E.J. Antonio is a 2009 fellow in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a recipient of fellowships from the Hurston/Wright Foundation and the Cave Canem Foundation, E.J. Antonio writes, performs and records her original works. She has appeared as a featured reader at venues in the NY tri-state area, such as Cornelia Street Café, the Bronx Council on the Arts First Wednesday reading series, the Calypso Muse Reading Series, the Hudson Valley Writers Center, the Harvard Club, WBAI’s broadcast Perspectives, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, the Bahai Center, Hunter Mountain Arts Festival, the Bowery Poetry Club, the Port Chester Art Fest 2008, 2009 and 2010, the Home Base Project, the York Arts Center, the Latimer House Museum, and the Howl Festival. Her work appears online at www.thedrunkenboat.com, poetz.com, and roguescholars.com, and has been published in various Journals and magazines; including, African Voices Literary Magazine, Amistad Literary Journal, Terra Incognita, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, Mobius: The Poetry Magazine, The Mom Egg Literary Journal, One Word/Many Voices: A Bi-Lingual Poetry Anthology, and Torch.
Keisha-Gaye Anderson is a Jamaican-born poet, writer, visual artist, and communications and marketing strategist based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of Gathering the Waters (Jamii Publishing 2014), Everything Is Necessary (Willow Books 2019), and A Spell for Living (Agape Editions), a multimedia e-book that includes music and Keisha’s original artwork, which received the Editors’ Choice recognition for Agape's Numinous Orisons, Luminous Origin Literary Award. Keisha’s poetry, fiction, and essays have been widely published in national literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. Her visual art has been featured in a number of exhibitions across the country. www.keishagaye.ink
Mermer Blakeslee is a writer, skier, teacher, and gardener. Her second novel, In Dark Water, was selected by Barnes and Noble for its Discover Great New Writers series. Leenie, an excerpt from her latest novel When You Live by a River, won the 2006 Narrative Prize from Narrative Magazine. Mermer was awarded three New York Foundation for the Arts Fiction Fellowships. Her roots are in poetry and two of her poems were finalists in Narrative’s First and Second Annual Poetry Contests. She was born, raised and still lives in the Catskill Mountains with her husband, her horses, dog and cat, and her garden, which has been published in Garden Design magazine. She is thrilled to be a grandma.
Nancy K. Bereano is the founding editor and publisher of Firebrand Books, a nationally recognized groundbreaking and award-winning lesbian and feminist press (1985-2000). Some of the best known, innovative, and well-respected authors from that period—the final decades of the 20th century when queer women’s writing began to receive the attention it deserved—were shepherded into publication by Firebrand: Dorothy Allison, Alison Bechdel, Cheryl Clarke, Leslie Feinberg, Jewelle Gomez, and Audre Lorde. With a long grassroots activist history both within and outside of the LGBTQ community, Nancy is New York City (the Bronx) born and raised. She moved to Ithaca, New York, in her late twenties and has lived there for the past fifty-two of her seventy-eight years
Born in postwar Germany into a family of refugees from the Soviet Union, Marina Antropow Cramer has enjoyed the benefit of lifelong ties to Russian expatriate communities. Her work has been performed by Roselee Blooston’s Short Story Theater. A short story, “Pear,” appeared online in Blackbird Literary Journal in 2009; another story, “Grave,” came out in the Fall 2009 online issue of Istanbul Literary Review. The digital journal Wilderness House Literary Review published “In Case of Fire” in the Winter 2010 issue, and “Half the Bed” in Winter 2012. Roads was her first novel. Her second, Anna Eva Mimi Adam, is scheduled for a February 2020 release. She holds a BA degree in English.
Denise B. Dailey was born in Brazil of French and French-Chilean parents. She has traveled in tents and hammocks to the seven continents with her husband and children, and uses her observations and languages to inform her travel writing, Listening to Pakistan, memoir, Leaving Guanabara, and biography of a Czech painter, Riko: Seductions of an Artist. She lives on a farm with her husband in Walton, NY.
Alexis De Veaux is a black queer feminist writer currently working toward new, literary definitions of black sermonic texts as secular engagements. The author of numerous works, including Warrior Poet, A Biography of Audre Lorde and the novel Yabo, De Veaux has written in and across multiple genres. For more information, go to www.alexisdeveaux.com
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is the author of the children's picture book BLUE: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky, illustrated by Caldecott Honor Artist Daniel Minter, and the young adult novel Powder Necklace, which Publishers Weekly called “a winning debut.” Her short fiction for adult readers is included in the anthologies Accra Noir edited by Nana-Ama Danquah, Africa39 edited by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, New Daughters of Africa edited by Margaret Busby, CBE, Hon. FIRSL, Everyday People edited by Jennifer Baker, and Woman's Work edited by Michelle Sewell, among others. Her writing has also appeared in Now2, African Writing, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Sunday Salon.
Kathy Engel is a poet, essayist and cultural worker who teaches in the Department of Art & Public Policy, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. Her most recent book is The Lost Brother Alphabet, Get Fresh Books, 2020. She was a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee.
Award-winning poet and writer Annie Finch is the author of six books of poetry including Eve, Calendars, The Poetry Witch Little Book of Spells, and an epic poem on abortion, Among the Goddesses. She is also the author of many books on poetry and poetic form including A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry, and editor of Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, the first major literary anthology on abortion. Annie is the founder of poetrywitchcommunity.com, open to all who identify as women, where she teaches online classes on poetry, meter, and scansion and on self-transformation through rhythmical writing.
