Artisan baker by trade, Alfredo Salvatore Arcilesi has been published in over 50 literary journals worldwide.  He was a finalist in the Blood Orange Review Literary Contest and the Scribes Valley Short Story Writing Contest, and was awarded the Popular Vote in the Best of Rejected Manuscripts Competition.  In addition to several short pieces, he is currently working on his debut novel.

Danielle Byington is an educator, author, and artist from East Tennessee. Her poetry has been published by outlets such as Cold Mountain Review, Still: The Journal, and Dancing Girl Press published her chapbook, The Absurdity of Origins, in 2019. Byington’s visual artwhich parallels the byproducts of her writing–has been part of virtual and physical exhibits at galleries in Louisville, KY, Laguna Beach, CA, as well as a public art installation in Johnson City, TN. Byington has taught composition and literature at various colleges, and her ardor for the intersection of language and visual arts manifested in 2020, as she created the educational business Sight into Insight, which utilizes the relationship of word and image to enhance emotional understanding.  

James Croal Jackson (he/him/his) is a Filipino-American poet. He has two chapbooks, Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, forthcoming 2021) and The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), with recent poems in White Wall Review, Subnivean, and Thin Air. He edits The Mantle Poetry (themantlepoetry.com) from Pittsburgh, PA. (jamescroaljackson.com)

After teaching college English for 40 years, Dr. Karen Elias (pictured on the right) is now an artist/activist, using photography to raise awareness about climate change. She has won awards at local art and photography shows and was featured in fall 2019 – with poet Marjorie Maddox – at an exhibit on collaborations between artists

and poets. An exhibit titled “Home Sick: Coming Face to Face with Climate Change,” a compendium of photography, personal statement, poetry and educational materials, was featured at the Ross Library in Lock Haven in December 2019. Her book-length collaboration with Marjorie Maddox, titled Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For, is scheduled for publication by Shanti Arts Press in fall 2021.

Ivanka Fear is a former teacher now pursuing her passion for writing. Her poems and short stories appear in Spadina Literary Review, Montreal Writes, Adelaide Literary, October Hill, Scarlet Leaf Review, The Sirens Call, The Literary Hatchet, Wellington Street Review, Aphelion, Muddy River Poetry Review, and elsewhere. You can read more about her at https://ivankafear.wixsite.com/mysite.

LA is currently an accountant at the University of Iowa.  Before that, she was a seminary professor.  Prior to that, she was a pastor.  She moved to Iowa City with her husband in 2016 and started writing poetry soon afterwards. She is improving her poetry-writing skills thanks to the Free Generative Writing Workshops.  To give back to the local writing community, she organizes a writers open mic at the public library (or via Zoom during pandemics) and serves on the advisory council of Iowa City Poetry.

Mariah Ghant (she/her) is a black, female artist based out of Philly. An alumnus of Vassar College, she studied Drama and English focusing on Acting and Poetry Writing. Mariah’s work has been featured in three print publications with Z Publishing, as well as online with Distance Yearning, Lucky Jefferson, and Passengers Journal. In her everyday life, Mariah enjoys creating and teaching art across various genres including theatre, writing, dance, and movement. Forever fantasizing on the phenomenal, Mariah’s writing explores relationships, identity, and the cosmos. To see more of her work, you can visit her poetry Instagram @mariah.g.poetry.

Heidi Hermanson has been published in Midwest Quarterly, Hiram Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Recently, she curated “Circus of the Mind” a show at Culxr (pronounced “culture”) House, combining page poetry, slam poetry, a belly dancer, a blues musician, and a soprano.

In 2008 Heidi received her MFA from the University of Nebraska.  In 2010 she won the public library’s annual poetry contest, performed her winning work accompanied by Silver Roots, a New York-based violin and flute duo. Her first collection of poetry was Waking to the Dream (Stephen Austin Press, 2018). Her second collection, Cocktails with God is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press

Janice Hornburg is a native Texan who transplanted to East Tennessee in 1993. She was a clinical research scientist involved in the FDA approval of new drugs, and is now retired. She is a member of the Poetry Society of Tennessee—NE Chapter, and the Lost State Writers’ Guild. For her poetry, she has won first-place awards from the Poetry Society of Tennessee, The Poetry Society of Texas, the Poetry Society of Virginia, the Watauga Branch of the National League of American Pen Women, and Green River Writers. Janice’s chapbook, Perspectives, was released by Finishing Line Press in May, 2013. Her work was published in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Gretchen Moran Laskas Volume V and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol. VI: Tennessee. Other poems have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Chapter 16, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Cold Mountain Review, and Still: The Journal.

