Poets
Julia C. Alter (Instagram) is the author of Some Dark Familiar, selected by Matthew Olzmann as the winner of the 2023 Sundog Poetry Book Award, and a finalist for the 2024 Vermont Book Award in Poetry. Her poems have been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize, and appear in numerous journals and anthologies. She lives in Vermont with her son.
Alfredo Antonio Arevalo is a gay Chicano from Fresno, California. He received an MFA from The University of Alabama, where he served as an Assistant Poetry Editor for Black Warrior Review and won a poets.org University & College Poetry Prize. His writing appears in Poetry Northwest, Iron Horse Literary Review, The Adroit Journal, Nimrod International Journal, Atlanta Review, Sonora Review, and elsewhere.
Andrew Christoforakis (he/him) is a poet based out of Naperville, IL. He has had work published in Blood Tree Literature, West Trade Review, B O D Y, and others. His chapbook But What If No One’s Looking Out for Us? won first prize in the Beyond Words Magazine 4th Annual Chapbook Awards.
Robbin Farr (Website, Substack) Poetry is a poet and writer of brief lyric nonfiction. She is the former editor of River Heron Review and a retired high school English and creative writing teacher of 23 years. Her work appears in Cleaver, Citron Review, The MacGuffin, One Art, and elsewhere. She is the author of Become Echo (2023) and Transience (2018) and writes the Substack 10 poetry notebooks. She is most comfortable in revision. Writing terrifies her.
Ella Flores is a creative writing PhD student at Binghamton University, is the Editor-in-Chief of Harpur Palate and interview editor for The Shore Poetry, and has work appearing or forthcoming in Permafrost, Red River Review, The National Poetry Review, FOLIO, River Styx, and others.
Spencer Jewell (Instagram, Website) is a writer originally from Nashville, Tennessee. She’s currently the poetry editor for Jeopardy Magazine in Bellingham, Washington and an undergraduate student at WWU. She was a semi-finalist for the 2022 National Student Poets Program and received a National Silver Medal from Scholastic for her series of haikus. Her poems and lyric essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Brink, Chestnut Review, Bluestem, Delta Poetry Review, Poetry South, Jabberwock Review, and others.
Michael Juliani is a poet, editor, and writer from Pasadena, California. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals that include The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Third Coast, Bennington Review, Washington Square Review, and Sixth Finch. Michael holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University.
Stephanie Kartalopoulos’ first book of poems, Amulet, was published in 2018 with Saint Julian Press. Her work has appeared in journals that include 32 Poems, Comstock Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Laurel Review, and Grist: A Journal for Writers. Stephanie lives in Atlanta with her husband and her cat, Dancer.
Anya Kirshbaum (she/her) (Website) is a bi/queer poet and somatic therapist living in Seattle, Washington. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Swamp Pink, Mississippi Review, Whale Road Review, Crannóg, Solstice Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Orison Spiritual Literature Prize and the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award, was nominated for a 2024 Forward Prize, and was the recipient of the 2023 Banyan Poetry Prize. Her work recently appeared in Best New Poets 2025.
Pete Miller (Instagram) lives in Omaha, Nebraska where he works in homeless services. He is the co-editor of the poetry journal A Dozen Nothing. His microchap Midwestern Hortus Siccus was published by rinky dink press.
Samantha Strong Murphey (Website) has an MFA in Poetry from NYU and teaches writing at UT-Dallas. Her work on her manuscript Bad Prophet has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Vermont Studio Center. Her poems can be found in The Missouri Review, Rattle, North American Review, and Crab Creek Review. Before becoming a poet, Sam worked as a journalist and has a rich and lengthy unwritten resume as a caregiver to her three human children, a rescue cat, and a rescue dog. She has resided for the last decade in Oak Cliff, the coolest neighborhood in Dallas, Texas.
Julie Murphy (Website) is a poet based in Santa Cruz, California and a member of the Hive Poetry Collective, where she hosts a radio show and podcast on KSQD and helps curate live readings at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Her work appears in Salt, Atlanta Review, The Massachusetts Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Entrance, CALYX, SWWIM, The Louisville Review, and elsewhere. Her poems explore embodiment, relationship, and the imaginal, shaped by contemplative practice and attention to the felt sense. She is also a psychotherapist and teacher, a member of the Community of Writers, and has taught poetry in Salinas Valley State Prison.
Zoë Ryder White’s (Website) first full-length collection, The Visible Field, was published by River River Books in February, 2026. A chapbook, Via Post, was a finalist for Tupelo Press’ Snowbound Chapbook award and won the Sixth Finch chapbook contest in 2022. HYPERSPACE was the editors’ choice pick for the Verse Tomaž Šalamun Prize in 2020 and is available from Factory Hollow Press. She co-authored A Study in Spring (Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2015) and Elsewhere (Sixth Finch Press, 2020) with Nicole Callihan. Her poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Iterant, Plume, and Threepenny Review, among others. A former elementary school teacher, she edits books for educators about the craft of teaching. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.
Visual Artists
Austin Cole (Website) is a filmmaker and visual artist from Colorado, born with a congenital heart defect that’s shaped not only their life but also their creative perspective. Growing up with health challenges, including a plethora of operations, open-heart surgery and multiple valve replacements, Austin developed a deep awareness of life’s fragility. This awareness has led to a profound connection with the world around them, especially the natural beauty and harmony that exists in the most unexpected places.
