POETS
Lisa Creech Bledsoe (Website, Facebook): Watched by crows and friend to salamanders, Lisa Creech Bledsoe is a hiker, beekeeper, and writer living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of two full-length books of poetry, Appalachian Ground (2019) and Wolf Laundry (2020). She has new poems out or forthcoming in The Blue Mountain Review, American Writers Review, Sky Island Journal, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Red Fez, and River Heron Review, among others. She can be found at AppalachianGround.com.
Brendan Constantine’s (Website) work has appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, Tin House, and many other journals. His most recent collections are Dementia, My Darling (2016) from Red Hen Press and Bouncy Bounce (2018), a chapbook from Blue Horse Press. He teaches at the Windward School and, since 2017, has been developing poetry workshops for people with Aphasia and TBI.
Jason B. Crawford (They/He) (Website, Twitter, Instagram) is a Black, nonbinary, bi-poly-queer writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. Their debut chapbook collection Summertime Fine is out through Variant Lit. Their second chapbook Twerkable Moments is due from Paper Nautilus Press in 2021. Their debut full-length How we Fed the Hunger will be out in 2022 from Sundress Publications.
Ja'net Danielo (Website) is the author of The Song of Our Disappearing, co-winner of the Paper Nautilus 2020 Debut Series Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mid-American Review, Gulf Stream, Frontier Poetry, and 2River View, among other journals. Originally from Queens, NY, she teaches at Cerritos College and lives in Long Beach, CA with her husband and her dog. You can find her at www.jdanielo.com.
Ann DeVilbiss (Website, Instagram) has work published or forthcoming in Columbia Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Gertrude, The Maine Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, PANK, and elsewhere. She lives and works in Louisville, Kentucky.
Sheila Dong (Website) is the author of the chapbook Moon Crumbs (Bottlecap Press, 2019). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, Juke Joint, Gone Lawn, Rogue Agent, and Rust + Moth, among other places. Sheila holds an MFA from Oregon State University and lives in Tucson, AZ.
David Donna’s poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review and First Literary Review - East. Donna, meanwhile, appears mostly in eastern Massachusetts.
Margaret Draft holds a BA from Smith College and an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She has been awarded the Ethel Olin Corbin Prize and work-study scholarships from the Frost Place for their Conference on Poetry. Her poems have been featured in Southern Humanities Review and on Poetry Daily.
Amy Dryansky (Website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) has published two poetry collections; the second, Grass Whistle (Salmon Poetry) received the Massachusetts Book Award. Her first, How I Got Lost So Close to Home, won the New England/New York Award from Alice James. Her work is included in several anthologies and individual poems appear in Harvard Review, New England Review, Memorious, Orion, The Sun, Tin House, and other journals. She’s a Massachusetts Cultural Council Poetry Fellow and former Poet Laureate of Northampton, MA. She directs the Culture, Brain & Development Program at Hampshire College and parents two children.
William Fargason (Website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) is the author of Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara (University of Iowa Press, 2020), and the winner of the 2019 Iowa Poetry Prize. His poetry has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Barrow Street, Indiana Review, The Cincinnati Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. He earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and a PhD in poetry from Florida State University. He is the poetry editor of Split Lip Magazine. He lives with himself in Tallahassee, Florida.
Robert Krut (Website, Instagram) is the author of three books: The Now Dark Sky, Setting Us All on Fire (Codhill/SUNY Press, 2019), which received the Codhill Poetry Award, This Is the Ocean (Bona Fide Books, 2013), and The Spider Sermons (BlazeVox, 2009). His work has appeared in journals like Passages North, Blackbird, The Cimarron Review, and more. He teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and lives in Los Angeles.
Romana Iorga’s work (Website, Twitter, Instagram) has appeared or is forthcoming in the New England Review, Poet Lore, Salamander, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, American Literary Review, and PANK, among others. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and currently scavenges for poems in the multilingual forests above Lausanne, Switzerland.