Dalton Huerkamp is a 3L at the University of Arkansas School of Law.

Zeke Jarvis is a Professor of English at Eureka College. His work has appeared in Moon City Review, Posit, and KNOCK, among other places. His books include, So Anyway…, In A Family Way, The Three of Them, and Antisocial Norms. 

French-Venezuelan Sophie Jupillat Posey wrote a poem about spring in the 4th grade and started a mystery series a year later. She’s been hooked to creating stories ever since. She studied writing and music at Rollins College. She’s had numerous short stories and poetry published in literary magazines since 2014. She enjoys reading and writing anything from science fiction and fantasy, to paranormal and mystery novels. She is the author of The Four Suitors and The Sea. When she isn’t writing, she is composing music, creating albums, and teaching French to students in Central Florida. She can be reached on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and her website.

Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); True, False, None of the Above(Illumination Book Award Medalist); Local News from Someplace Else; Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award)—the short story collection What She Was Saying(Fomite); four children’s and YA books—including  Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Readiing Poems with Insider Exercises (Finalist Children’s Educational Category 2020 International Book Awards), and A Crossing of Zebras: Animal Packs in Poetry; I’m Feeling Blue, Too!—Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (co-editor); Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry (assistant editor); and 600+ stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. Forthcoming in 2021 is her book Begin with a Question (Paraclete Press), as well as her ekphrastic collaboration with photographer Karen Elias, Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (Shanti Arts). For more information, please see www.marjoriemaddox.com.

Philip Jay Marlin, born 10/16/63, Queens, NYC is a poet and visual artist living in Charlottesville, VA, and has one book of poems, The Cargo. His works have appeared in The Belmont Literary Journal, Virginia Bards Review, Sun Sentinel, and through the Charlottesville City Transit.

Corey Mesler has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published eleven novels, four short story collections, six full-length poetry collections, and a dozen chapbooks. His novel, Memphis Movie, attracted kind words from Ann Beattie, Peter Coyote, and William Hjorstberg, among others. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart many times, and three of his poems were chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.

S.J. Murphee is a new and promising poet based out of Nashville, Tennessee.  S.J. has been writing since she was a child and now spends her time crafting words for herself and others. When she is not writing, you can expect to find S.J. spending her time with her partner and their cat.

Karen Neuberg’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Glassworks, Gone Lawn, Misfit, Really System, and Verse Daily.. She is the author of Pursuit (Kelsay Books, 2019) and the chapbook the elephants are asking (Glass Lyre Press, 2018). She holds an MFA from The New School and is associate editor of the online journal First Literary Review East. She lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY.

Eliot Parker is the author of three previous thriller novels and a collection of short stories. His short story collection Snapshots won the 2020 PenCraft Literary Award for Short Story Anthology along with the 2021 Feathered Quill Award for Short Story Fiction. His thriller novel A Knife’s Edge was an Amazon #1 bestseller in thriller novels and is currently being optioned for a film by Starlight Entertainment. Eliot is the  recipient of the West Virginia Literary Merit Award and a finalist for the Southern Book Prize. He hosts the podcast program, Now Appalachia,which profiles authors, editors, and publishers in the Appalachian region which can be heard on the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network.

Bruce Pemberton is a retired high school English teacher, tennis coach, and Gulf War veteran. He lives on the Palouse, in rural, eastern Washington state.

Catherine Pritchard Childress lives in the shadow of Roan Mountain in East Tennessee where she teaches writing and literature and serves as co-director of the Creative Writing Festival at East Tennessee State University. Her poems have appeared in North American Review, Louisiana Literature, Connecticut Review, The Cape Rock, Appalachian Heritage, Still: The Journal, Stoneboat, and drafthorse among other journals, and have been anthologized in The Southern Poetry Anthologies, Volumes VI and VII: Tennessee and North Carolina. She is the author of the poetry collection Other(Finishing Line Press, 2015).

Rita Quillen’s new novel WAYLAND, a sequel to HIDING EZRA, was published by Iris Press in 2019, and her new poetry collection SOME NOTES YOU HOLD(Madville Press) in 2020. Her full-length poetry collection, The Mad Farmer’s Wife, published in 2016 by Texas Review Press, a Texas A & M affiliation, was a finalist for the Weatherford Award in Appalachian Literature from Berea College. One of six semi- finalists for the 2012-14 Poet Laureate of Virginia, she received three Pushcart nominations, and a Best of the Net nomination in 2012. She lives, farms, writes songs, and takes photographs at Early Autumn Farm in southwestern Virginia. Read more at www.ritasimsquillen.com.

