Darren C. Demaree is the author of fifteen poetry collections, most recently “Burning It Down” (December 2020, 8th House Publishing). He is the recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louis Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.
Erin Elizabeth Smith (she/her) is the Executive Director of Sundress Publications and the Sundress Academy for the Arts and a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, most recently DOWN (SFASU 2020) and the founder of the Best of the Net Anthology. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Guernica, Ecotone, Crab Orchard, and Mid-American. Smith is a Distinguished Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Tennison S. Black is the author of Survival Strategies (winner of the National Poetry Series, UGA Press, 2023). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in SWWIM, Hotel Amerika, The Seattle Times, Booth, Wordgathering, and New Mobility, among others. They earned their MFA from Arizona State University and have been twice-awarded Virginia G. Piper global teaching and research fellowships.
Jillian A. Fantin is a contemporary court jester with roots in the American South and north central England. They are the vessel for transmission of the full-length, hybrid poetry-play THE DOUGHNUT WORLD (fifth wheel press, 2024) and the author of the prose poetry micro-chapbook A Playdough Symposium (Ghost City Press, 2023). With writer Joy Wilkoff, Jillian co-founded and edits RENESME LITERARY, a shortform Twilight-inspired online arts journal. They also serve as an assistant editor for Sundress Publications’ Best of The Net Anthology and a blog curator for Querencia Press. Connect with Jillian on Twitter (@jilly_stardust) or Instagram (@jillystardust).
Amber Alexander, who publishes creative work as e. holloway, is a poet based in Ohio. They started at Sundress as an Editorial Intern before becoming Assistant Editor for Best of the Net and a member of the Reader Board. They were a previous SAFTA Writing Resident in 2023, have been published by Cornfield Review, and earned multiple awards during undergrad at The Ohio State University. They focus both their professional and creative work on building a sense of community. Find them at @hollowaye_ on twitter.
Jen Gayda Gupta is a poet, educator, and wanderer who spent the last two years traveling across the country in a tiny camper with her spouse and their dog. She recently traded in her nomadic life for a home without wheels in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Jen’s work has been published in Up the Staircase, Rattle, Whale Road Review, Ballast, The Shore and others. She is an assistant editor at Best of the Net, and works as a reader for Sundress Publications and The Maine Review. You can find her in the woods or @jengaydagupta and jengaydagupta.com.
Shipra Agarwal is a doctor-turned-writer from India, pursuing an MFA in fiction from Arizona State University. She is a 2024 Tin House Summer Workshop scholar and an alum of the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Her work is published/forthcoming in Witness Magazine and The Rumpus, nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize and the Pushcart Prize, and supported by Sundress Academy for the Arts, Anaphora Arts, GrubStreet, and Women’s National Book Association. Shipra is working on a novel-in-stories about family secrets whose consequences reverberate across generations.
Sarah A. Chavez, a California mestiza living in the PNW, is the author of the poetry collections like everything else we loved, (Porkbelly Press), Halfbreed Helene Navigates the Whole (Ravenna Press Triple Series), Hands That Break & Scar (Sundress Publications), and All Day, Talking (dancing girl press). Recent writing projects have received a 2019-2020 Tacoma Artists Initiative Award, as well as residencies at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, the Macondo Writers Workshop, and The Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow. Her new project, In the Face of Mourning was awarded a 2023 Scholarship & Research grant from the University of Washington Tacoma’s (UWT) School for Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. Chavez teaches creative writing and Latinx/Chicanx-focused courses and serves as the poetry coordinator for Best of the Net Anthology. Recent writing can be found in Diode, Thimble Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Cider Press Review, & The Museum of Americana: A Literary Review.
Descended from ocean dwellers, Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American writer, community organizer and teacher. They are author of The Heart’s Traffic: a novel in poems (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press, 2009) and recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry) as well as chapbooks to make black paper sing (speCt! Books) and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, Leslie Scalapino Finalist). Chen is co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press, 1st edition; AK Press, 2nd edition) and currently a core member of the Massage Parlor Outreach Project. They are also a Kelsey Street Press collective member and an Airlie Press editor. They have received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Can Serrat, Imagining America, Jack Straw Cultural Center and the Intercultural Leadership Institute as well as the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers. They are currently collaborating with Cassie Mira and others on Breathing in a Time of Disaster, a performance, installation and speculative writing project exploring breath through meditation, health and environmental justice. They teach in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the MFA program in Creative Writing and Poetics at University of Washington Bothell and serve as the Poet Laureate of the City of Redmond. www.chinginchen.com
Thank you to all of our readers who helped make this issue possible:
Lee Anderson, Jubi Arriola-Headley, Tierney Bailey, Elisa Balabram, Victoria Ballestros, Amy Baskin, Ashley Beene, Emi Bell, Christina Berke, Nicole Bethune, Sara Borjas, Sarah Cadorette, Mialise Carney, Celeste Chan, Shirley Chan, Mallika Chennupaty, Kevin Chesser, Leo Coffey, Whitney Cooper, Beth Couture, Hayli Cox, Krista Cox, Susannah Dainow, Alex DiFrancesco, Laura Donnelly, Kenli Doss, Amanda Dowd, Dulani, James Engelhardt, Cuca Esteves, Amelia Díaz Ettinger, Sierra Farrare, Ousman Fatty, Haley Fedor, Katherine Felts, Rona Fernandez, Robert Long Foreman, Molly Fuller, Ángel García, Kasey Grady, Michelle Goodman, Christian Harrington, Marah Hoffman, Mark Jenkins, Charles Jensen, e. jin, Ever Jones, Jake Just, Saira Khan, Nari Kirk, Symbol Lai, Erin Larson, Nicole Lawrence, Grace Lee, Heather Leigh, Kristen Leigh, Layla Lenhardt, Vivian Li, Sabina Livadariu, Christian Livermore, B. Cody Lumpkin, Nikki Lyssy, Jennifer Martelli, Nicole McCarthy, Caitlin McGill, Emma McVeigh, Cassie Mira, Rita Mookerjee, Miguel M. Morales, Frances Nan, Sophie Nunberg, H. Critch Parsons, Sara Phelps, Sunny Rosen, Lacey Rowland, Jacquelyn Scott, Sun Yung Shin, Miranda Strand, Tien Taylor, Mat Thomas, Jeff Tigchelaar, Savannah Vento-Chun, Veronica Vo, Larina Warnock, Nicole Bethune Winters, Vicki Xu, Rebecca Youe, and Tanya Young