Diane Gilliam grew up in Columbus, Ohio, daughter of parents who were part of the post-war Appalachian outmigration, from Mingo County West Virginia and Johnson County Kentucky. She earned a PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from Ohio State and an MFA from Warren Wilson. Gilliam is the recipient of the 2013 Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation. Gilliam’s first book One of Everything (2003) tells the stories of four generations of women in her family. Her second book, Kettle Bottom (2004), showcases the voices of people living in the coal camps at the time of the 1920-21 West Virginia Mine Wars. Kettle Bottom has won a Pushcart Prize and the Ohioana Library Association Book of the Year in Poetry. Gilliam also won the 2008 Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing.
Maria Mazziotti Gillan is a recipient of the 2014 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs), the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions). She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. Maria Gillan is Bartle Professor and Professor Emerita of English and creative writing at Binghamton University-SUNY. She has published more than twenty books of and about poetry and has edited four anthologies. She is a 2022 recipient of the Clara Lemlich Award for lifelong community activism.
Marilyn McCabe's work has garnered her an Orlando Prize from AROHO, the Hilary Tham Capital Collection contest award from The Word Works resulting in publication of her book of poems Perpetual Motion, and two artist grants from the New York State Council on the Arts. Her second book of poems, Glass Factory, was published in 2016. Her poems and videopoetry have been published in a variety of print and online literary magazines. She blogs about writing and reading at Owrite:marilyonaroll.wordpress.com.
Elisabeth Nonas: The author of Story Workout: Exercises to Help You Connect to the Stories You Want to Tell, she is currently at work on her fifth novel, Grace Period. She graduated college as an English major with a creative writing thesis, Elisabeth Nonas applied to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts graduate film program. Armed with her MFA and an award-winning thesis film that attracted her first agent, she moved to LA and started writing. Nonas followed her heart to Ithaca and was hired to teach an introductory screenwriting course in the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College for the spring semester of 1996. She was later hired full time, eventually chairing her department, and being a driving force behind the creation of a new major in Writing for Film, Television, and Emerging Media. At the time she retired in December 2019, her focus in the classroom had shifted to story more broadly delivered. She and her students investigated how stories are told, whether in film, television, videogames, webseries, fan fiction, graphic novels, as well as across media platforms and in theme parks.
Stephanie Nikolopoulos is a writer and editor based in New York City. She is the coauthor, with Paul Maher Jr., of the biography Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” Afar animated her flash travel story “Seeing the Light in Sweden” for their Travel Tales series in 2019, and the Albany International Airport Gallery selected her “Essay after Visiting the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Written from a Skyscraper” for their Landmarks exhibit in 2018. She currently writes the column A Byte Out of the Big Apple for Thomas Insights.
Bertha Rogers's poetry has been published in literary magazines, journals, and anthologies, as well as in several chapbooks and full-length collections; The Reason of Trees; The Fourth Beast; A House of Corners; Sleeper, You Wake; Heart Turned Back; and Wild, Again. Her translation of Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon Epic, was published in 2000, and her translation with illuminations of the 95 Riddle-Poems from the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book, Uncommon Creatures, was published in 2019. Forthcoming is What Want Brings: New & Selected Poems. She founded Bright Hill Press & Literary Center of the Catskills.
Jane Schulman is a poet and fiction writer. In 2020, she published a book of poetry, Where Blue Is Blue, with Main Street Rag. In the book, she explores themes of love, death, disability, and wonder in the everyday. Jane’s poems have appeared in Mezzo Cammin, Sixfold, The Lake and many others. She is now at work on a book of short stories. Jane was born in Brooklyn and lives in Jamaica, Queens. She's the mother of four sons and grandmother of six. A seeker and finder of voices, she works as a speech pathologist in a Brooklyn public school with children with autism and learning challenges. at www.janeschulman.com
ELENA SCHWOLSKY, RN, MPH, is a nurse, community health educator, activist, and writer from Brooklyn, New York. Elena serves as a workshop leader for the NY Writers Coalition, an organization that offers free writing workshops in community centers, libraries, youth programs, hospitals and prisons throughout New York City. Her award-winning book, Waking in Havana: A Memoir of AIDS and Healing in Cuba was published in November, 2019 by She Writes Press.
Yolanda Wisher is the author of Monk Eats an Afro (Hanging Loose Press, 2014) and the co-editor of Peace is a Haiku Song (Philadelphia Mural Arts, 2013). Wisher was named the inaugural poet laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania in 1999 and the third poet laureate of Philadelphia in 2016. A Pew and Cave Canem Fellow, she has been a Writer in Residence at Hedgebrook and Aspen Words. Currently the Curator of Spoken Word at Philadelphia Contemporary, she also performs a unique blend of poetry and song with her band The Afroeaters.
Lisa Wujnovich is a poet and farmer at Mountain Dell Farm and the author of Fieldwork, Finishing Line Press, and This Place Called Us, Stockport Flats Press. Lisa’s poems have appeared in anthologies and publications, including one she co-edited: The Lake Rises, poems to and for our bodies of water, Stockport Flats Press. Her poems can be read most recently in Planet in Crisis, 2020, FootHills Publishing and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, 2018, University of Georgia Press. You can find her poems The Banyon Review, Snap Dragon: journal of art and healing, La Presa: An International Journal, and MER VOX. Lisa has an MFA in poetry from Drew University.