Adnan Adnan won the Ruth MacLean McGee Award for Outstanding Achievement in Creative Nonfiction in 2013. In 2018, he won the Chalk Hill Artist’s Residency grant for his memoir, The Sentimental Pigeon Keeper. Inspired by Jon Fosse’s works, he authored 108 plays in 2024. Adnan’s works have appeared in the Flash Fiction World, Mukto-Mona, Reed Magazine, TWO@SJSU, Pinyon Review, and The Rumpus. He is currently finalizing his memoirs, The Sentimental Pigeon Keeper and Do Not Die Out There. He lives in San Jose, California, with his wife, Farzana, and daughters, Rain and Arabella.

Allison Burris writes whimsical and subversive poems from Oakland, CA. Her most recent publications are in The Lit Nerds amd Redheaded Stepchild. You can find her at the library looking for a magic portal or getting up to some kitchen witchery. She writes about creativity on Substack at Ink in the Archives. Connect with her: https://linktr.ee/allisonburris

Angelina Leaños is a queer Latina and a third-year MFA poetry student at Fresno State. A Ventura County Youth Poet Laureate emerita, she serves as a member of the California Poets in the Schools’ Board of Directors and is the managing editor for The Normal School magazine. Angelina’s work has been published in Urban Word, Arkana, and elsewhere.

Bianca Beronio (Binx) Is a first-year PhD student at UTSA and the daughter of Peruvian refugees. Her poems are part of a larger project to understand the duality of her identity and also serve as an exploration of the country her mother left behind.

Carter Vance is a writer and poet originally from Cobourg, Ontario, Canada currently resident in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. His work has appeared in such publications as The Smart Set, Contemporary Verse 2 and Plentitude, amongst others. His debut novel, Smaller Animals, is now available from Roundfire Books.

David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and a poet, whose writing grows from the intersection of landscape and memory. He creates because language allows him to listen more closely: to wind moving through grass, to silence after loss, to the subtle music beneath ordinary days. Poetry slows the world enough for meaning to surface.

David Cameron writes stories and poems in the mountains of Western NC where he live with his spouse, Kathryn and son, Will. His story, “Secrets” is a nod to Nathanial Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” as Jess fills in for Hester Pryne, bravely bearing Christian scorn while protecting a man’s secret. Secrets have a way of coming out, however, and the righteous do fall.

David Larsen is a writer who lives in El Paso, Texas. His stories have been published in numerous literary journals and magazines including Cholla Needles, The Heartland Review, Change Seven, Literary Heist, Aethlon, Pattern Recognition, Coneflower Café, The Raven Review, Voices, Smoky Blue Literary Arts Magazine, Mobius, The Griffel Literary Magazine, Bright Flash Literary, Floyd County Moonshine, The Mantelpiece, Oakwood, Nude Bruce Review, Canyon Voices, County Lines: A Literary Journal, The Word’s Faire, Rundelania, Red Dirt Forum and October Hill Magazine.

Donald Patten is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He creates oil paintings, illustrations, ceramics and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries throughout Maine. His work Master Artworks in COVID Times is a series of drawings that represent his experiences in modern COVID life by drawing inspiration from past masterpieces that depict the embodied experience of trauma. To view his online portfolio, visit @donald.patten on Instagram.

Dženeta Zaklan is a Bosnia and Herzegovina-based slam poet, poet, and essayist. Her work explores intimacy, inheritance, gender, and emotional memory. She has been published in multiple digital journals, including LitHub and A Priori. Alongside her written work, she performs spoken word and continues to develop cultural and art projects across page and stage.

Ismael S. Rodriguez Jr. writes from the crossroads of surrealism, satire, mysticism, and working-class grit, crafting poems and prose that blur the line between prophecy and punchline. Their work explores existential absurdity, spiritual rebellion, memory, labor, and the strange beauty hidden inside modern collapse. Drawing inspiration from Zen paradox, punk ethics, and dreamlike imagery, Ismael’s writing invites readers into worlds where teacups become scriptures, neon becomes prayer, and the ordinary cracks open into myth.

Jamison Conforto is a writer and poet from the Salt Lake Valley. His poetry collection “Antelope Boy” received recognition at the Sigma Tau Delta Centennial Convention held in St. Louis, and in the 2024 Utah Original Writing Competition held by SLCC. You can follow his poem-a-day journey on Instagram @the_year_365_in_365, and find out more at https://www.jamisonconforto.com/

Jennifer Rodrigues (she/her) lives on Powhatan land of Fairfax, VA. She is a certified trauma-informed yoga therapist & instructor, a queer & neurodivergent military spouse, & mom. Her poetry or photography has been featured in Passengers, Susurrus, FERAL, The Jelly Bucket, Mid-Atlantic Review, Paper Dragon, America’s Future anthology by WWPH, & several military anthologies. Her debut chapbook, Estate Sale, is forthcoming (2025) with Kelsay Books. Her photography has been nominated for Best of the Net. Find her on Insta @gmoneyfunklove & Bluesky @gmoneyfunklove.bsky.social.

