Sarah Blackman is a poet, fiction and creative non-fiction author originally from the Washington D.C. area. Her poetry and prose has been published in a number of journals and magazines, including The Georgia Review, Denver Quarterly, Crazyhorse, The Gettysburg Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, Conjunctions, Oxford American Magazine and The Missouri Review among others. She has been featured on the Poetry Daily website and anthologized in the Poets Against the War Anthology, Best New American Voices, 2006, Metawritings; Toward a Theory of Nonfiction, and xoOrpheus: Fifty New Myths. 

Teddy L. Friedline (they/he) is a queer writer. They serve as co-EIC of FAIRY
PIECE MAG, a literary magazine about made-up rules and chess. His work has appeared in Yes
Poetry, Pigeon Review, streetcake, DEAR Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Starting this fall they
will be an MFA candidate at Chatham University. You can find him on Instagram and on Twitter,
both @jadeitebttrdish.

Loisa Fenichell’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets, and has been featured or is forthcoming in Guernica Magazine, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Northwest, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, “all these urban fields,” was published by nothing to say press and her collection, “Wandering in all directions of this earth,” is the winner of the 2022 Ghost Peach Press Prize, selected by Eduardo C. Corral and forthcoming from Ghost Peach Press in 2023. She is the winner of the 2021 Bat City Review Editors' Prize, has been a finalist for Narrative Magazine’s 2021 30 Below contest, a runner-up for Tupelo Quarterly's Tupelo Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the Dorianne Laux / Joe Millar prize. She has been the recipient of an award from Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, will be graduating from Columbia University’s MFA program come August of 2023, and will be a PhD candidate in English and Creative Writing at University of Denver come Fall of 2023.

Holly Mitchell is a poet from Kentucky, now based in New York. Sarabande Books published Holly’s debut collection, Mare’s Nest, in Spring 2023.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Author's note: "The Model Ship" and "Self-Acceptance" are both persona poems in the voice of my grandfather.

Aaron Canipe is a photographer and designer living in Mebane, North Carolina. He
earned his MFA in Experimental & Documentary Arts from Duke University in 2015.
Canipe’s work revolves around what it means to struggle with a loss of innocence and
beauty in the South today. His photographs and books have been exhibited
throughout the region.

Annie Woodford is from a mill town in the Virginia Piedmont and now lives in Deep Gap, North Carolina. She is the author of Bootleg (Groundhog Poetry Press, 2019). Her second book, Where You Come from Is Gone (2022), is the winner of Mercer University’s 2020 Adrienne Bond Prize and the 2022 Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry. She was awarded the Jean Ritchie Fellowship in 2019.

Katie Prock is a photographic artist and book maker. Prock earned her MFA in Studio Art at Florida Atlantic University, where she now works as an instructor. Her practice utilizes alternative printing techniques and incorporates handcrafted processes which emphasize chance occurrence and imperfections. Her work and research focus on topics such as identity, gender, family history, and girlhood. In addition to being exhibited across the United States, including Biblio 2020 at Art Palm Beach, Prock’s work has been featured abroad in the Body + Memory + City Photo Festival in Alicante, Spain. 

 
Alyson Fisher’s work is a tribute to recollections, keepsakes, and happenings. Her process is agile and repetitive, similar to habits and memories. She embraces what feels “homemade”, capturing an unconventional tenderness of materials. Alyson Fisher currently resides in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, where she teaches AP Art, Art History, and Psychology. She received her BFA in Printmaking with a minor in Art History from University of South Carolina.

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Mary Lekoshere lives and paints in her native town of Greenville, SC. Her studio is a breakfast nook off the kitchen, where she paints around parenting her four children, and feeding her husband. She fell in love with oil painting at the age of 14 at an art camp, and went on to study painting, drawing and printmaking in college. She has a life long passion for illustration and story, as is reflected in the narrative nature of her paintings. She pursues the “Ache of Beauty” in her work, and is delighted when her images evoke an emotional response in her viewers. 

Jack Sorokin began his career in the arts at the age of 15, assisting documentary filmmakers and celebrity portrait photographers in NYC. Early recognition from The National Endowment for the Arts YoungArts program in 2011 further propelled his career, leading to a BFA in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2015 Jack's unique visual narratives have since been sought after by a range of esteemed commercial and editorial clients including American Express, ProPublica, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Jack's work invites the viewer into a thoughtful contemplation of the intricacies of the human experience and the duality of tenderness and crudeness inherent in all of us. His goal is to humanize the experiences of communities that are often stereotyped, offering an immersive experience that amplifies the voices and stories of these individuals. Through his work,  Jack illuminates the crucial aspects of vulnerability, community, and intimacy in the human experience. His work not only captures moments but also sparks conversation and understanding, bringing much-needed light to the stories and experiences often overlooked.

Sarah J. Sloat is the author of Hotel Almighty, a collection a visual poetry from Sarabande Books. Sarah is originally from New Jersey but has lived for many years in Europe, where she works in news. Her poems, prose and collage have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Diagram and elsewhere. You can keep up with her at sarahjsloat.com and on Instagram at @sjane30.

Kristi Stout is a writer splitting time between Virginia and North Carolina. Some of her previous
work can be found at The Rumpus and Blue Arrangements.

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Kacey Nicosia is an emerging writer from Huntersville, NC. She attends school at Clemson
University where she studies Environmental and Natural Resources and Creative Writing. She
lives in Central, SC near a train track with thoughts about adopting a cat.

 
Kelly Hoffer is a poet and book artist. Her debut collection of poetry, UNDERSHORE (2023), was selected by Diana Khoi Nguyen as the winner of the Lightscatter Press Prize. The manuscript of her second collection, "Fire Series," was a finalist for the 2021 National Poetry Series and the Georgia Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, TAGVVERK, American Chordata, Denver Quarterly, Mississippi Review, Prelude, and Second Factory among others. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD in Literatures in English from Cornell University. She currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan as the Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Poetry. Learn more at https://www.kellyrosehoffer.com/.

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Katherine Gaffney completed her MFA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is
currently working on her PhD at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her work has previously
appeared in jubilat, Harpur Palate, Mississippi Review, Meridian, and elsewhere. She has attended the
Tin House Summer Writing Workshop, the SAFTA Residency, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference as a scholar. Her first chapbook, Once Read as Ruin, was published at Finishing Line Press. Her first full-length collection, Fool in a Blue House, won the 2022 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry.