POETS
Claudia Acevedo-Quiñones is a writer from Puerto Rico. Her work focuses on family, dreams, and diaspora. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The Southampton Review, Salt Hill Journal, Ambit Magazine, Muse/A Journal, and other publications. She was a finalist for the 2019 Phillip Booth Poetry Prize and the runner-up for Split/Lip's 2020 Hybrid Chapbook Contest. Claudia lives in Brooklyn, NY. You can read more of her work at cacevedoquinones.com. Follow her on Instagram @clobsandwich.
Jennifer Beebe is a poet moved by image, light and shadow, and the intersection between pain, joy, and the terrible beauty of being human. She’s awful with traffic circles but can wander a river for hours.
Despy Boutris is a writer. A Pushcart Prize and three-time Best of the Net nominee, her work has been published or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Journal, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Currently, she teaches at the University of Houston and serves as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast, Guest Editor for Palette Poetry and Frontier, and Editor-in-Chief of The West Review. Learn more at despyboutris.com. Follow her on Twitter @itsdbouts.
Marietta Brill’s poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in The Dialogist, Inverted Syntax, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Hyperallergic.com, wildness, The Adirondack Review, The Rumpus, About Place Journal, and others. Her poems were selected by Mark Doty for first prize in the Walt Whitman Bicentennial Poetry Contest (2019), and by Khadijah Queen as a finalist in the Inverted Syntax Sublingua Contest (2020), and have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. She lives with her family in New York’s Catskill Mountains. Follow her on Twitter @mariettabrill and Instagram @marbrill.
Janine Certo is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Elixir, winner of the 2020 New American Poetry Prize and the 2020 Lauria-Frasca Poetry Prize (forthcoming, co-published by New American Press and Bordighera Press) and In the Corner of the Living (Main Street Rag, 2017), as well as the non-fiction book Children Writing Poems: Poetic Voices in and out of School (Routledge, 2018). Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in The Rumpus, The Greensboro Review, Mid-American Review and New Ohio Review. Her poems earned second prize in Nimrod International Journal’s 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. She is an associate professor at Michigan State University. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter @janinecerto. Learn more at janinecertopoet.com.
Amanda Chiado’s poem “Armor” was part of the 2019 Visible Poetry Project, animated by Marc Burnett. She is the author of the chapbook Vitiligod: The Ascension of Michael Jackson (Dancing Girl Press, 2016). Her poetry and short fiction has most recently appeared in The Pinch, Barren Magazine, and Entropy. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart & Best of the Net. She is the Director of Arts Education at the San Benito County Arts Council, is a California Poet in the Schools, and edits for Jersey Devil Press. Learn more at amandachiado.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandachiado, Facebook, and Instagram @amandachiado.
Ruth Dickey’s first book, Mud Blooms, was selected for the MURA Award from Harbor Mountain Press (2019) and awarded a 2019 Nautilus Award. The recipient of a Mayor’s Arts Award from Washington DC, and a grant from the DC Commission and Arts and Humanities, Ruth is an ardent fan of dogs and coffee, and lives in Seattle where by day she is the Executive Director of Seattle Arts & Lectures. More at www.ruthdickey.com. Follow her on Twitter @ruthedickey and Instagram @ruthdickey206.
Josh Exoo lives in Canton, New York, where he grew up. He gets by with the help of his loving wife and their three unruly cats. He teaches at St. Lawrence University, where he depresses a whole new group of young minds every semester.
Geula Geurts is a Dutch born poet and essayist living in Jerusalem. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, The Penn Review, Juked, Raleigh Review, Birdcoat Quarterly, Blood Orange Review, New South, and SWIMM, among others. Her lyric essay “The Beginnings of Fire” was named a runner-up in CutBank’s 2020 chapbook competition, and is forthcoming with CutBank Books in Spring 2021. Her mini chapbook Like Any Good Daughter was published by Platypus Press. She was named a finalist in the 2018 Autumn House Chapbook Contest, and a semifinalist in the 2020 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize. She is a graduate of the Shaindy Rudolph Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar Ilan University, and works as a literary agent at the Deborah Harris Agency. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @geulageurts.
Kathryn Haemmerle holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and received an MFA Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She was named a finalist for the 2020 Yemassee Chapbook Prize and for the Iron Horse Literary Review National Poetry Month contest. She was also selected as a semi-finalist for the Tupelo Quarterly 2019 Open Poetry Prize and Nimrod International Journal of Prose & Poetry’s 2019 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Common, Hobart, Iron Horse Literary Review, Blackbird, Tupelo Quarterly, Lake Effect, Nimrod International Journal of Prose & Poetry, and elsewhere. More of her work can be found at kathrynhaemmerle.com.
