Poetry:

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, born in Mexico, lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His first book of poems, Raw Materials, was published by Pygmy Forest Press. His poetry has been published by Alternating Current Press, Deadbeat Press, New Polish Beat, Poet’s Democracy, and Ten Pages Press. His latest chapbook, Make the Light Mine, was published by Kendra Steiner Editions.

Mike Biegner has had poems published in Blooms, Poetry Storehouse, Silver Birch Press, Silkworm. His prose poem “When Walt Whitman Was A Little Girl” was made into a video short by North Carolina filmmaker Jim Haverkamp, where it has competed at various film festivals around the world and is available for viewing on Vimeo. Mike most recently was a finalist in the 2017 Northampton Arts Council Biennial Call To Artists.
Mike has been part of the UMASS MFA program’s Juniper Institute, studying with poets such as Matthea Harvey, Matthew Zapruder and Dan Chelotti. He has also studied under Patrick Donnelly – former Poet Laureate of Northampton, MA.

Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news as well as in two anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannnan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recover for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. Last year she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53.)

Shirley Jones-Luke is a poet of color from Boston, Mass. She has an MFA from Emerson College. She has attended poetry workshops at Breadloaf, Tin House and VONA.

A Kaiser is member of the poetry collective Sweet Action and contributor to its three chapbooks. You can also read her work in Amsterdam Quarterly, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Manzano Mountain Review and some elsewheres. Her poem, The Sound of Clothes, is the Sow’s Ear Poetry Journal 2017 poetry prize winner. She is an activist and a translator from French, Spanish and Catalan.

Ellen LaFleche has won the Tor House Poetry Prize, the Philbrick Poetry Prize, the Joe Gouviea Outermost Poetry Prize, and the New Millennium Poetry Prize. She has three chapbooks, and is assistant judge of the North Street Book Prize for winningwriters.com.

Dana Malone resides in Nashville. Her most recently published work is featured on the podcast, Versify, and in The Tennessean, Number One, Native and Wordpeace. She was a finalist in the 2018 Atlanta Review poetry competition and has been nominated for “Best of the Net.” Her work is forthcoming in the collection, 20/20 Ekphrastic. She has read and performed throughout the eastern United States, the UK and Australia.

Alric McDermott is a recently emptied vessel, liquid reaching the lip.

S. B. Merrow lives in Baltimore, where she writes poems and works on the fine flutes of professional musicians. Recently, her work has been accepted by Salamander, Nimrod International Journal, Tishman Review, Panoplyzine, Gyroscope Review, and other journals. Two poems were selected by the Naugatuck River Review in their 2018 contest. Her chapbook, “Unpacking the China,” was the winner of QuillsEdge Press’ 2016 chapbook competition.

Carl “Papa” Palmer of Old Mill Road in Ridgeway, Virginia, now lives in University Place, Washington. He is retired from the military and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and is enjoying life as “Papa”to his grand descendants. Carl is also a Franciscan Hospice volunteer and former Pushcart Prize and Micro Award nominee. MOTTO: Long Weekends Forever!

Sarah Sullivan, a resident of Northampton, MA, is a physician, poet, teacher, editor, lover of ocean and sun, partner, parent, friend, meditator, searcher. She is published in Switchgrass Review, Sixfold, Freelit Magazine, Worcester Medicine Magazine, several anthologies, and her chapbooks While it Happened: 30 Poems in November! 2016 and Together, In Pieces: 30 Poems in November! 2017.

Jessica Tiller is a current undergraduate student working towards a BA in English and Environmental Studies from Truman State University. Her poetry has appeared in The Monitor and Windfall, as well as on her mother’s fridge. When not writing, she can be found gardening, dumpster diving, or finding other ways to soil her clothes.

Kelly Smith Trimble is the author of Vegetable Gardening Wisdom, a book of gardening tips and quotes (Storey Publishing, April 2019). Through her career in lifestyle editorial, her writing has appeared in many magazines and websites, but the last poem she had published was in college (“Caldera,” The Mountain Goat, Sewanee: The University of the South, 1997.

Roger West is a poet, performer and songwriter – a punk rocker long before and long after it was fashionable. He spends most of his time on the luminous Mediterranean coast in France, writing, recording and performing in French and in English, influenced by those ‘liquid stories’ that float across that silent sea and wash up on its shores. He has published four books of poems and a number of ‘poetry artifacts’, has contributed to anthologies and journals in France, the UK and the US and has recorded several CDs of music and poetry. He is also a poetry translator, translating from French, or from Arabic and Persian via French, into English. He is a Director of the Austin International Poetry Festival and a Translator for the Festival of Mediterranean Literature in Malta.

Fiction:

Sean Murphy has appeared on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and been quoted in USA Today, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and AdAge. His work has also appeared in Salon, The Village Voice, The New York Post, The Good Men Project, and others. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and served as writer-in-residence of the Noepe Center at Martha’s Vineyard. He’s Founding Director of Virginia Center for Literary Arts (www.thevcla.org). To learn more, please visit seanmurphy.net/ and @bullmurph.

Non-Fiction:

Anonymous never forgets that she is an activist first and a writer second. Currently an MFA student at Mills College, Wolf works to promote social justice in her professional roles on campus. She tutors first generation students and supports them through the college application process. At her other job, Wolf is working to connect students experiencing housing and food insecurity with staff members and with local resources that will support them. She strives to not just open conversations between administrators and students experiencing these kinds of vulnerability, but to push for the practical solutions that students so obviously need. A workshop to promote sex-positive consent, a student trip to see the vital new film The Hate U Give, and a forum to discuss on-campus sexual violations and harassment are also in the works.
Wolf’s work has been published in a dozen literary journals and two anthologies, Sanctuary and 11/9: The Fall of American Democracy. She was accepted to Alderworks residency in Alaska for a month in summer 2018, and to SAFTA, an organization co.

Art:

Joey Aronhalt’s project “Insertions” is a direct insertion of something that doesn’t belong in its environment to prompt the viewer to question.

Guilherme Bergamini is 40 years old and was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Graduated in journalism, has been working with photography for 23. Through this art, Bergamini intends to express his experiences, worldview and anxieties. Passionate about photography since childhood, Guilherme is an enthusiast and curious by new contemporary possibilitiesthat this technique allows. Persistent and critic, the art is thas photography as a way to political and social criticism. Awarded in national and international competitions and festivals, he took part in group and solo exhibitions in 21 countries.Had his work published in several Brazilian and foreign press vehicles. He publishes part of his photographic journey on his website (www.guilhermebergamini.com).

Steven Ostrowski is a poet, fiction writer, painter and songwriter. His work, including his artwork, appears widely in literary journals, magazines and anthologies. He is the author of five published chapbooks–four of poems and one of stories. He and his son Ben are coauthors of a full-length collection, ‘Penultimate Human Constellation,’ published in 2018 by Tolsun Books.
“The three paintings I’ve sent, although abstract, are energetic and forward looking. They intend to put a viewer in a reflective but optimistic state of mind: the good is in our midst if we only keep open our eyes.”

Jim Ross resumed creative pursuits in 2015 after retiring from public health research. He’s since published 75 pieces of nonfiction, several poems, and 200 photos in 80 journals in North America, Europe, and Asia. His publications include 1966, Bombay Gin, Columbia Journal, Entropy, Friends Journal, Gravel, Ilanot Review, Lunch Ticket, Kestrel, MAKE, The Atlantic, and Thin Air. He and his wife–parents of two health professionals and grandparents of four wee ones–split their time between Maryland and West Virginia.