Contributors
David Adès is the author of Mapping the World, Afloat in Light, and the chapbook Only the Questions Are Eternal. David won the Wirra Wirra Vineyards Short Story Prize 2005. Mapping the World was commended for the FAW Anne Elder Award 2008. David’s poetry, twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, won the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize. His poems have been Highly Commended in the Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize, and commended for the Reuben Rose Poetry Prize. David is the host of the monthly poetry podcast series “Poets’ Corner” – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb8bHCZBRMBjlWlPDeaSanZ3qAZcuVW7 N. He lives in Sydney with his wife and three children.
Wayne Amtzis is the author of the poetry books: City on their Backs, poems & photos from the streets of Kathmandu and Sandcastle City/Quicksand Nation. He is the editor and co-translator of four collections including Days in the Life: translations from Nepali and Nepal Bhasa. His translations have appeared in Language for A New Century: contemporary poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. His photos of Kathmandu appear in flatline witness and were exhibited at Siddhartha Gallery in Kathmandu in 2001, 2002 and 2004. A longtime resident of Nepal, he currently lives with his wife, Judith in her hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Richard D. Ankney is a retired engineer. His poetry has appeared in The Pennsylvania Review, In Pittsburgh, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the City of Asylum anthology from the ends of the earth, and other publications. He lives in Squirrel Hill, where he writes, plays guitar, and tries to keep up with his grandchildren.
Valerie Bacharach’s writing has appeared or will appear in: Vox Populi, The Blue Mountain Review, EcoTheo Review, Minyon Magazine, One Art, The Ilanot Review, Poetica, and Northern Appalachian Review. Her chapbook After/Life will be published by Finishing Line Press. Her book, Ghost Recipe, will be published by Broadstone Books. She has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. Her poem “Birthday Portrait, Son” was selected for inclusion in 2023 Best Small Fictions. Her poem “Shavli” was nominated for Best of the Net 2023.
Tess Barry was shortlisted for the 2015 Manchester Poetry Prize. Twice a finalist for North American Review’s James Hearst Poetry Prize and Aesthetica Magazine’s Poetry Award, she has also been shortlisted four times for the Bridport Poetry Prize. Her work appears in Aesthetica, The Compass Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, Cordella Magazine, Mslexia, North American Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Stinging Fly, among others. In addition to holding an MFA from Carlow University, Barry holds an MA in English from the University of Pittsburgh. She is a Fellow of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project and the Director of Carlow University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program.
Cameron Barnett is a Pittsburgh poet, teacher, and the Emerging Black Writer in Residence at Chatham University (2022-2024). His first collection, The Drowning Boy’s Guide to Water, was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. His second collection, Murmur, (Autumn House Press) was published in 2024. He is the recipient of a 2019 Investing in Professional Artists Grant Program, a partnership of The Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments; he is also the winner of the 2019 Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award for Emerging Artists. His work explores the complexity race, place, and relationship for Black people in America.
Joseph Bathanti is former North Carolina Poet Laureate (2012-14) and recipient of the North Carolina Award in Literature. His latest volume of poetry, Light at the Seam, from LSU Press, won the 2022 Roanoke Chowan Prize, awarded annually by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association as well as the 2023 Brockman-Campbell Award, given annually by the North Carolina Poetry Society. The Act of Contrition & Other Stories, winner of the Eastover Prize for Fiction, was published in July of 2023. Bathanti is McFarlane Family Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Education at Appalachian State University.
Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021) and The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). Her poems have appeared in more than 50 journals and a dozen anthologies. Three have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2007, she won the Earle Birney Poetry Prize from Prism International and in 2018, she was a finalist for the John Ciardi Poetry Prize from BkMk Press. She divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-hosts and curates the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.
Jan Beatty’s eighth book is Dragstripping, (University of Pittsburgh Press, fall, 2024). Her memoir, American Bastard, won the Red Hen Nonfiction Award (2021). Other books include The Body Wars (University of Pittsburgh) and a chapbook, Skydog (Lefty Blondie Press, 2022), Jackknife: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh, 2018 Paterson Prize) named by Sandra Cisneros on LitHub as her favorite book of 2019. Awards include the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, Discovery/The Nation Prize finalist, Pablo Neruda Prize, an Artist Grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation, and a Creative Achievement Award, Heinz Foundation. Publications include The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, POETRY, and Best American Poetry.
Kelley Beeson holds a Master of Fine Art in Poetry from the University of Notre Dame and a Master of Library and Information Science from The University of Pittsburgh. She is the recipient of the 2023 Lefty Blondie Press Chapbook Award for her book, Undress. Her work appears in Kaliope, Pittsburgh City Paper, and The Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. She grew up in Pittsburgh and left only once for graduate school and deeply missed the hills and valleys of Western PA. She lives in Carrick, works as a crackerjack librarian in Fox Chapel, and writes as a mad-proud member of the Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops since 1992.
