Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-three poetry collections, most recently So Much More (Harbor Editions, November 2024). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise 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 working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system.
Shipra Agarwal is a doctor-turned-writer from India, pursuing an MFA in fiction at Arizona State University. Her work exploring the weaponization of shame in collectivist cultures has been published in Witness Magazine and The Rumpus, awarded second place in the Glendon and Kathryn Swarthout Awards, nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize and the Pushcart Prize, shortlisted for the First Pages Prize and the Iron Horse Long Story Prize, and supported by a Tin House Summer Workshop scholarship, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, a residency at the Sundress Academy for the Arts, an Anaphora Arts scholarship, and a fellowship at the Authentic Voices Program. The Co Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net, Shipra is working on a novel-in-stories.
Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal (they/them) writes queer, working-class stories, essays, and poems. Winner of the Plaza Short Story Prize, their creative work can be found in Story, Third Coast, The Masters Review, Fairy Tale Review, Hole in the Head Review, F(r)iction, South Carolina Review, and elsewhere. Other writing appears in The Rumpus, Barrelhouse, and additional journals. Their work has been supported by MASS MoCA, Community of Writers, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Tin House Winter Workshop. They teach Creative Writing at Gannon University.
Carlo Matos is a bi+/poly author who has published 13 books of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and scholarship. He is the author of Book of Tongues: The Dead Letters of Pedro & Ines (a collaboration with the poet Amy Sayre Baptista),which is forthcoming from FlowerSong Press. His first novel, As Malcriadas or Names We Inherit (New Meridian, 2022) was featured by the literary scholar Vamberto Freitas in the oldest daily paper in Portugal last summer. His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in such journals as Hobart, Rhino, PANK, DMQ Review, Modern Drama, and Diagram, among many others. His books have been reviewed in such places as Kirkus Reviews, Boston Review, Iowa Review, and Portuguese-American Journal. Carlo has received grants and fellowships from the Disquiet International Literary Program (Portugal), CantoMundo, the Illinois Arts Council, Fundação Luso-Americana, Instituto Camoes, the Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the La Romita School of Art (Italy). He is also a winner of the Heartland Poetry Prize in poetry. Carlo is also a founding member of the Portuguese-American writers collective Kale Soup for the Soul and co-edited one of the first anthologies dedicated to Portuguese American and Portuguese Canadian writing. He currently lives in Chicago, is a professor at the City Colleges of Chicago, and is a former MMA fighter and kickboxer. Most days you can find him riding his motorcycles all over the Chicagoland area. Follow him on Instagram @carlomatos8.
Heather Leigh (they/them) is a queer, disabled, Chicago-based professor, editor, and writer. They have worked with the editing team of Uncanny Magazine, as a fiction and poetry editor for Curbside Splendor, and as managing editor of LacertaPublications. Their most recent publication, “Netflicks and Chill,” was published in CultureCult’s limited print anthology, Bloodlet. They are currently working on completing a collection of flash and short stories composed of a mashup of literary and various speculative fiction genres that critique modern society and culture. Spoiler: Someone usually dies at the end.
Sierra Farrare (she/her) is a short fiction writer from Baltimore, Maryland. In addition to a limited self-published run of her collection, Friday Night Hand Grenade, you can also find her work featured in Pretty Owl Poetry and University of Baltimore’s Welter. She currently serves as the assistant executive director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts and is a member of the reader boards for Spellbound Publications, LLC. and Sundress Publications.
Sarah A. Chavez (she/ella/they), a California mestiza living and working 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 2025-2026 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 in-process 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, facilitates community writing workshops in and around Tacoma, WA, and serves as the poetry coordinator for Best of the Net Anthology. Some of their writing can be found in Diode, Thimble Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Cider Press Review, & The Museum of Americana: A Literary Review.
Robin LaMer Rahija is a Kentucky poet, currently working as administrative staff at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Inside Out Egg (Variant Lit 2024), and her poems have appeared in Puerto Del Sol, FENCE, Spoon River Review, and elsewhere.
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.
Laura Page lives and works in Eugene OR. She studied English and Writing at Southern Oregon University and is the author of Dove, Coyote, (Ghost Peach Press, 2020). Laura has worked as a literary editor, a poet, and in more recent years, an artist, visually collaborating with writers and small presses in the poetry community.
Lee Anderson is a trans writer with an MFA from Northern Arizona University. Their award-nominated work is published in the Best American Food and Travel Writing 2025 anthology and can otherwise be found in places like Brevity, Salt Hill Journal, and The Rumpus. They are the Managing Editor of Half Mystic Journal and live in Chicago with their partner and a cat named Pretzel.
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.
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 Teaching Professor in the English Department at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Krista Cox is a poet, activist, and freelancer, and currently pursuing a master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. She’s Managing Editor of Doubleback Review, Managing Editor at Sundress Publications, and an Associate Poetry Editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection, as well as on the Board of Directors of Sundress Academy for the Arts. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Journal, South Dakota Review, Salt Hill Journal, and elsewhere.
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Leena Aboutableb, Thandiwe Adofo, Betsy Aoki, Asia Ashley, Samantha Reid Aviña, Tierney Bailey, Elisa Balabram, Whitney Bashaw, Emi Bell, Ines Bellina, DeMisty Bellinger, Christina Berke, Evelyn Berry, Nicole Bethune, Kayla Blau, Bonnie Bolling, Sara Borjas, Luci Brown, Mialise Carney, Kristi Carter, Celeste Chan, Shirley Chan, Mallika Chennupaty, Mickee Cheung, V Clayton-Alexander, Michael Colson, Vincent Cooper, Whitney Cooper, Krista Cox, Susannah Dainow, Nick Domich, Kenli Doss, Donna Wojnar Dzurilla, Stevie Edwards, Dania Baha Eldin, Erin Elkins, James Engelhardt, Haley Fedor, Katherine Felts, Molly Fuller, Ángel García, Ashley Gilland, Teresa Hayes, Heather, Todd Heldt, Logan Hoffman-Smith, Noor Alnaaz Islam, Cathy Jackson, Priya Jain, Ever Jones, Jennifer Schomburg Kanke, Saira Khan, Jill Khoury, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Nari Kirk, Zoe Korte, Robin Krueger, Hapshiba Kwon, Nicole Lawrence, Meta LeCompte, Grace Jahng Lee, Stella Lei, Jaimie Li, Amy Lin, Sabina Livadariu, Christian Livermore, Christie Louie, B. Cody Lumpkin, Leanne Machado, Adriadne Macquarie, Marianne Manzler, Jennifer Martelli, Denishe Mberi, Nicole McCarthy, Miguel M. Morales, Suzanne Naone, Amy Nguyen, Sophie Nunberg, DeAngelo Oliver, Pia Owens, Jardana Peacock, Sara Phelps, Marlo Provorse, Vitoria Ramos, Hannah Rego, Luci Ellen Roller, Forest Roth, Danielle Schroeder, Jacquelyn Scott, Nada Sefaw, Emma Sheinbaum, Austin Spring, Miranda Stark, Julia Talen, Annie Tan, Tien Taylor, Kari Treese, Angelica Urquizo, Chris Vega, Ryleigh Wann, Michelle Whittaker, Ty Williams, Rebecca Youe, Tanya Young, Iris Yu, Magdalen Zinky