Known more for his poetry than pixels, Keith A. Dodson has dabbled in photography for over fifty years. Recent artwork has appeared, or will soon appear, in Arkana, Ink In Thirds, LIT Magazine, Sheepshead Review, Split Rock Review, and The Penn Review.
Jacelyn (she/her) (Website, Instagram) is a self-taught visual artist who ditched engineering to make art because of a comic she read. Her artworks and photography have been published by the Commonwealth Foundation's adda, Chestnut Review, and more. She can be found at jacelyn.myportfolio.com and on Instagram at @jacelyn.makes.stuff.
Marie B Gauthiez (Website, Instagram) is a multi-disciplinary French-American artist. Using a mixed media approach, she makes work about mapping of the self, reconstruction, preservation and identity. Marie received her MFA in Studio Art from American University in 2024. Recent solo exhibitions include “Jardin Interieur” at Transformer (Washington, DC) and “We Dwell in Between” at Tephra ICA (Reston, VA).
Sarah Gutwirth (Website) received her BFA and BA in painting in 1978 from a joint program of Reed College and the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland OR. Her MFA in painting is from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1985. In 2017 she was nominated for the prestigious Joan Mitchell Prize for Painting. She has received grants from Kentucky Arts Council, Kentucky Foundation for Women, Murray State University and United University Professions at SUNY. She has had 20 one and two person exhibits over the last thirty-one years and has had work in numerous group shows most recently at Somerset Manning Gallery in Wilmington DE, and in Philadelphia at CFEVA, INLIQUID and the Cosmopolitan Club. Her work has been shown in eight states. She has paintings is in several private and University collections, including the People’s Education Press in Beijing. She held three tenure track teaching positions, receiving tenure at two. She retired in 2017 as Full Professor of Painting Emerita at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. She has travelled widely and lived in France as a child. In 2017 she moved to Philadelphia where she was born and raised.
Olga Karpenko (Olly) (Facebook, Instagram, Website) was born, lives, and works in Kyiv, Ukraine. She is a mathematician by education (Master of Mathematics 1988), a psychologist by profession (PhD in Socionics 2007), and an artist by spirit (Member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine since 2024). The main art techniques she employs include watercolor, sepia, watercolor monotype, pen and ink, Chinese ink, acrylic, collage. Her work explores themes such as cityscape, landscape, marine life, and flowers. Olga’s artistic practice is rooted in attentive observation of everyday life and the structures that sustain it. Her graphic work focuses on urban spaces, natural elements, and infrastructure as essential frameworks that enable human existence. She is also concerned with issues of human interaction with nature and other living beings. Her large cycles of artistic works include “Fish Day,” “Flower Moods,” “Flowers in the City,” “Lyutyj 2022,” “#KyivCityExpress, or 20 Stations of the Kyiv City Electric Train,” and “Helsinki-Kyiv.”
Luca Rosa Schurink (Instagram) creates digital collages to explore the fluidity of memory, identity, and the surreal spaces between reality and imagination. She combines the vintage and the futuristic to build new worlds that awaken dreams and spark curiosity. Her process embraces experimentation and spontaneity, letting accidents and surprises shape the final piece. She enjoys pushing the boundaries of digital media to create compositions that are visually striking and emotionally resonant. Through her work, she invites viewers to pause and imagine their own stories within each piece, activating their creativity and creating moments of storytelling that linger beyond the screen.
Sonya Sklaroff (Website, Instagram) is a New York City - based painter whose work captures the energy of everyday life, from city streets and rooftops to gardens and intimate portraits. For over three decades, she has developed a distinctive visual language defined by bold color, expressive brushwork, and imaginative compositions that reveal emotion, humor, and humanity in often-unseen moments. Sklaroff earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Parsons School of Design. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in public and private collections. She has received numerous awards, participated in artist residencies, and led workshops around the world. Her monographs include Sonya Sklaroff, with a foreword by Harlan Coben, and Pandemic Paintings, with a preface by Rachael Ray; her exhibition catalog Secrets of New York features a foreword by Lisa Randall. Across cityscapes, portraits, and works drawn from travel, her paintings highlight moments of connection in everyday life, bringing focus to what is often overlooked.
Daria Troitska (Instagram) is an artist working in digital arts and mixed media. Her work explores emotional states and symbolic connections between the human figure and nature through atmospheric compositions. She is interested in ambiguity, stillness, and spaces where narrative dissolves into mood. She is based in Ukraine.
Anastasia Yaroshevich (Instagram) was born in 1985 in Ukraine. She studied fine art at an art school, at university Faculty of Arts and then at the Kharkov State Academy of Design and Fine Arts. She paints in oil, watercolor, acrylic, and draw with a pencil. She has been taking part in Ukrainian and foreign exhibitions since 2001. She is a member of the National Artists Union of Ukraine since 2021. Her paintings are in collections of museums, galleries, and private collections in Ukraine and abroad.
Author and artist Amanda Yskamp’s (Website) work has been published in such magazines as Threepenny Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Georgia Review, Boxcar Review, and Caketrain. She is a poetry editor and frequent cover artist for WordRunner E-Chapbooks. Living on the 10-year flood plain of the Russian River, she teaches writing from her online classroom, Wordwise Instruction.