POETS
Janine Certo (Website, Twitter, Instagram) is the author of three full-length poetry collections: O Body of Bliss, winner of the Longleaf Press Book Contest in Poetry (forthcoming, 2023, Longleaf Press), Elixir, winner of both the New American Poetry Prize and the Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize (New American Press and Bordighera Press, 2021), and In the Corner of the Living, runner-up for the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award (2017); as well as the poetry chapbook, Home Altar, winner of the Keystone Chapbook Prize (forthcoming, 2022, Seven Kitchens Press). A winner of Nimrod International Journal’s Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, her poems appear in The Cincinnati Review, The Greensboro Review, New Ohio Review, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, and others. She is an associate professor at Michigan State University.
Julie Choffel’s (Instagram) most recent book is The Inevitable Return of What We Do Not Love (Finishing Line Press, 2022). Her poems can be found in New American Writing, Posit, Orion, RHINO, Barrow Street, Interim, and the tiny, among other places. Born and raised in Austin, TX, she now lives near Hartford, CT.
Kevin Clark’s (Website, Twitter, Instagram) third full-length volume of poems The Consecrations is published by Stephen F. Austin University Press. A limited hardbound run is available in celebration of the one-year anniversary of its publication. His second book Self-Portrait with Expletives won the Pleiades Press prize. Clark’s poetry appears in the Southern, Antioch, Georgia, Cincinatti, and Iowa reviews, as well as Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Hotel Amerika, Poetry Northwest, and many other journals.
Dante Di Stefano’s newest work is the book-length poem, Midwhistle (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023). He is the author of three previous poetry collections, including Lullaby with Incendiary Device, published in Generations (Etruscan Press, 2022) as a three-in-one collection also featuring works by H.L. Hix and William Heyen.
Alicia Elkort’s (Website, Instagram) first book of poetry, A Map of Every Undoing, was published in 2022 by Stillhouse Press with George Mason University. Alicia's poetry has been nominated several times for the Pushcart, Best of the Net, and the Orison Anthology, and her work appears in numerous journals and anthologies. She reads for Tinderbox Poetry Journal and works as a Life Coach helping people find more joy and peace. Alicia lives in Santa Fe, NM, where praise and clouds are part of her everyday experience. For more info or to watch her two video poems: aliciaelkort.mystrikingly.com.
John Gallaher’s (Twitter, Instagram) forthcoming book is My Life in Brutalist Architecture (Four Way Books, 2024). Gallaher lives in northwest MO and co-edits the Laurel Review.
Mara Lee Grayson’s (Website, Twitter, Instagram) work has appeared in Columbia Journal, Fiction, Nimrod, Pedestal, Poetry Northwest, Tampa Review, and other publications. Her poetry has been nominated for the Best of the Net and twice for the Pushcart Prize. An award-winning scholar of rhetorics of racism and antisemitism, Grayson is the author of three books of nonfiction. She holds an MFA from The City College of New York and a PhD from Columbia University. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Grayson resides in Southern California and works as an associate professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Find her on Twitter: @maraleegrayson.
Rebecca Hoogs (Twitter, Instagram) is the author of Self-Storage (Stephen F. Austin University Press) which was a finalist for the 2013 Washington State Book Award in Poetry, and a chapbook, Grenade (GreenTower Press). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, AGNI, FIELD, Crazyhorse, Zyzzyva, The Journal, Poetry Northwest, The Florida Review, Cincinnati Review, and others. She won the 2010 Southeast Review poetry contest and is the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Artist Trust of Washington State. She is the Executive Director for Seattle Arts & Lectures and has directed and taught in the summer Creative Writing in Rome program for the University of Washington.
Jill Kitchen’s (Website, Twitter, Instagram) work appears or is forthcoming in Ecotone, HAD, Parentheses Journal, The Penn Review, Pidgeonholes, Rust & Moth, SWWIM, Tahoma Literary Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She has a B.A. in Romance languages from Colorado College and studied creative writing at UCLA, Columbia University, The Poetry Project in New York City, and with Hollowdeck Press. She lives in Boulder, Colorado where she can be found rollerskating on the creek path searching for great horned owls.
Veronica Kornberg (Website, Twitter, Instagram) is a poet from the San Francisco Bay Area. Recipient of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals, including RHINO, Indiana Review, New Ohio Review, Rattle, On The Seawall, Catamaran, Calyx, and Plume. She is a Peer Reviewer for Whale Road Review.
Tara Mesalik MacMahon (Website) is the author of Barefoot Up the Mountain, winner of the 2020 Open Country Press Chapbook Contest. A graduate of Pomona College and Harvard Business School, Tara’s poems appear in Nimrod International, Jabberwock Review, Poet Lore, Rhino, Dogwood, and Red Hen Press’ New Moons, among other literary journals and anthologies. Additional honors and prizes include those from Jabberwock’s Editors Prize and a Pushcart Prize nomination, Frontier Poetry’s Industry Prize, Dogwood’s Poetry Prize, Nimrod’s Francine Ringold Award for New Writers, and others. Tara resides on an island in the Salish Sea with her husband Paul and their rescue dog Hector.
Tanya Standish McIntyre (Website, Twitter, Instagram) is a poet and visual artist based in rural Quebec, Canada. Her debut collection, The House You Are Born In, is forthcoming in McGill-Queens University Press’s Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series in Dec 2022. Drawing upon memories of her early years on an ancestral farm and the marking relationship with her grandfather, an early review calls it “a stunning debut by a promising new poetic voice, haunting and uplifting in equal measure.” Visit her website at tanyastandishmcintyre.com.
