Poets
Eben E. B. Bein (he/they) (Website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X) is a biology-teacher-turned-climate-justice-educator at the nonprofit Our Climate. He was a 2022 Fellow for the Writing By Writers workshop and winner of the 2022 Writers Rising Up “Winter Variations” poetry contest. Their first chapbook Character Flaws is out with Fauxmoir lit, and they’ve published with the likes of Fugue, New Ohio Review, and Crab Creek Review. They are currently completing their first full collection about parent-child estrangement, healing, and love. He lives on Pawtucket land (Cambridge, MA) with his husband and can be found online at ebenbein.com or @ebenbein.
Christine Byrne (Instagram, Twitter/X) is currently an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she won the John Logan Poetry Prize. Her most recent work appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, The New England Review, The Journal, Sugar House Review, Salt Hill, and elsewhere.
Ronda Piszk Broatch (Website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X) is the author of Chaos Theory for Beginners (MoonPath Press, 2023), finalist for the Sally Albiso Prize, and Lake of Fallen Constellations (MoonPath Press, 2015). She is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Ronda’s journal publications include Greensboro Review, Blackbird, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, Moon City Review, and NPR News / KUOW’s All Things Considered. She is a graduate student working toward her MFA at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop.
Timothy Geiger (Website) is the author of the poetry collections Weatherbox (winner of the 2019 Vern Rutsala Poetry Prize from Cloudbank Books), The Curse of Pheromones (Main Street Rag Press), and Blue Light Factory (Spoon River Poetry Press), as well as 10 chapbooks. His work has received a Pushcart Prize, a Holt, Rinehart and Winston Award in Literature, and recently appears in Poetry South, Plainsongs, Stoneboat, Tar River Poetry, and Anacapa Review. He runs a small farmstead in northwest Ohio (overrun with goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, and dogs), operates Aureole Press (a letterpress imprint publishing contemporary poetry since 1989), and is a Professor of English (teaching creative writing, poetry, and book arts) at The University of Toledo.
Born in South Korea, Sekyo Nam Haines immigrated to the U.S. in 1973 as a registered nurse. She received her BA in American literature and writing at Goddard College ADP. She continued her study of English literature at the Harvard Extension School and poetry with the late Ottone M. Riccio in Boston, MA. Her first book, Bitter Seasons’ Whip: The Complete Poems of Lee Yuk Sa, was published in 2022 (Tolsun Books). Her poems appeared in Constellations, Off the Coast, Lily Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Her translations of Kim Sowohl’s poetry appeared in The Harvard Review, The Brooklyn Rail: In Translation, Ezra, and Circumference. Her translations of Cho Ji Hoon appeared in Interim, Asymptote’s Translation Tuesday blog, The Fourth River, Tupelo Quarterly, Anomaly, The Tampa Review, May Day, Guernica Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Azonal, Diode, Common, Consequence Forum, Rhino, and The Hopper Poetry. Sekyo lives in Cambridge, MA with her family.
Born in 1920, Cho Ji Hoon is a canonical poet of modern Korea and a renowned scholar of Korean aesthetics, culture and history. Written in a modernist free-verse form, his poetry is deeply rooted in Korean soil, imbued with the sounds, smells and colors of pre-industrial Korea and resonates with the literary Sijo. In 1939, Cho Ji Hoon’s first poem appeared in the literary magazine MoonJang. In 1946, his poetry appeared in the collection, Cheongnok Jip (청록집) along with the works of Park Mokwohl and Pak Doo Zin. The three were known as “Cheongnokpa,” or the “Green Deer Poets.” A professor of Korean language and literature at Korea University for 20 years, Cho Ji Hoon served as the president of the Korean cultural society affiliated with the university and president of the Korean poet’s association. A recipient of literary award, he published five poetry collections, as well as many books related to Korean literature and culture. He died in 1968.
Karla Myn Khine (Website, Instagram, Twitter/X) is a poet and writer currently pursuing her MFA at San Francisco State University, where she is a recipient of the Daniel Langton Poetry Prize, an Academy of American Poets University Award, and a Marcus Graduate Scholar. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poets.org, Bullshit Lit, Drunk Monkeys, Eclectica, Silk Club, and elsewhere. She currently lives in San Francisco and is in the throes of writing her thesis.
kyung (they/them) (Website) is a medic and leather harness maker living on Peoria, Potawatomi, Miami, Sioux, Kickapoo, and Kaskaskia lands in South Side Chicago. Their commitments delve into community-led crisis & street herbalism, liberatory practices of queer/trans care, and anti-imperial lineages of memory. Their poetry appears in Meridian, Sonora Review, FOLIO Literary Journal, Tiger Moth Review, and elsewhere.