K. D. Harryman’s work has appeared in Narrative, The Greensboro Review, Carolina Quarterly, Dogwood, Raleigh Review, Forklift, Alaska Quarterly, Verse Daily, North American Review and The Cortland Review among others. She is the recipient of the 2019 Rumi Prize sponsored by Arts & Letters and the 2018 James Hearst Poetry Prize sponsored by North American Review. Her first book, Auto Mechanic's Daughter, was selected by Chris Abani in 2007 for the Black Goat Poetry Series Imprint at Akashic Books in Brooklyn. She lives with her family in Los Angeles. Learn more at karenharryman.com. Follow her on Instagram @poetrybite.
Rachael Inciarte lives in the Southern California desert. She holds an MFA from Emerson College. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Juked, Poetry Northwest, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry and others. Find her at www.rachaelinciarte.com.
Michelle Menting lives in Maine. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram @mchellement. Learn more at michellementing.com.
Casey Patrick’s poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Ruminate Magazine, The Pinch, Passages North, and other journals. She has an MFA from Eastern Washington University and her work has been supported by fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Hub City Writers Project, and a 2020 Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She lives in Minneapolis and is working on her first collection. Learn more at www.casey-patrick.com. Follow her on Twitter @everythingfitz and Instagram @caseyptrck.
Julia Paul: In addition to publication in numerous literary journals, both national and international, including Comstock Review, Minerva Rising, New Mexico Review, The Fourth River, and Connecticut Review and anthologies such as, From Under the Bridges of America, The Heart of All that Is and Forgotten Women, several of Julia Paul’s poems have been performed in stage productions. Her book, Shook, (Grayson Books) was published in 2018 and her chapbook, Staring Down the Tracks, (the Poetry Box) came out in 2020. Paul serves as president of the Riverwood Poetry Series, a longstanding reading series in Hartford. She is an elder law attorney in Manchester, CT.
Meggie Royer is a writer and photographer from the Midwest who is currently working in the domestic violence field in Minnesota. Her poems have previously appeared in The Harpoon Review, Melancholy Hyperbole, The Minnesota Review, and more. She runs a literary journal, Persephone’s Daughters, dedicated to empowering survivors of domestic and sexual violence and child abuse. Learn more at writingsforwinter.tumblr.com. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram @meggieroyer.
Cynthia White’s poems have appeared in Massachusetts Review, Narrative, Grist, and CALYX, among others. She was a finalist for New Letters’ Patricia Cleary Prize as well as Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize and was the winner of The Julia Darling Memorial Prize from Kallisto Gaia Press. She lives in Santa Cruz, California. Follow her on Facebook.
Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have previously appeared in Poetry, TriQuarterly, and Threepenny Review, as well as other journals and magazines. Learn more at janezwart.com. Follow her on Twitter @_janezwart_ and Facebook.
Visual Artists
Laura Gabriela Amador is an artist and educator working in the Bay Area, CA. In 2011 she received her BFA in Painting from Boston University and shortly thereafter moved west to California. She was an artist at Local Color in 2018 and contributed to the 100 Block mural project in downtown San Jose. Today she creates paintings and fabric sculptures about natural landscapes and her relation to them. To contact her about her artwork, please email laura.g.amador@gmail.com. Learn more at laura-amador-art.com.
Genevieve Cohn received her MFA in Painting from Indiana University and her BA in Art and Culture & Communications from Ithaca College. She has attended residencies at the Fiore Art Center, The Vermont Studio Center, The Ragdale Foundation, and AiRGentum and is the winning recipient of the Hopper Prize. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings, Create Magazine, Art Maze Magazine, and she has exhibited work in New York City, Boston, Chicago, and Miami, among other cities. She is currently living in Boston, MA and teaches at Wellesley College as their Mellon Fellow in Painting. Learn more at genevievecohn.com.
Batnadiv HaKarmi (b. 1980) is an American-born painter and poet who spent her formative years in the Old City of Jerusalem. Her work straddles the line between representation and abstraction and explores the intersection of painting and poetry. She studied art at the Jerusalem Studio School; the International School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture, Italy; and the New York Studio School. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Bar Ilan University. Batnadiv has had two solo exhibitions at the Art Shelter Gallery, Jerusalem, and has taken part in numerous group shows and art events in Israel and abroad—most recently in the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem and the Mishkan Museum of Art in Ein Harod. She currently heads the Art Program at Emunah veOmanut, Emunah College, and is on the Visual Arts faculty of the Brandeis Institute of Music and Art. She has been a member of Studio of Her Own since 2015. Learn more at batnadiv.com.