Alecia Beymer is a poet and educator who grew up along the Ohio River, about 40 minutes northwest of Pittsburgh, PA in the remnants of a small steel town. Some of her poetry has appeared in The Inflectionist Review, Sugar House Review, SWWIM, Rust & Moth, Radar Poetry, among others. She was a finalist for the Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry for her poem, “Tree Surgeon,” which appeared in Bellevue Literary Review. She was also a semi-finalist for the Francine Ringold Awards for New Writers from Nimrod Journal. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor – Educator in the Department of English at the University of Cincinnati. In her research and creative work, she is interested in ecopoetics, forms of attachment and intimacy, and the poetics of teaching.
Phillip Border received his BA in Literature from Frostburg State University, where he served as chief editor for Bittersweet Literary Magazine. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Carlow University, where he serves as co-emcee for Carlow’s MFA Alumni Reading Series, Raising Our Voices. His published works have appeared in The Amistad, Coal Hill Review, BackBone Mountain Review, Rigorous, Wingless Dreamer, and other journals. He is the two-time recipient of The Allegany Arts Council Award for best poetry.
Kate Bowers (she/her) is a Pittsburgh based writer who has been published in Sheila-Na-Gig, Rue Scribe, and The Ekphrastic Review. Her work appears also in the anthology Pandemic Evolution: Poets Respond to the Art of Matthew Wolfe by Hayley Haugen (Editor) and Matthew Wolfe (Contributor). Kate also serves as part of the Social Media Team for The Ekphrastic Review.
Morgan Boyer is the author of The Serotonin Cradle (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and a graduate of Carlow University. Boyer has been featured in Kallisto Gaia Press, Thirty West Publishing House, Oyez Review, Pennsylvania English, and Voices from the Attic. Boyer is a neurodivergent bisexual woman.
Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His sixth full-length poetry collection is Miracles That Keep Me Going (WordTech Editions, 2023). His poetry has been nominated three times for the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Salamander Ink Magazine, and elsewhere.
Doralee Brooks is a facilitator for the Madwoman in the Attic poetry workshops at Carlow University and professor emerita of the Community College of Allegheny County in Developmental Studies. She is a fellow of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project (95) and Cave Canem (97 and 99). Doralee holds an MEd from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA from Carlow University. Her poems have appeared in Voices from the Attic, Paterson Literary Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and Uppagus, among others. Doralee’s chapbook, When I Hold You Up to the Light, won the 2019 Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Contest published by Main Street Rag. She is City of Asylum’s Poet Laureate of Allegheny County 2022-2024.
Daniela Buccilli‘s chapbook of poems is called What It Takes to Carry. She co-edited an anthology of poetry called Show Us Your Papers (both published by Main Street Rag). Her poetry can be found in literary magazines and anthologies. She has writing degrees from University of Pittsburgh (2001) and Carlow University (2019). She teaches public high school, serves as her union’s secretary, and lives in the South Side.
Sheila L. Carter-Jones is the author of Three Birds Deep, winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Book Award. Her chapbook, Crooked Star Dream Book, received Honorable Mention for the New York Center for Book Arts Chapbook Contest. She earned her BA from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.Ed. and Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. Sheila is a fellow of Cave Canem, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and a Walter Dakin Fellow of the Sewanee Writer’s Conference. Sheila received her MFA from Carlow University and teaches in their Madwomen in the Attic Program. Her latest book is Every Hard Sweetness (Boa Editions, Ltd. 2024)
Ava C. Cipri is a non-binary queer writer, educator, & activist in Pittsburgh, PA, who co-founded and serves as poetry editor for The Deaf Poets Society: An Online Journal of Disability Literature & Art. A Pushcart, New Poets, & Best of the Net nominee, their work appears or is forthcoming in Boulevard, Cimarron, PBQ, WHR, and Stirring, among others. Ava’s chapbook, Leaving the Burdened Ground (Stranded Oak Press, 2018) was a finalist for both the Robin Becker Series Contest & the Grazing Grain Poetry/Hybrid Contest. Their second chapbook is Queen of Swords (dgp 2018). Ava is a Zoeglossia fellow with an MFA from Syracuse University.
Kristofer Collins is the Books Editor for Pittsburgh Magazine. He is also co-curator of the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series with Joan Bauer. His latest poetry collection, Roundabout Trace, was published in 2022 by Kung Fu Treachery Press. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife and two children.
Carrie Conners, originally from Moundsville, West Virginia, lives in Queens, New York and is an English professor at LaGuardia Community College-CUNY. Her first poetry collection, Luscious Struggle (BrickHouse Books, 2019), was a 2020 Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist. Her second collection, Species of Least Concern was published by Main Street Rag in 2022. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Bodega, Kestrel, Split Rock Review, RHINO, and The Monarch Review, among others. She is also the author of the book, Laugh Lines: Humor, Genre, and Political Critique in Late Twentieth- Century American Poetry (University Press of Mississippi, 2022).
