Arthur Asseraf is a historian and writer from Paris who lives in London. He is the author of Electric News in Colonial Algeria, winner of the Middle East Studies Book Prize, and Le désinformateur.
Bruce Bond is the author of 37 books including Patmos (UMass, 2021), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner, 2022), Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), Therapon (with Dan Beachy-Quick, Tupelo, 2023), Vault (Ashland, 2023), Lunette (Green Linden, 2024), and The Dove of the Morning News (U of NV, 2024). His honors include the Juniper Prize, Richard Snyder Award, Test Site Poetry Award, New Criterion Poetry Award, Nicholas Schaffner Award for Literature in Music, Crab Orchard Book Prize, Wishing Jewel Editor’s Selection, Elixir Press Poetry Award, Tampa Review Book Prize, Lynda Hull Award, James Dickey Prize, Laurence Lieberman Prize, Verse Daily Book Prize, two TIL Best Book of Poetry awards, fellowships from the NEA and the Texas Institute for the Arts, and seven appearances in Best American Poetry. Presently he teaches as a Regents Emeritus Professor at the University of North Texas and performs jazz and classical guitar in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
Current Wisconsin Poet Laureate Brenda Cárdenas has authored Trace (Red Hen Press), winner of the 2023 Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry and silver winner of Foreword Review’s Indie Poetry Prize; Boomerang (Bilingual Press); and three chapbooks. She also co-edited the anthologies Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance and Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest. Her poems and essays have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, including Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Braving the Body, Latinx Poetics: The Art of Poetry, Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Anthology, among others. In 2024, her poem “Para los Tin-Tun-Teros,” set to choral music by Daniel Afonso, was performed by the National Concert Choir at Carnegie Hall. She is Professor Emerita of English at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee.
Meg Cass is a trans writer, teacher, and crafter based in St. Louis, Missouri. Their previous collection, ActivAmerica, was chosen by Claire Vaye Watkins as winner of the 2016 Katherine Anne Porter Prize. Recent stories have appeared in Ecotone, Smoke and Mold, Black Warrior Review, Foglifter, manywor(l)ds, Passages North, and ANMLY, and have been selected for The Wigleaf Top 50 and The Best Small Fictions anthologies. Meg teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois Springfield, and co-organizes the Changeling queer reading series.
jason b crawford (He/They) is the author of YEET! from Omnidawn Publishing in 2025 and Year of the Unicorn Kidz from Sundress Publications 2022. crawford was born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. Author of three chapbooks, Summertime Fine (Variant Lit), Twerkable Moments (Nautilus Press), and Goodboi (Neon Hemlock Press) . Crawford holds a Bachelors of Science in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from The New School. crawford is the winner of Courtney Valentine Prize for Outstanding Work by a Millennial Artist and was a 2023 Lambda Literary Emerging Fellow. Their work can be found in the Academy of American Poets, Poetry, Four Way Review, Cincinnati Review, and HAD, among others.
Cass Donish is the author of the poetry collections Your Dazzling Death (Knopf, 2024), winner of the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award; The Year of the Femme (University of Iowa Press, 2019), winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize; and Beautyberry (Slope Editions, 2018). Their nonfiction chapbook, On the Mezzanine (Gold Line Press, 2019), was selected for publication by Maggie Nelson. Donish lives and writes on the ancestral lands of the Osage Nation, Otoe-Missouria, Očeti Šakowin (Sioux), Kickapoo, Kaskaskia, Illini-Peoria, and other Indigenous peoples who were unjustly and forcibly displaced, in a place also known as Columbia, Missouri.
Writer and professor Gary Dop is the author of the poetry collection Father, Child, Water (Red Hen Press), and his most recent play is Democracy: An American Absurdity in One Act (Rain Taxi). Dop founded and directs the Randolph College MFA program, and his work appears in venues such as Georgia Review, Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, Sugar House Review, and North American Review.
Santa Fe artist Kathleen Frank travels throughout the American West, seeking inspiration for her landscape paintings. Using vibrant hues, she captures light and pattern in her search for logic within complex terrains. Exhibitions include International Art Museum of America; Museum of Western Art; St. George Museum of Art; Northwest Montana History Museum; UNM Valencia; MonDak Heritage Center | Art & History Museum; WaterWorks Museum; Sahara West Gallery; La Posada de Santa Fe; and Jane Hamilton Fine Art. Press includes LandEscape Art Review, MVIBE, Art Reveal, Magazine 43, and Southwest Art. Art in Embassies/U.S. State Department selected her work for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Viktoriia Grivina is a writer and cultural anthropologist from Kharkiv, Ukraine. She writes personalized essays and short stories. In 2023 her memoir book proposal, Potatoes and Other Hobbies, was selected for the short list of Nan Shepherd Prize (UK). In 2024 she was short-listed for the Creative Future Writer’s nonfiction award and received the first prize at Dream Foundry fantastic fiction competition. Her first book, an essay collection Kharkiv—A War City, was published in 2025. Her PhD study at St. Andrews University (UK) is dedicated to the mythological and aesthetic transformations of cities during war.