Maiko Kikuchi (b.1983, Tokyo, Japan) received her B.A in Theater Arts and Fashion Design from Musashino Art University, Japan in 2008, her M.F.A in Sculpture from Pratt Institute, in 2012. She has extensive, multi-faceted professional experience in the areas of illustration, painting, drawing, collages, sculpture, animation, and puppetry/performance. Her recent self-direction object theatre piece “Daydream Tutorial” has been shown at LaMaMa (NY), The Wild Project (NY), and FiveMyles Gallery (NY). Other recent exhibits include “On The Other Side Of The Fence.” at Dixon Place (NY) as their 2016 artist in residency, “PINK BUNNY” at Japan Society (NY), and “Daydream Antology” at Five Myles (NY) as an opening performance in their festival IN FLUX. As well as self-directed theatre pieces, Kikuchi has worked as a puppeteer, object builder, and visual designer for other directors’ shows, such as “Co. Venture” by Brooklyn Touring Outfit at Baryshnikov Art Center(NY), “Six Characters” by Theodora Skipitares at LaMaMa (NY), and “The Chairs” by Theodora Skipitares at Whitney Museum (NY). As Visual artist, she presented her collage animation in the Crown Heights Film Festival group exhibition“NO PARKING” at Ca’d’ Oro Gallery (NY), and“Unwritten stories” at HERE Art Center (NY) and Jamestown Art Center (RI). Her drawing/collage works are commissioned to some online art galleries such as Tuuum and Walls Tokyo, and she also provides collage animation music videos for a variety of musicians. Kikuchi is currently an artist in residency at HERE Art Center’s HARP program, collaborating with multidisciplinary artist and puppeteer, Spencer Lott. Learn more at maikokikuchi.jimdo.com.
Honour Mack resides, teaches, and maintains a studio practice in Portland, Maine. She has exhibited her work in New England and in various venues across the United States, including The Center for Maine Contemporary, Colby College, and Pacific Northwest College of Art. Mack has received Fellowships to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the Vermont Studio Colony, and Chautauqua Institution. She graduated from Skidmore College and Yale University School of Art. Honour is currently a Professor and Program Chair for the Painting Department at Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine. Learn more at honourmack.com.
Lavar Munroe (b. 1982, Nassau, Bahamas) earned his BFA from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2007 and his MFA from Washington University in 2013. In 2014, he was awarded a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Munroe was included in Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of The Swamp, the New Orleans triennial curated by Trevor Schoonmaker, and the 12th Dakar Biennale, curated by Simon Njami, in Senegal. In 2015, Munroe's work was featured in All the World's Futures, curated by Okwui Enwezor as part of the 56th Venice Biennale. Recent group shows include those at the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham; Perez Art Museum, Miami; National Gallery of Bahamas, Nassau; MAXXI Museum of Art, Rome; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; Virginia Museum of Modern Art, Virginia Beach; and The Drawing Center, New York. Munroe was awarded residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, MacDowell Colony, the Headlands Center for the Arts, Joan Mitchell Center, Thread: Artist Residency & Cultural Center, a project of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and was an inaugural Artists in Residence at the Norton Museum of Art. He is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Lavar Munroe lives and works between Baltimore, Maryland and Nassau, Bahamas. Learn more at www.lavar-munroe.com, and follow Munroe on Instagram @lavar.munroe.studio.
Ethan Pines is an award-winning photographer who grew up on a small ranch in Los Angeles, attended U. Penn and Columbia, then returned to L.A. to shoot. Over two decades he has shot campaigns and editorial for Genentech, Dolby, Universal Studios, Forbes, Wired, The New York Times and many others. His fine-art exhibitions include group shows and a solo show at New Theme gallery. He shot this issue’s cover as part of his latest project, American Window, captured on a 4500-mile RV trip in July 2020. Ethan lives in Topanga Canyon with his wife, amazing baby girl and a bunch of weeds. Prints and images at ethanpines.com.
Mari Renwick 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. Learn more at marirenwick.com.
Tema Stauffer 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. Learn more at temastauffer.com.
Thank you to Getty’s Open Content Program, the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and the Library of Congress.