Josh Martin (he/him) (Website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X) is an assistant professor of English at Tusculum University. The recipient of the 2023 Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize from the North Carolina Writers Network, as well as a scholarship from the 2021 Sewanee Writers’ Conference, his poems and essays have been published in The Bitter Southerner, Kitchen Work, Rattle, The Kenyon Review Online, Carolina Quarterly, storySouth, and elsewhere. His first book, Earth of Inedible Things, won the 2021 Jacar Press Book Award. He currently lives in Gray, TN, where he spends time with his wife, daughter, and cats, while trying to perfect his Bolognese recipe.
Samuel Piccone (Website) is the author of the chapbook Pupa (Anhinga Press, 2018). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Sycamore Review, Frontier Poetry, Washington Square Review, and RHINO. He serves on the poetry staff at Raleigh Review, and is a lecturer at Iowa State University.
Shane Seely (Website, Facebook, Twitter/X) is the author of three books of poems, most recently The First Echo (LSU Press, 2019). He teaches in and directs the MFA program at University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Malik Thompson (Instagram) is a Black queer man from Washington, DC. His work is featured, or forthcoming, in Cobra Milk, Sundog Lit, Diode, MQR Mixtape, Oroboro, Poet Lore, and other places. He has received support from Lambda Literary, Obsidian Foundation, Brooklyn Poets, Cave Canem, and other organizations. He can be found on Instagram via the handle @latesummerstar.
Jim Tilley (Website, Facebook, Instagram) has published three full-length collections of poetry and a novel with Red Hen Press. His short memoir, The Elegant Solution, was published as a Ploughshares Solo. His poem, “On the Art of Patience,” was selected by Billy Collins to win Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize for Poetry. Four of his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His next poetry collection, Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe: New & Selected Poems, will be published in June 2024.
Jennifer Veech is a writer, editor, and teacher. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, when she’s not writing or teaching, she’s outside on her bike, in the garden, or tromping about.
Visual Artists
M. Apparition (Website, Instagram) is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, drawing, and experimental photography. Work has been shown nationally in New York, San Francisco, Rochester, and Baltimore; and internationally in Florence, Italy, and the Lishui and Yixian Photo Festivals in China. Images have been published in GUP Magazine, Humble Arts Foundation, Vice, and numerous other print and online magazines. Apparition was born, raised, and currently lives and works in New York City. The artist is fascinated by duality and is driven by curiosity. As John Chamberlain wrote, “I'm more interested in seeing what the material tells me than imposing my will on it.”
Frieda Christofides (Website, Instagram) has intense love for the outdoors and is her happiest when outside painting. She’s a born and raised New Yorker! So, painting outdoors can mean sitting in the middle of Broadway, going to Central Park for the millionth time or finding a secret community garden. Honestly there is never a lack of subject. She loves finding a place and thinking, “how did I not know this existed?” Frieda gathers energy from the places, movement, and life around her. She often paints together in groups. Quite often with NYC Urban Sketchers or with a group of artists that have been painting together since high school. This has created a unique artist dialog for her, finding a location, discussing composition, and completing the project in the chosen spot. She went to the HS of Art and Design in NYC, where it was mandatory to paint “en plein air”, on the subway ride home, or weekends in the neighborhood. Frieda never stopped that style of painting. She graduated from the RISD in Printmaking. She is on the board for NYC Urban Sketchers as their event coordinator. Events organized are workshops, Earth Day and Summer Celebration both at the Queens Botanical Garden.
Susan Pollet (Website, Instagram, Twitter/X) has been creating arts and crafts since she was a small child. She has studied at the Art Students League of New York, Cooper Union, and the 92nd Street Y, all in New York City. While creating art, she was also a public interest lawyer for 40 years, primarily in family court, a former President and officer of women’s bar associations, and, to this date, an advocate for the rights of women, children, and families. Her artwork reflects her interests in domestic themes as well as her love of beautiful landscapes and urban environments. Susan uses various forms of media as art expression, including collage, paints, and drawing instruments of all sorts and on all surfaces. She is also a published author of 11 adult fiction books and 3 children’s books. She created the covers for the adult books and the illustrations and covers for the children’s books.
Travis D. Roberson (Website) is a writer and artist originally from central Florida. He primarily works with watercolor and spray paint, often blending the two mediums to create scenes nestled somewhere between the cartoonish and surreal. His writing appears or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Juked, Pithead Chapel, and many other outlets. He now lives in New York with his dog and wife, and a daughter on the way. You can find more of his art and words at www.travisdroberson.com.
Thank you to Flickr Commons, Getty’s Open Content Project, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.