Lois Newman Conway is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Carlow University where her concentration was in fiction writing. She also has an undergraduate degree in writing with a concentration in poetry. Her work has been published in Voices from the Attic and Mensa Bulletin.
Paola Corso is an award-winning author of seven books set in her native Pittsburgh where her Italian immigrant family members were steelworkers. Her books include The Laundress Catches Her Breath, winner of the Tillie Olsen Award in Creative Writing, and her latest, Vertical Bridges: Poems and Photographs of City Steps. She is co-founder of Steppin Stanzas, a grant-awarded poetry and performance project celebrating Pittsburgh public stairways, a video, “On the Way Up: City Steps, City Immigrants,” and Western Pennsylvania History essay on city steps. She’s proud to be included on Pennsylvania Center for the Book’s Literary Map. www.paolacorso.com.
Bahar Davoudi is an Iranian-Canadian poet and writer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her work has been published in Voices from the Attic, The Poet, Barzakh Magazine, and Fresh Words. Bahar is a member of (sub)Verses Social Collective as well as Madwomen in the Attic Community at Carlow University in Pittsburgh. She is passionate about poetry as a means of understanding and reinforcing a meaningful relationship with the society, including oneself. Bahar is a scientist with a PhD in Medical Biophysics.
Emily De Ferrari has lived a long lifetime mostly in and sometimes out of Pittsburgh and the Ohio River Valley. She’s had a few poems published in local venues such as Uppagus, Vox Populi Sphere, and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette (when not on strike). A few others have found homes in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Persimmon Tree, and Italian Americana. Emily has worked in a rehab facility, a food coop, has driven a truck for a nursery, but most recently and for the longest time has been a midwife. She thanks Mel Packer for 35 years of support, challenge and most of all love.
Shaheen Dil is a reformed academic, banker and consultant who now devotes herself to poetry. She was born in Bangladesh, and lives in Pittsburgh. Her poems have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Her first full-length poetry collection, Acts of Deference, was published in 2016 by Fakel Publishing House. Her second full-length poetry collection, The Boat-maker’s Art, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2024. Shaheen is a member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange, the DVP/US1 Poets, and the Porch Poets. She holds an AB from Vassar College, a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University.
Victoria Dym is a graduate of Barnum and Baily Clown College with a degree in Humility, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing-Poetry from Carlow University. Her chapbooks, Class Clown and When the Walls Cave In were published by Finishing Line Press in 2015 and 2018. Victoria’s chapbook, Spontaneous, was selected by Northwest Poet Laureate, Katherine Nelson-Born as winner of the 2021 Poem-A-Day Chapbook Challenge Contest was published by the West Florida Literary Federation in 2022. Ms. Dym’s full-length manuscript, The Hatchet Sun was published by Finishing Line Press in 2023.
Donna Wojnar Dzurilla, MFA, completed her undergraduate degree in Professional Writing and was awarded the Excellence in Professional Writing Award at Carlow University. Dzurilla earned her MFA through Carlow University’s Creative Writing Program. Her poetry has appeared in the Backbone Mountain Review and Rune Literary Magazine. As writer-in-residence in 2022, Dzurilla conducted a ten-week workshop for low-income, single mothers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as part of a collaboration between the Carlow and Slippery Rock Universities and the non-profit organization, When She Thrives. Donna resides in Pittsburgh with her husband, Steve.
Barbara Edelman’s poetry collections include All the Hanging Wrenches (2022) and Dream of the Gone-From City (2017), both from Carnegie Mellon University Press, as well as the chapbooks Exposure (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and A Girl in Water (Parallel Press, 2002). Her poems and short prose have appeared in the journals Pleiades, Spillway, Raleigh Review, Rattle, Arts & Letters, among others, and in several anthologies including A Fine Excess, Along These Rivers, and Natural Language. She has received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts individual artist’s grant in poetry and residency fellowships to the Hambidge Center, VCCA, and Vermont Studio Center.
Angele Ellis is author of Arab on Radar (Six Gallery Press), whose poems on family heritage won an Individual Fellowship in poetry from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; Spared (A Main Street Rag Editor’s Choice Chapbook), and Under the Kaufmann’s Clock (Six Gallery), a poetry/fiction hybrid inspired by her adopted city of Pittsburgh. A longtime writer, editor, and community activist, Ellis’s work—including poems, fiction, articles, and reviews—has appeared widely. She also is coauthor of Dealing With Differences (Corwin Press), a pioneering high school curriculum guide that explored the connections among racism, classism, ableism, sexism, and homophobia.
Barbara Evans is a former Pittsburgh Public Schools English teacher and career educator who has worked in college administration in Pennsylvania, Washington, DC, Maryland and the Virgin Islands. She served as the project director for the Community College of Allegheny County’s Big Read/One College, One Community Reads! city-wide literary program for 11 years. Evans took volunteers into a prison, half-way facility and juvenile detention center to immerse participants with literature by writing poetry and using other creative techniques. She is published in the Caribbean Writer, Chapter and Verse, Voices in the Attic and her first chapbook, Every Drop is forthcoming.