Amy Lerman (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) was born and raised on Miami Beach, moved to the Midwest for many years, and now lives with her husband and very spoiled cats in the Arizona desert, where she is residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College. She received her Master’s and Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Kansas, and her poems have appeared in Rattle, Smartish Pace, Common Ground Review, Prime Number, Solstice, and other publications. She won the inaugural Art Young Memorial Award for Poetry, placed second in Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry, received honorable mention from Glimmer Train, and was a finalist for the 2020 Slippery Elm Prize, the 2019 and 2017 Princemere Poetry Prizes, the 2019 Erskine J. Poetry Prize, and a 2018 Editor’s Pick for Solstice Magazine.
Carolyn Oliver’s (Website, Twitter, Instagram) poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, Indiana Review, Cincinnati Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Shenandoah, 32 Poems, Southern Indiana Review, Cherry Tree, FIELD, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the Goldstein Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review, the Writer’s Block Prize in Poetry, and the Frank O’Hara Prize from The Worcester Review, where she now serves as a poetry editor. Carolyn lives in Massachusetts with her family.
Justin Rigamonti (Website, Twitter, Instagram) teaches writing at a college in Portland, Oregon and serves as the Managing Editor of Fonograf Editions. His poems have been recently published or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, New Ohio Review, The Bangalore Review, and Thrush.
Melanie Kristeen Robinson (Twitter, Instagram): As a poet, writer, educator and owner of a small content writing business, every aspect of Melanie’s work—both creative and professional—is steeped in a reverence for communication. She holds an MFA in poetry from Texas State University and was the 2019-2020 Poet in Resident at the Clark House in Smithville, Texas. She was the recipient of a Damsite Residency in New Mexico and has been published by Rust + Moth, Barren Magazine, Burning House Press, The Boiler, Black Bough Poetry, and University of Hell Press. She was also a commissioned, featured artist for Luminaria: San Antonio Arts Festival in 2017.
Carolyn Supinka (Website, Twitter, Instagram) is a writer and visual artist currently living in Portland, Oregon. Her work has recently been published in Hobart, DIAGRAM, and Buckman Journal, and is forthcoming in The Indianapolis Review. She is the author of the chapbook Stray Gods (2015, Finishing Line Press) and the author of Inside Voice, a micro-chapbook forthcoming in the summer of 2021 from Ghost City Press.
Danielle Susi (Website) is the author of the chapbook The Month in Which We Are Born (dancing girl press, 2015). Her writing has appeared in Knee-Jerk Magazine, Hobart, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her debut full-length manuscript has been selected as a semi-finalist for both the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize at Persea Books and the Hudson Prize at Black Lawrence Press. She received her MFA in writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently lives and works in Salt Lake City. Find her online at daniellesusi.com.
Sharon Tracey (Website) is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Chroma: Five Centuries of Women Artists (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2020) and What I Remember Most is Everything (All Caps Publishing, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Terrain.org, SWWIM, The Worcester Review, Mom Egg Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and elsewhere. Learn more at sharontracey.com.
Ruth Williams (Website, Twitter, Facebook) is the author of a poetry collection, Flatlands (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), and two chapbooks, Nursewifery (Jacar Press, 2019) and Conveyance (Dancing Girl Press, 2012). Currently, she is an Associate Professor of English at William Jewell College and an Editor for Bear Review.
Visual Artists
Sarah Detweiler (Website, Instagram, Etsy) is a Philadelphia area-based mixed media painter whose most recent works incorporate embroidery with watercolor, gouache, and oil paints. She has a BFA from the University of Delaware in Visual Communications and a Masters in Art Therapy from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. She has exhibited in group and solo shows in various locations including New York City, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Sarah’s art centers around themes of feminism, female empowerment, and the human experience. Prints of Sarah's art are available through her Etsy store, SD Artifacts.
Tia Factor (Website) received her BFA from the California College of the Arts (CCA) and her MFA from the University of California at Berkeley. Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions from Oregon to Denmark, Chicago to Tasmania, and exhibited in such notable venues as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Museum, Richmond Art Center (CA), Oliver Art Center (CCA, Oakland), Southern Exposure (SF), Pacific Northwest College of Art, Mary Elizabeth Dee Shaw Gallery (UT), Torrance Art Museum (CA), The Center for Contemporary Arts (Santa Fe), the Schneider Museum at Southern Oregon University in Ashland and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum (JSMA) at PSU. Factor has been featured in art magazines and on-line publications including Bear Deluxe, Stretcher, Artweek, New American Paintings, NAU NUA (Spain), The Semi-Finalist and art ltd. She was a RACC Professional Development Grant recipient and an artist in resident through Arts Tasmania and the Vermont Studio Center. She teaches at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) and at the School of Art + Design (PSU), co-curates Erickson Gallery and is the program director of a yearly study abroad art course in Berlin. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
Kirsten Francis (Website, Instagram, Facebook) is a collage and mixed media artist living in Encinitas, CA. She received a BFA in Printmaking from the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland OR. Francis creates intricate, dimensional collages using images sourced from magazines and books. By altering these images, Francis subverts their meaning, transforming them into visual expressions of her own thoughts, emotions and anxieties. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout Southern California.
