2025. Her work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Yale Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere.
David Moolten’s (Linktree) last book, Primitive Mood, won the T.S. Eliot Prize (Truman State University Press, 2009). His chapbook The Moirologist won the 2023 Poetry International Winter Chapbook Competition and is forthcoming. He lives in Philadelphia.
Lauren Moseley (Website, Instagram) is the author of the poetry collections Big Windows (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2018) and Resurrection Biology (Coffee House Press, forthcoming in 2027). Her poems have appeared in Orion magazine, Poets.org, Electric Literature, the Iowa Review, On the Seawall, Third Coast, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, and elsewhere. Lauren has received fellowships from Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hewnoaks, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.
John A. Nieves (Website) has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Alaska Quarterly Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, swamp pink, and New Ohio Review. A 2025 Pushcart Prize winner, he also won the Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is associate professor of English at Salisbury University and an editor of The Shore Poetry.
John Walser’s (Facebook, X) poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Plume, Posit, and december magazine. His manuscript Edgewood Orchard Galleries has been a finalist for the Autumn House Press Prize, the Ballard Spahr Prize and the Zone 3 Press Prize as well as a semifinalist for the Philip Levine Prize and the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award. A four-time semifinalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize and a three-time Pushcart nominee, John is the recipient of the 2015 Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award. He is an English professor at Marian University and lives in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with his wife, Julie.
Visual Artists
Lawrence Bridges (Instagram) is best known for his work in both film and literature. His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and Tampa Review. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums (Red Hen Press, 2006), Flip Days (Red Hen Press, 2009), and Brownwood (Tupelo Press, 2016). His photographs have recently been featured in the Las Laguna Art Gallery (2023), Humana Obscura, the London Photo Festival, Light Space & Time Art Gallery, and the ENSO Art Gallery in Malibu, California. Bridges produced a series of literary documentaries for the National Endowment for the Arts’ “Big Read” initiative, profiling Ray Bradbury, Amy Tan, Tobias Wolff, and Cynthia Ozick. He lives in Los Angeles.
Ann Calandro (Website) is a writer, artist, and classical piano student. Her writing has appeared in Lit Camp, The Fabulist, The Plentitudes, and other literary journals. Serving House Books published her debut short story collection, Lost in Words, in February 2025. Her artwork has appeared in literary journals, been included in the 2023 New Jersey Arts Annual, and exhibited at Phillips Mill, the Monmouth Museum, the Biggs Museum of American Art, and many galleries. Shanti Arts Press published three children’s books she wrote and illustrated. Calandro received a master’s degree in English from Washington University in St. Louis.
Max Cavitch’s (Instagram) photographs have appeared in Al-Tiba9 Contemporary Art, Amsterdam Quarterly, Atlantic Northeast, Denver Quarterly, Feral, F-Stop, Journal of Wild Culture, L’Esprit, Phoebe, and Politics/Letters, and exhibited at Art Room Gallery, Biennale di Senigallia, Blank Wall Gallery, Boomer Gallery, Chania International Photo Festival, Decagon Gallery, Glasgow Gallery, and Ten Moir Gallery. His first solo exhibition, “Leinwände: Wien,” was mounted in May 2025 by Decagon Gallery (Brooklyn). Since 2019, he’s been a contributing photographer for the public-science project, iNaturalist, and in 2024 he was elected to membership in the Philadelphia arts collective, InLiquid. His work is currently represented by Haze Gallery (Berlin) and Artsy.net.
Jennifer Croney Chernak (Website, Instagram, YouTube) is a self-taught, abstract painter based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her art explores the complexity of a landscape that must be resilient to the harshness of civilization. An award-winning artist with over 40 years exhibiting in the mid-Atlantic region, Chernak is a member of the Tri-state Artist Equity Association and the DaVinci Art Alliance and teaches visual art at the William Penn Charter School. Her paintings are a combination of the plein air experience and indoor work in her studio. Chernak’s paintings address environmental themes associated with land use and appreciation for nature’s generosity.
Tinamarie Cox (Website, Instagram, Facebook) (she/her) lives in Arizona with her husband, two children, and rescue felines. Her written and visual work has appeared in many online and print publications under various genres. You’ll find her artwork in San Antonio Review, The AmaZine Community, Oddball Magazine, Troublemaker Firestarter, Door = Jar, and others.
Stephanie Ann Farra (Website, Instagram) is a photographer and writer whose work explores the subtle intersections of nature and human expression. With a deep appreciation for history and storytelling, she uses both imagery and language to capture moments that feel timeless.
Kim Kei (Website, Instagram) is a multi-disciplinary Los Angeles based artist whose practice spans sculpture, printmaking, painting, and photography to evoke sensations of vulnerability, invasiveness and tenderness towards the body. Kei attended the University of Arizona and went on to receive her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2003. Her work has been exhibited internationally and she has had solo shows at Local Language (Oakland, CA), the Irvine Fine Arts Center (Irvine, CA), Brandstater Gallery (Riverside, CA), Alter Space (San Francisco, CA), and Bustamante Gill (Los Angeles, CA). Kei has attended residencies at Instinc, Singapore, Mass MoCa, Irvine Fine Arts Center, and La Sierra University and her work has been featured in Juxtapoz, Artsy and Temporary Art Review. In addition to her studio work, Kei has taught painting as an adjunct professor at La Sierra University.
Ellen Kombiyil (Website) is a visual artist, poet, and educator from the Bronx. Her latest poetry collection, Love as Invasive Species (Cornerstone 2024) is a tête-bêche exploring matrilineal inheritances. Her visual art has been displayed at Emerge Gallery and is published in Action Spectacle, Bear Review, DIAGRAM, The Indianapolis Review, Quarterly West, and TAB, and she has new poems appearing in Sixth Finch, Cherry Tree, Second Factory, and Tahoma Literary Review. She is a 2022 and 2025 recipient of a BRIO Award (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) from the Bronx Council on the Arts, a two-time winner of the Mary M. Fay Poetry Award from Hunter College, a recipient of an Academy of American Poets college prize, and was awarded the Nancy Dean Medieval Prize for an essay on the acoustic quality of Chaucer’s poetics. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Hunter’s MFA program, she currently teaches writing at Hunter College.
Edward Lee (Website, Instagram) is an artist and photographer from Ireland. His paintings and photography have been exhibited and published widely, with many pieces in private collections.
Ruth Schreiber (Website) is a multimedia artist whose subjects include landscapes and still life, the body and ageing, life cycle ceremony and practice, death, and memory. Ruth produces photography and installation pieces, paintings and sculpture, ceramics, and video art. Her work can be found in private collections on three continents and in several public collections. She is also a published poet and a volunteer docent.
Michael Toti (Instagram) is a collage and assemblage artist who applies his graphic design training, illustration skills and a love of quirky detail to 2-D and 3-D works. He uses a variety of materials ranging from bits of metal, wood and other found objects, to vintage advertising art, Chinese fans and typography. These he arranges and embellishes with wood burning, inking, stamping, painting and other techniques.
Thomas Vogt (Instagram, Bluesky) is an aspiring poet, photographer, and city planner in Sacramento, California. He enjoys capturing the ‘every day’ through a pen, a lens, or behind a mug at your local coffee shop. His work can be found in Magpie Zine.
Jessi Yocum (Instagram) is an artist of multiple mediums, a writer, and a baker. She hails from Nebraska but now resides in southern Louisiana with her family and their many animals.
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