Tikvah Feinstein’s poetry and short fiction are widely published in the USA and internationally. Her poetry has appeared in The BeZine, Verbal Art, Loyalhanna Review, Boston Poetry Magazine, India’s Phenomenal Literature, among others. Tikvah’s story “The Purpose of Tears” won the 2017 Westmoreland Short Story Award from Westmoreland Arts & Heritage Festival. Her flash fiction appears often in UK’s Friday Flash Fiction, and she has published 25 editions of Taproot Literary Review. Her awards include the Jefferson Award for volunteer services and an “Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.” Tikvah’s latest book is Elsagene: A Reincarnation Murder Mystery Solved.
Celeste Gainey is the author of the poetry collection, the GAFFER. Graduating with a BFA in Film & Television from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, as well as earning an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Carlow University, Gainey was the inaugural Poet Laureate of Allegheny County for City of Asylum, as well as the first woman to be admitted to the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) as a gaffer. She has spent many years working with light in film and architecture.
Natasha Garrett was born and raised in Macedonia and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her poetry, personal essays and translations have appeared in Transnational Literature, Gravel, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Arts and Letters, and other publications. In her essay collection Motherlands, she combines personal stories and literary sources to explore aspects of modern migration. Her travel writing is included in Fearless Footsteps, a collection of travel essays. She obtained her PhD in Education at the University of Pittsburgh, and her Master’s in English Literature from Duquesne University. She serves as a Director of international student services and as an adjunct professor at La Roche University.
Julia M. Glencer is the Associate Director of the Thomas R. Kline Center for Judicial Education of the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University, where she also teaches courses in legal writing and Administrative Law. She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from Carlow University (2023), a J.D. from the Dickinson School of Law (1997), and a B.A. in English from Carlow College (1993). Married with a college-age daughter, she plays first flute for the North Pittsburgh Symphonic Band and spends time caring for her mother who has dementia.
Kathleen Hellen A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, is an award-winning poet with three book-length collections, including Meet Me at the Bottom, The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, and Umberto’s Night, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. Her work has appeared widely in such journals as Arts & Letters, The Carolina Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, Massachusetts Review, New Letters, Nimrod, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Salamander, among others. Hellen’s awards include the Thomas Merton poetry prize and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review.
Erica Hom (she/her) is a teacher, artist, and queer Filipina diaspora writer originally from Long Island, New York. Her writing focuses on women’s experiences in immigration, inherited trauma, cryptids, ghosts, and unreal worlds. Her work has been featured by various publications including Honey Literary, The Arkansas International, ROOM magazine and others. Her poem “Migrant Worker Love Letter” was the winner of the C.D. Wright Emerging Poets Prize. She currently lives in Pittsburgh surrounded by many books, plants, and foster cats.
Elizabeth Hoover is the author of the archive is all in present tense, winner of the 2021 Barrow Street Book Prize. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in the North American Review, Kenyon Review, and StoryQuarterly. She teaches in the English Department at Webster University in St. Louis
Halsey Hyer (they/them) is the author of the forthcoming full-length poetry collection, Divorce Garter (Main Street Rag, 2024). Their micro chapbook of micro poems, Everything Becomes Bananas (Rinky Dink Press, 2022), was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023, and their debut chapbook, [deadname] (Anhinga Press, 2022), won the 2022 Rick Campbell Chapbook Prize. Based out of Pittsburgh, PA, they’re a collective member of The Big Idea Bookstore and the 2022-2024 Margaret L. Whitford Fellow in Chatham University’s MFA in Creative Writing. Find out more on their website—www.halseyhyer.org.
Lori Jakiela is the author of seven books, most recently a hybrid memoir—They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice: On Cancer, Love, and Living Even So (Atticus Books, 2023). Her poems and essays have been widely published in places like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Nerve Cowboy, Pittsburgh Magazine, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and more. Her author website is http://lorijakiela.net. She lives in Trafford, Pa., the last stop in Pittsburgh’s Electric Valley, with her husband Dave Newman and their children.
Cyd Johnson is a born and raised Pittsburgher. They studied Art History and French at the University of Pittsburgh, and earned an M.S. Ed from St. John’s in New York City where they and taught high school math for three years. Cyd is passionate about working in alternative education settings that value community. Since returning to Pittsburgh in the fall of 2022, they have been able to connect to the broader Pittsburgh arts community through work at City of Asylum, where they rediscovered the joy of writing and poetry. Cyd now teach science at City of Bridges High School.
Mark Karason was born in Akron Ohio, is a new resident of Pittsburgh, a transplant from the Pacific Northwest. He has written poetry for forty years, publishing two poems since arriving in “the city of bridges.” In 2009, he self-published a collection of poetry launched at Garrison Keillor’s Common Good Books in St. Paul Minnesota.