Angelina Gualdoni (Website) is a painter living in New York City. She is inspired by the intersections of feminism, herbalism and ecology, asserting domestic interiors as a crucible for innovation and resilience. Through use of dyeing, pouring, staining and textile patterning, she links various women’s creative practices from industrial to domestic, decorative to metaphysical. Gualdoni has shown nationally and internationally at the Queens Museum, NY, St. Louis Art Museum, MO, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, The Aldrich Museum, Connecticut, the Museum de Paviljoens, Netherlands. She has been the beneficiary of several grants and fellowships, including Artadia, Pollock-Krasner, NYFA. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, amongst others. She is represented by Asya Geisberg Gallery.
Jared Leake (Website, Instagram) is a mixed media artist based on the central coast of California. His work focuses on mixed media painting, drawing, photography and aspects of video. He has attended Artist in Residency programs in Greece, Costa Rica, and Southern California, as well as other workshops around the country where he created work through research and experimentation with materials. Aspects of Jared's travel, love of outdoors, and storytelling are seen throughout his work.
Gina Gwen Palacios (Website, Instagram) was born in Taft, Texas. She earned an MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, an MA from The University of Texas at Austin in Instructional Technology, a BA from Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi in TV/Film and an AA from Del Mar College in Radio/Television. She has exhibited at Arlington Art Center (Arlington, VA), Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art (Victoria, TX), Asya Geisberg Gallery (New York, NY), Villa Victoria Center for the Arts (Boston, MA), List Art Center, Brown University (Providence, RI), BAIT15 (Abu Dhabi, UAE) and the Newport Art Museum (Newport, RI). Palacios is currently an Assistant Professor of Painting & Drawing at The University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley.
Twon Pearson is a visual artist currently based in San Antonio, Texas. Drawing inspiration from a mixture of lore and the human condition, Twon’s work often depicts characters in an imaginative realm grounded in specific memories or daily emotions.
Mari Renwick (Website, Instagram) is a visual artist primarily working with pigmented wax in a process know as encaustic painting. She divides her time between Brooklyn and upstate NY, drawing inspiration from the local flora and fauna of each area. While lovely and inspiring blooms are easily found in the country, often the unnoticed, fallen, and trodden botanical remains hold more interest and inform many of Mari’s images. In addition to an applied arts education, Mari has taken workshops and classes at various educational institutions including SVA, Parsons, Women’s Studio Workshop, and R and F Paints, and attended a residency at the once-satellite school of the Art Students League in Woodstock, NY. She was an Adjunct Professor of Art at Marymount College in New York City. Prior to the disruptions of the Corona Virus, Mari taught encaustic painting classes at Trestle Art Space in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY, and was employed as a pre-school teacher. Mari has exhibited her work locally and across the country and is in numerous private collections. She lives with her husband, teenage daughter, and two cats.
Tema Stauffer (Website) is a photographer whose work examines the social, economic, and cultural landscape of American spaces. Her work has been exhibited at Sasha Wolf, Daniel Cooney Fine Art, and Jen Bekman galleries in New York, as well as galleries and institutions internationally. Daylight Books published a monograph of her UPSTATE series in 2018, coinciding with her New Faculty Solo Exhibition at ETSU’s Reece Museum. The series has since been exhibited at Tracey Morgan Gallery, ilon Art Gallery, and Hudson Hall. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography at East Tennessee State University and is working on a new body of work, SOUTHERN FICTION, with forthcoming exhibitions at Tracey Morgan Gallery and the TN Arts Commission Gallery in 2021.
Thank you to Getty’s Open Content Program, the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and the Library of Congress.