Joe Bisicchia writes of our shared dynamic. An Honorable Mention recipient for the Fernando Rielo XXXII World Prize for Mystical Poetry, he has written five published collections of poetry. He also has composed over three hundred individual works that have been published in over one hundred publications such as California Quarterly, pacificReview, The Concrete Desert Review, Balloons Literary Journal, Triggerfish Critical Review, Sheepshead Review, Gone Lawn, The Tiger Moth Review, Agape Review, and more. The former broadcaster is director of public affairs for Virtua Health in New Jersey and is a Practicing Excellence certified clinician coach. He earned his BA at La Salle University and is currently on the MFA track at Lindenwood University. To see more of his work, visit JoeBisicchia.com.

Larissa Monique Hauck is a queer visual artist with a BFA with Distinction from the Alberta University of the Arts (2014) and a B.Ed. from the University of Calgary (2023). She has been included in events such as Nextfest 2018 (Edmonton, AB), Nuit Rose 2016 (Toronto, ON), and the 9th Annual New York City Poetry Festival 2019 (New York, US). Through the exploration of visual storytelling, Larissa confronts the complexities of queer feminine identity contrasted with the resilience of the natural world. Each figure acts as a metaphor, expanding on the isolation and the gaze imposed upon queer bodies, while also reflecting the personal and collective desire for connection, visibility, and self-authorship. She considers the way the natural world echoes the inner workings of the human experience, mirroring our emotions, thoughts, and even our corruptions.

Lea Galanter is a Massachusetts editor and writer with a background in history and theater. After writing plays for many years, she stumbled into the world of poetry and has never looked back. Her poetry has been published by Chiron Review, River and South, Panoply, Young Raven’s Literary Review, Poetica Review, Unlost Journal, and in several anthologies. She ventures regularly into the spaces between words seeking secret messages.

Lindsey R. Swindall, Ph.D. is a writer, educator and co-founder of Winfield Artists, LLC. She has written several academic books in the field of African American Studies. Her writing has been also published in literary and scholarly journals including Theatre Journal, James Baldwin Review, Lunch Ticket, Litro Magazine, New Jersey Studies and The MacGuffin.

Maddie Downie is a writer based out of Bellingham, Washington. She’s an editor at a outdoor gear and travel magazine, but her true love is poetry and fiction. Her work can be found in various magazines including Plainsongs and Five on the Fifth, as well as on her Instagram @maddie__pens. She finds inspiration for her writing in the North Cascade wilderness.

Matthew Fertel‘s work focuses on capturing the usually unnoticed minutiae we all encounter in our daily lives. He seeks to expose the unseen beauty in the everyday objects that make up the landscape of our existence. He achieves this through passing by the same locations over days, months and years, allowing him to photograph how objects change as the environment interacts with them over time.

Mia Soto | M.S. Blues is a 20 year old student, writer, and Mental Health field employee based in the Bay Area, CA. She has over 280 publications. She is a Senior Editor at Low Hanging Fruit Magazine and the Executive Editor at Vellichor Literary. She is also the EIC of Cuentos de la Gente and the Founder & EIC of The Infinite Blues Review. Her debut book, Collected Works: Poetry & Short Stories can be purchased through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, other booksellers, and in store at Caspian Books located in Tracy, California.

Michael C. Roberts is a mostly retired pediatric psychologist who has turned to other creative activities including writing and photography for literary magazines. His images have been published in The Canary, Burningword, FERAL, Cholla Needles, Cantos, Cold Moon, Right Hand Pointing, Door is a Jar, Camas, Hindsight, Straylight, Thimble, Ponder, Closed Eye Open, Alchemy Spoon, 3rd Wednesday, The Right Words, Cardinal Sins, Human Obscura, Blue Mesa Review, The Word’s Faire. A photographic book is available on Amazon: “Imaging the World with Plastic Cameras: Diana and Holga.” In his photography, he seeks to portray things and scenes that are overlooked or are mere backdrops to everyday life. In the last several months, he has been exploring minimalism as a way of projection and abstraction. Roberts often makes photographs in a range of color, objects, and format, the simplicity of minimalism reduces nature to its basics to reveal the underlying beauty of structure and form.

Mohan Rangam is a devoted student of English Literature, and began scribing poems early in life. Though Indian by birth, his fervor for the English language remains unquenchable. Inspired by many illustrious English poets, he developed a deep affinity for free verse poetry. Through my poems, he aspires to emotionally captivate readers and immerse them in a sense of euphoria.

Morgan Boyer is the author of The Serotonin Cradle (Finishing Line Press, 2018), If I Wasn’t Sacred (Alien Buddha Press, 2025) and a graduate of Carlow University. Boyer has been featured in Kallisto Gaia Press, Thirty West Publishing House, Oyez Review, Pennsylvania English, and Voices from the Attic. Boyer was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2025.

Nora Smith is a student at Coastal Carolina University studying English. She writes poems because I’m interested in the places where attention starts to fray, where something ordinary becomes briefly uncanny, where language misbehaves just enough to tell the truth. Lately, her work has been circling questions of belief, intimacy, and the body as a site of both evidence and doubt. I’m interested in how people try to explain what they can’t see, how memory invents its own architecture, and how humor can sit beside fear without canceling it out.

Ronald Walker is an artist living in the Sacramento area of California. He works in a style he calls Suburban Primitive, combining his interest in the origins and functions of art along with life in the suburbs. Ronald holds both a MFA and a MA in painting and his work has been shown In more than 50 solo exhibits over the years.

Samuel Goldsmith (he/him) is a photographer, writer, and musician who lives in Richmond, California. He creates art so as to be a river, not a lake. His photography has appeared or is forthcoming in Moss Piglet, Ink in Thirds, and Molecule.

Savannah Williams is in her thesis year at Texas State’s MFA program, for poetry. Her thesis director is Dr. Cecily Parks. She has been writing poetry all of her life. She is from Austin, Texas.

Sia Mehta is a New York City–based and NYU Tisch-educated filmmaker, writer, and producer whose work centers on the dichotomy of femininity, women of color and underrepresented voices. She explores youth, grief and coming of age through intimate storytelling across documentary, photography, narrative film, and writing; she is currently in post-production for her fourth narrative short film. Sia has worked with the Toronto International Film Festival, Stay Gold Productions, Lincoln Center Film and CineFrance programming, as well as numerous independent productions, and is a member of New York Women in Film and Television.

Sophia Beem is an Illinois writer who has spent most of her life in Central Illinois, except for when she briefly lived in Vienna, Austria. You can find her writing in Thimble Literary Magazine, Q Magazine, and Planet Forward. She lives in a pink house and sometimes hosts local bands in her basement.

Taiwo Hassan is a poet, singer, and writer of Yorubá descent. Their poems have been published in Uncanny Magazine, trampset, Kissing Dynamite, Lucent Dreaming, The Shore, Brittle Paper, Dust Poetry Magazine, Ice Floe Press, Wizards In Space, and several other journals. My poetry explores themes of family, identity, love, loss, and womanhood. As a poet, they strive to craft works that illuminate the issues associated with living as a queer person and a Nigerian.

Tom C. Hunley is the author of eight full-length poetry collections, eight chapbooks, two textbooks, and two produced films. He and his wife of thirty years have four amazing kids. Right or wrong, he believes he has impeccable taste when it comes to literature, film, music, and the one woman who has his whole heart. He seriously lacks inner resources, and he’s almost certain that his liver is diseased. He despises generative AI, groupthink, the tortured language of propaganda, big government, and bloated bureaucracies, especially in universities. He has published poems and stories in journals with names beginning with every letter of the alphabet, from Atlanta Review to Zone 3. He is currently working on a novel and a memoir.

Tyler Lemley is a recent graduate of the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Tx where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts and English. Tyler writes from the perspective of a queer person from a small Texas town grappling with love and belonging. He has been published in the The Main Street Rag, The Tusculum Review, Does It Have Pockets, and has work forthcoming in Black Fox Literary.

Yvonne Higgins Leach is the author of a poetry collection In the Spaces Between Us (Kelsay Books 2024). Her first collection Another Autumn was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2014. She spent decades balancing a career in communications and public relations, raising a family, and pursuing her love of writing poetry. Her latest passion is working with shelter dogs. She splits her time living on Vashon Island and in Spokane, Washington. For more information, visit www.yvonnehigginsleach.com

Zebulon Huset is a public high school teacher, writer and photographer. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Best New Poets, Meridian, Louisville Review, Smartish Pace, The Southern Review, Fence and others. He edits the prompt-based Sparked Literary Magazine, which is back from hiatus in 2026.