Christopher Nelson (Website) is the author of Blood Aria (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021) and three chapbooks, including Blue House, for which he was awarded a Poetry Society of America National Chapbook Fellowship. He is the founder and editor of the journal Under a Warm Green Linden and Green Linden Press, a nonprofit publisher dedicated to poetic excellence and reforestation. He edited the anthology Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora (Green Linden Press, 2021), winner of a Midwest Book Award and named by Entropy Magazine as one of the best poetry books of 2020–21. His poems have appeared in the Best New Poets, Boston Review, Image, The Missouri Review, New Ohio Review, RHINO, Salamander, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. For more information visit christophernelson.info.
Stephanie Niu (Website, Twitter, Instagram) is a poet from Marietta, Georgia and the author of She Has Dreamt Again of Water (Diode Editions, 2022). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Waxwing, Ecotone, The Georgia Review, and Southeast Review, as well as scientific collaborations including the 11th Annual St. Louis River Summit. She lives in New York City.
Clare Paniccia (Instagram) recently graduated with her doctorate in poetry from Oklahoma State University. Her work has been featured in or is forthcoming from Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She lives and works near Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Jennifer Polson Peterson (Website, Instagram) lives in south Mississippi with her partner and two daughters. She is the author of a chapbook, Must Resemble Leisure, published in 2022 by Seven Kitchens Press, and her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Image, and elsewhere.
Alafia Nicole Sessions (Website, Instagram) is a Black poet and mother living in Los Angeles, where she currently works as an educator, actress, herbalist, and doula. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Los Angeles Review, Indiana Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Green Mountains Review, The Sonora Review, Glint Literary Journal, and elsewhere. Alafia is a recipient of the 2021 Sustainable Arts Foundation award and Randolph College’s Elizabeth Dwiggins ‘94 award. She is a candidate in the low residency MFA program at Randolph College.
LaWanda Walters (Twitter, Facebook) is the author of Light Is the Odalisque (Press 53, Silver Concho Poetry Series, 2016). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Georgia Review, Antioch Review, Ploughshares, Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, The American Journal of Poetry, and other literary magazines, as well as in Best American Poetry 2015 and Obsession: Sestinas in the Twenty-First Century. She received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in 2020. She lives in Cincinnati.
Dom Witten (Website, Instagram, Poetics Lab Instagram) is a Black poet raised on the end of a one-way street in Detroit, MI. She received her MFA from the University of North Carolina Greensboro with a special attention to process-based learning. She is a co-founder and program director of the Poetics Lab, which facilitates inclusive spaces for communities to engage with identity through poetry and performance of the self. Dom’s poems are obsessed with establishing a future with more joy, sass, naps and emotional accuracy.
Visual Artists
Sherry Smith Bell (Website) is an artist, poet and curator of fine art print portfolios published by Blue Sky Press. Sherry earned a B.F.A.from Ohio Wesleyan University in fine art and education. She pursued her love of art, receiving a M.S. and an M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Sherry founded the printmaking department at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto,California. Later in her teaching career, Sherry established the Lafayette Printmaking Workshop.The workshop specialized in nontoxic printing methods. Sherry's print portfolios featuring nationally known printmakers are "Of Time and Place," "Wild Women," "Brave New World, "Translations," and "Cross Currents." Sherry's work is held in numerous National museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Palace of the Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, and special library collections. To learn more, visit her website www.sherrysmithbell.com.
Tanya Standish McIntyre (Website, Twitter, Instagram) is a poet and visual artist based in rural Quebec, Canada. Her debut collection, The House You Are Born In, is forthcoming in McGill-Queens University Press’s Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series in Dec 2022. Drawing upon memories of her early years on an ancestral farm and the marking relationship with her grandfather, an early review calls it “a stunning debut by a promising new poetic voice, haunting and uplifting in equal measure.” Visit her website at tanyastandishmcintyre.com.
Alexandra N Sherman’s (Website, Instagram, Facebook) art explores the landscape of the mind through watercolors painted from her subconscious, installations with found or created objects, and collage using vintage and antique ephemera. She seeks to give the viewer an intimate experience through works that explore the uncertainty and mystery inherent in life, ourselves, the environment and the need for conservation. Her work depicts the spaces in-between, the seen and unseen through ambiguous narrative that invites the viewer to complete the story.
Annie Wood (Website, Instagram) is an internationally exhibited, creative-compulsive Israeli-American born and raised in Hollywood, California. Annie is an intuitive mixed media expressionist who often draws, paints, shoots, and collages soulful humans, using any medium within her reach. She firmly belives, Everyone has boundless creativity within them just waiting to bust on out. Why keep it waiting? Visit her website at anniewood.com.
Stela Zaharieva (Website, Instagram, Facebook) was born in Bulgaria and moved to the US in 1997 to pursue photography. Stela has been a professional photographer since 2006 and has judged international competitions for International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers (ISPWP) and Fearless. Stela has won multiple awards, including ISPWP and the ND Awards. Stela’s personal work has been exhibited in local galleries. Learn more at stelazaharieva.com.
Thank you to the Library of Congress, Creative Commons, and the National Gallery of Art.