Juanita Rey is a Dominican poet who has been in this country five years. Her work has been published in  Pennsylvania English, Opiate Journal, Petrichor Machineand Porter Gulch Review.

Jose Rivera is a self taught artist based in the Orlando, FL area. With a focus on surrealism, Jose has expanded his artistic skills through many mediums of art, including sculpture. His favorite subjects include the human body, nature and anything colorful!

Jane Sasser was born and raised on a farm in Fairview, NC. She grew up in a family of storytellers and began writing her own stories at the age of six. Her poetry has appeared in JAMA, North American Review, The Sun, and other publications. She has published three poetry chapbooks: What’s Underneath(Iris Press, 2020), Itinerant (Finishing Line, 2009), and Recollecting the Snow(March Street Press, 2008). A retired high school English teacher, she lives in Oak Ridge, TN, with her husband and retired greyhounds.

Kate E. Schultz earned her MA in English from Ohio University, where she also served as Assistant Editor of New Ohio Review. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Bayou Magazine, Critical Read, The Cut, and others. Find out more about Kate and http://kateelizabethschultz.com or follow her on Instagram: katerade98.

Roberta Schultz is a singer songwriter and poet originally from Grant’s Lick, KY. Three of her chapbooks, Outposts on the Border of Longing (2014), Songs from the Shaper’s Harp (2017), and Touchstones (2020) are published by Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in Panoply, Still: the Journal, Riparian, Kudzu, The Main Street Rag and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel.

Larry Smith is a poet, fiction writer, biographer (Kenneth Patchen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, d.a. levy), and editor-publisher of Bottom Dog Press/ Bird Dog Publishing. He grew up in the industrial Ohio River Valley and lives along the shores of Lake Erie near Toledo with his wife Ann. He is a professor emeritus of Bowling Green State University in Ohio. His most recent book treats his hometown: Mingo Town and Memories.

A Hamblen County, Tennessee native, Kelsey A. Solomon believes in dream work. Her poems can be found in Appalachian Heritage, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, The Mildred Haun Review, and Cathexis Northwest. She holds a Master of Arts in English from East Tennessee State University, a Bachelor of Arts in English (Creative Writing) & Philosophy from Carson-Newman University, and an Associate of Arts in English from Walters State Community College [WSCC]. As an Assistant Professor of English at WSCC, she teaches freshman composition and literatures of early Europe and modern America.  Since 2018 as part of her service to WSCC, she is the chair of the Mildred Haun Conference: A Celebration of Appalachian Literature, Culture, and Scholarship, through which she extends opportunities to engage students, community, and fellow writers to nurture their pursuits in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, songwriting, and scholarship.

Sappho Stanley is a queer transwoman. She is a Junior at East Tennessee State University and is working on her English undergraduate degree as well as two minors in Creative Writing and Mathematics. She grew up in a small town in Southwest Virginia named “Pound.” Currently, she lives in Mount Carmel, Tennessee with her cat Kevin.

Larry D. Thacker’s stories can be found in past issues of The Still Journal, Pikeville Review, Fried Chicken and Coffee, Dime Show Review, Vandalia Journal, Grotesque Quarterly, and Story and Grit. His books of fiction include the short story collection, Working if Off in Labor County, from West Virginia University Press, and the forthcoming short story collections, Everyday, Monsters, from Unsolicited Press, co-written with C.M. Chapman, and Labor Days, Labor Nights: More Stories, from Bottom Dog Press.

His poetry is in over 180 publications including Spillway, Still: The Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, American Journal of Poetry, Poetry South, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and Appalachian Heritage. His stories have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net recognitions. His books include Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia, and the poetry chapbooks Drifting in Awe and Memory Train, as well as the full collections Drifting in Awe, Grave Robber Confessional, Feasts of Evasion, and the forthcoming, Gateless Menagerie. His MFA in poetry and fiction is earned from West Virginia Wesleyan College. Visit his website at: www.larrydthacker.com

Antonio Vallone is an associate professor of English at Penn State DuBois. Founding publisher of MAMMOTH books, he is also poetry editor of Pennsylvania Englishand a co-founding editor of The Watershed Journal Literary Group—which provides journal and book publishing opportunities for Pennsylvania writers and runs Watershed Books, a writer’s space and used bookstore. He is a board member of The Watershed Journal and the Pennsylvania College English Association. His collections include The Blackbird’s Applause, Grass Saxophones, Golden Carp, and Chinese Bats. Forthcoming are American Zen and Blackberry Alleys: Collected Poems and Prose.