James Allen Hall is the author of two books of poems: Now You’re the Enemy and Romantic Comedy (Four Way Books, 2023). Their book of lyric essays, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well, was published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 2017. They are the recipient of awards from the NEA, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Lambda Literary, the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and the Texas Institute of Letters. With the poet Aaron Smith, they co-host Breaking Form: A Poetry and Culture Podcast.
Janice N. Harrington’s latest book of poetry is Yard Show, about African Americans in the Midwest. She teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois.
Kai Ihns lives and works in Chicago. She’s the author of two books of poems, most recently Of (The Elephants, 2024).
Fady Joudah has published several collections of poetry and poetry in translation. His book […], composed during the genocide of Gaza, won the Jackson Poetry prize in 2024 and was shortlisted for the National Book Award.
Jessica Klimesh is a US-based writer, writing coach, and editor whose creative work has appeared in dozens of journals, including Ghost Parachute, Flash Frog, Milk Candy Review, Neither Fish Nor Foul, Cleaver, Gooseberry Pie, and Gone Lawn. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and was included in Best Microfiction 2025. Find her on Substack at JEK Writes and on YouTube.
Jennifer S. Lange is a self-taught artist creating illustrations for books, games, posters, and worldbuilding projects using a range of media from digital 3D modelling to traditional charcoal drawing, and using figurative realism in small formats. When not working on projects, her SFF work is accompanied by story snippets providing a look beyond the frame of the image. With her interests including anthropology, transhumanism, astronomy, and fashion, both character and architectural designs astonish with their eclectic mix of less-travelled paths. Jennifer lives in northern Germany with her partner, and a lot of cats.
Joshua Jones Lofflin’s writing has appeared in The Best Microfiction, The Best Small Fictions, The Cincinnati Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. He lives in Maryland.
Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of 37 books, including 13 full-length poetry collections that include Animals Out-There W-i-l-d, once upon a twin, and the forthcoming Ironhood. Other non-poetry titles include Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life, The Language of Home: Stories, and I’ll Tell You Later: Deaf Survivors of Dinner Table Syndrome. His work has appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. An inaugural Zoeglossia Poetry Fellow, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Jennifer Martelli has received fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Monson Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Poetry, Braving the Body Anthology, Verse Daily, Plume, Diode, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She is the author of Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree, The Queen of Queens, which won the Italian American Studies Association Book Award and was shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and My Tarantella, which was also shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award and named finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Jennifer Martelli is co-poetry editor for MER.
Rebecca Nakaba (they/she) is a queer Japanese American writer and artist. Their work has been published in khōréō, Chestnut Review, Joyland, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere.
Danielle Batalion Ola is a descendant of sakadas, born and raised on the island of Kaua’i. She’s had the honor of being named a Tin House Scholar and Kundiman Mentorship Lab Fellow. Her work has been featured in magazines such as swamp pink, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and wildness, among others. When she isn’t hammering away at her own work, she reads and edits the work of others with No Tokens.
Abdaljawad Omar is a writer and Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University, Palestine.
Cesar Piedra is an interdisciplinary artist, born in southern California and raised in northern Nevada. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in ceramics and a minor in art history at the University of Nevada Reno. His Art practice is informed by the rich history of the Mesoamerican and Mexican-American cultures. Piedra’s mash-up of Mesoamerican and contemporary subject matter and iconography allows him to make connections to the ancestral culture of Mexico to share, critique, and explore conversations about the evolution of culture.
Remi Recchia is a Lambda Special Prize-winning poet, essayist, and editor from Kalamazoo, Michigan. An eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared in World Literature Today, Best New Poets 2021, and Prairie Schooner, among others. He is the author of two collections of poetry and four poetry chapbooks, and he is the editor of two contemporary poetry anthologies. Remi has received support from Tin House, PEN America, and the Poetry Foundation. He holds an MFA in poetry and a PhD in English. Remi will begin his M.Div. at Yale University in Fall 2025.
Carly Stone is an Australian writer based in Brooklyn. Their work appears in The Threepenny Review, Meanjin, Fence, and 3:AM, among others.
Diane Seuss is the author of six books of poetry: Modern Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2024), a finalist for the National Book Award and short-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize; frank: sonnets (Graywolf Press, 2021), winner of the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf Press, 2018), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry; Four-Legged Girl (Graywolf Press, 2015), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), a recipient of the Juniper Prize for Poetry; and It Blows You Hollow (New Issues Press, 1998). Her seventh collection, Althea: Poems, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2027.
Siamak Vossoughi is an Iranian-American writer living in Seattle. He has published two story collections, Better Than War (recipient of the 2014 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction) and A Sense of the Whole. A third collection is forthcoming in 2026 from Sarabande. His stories have also appeared in Kenyon Review, Missouri Review, Bennington Review, Idaho Review, Columbia Journal, Gulf Coast, and Copper Nickel.