Diane Kerr’s full-length collection Perigee won the Brittingham Prize in 2020. Her first book Butterfly was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2014. A chapbook, One, was published by Parallel Press in 2007. Kerr’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Alaska Quarterly Review, Mississippi Review, Paterson Literary Review, Pearl, Poetry East, Southern Indiana Review, The Diagram, What Rough Beast, and Zone 3, among others. In 2020 she won the Palette Prize for a previously published poem, “The Distinguished Thing: A Colloquy.” Kerr holds an M.F.A. from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and has received residency fellowships from Ropewalk and Hedgebrook.
James King was born in and resides in Pittsburgh. He works as a self-employed contractor. James recently attended the inaugural August Wilson House poetry workshop. Currently he is seeking publication of 85 poems on Haiti, where he has done volunteer work for the past 23 years.
Romella Kitchens is a University Of Pittsburgh Graduate. She has three master’s degrees in education. She has written poetry for over five decades and has read numerous times for the Hemingway Series and at other local venues. She has had poems published in Coal Hill Review, Uppagus Online, The California Quarterly and has been published in two anthologies from Autumn House Publications. She has four published chapbooks. One is from Main Street Rag and the other three were published by Pudding House Press. She has been published internationally.
Kara Knickerbocker is the author of the chapbooks The Shedding Before the Swell (dancing girl press) and Next to Everything that is Breakable (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming from: Poet Lore, HOBART, Levee Magazine, Portland Review, and the anthologies Pennsylvania’s Best Emerging Poets, Crack the Spine, and more. Her work has received support from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Murphy Writing at Stockton University, and the Gullkistan Center in Iceland. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee originally from Pennsylvania, she currently lives in Hawai’i.
Don Krieger is a biomedical researcher whose focus is the electric activity within the brain. He is a 2020 Pushcart nominee, a 2020 Creative Nonfiction Foundation Science-as-Story Fellow, and author of the hybrid collections: Discovery (Cyberwit, 2020) and When Danger Is Past, Who Remembers? (Milk and Cake Press, 2020). His work has appeared in Seneca Review, The Asahi Shimbun, Beltway Quarterly, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, American Journal of Nursing, Neurology, and others, and has been translated into Farsi, Greek, Italian, German, Turkish, Romanian, and Portuguese.
Sara Emily Kuntz wanted to be a mermaid, but eventually realized she was a forest creek fairy, which is honestly just as good. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Carlow University and a BA in English Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. Sara was raised in eastern Pennsylvania and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, both stolen homelands of the Lenape. Her big grey cat is a sprightly 17 and his name is Miso, like the soup.
Gail Langstroth, a trilingual lecturer, international eurythmy performer, translator, poet, and film artist, graduated from Drew University’s M.F.A. in poetry and won the Patricia Dobler Poetry Prize, 2011. Get Fresh Books released Langstroth’s bilingual firegarden / jardín-de-fuego, 2020. The film, V: OICED: words from asphalt (2021) was showcased in European festivals. Stahlworte/ Steelwords, Langstroth’s performance piece inspired by Dee Briggs’ 72,000 lb. steel sculpture: “Can’t You See!” premiered in The Netherlands, 2021. In October 2023, Before Now / After I, an exhibition of Langstroth’s visual art opened in Hamburg, Germany. Recent publications include: Cyte Magazin, BlackSunFlowers, rApport, Platform Review, WordPeace, and Vox Populi. www.wordmoves.com
Jessica Manack is a writer and editor whose recent interests include Appalachian history, especially that of its women residents, Forest County and the PA Wilds, conservation, and forest stewardship. She is the recipient of a 2022 Curious Creators Grant and the winner of the Five South Spring 2022 poetry contest, and is working on her first collection of poetry. A graduate of Hollins University, she lives with her family in Pittsburgh’s North Side. Read more of her work at http://www.jessicamanack.com.
Carl Marcum is a Chicano poet from Tucson, Arizona. He is the author of the collections, Cue Lazarus, and A Camera Obscura, winner of the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in the anthologies, The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry, and Latinix Rising: An Anthology of Latinx Science Fiction & Fantasy. He received his MFA from The University of Arizona and was Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Marcum has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Taos Writers Conference. He served as a Canto Mundo Fellow from 2011-2015.
Daniel McNulty is a senior at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a native of the Pittsburgh area, having grown up in the South Hills. He is currently studying International Relations and Arabic. He has been conditioned by his experience volunteering on behalf of Pittsburgh policing issues and the Arab and Muslim communities, and wants to pursue a career in social justice. His poems are inspired by his love of the city that raised him, and the many others who found their homes here.
Gwendolyn A. Mitchell—poet, editor, and literary consultant—is the former Senior Editor for Third World Press. She received her Master of Fine Arts in English from Pennsylvania State University. Her poetry appears in American Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry South, Essence Magazine, and Voices in the Attic, among others. Mitchell served as the first poet-in-residence for the Tougaloo Art Colony and has conducted workshops and seminars on poetry, literary arts, and publishing. She is the author of the poetry collection, House of Women, and co-editor of two anthologies, Releasing the Spirit, and Describe the Moment, (Gallery 37 Chicago).
Dave Newman’s publications include The Same Dead Songs: a memoir of working-class addictions (J. New Books, 2023) and East Pittsburgh Downlow (J. New Books, 2019). His collection The Slaughterhouse Poems (White Gorilla Press, 2013) was named one of the best books of the year by L Magazine. His work also appears in Ambit (U.K.), Tears In The Fence (U.K.), Gulf Stream, Belt, and Nerve Cowboy. Winner of numerous awards, including the Andre Dubus Novella Prize, he teaches in the Creative and Professional Writing Program at The University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg, and lives in Trafford, PA with his wife, the writer Lori Jakiela, and their two children.
Nina Padolf’s chapbook, Uprooted, (Kelsay Books, 2021) explores various traumatic events such as the murder of her sister, finding her biological mother, and caring for her mother who suffered from Alzheimer’s. She co-edited: Nasty Women and Bad Hombres Poetry Anthology (Lascaux Editions, 2017); Is It Hot In Here Or Is it Just Me?: Women Over Forty Write on Aging (Social Justice Anthologies, Amazon, 2019). Her poetry is featured in: Paterson Literary Review, The Accusation, The Pine Cone Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, & other journals. She instructs writing courses at The University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University.
Patricia Passeltiner came to Pittsburgh thirty years ago from New York City. She is a retired physician writing poems and plays. Her poem, “O’Hara Street,” was selected in a Members Only Competition, Fall 2023, by the Poetry Society of the U.K.
Walt Peterson is a writer and teacher from Pittsburgh, the founder of Prison Arts Program at SCI Pine Grove and editor of In Our Own Voices: Memoirs of the Sisters of Saint Francis. His book Talking Smack to the Dead was published in July of 2022 and he won the Westmoreland Award for Fiction 2023
Molly Prosser is the author of the poetry collection Rubbernecking (2015). Her poems appear in Pittsburgh City Paper, Weave Magazine, I-70 Review, Soundings Review, So to Speak Journal, and more. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Carlow University where she also taught literature, composition, and communications. Molly has received support from The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, The Writing Salon Berkeley, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Arvon Foundation. She is a manuscript reader for Autumn House Press, and a member of the Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops for women.
Anne M. Rashid, Professor of English and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Carlow University, has published poetry in Adagio Verse Quarterly, Lit Candles: Feminist Mentoring and the Text, The Metro Times, Pittsburgh’s City Paper, Broad River Review, Paterson Literary Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Fourth River, and Sampsonia Way. She and her co-translator, the late Chae-Pyong Song, published translations of Korean poetry in multiple journals. Her essay, “Lucille Clifton’s and Claudia Rankine’s Elegiac Poetics of Nature” was recently published in Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era.
Margaret Kasper Reed is a teacher and writer who has recently moved to Pittsburgh from upstate New York. Her poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Rattle, Poet Lore, and The English Journal. Chapbooks include Lament’s Grocery and Children of the Sky. With pianist Gwen Beckman, she collaborated on the theatre piece Into Blue, which incorporates Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with poetry and art.
C.C. Reid grew up on an orchard near Gettysburg. She studied fiction and poetry at The University of Pittsburgh, and earned an MFA from The University of Maryland. Her work has been supported by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Cuttyhunk Island Artists’ Residency, The Writer’s Center, and The Center for Book Arts. Her work has appeared in Five Points, Bellevue Literary Review, Poet Lore, Mid-American Review, Southern Indiana Review, F(r)iction, and Nimrod, among other journals. She’s won the Larry Neal Award, the Mary C. Mohr Award, and F(r)iction’s poetry award
John Reoli is an actor and writer based in New York City. His short fiction publications include the Scarlet Leaf Review, James White Review, Harrington Gay Mens Fiction Quarterly, The Front, Pittsburgh’s Out (1997 Short Fiction Contest Winner). His poetry publications include the collection Naked Prayers (Six Gallery Press, 2007) and they appear in Global Poemic, The Oakland Review, Thieves Jargon and The Red River Review. Full-length dramatic works have been presented in the 2015 Venus/Adonis Festival and the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival. Earlier plays, One Seat in the Shade, Rain and Same Time Tomorrow were showcased at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company.
John Repp is a poet and fiction writer living in Erie, Pennsylvania. He holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, spent the 1992-93 academic year as Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Carnegie Mellon University, and has walked approximately a zillion miles in (and among) Squirrel Hill, Greenfield, Shadyside, Point Breeze, Hazelwood, and Oakland. His most recent collection of poetry is The Soul of Rock & Roll: Poems Acoustic, Electric & Remixed, 1980-2020, published by Broadstone Books
Karen Rigby was born in the Republic of Panama, and is the author of Chinoiserie (Ahsahta Press, 2012), which won the 2011 Sawtooth Poetry Prize, and Fabulosa (JackLeg Press, forthcoming 2024). A National Endowment for the Arts literature fellow, her poems have been published in Australian Book Review, The London Magazine, Poetry Northwest and other journals. She lives in Arizona. www.karenrigby.com
Judith R. Robinson is an editor, teacher, fiction writer, poet and visual artist. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, she is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers. She has published 100+ poems, five poetry collections, one fiction collection; one novel; edited or co-edited eleven poetry collections. Teacher: Osher at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Her newest poetry collection is Buy A Ticket (WordTech Editions, 2022). The newest edited collection is Speak, Speak, poetry of Gene Hirsch, Cyberwit.com, 2020.
Rosaly DeMaios Roffman has been the facilitator of the Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop for 23 years. Her publications include the prize-winning Life on the Line, (co-edited) and Going to Bed Whole, Tottering Palaces, The Approximate Message, In the Fall of a Sparrow, and I Want to Thank My Eyes. Rosaly has read her poems in Ireland, Mexico, Greece, Israel, Spain, and Bratislava, and has been translated into Mandarin, Japanese, Slovak, and Hebrew. In 2021 she was honored for her work as founder of the interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Myth/ Folklore at IUP and is also reviving the journal ARISTEIA that she started.
When Nick Romeo is not at his nine-to-five occupation which is strongly situated in the STEM fields, he passes the time with his wife, cats, and his art creations. His main forms of expression are 3D digital renderings, electronic music, writing, sewing, and photography. Nick’s newest chapbook is titled Empyrean Fog Machines released by Back Room Poetry.
Ella Rosenblatt is a Dutch-American artist/writer/educator/designer. She is currently completing her MFA CalArts, and previously she studied Art History and Science, Technology, & Society focusing on linguistics and art/writing practice at Brown University. Bottlecap Press published her chapbook of erasure poems, A Dance Through Time in 2022, and she has previously published in v.1, the College Hill Independent, the Round, among others. Ella loves observing people and animals, especially sloths, otters, all birds, and dogs.
Marty Saunders is from Pittsburgh. The recipient of a grant from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and the Shipsey Poetry Prize, recent work appears in Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Jennifer Schaupp (she/her) is a native Pittsburgh writer whose interests in poetry and plays have coalesced into projects with local and national arts organizations, including the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival and Spilling Ink in Washington, D.C. She is also an improvisor and educator, two roles that go hand in hand, as she teaches literary arts, theatre, and communication classes at Point Park University. Currently, she is working on a dissertation that intersects English language learning, immigration, social justice, theatre, and healing-informed practices. Jennifer has had poetry published in The New Yinzer and nonfiction in Defenestration.
Mike Schneider has won awards for magazine writing, including a 2003-04 Creative Artists Stipend in Arts Commentary from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and written book reviews and essays on culture for several publications. Three times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, his poems appear in literary journals, anthologies and chapbooks. He received the 2012 Editors Award from The Florida Review and the 2016 Robert Phillips Prize from Texas Review Press. The Hungry Hill Writing Group in West Cork, Ireland awarded Schneider’s work second prize in its Poets Meet Politics 2022 International Open. His full-length collection Spring Mills came out this year.
Fred Shaw was named Emerging Poet Laureate Finalist for Allegheny County in 2020. He is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, and Carlow University, where he received his MFA. His first collection. Scraping Away, was published by CavanKerry Press. A book reviewer and Poetry Editor for Pittsburgh Quarterly, his poem, “Argot,” is featured in the 2018 full-length documentary, Eating & Working & Eating & Working. The film focuses on the lives of local service-industry workers. His poem “Scraping Away” was selected for the PA Public Poetry Project in 2017. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and rescued hound dogs.
Barbara Shema, a poet, and visual artist, returned to Pittsburgh in 2013 after living in Providence RI, Albany NY, and Budapest Hungary. In Providence, she was awarded a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts to facilitate Art/ESL workshops for Somali and Hmong refugees who had recently arrived. In Budapest, she taught English as a foreign language. Barbara has an undergraduate degree in Art Education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a graduate degree in Educational Leadership from Carlow University. A finalist in the 1999 Prosody Poetry Contest, her work appears in Voices from the Attic, Loyalhanna Review, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Michael Simms is a poet and novelist, as well as the founding editor of Autumn House Press (1998-2016) and of Vox Populi (2014-present). He is the author of four full-length collections of poetry, most recently Strange Meadowlark (Ragged Sky, 2023) and two novels, most recently The Green Mage (Madville, 2023). His poems have been widely published, including in Poetry (Chicago), Southwest Review, Scientific American, Plume, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. In 2011, the Pennsylvania Legislature awarded him a Certificate of Recognition for his service to the arts. He lives in the Mount Washington neighborhood in Pittsburgh.
Mandal K. Singh’s first published poem came from the advice he gave to his son about growing African Violets. Following his son’s suggestions, he revised the text, and it became “Violets with love” in Poetry.com, 2003. This poem was a winner of the Editor’s Choice Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry. His second poem is, “The Bare Earth” in From the ends of the earth. Poems of the Ecojustice for All!, City of Asylum, Pittsburgh, Summer 2022.
Ellen McGrath Smith teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and in the Carlow University Madwomen in the Attic program. Her poetry has appeared in The Georgia Review, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, Talking Writing, Los Angeles Review, and other journals and anthologies. Books include Scatter, Feed (Seven Kitchens 2014) and Nobody’s Jackknife (West End Press 2015). Her chapbook Lie Low, Goaded Lamb was published in January 2023 by Seven Kitchens Press as part of its Keystone Series.
Scott Bradley Smith’s poems have appeared in Kalliope and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His stories have appeared in Subtropics and Hawaii Pacific Review. His awards include First Prize in the Pittsburgh City Paper Short Fiction Contest and Honorable Mention in the Tucson Weekly Fiction Contest. He’s the author of five produced plays and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona in Tucson. He now resides in Pittsburgh, Pa., where he manages communications for an environmental health nonprofit and where he plays bass in the surf rock band The Impositions.
Richard St. John’s newest poetry collection, Book of Entangled Souls, was published in 2022 by Broadstone Books. He is also the author of The Pure Inconstancy of Grace (published by Truman State University Press, in 2005, as first runner-up for the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry), Each Perfected Name (Truman State University Press, 2015), and Shrine (a long poem released as a chapbook, 2011). Rick has worked professionally in the areas of community development, nonprofit management, and reflective conversation. He lives in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh with his wife Kate. For more information or to contact him, please visit his website: richardstjohnpoet.com.
Carol Stanton grew up in the Steel Valley, earned a BA from Duquesne University and an M.Ed. from the University of Pittsburgh. She lived in San Francisco for many years, teaching at the University of San Francisco. After moving back to Pittsburgh, she worked at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a member of the Mad Women in the Attic program at Carlow University and has published poems in Voices from the Attic, the Paterson Review and other journals.
Min Straussman is a writer from Pittsburgh currently living in Paris whose essays, short stories, and flash fiction can be found in beestung, Impossible Worlds, and elsewhere.
Joshua Tarquinio caught the poetry bug on a visit to Jack Kerouac’s hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. He has a degree in Media Production from Robert Morris University, and is working on a road trip memoir. You can catch some of his impromptu typewriter poetry on his Instagram page, @the_lantern_poet.
James (Jim) Tasillo is a native Pittsburgher who after a stint as a starving writer and photographer worked in the flooring distribution business. For a decade Jim was a regular storyteller at The Moth Story Slams and Grand Slams. His poetry and humorous essays have been published in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His chapbook Po-ems was produced at The Soapbox in Philadelphia, PA by The Citizen Hydra Project. Jim has read his poetry at The Free Association Reading Series at Alphabet City. He is overjoyed by his children, grandchildren, his incredible wife and grateful for the storytellers, poets and musicians that enliven our world.
Mady Thetard (she/her) is a writer and theatre-maker currently studying theatre arts and creative writing at Point Park University. Her hometowns are as varied as her interests; she enjoys collecting little pieces of each place she’s lived and incorporating her observations within her work. Her work has been seen onstage with Bridges Theatre Company, The RLM One Acts Festival, and Theatre Aspen’s Summer Cabaret Series.
Matthew Ussia is director of Duquesne University’s First Year Writing Program despite the fact that he got a C- in freshman writing and was rejected from Duquesne’s MA program. He is also an editor, podcaster, post-doom thereminist, softcore punk, postpunk backup singer, social media burnout, and sentient organic matter. His first book, The Red Glass Cat, was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2021. His writings have appeared in Mister Rogers and Philosophy, Future Humans in Fiction and Film, North of Oxford, Trailer Park Quarterly, Anti-Heroin Chic, and The Open Mic of the Air Podcast among others. More information can be found at www.matthewussia.com.
Cecelia Ware, a life-long Pittsburgh Northsider, is the Executive Director of Infinite Lifestyle Solutions, an organization for youth and families who have been victimized and traumatized by violence. She is devoted to improving the health and wellness of self, family, community and especially the neighborhood school children and teens. She is President of the Northside Public Safety Council, and a Member of the Allegheny County Violence Prevention Advisory Board. For Cecelia, writing poetry is a self-healing and productive way to process the enormous burdens she shares with friends and neighbors in a city inordinately impacted by the epidemic of youth gun violence.
Arlene Weiner grew up in New York City and has spent most of her life in Pittsburgh. Her poems have been published in a number of journals and anthologies, including Along These Rivers, 99 Poems for the 99 Percent, and Nasty Women and Bad Hombres, and have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. Arlene was awarded a residence at MacDowell. Ragged Sky Press has published three collections of her poetry: Escape Velocity (2006), City Bird (2016), and More (2022). Arlene also writes plays. Her play Findings was produced at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater in 2017.
Sarah Williams-Devereux is the author of Of a Mother (Finishing Line Press, 2023), a finalist in FLP’s 2022 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition. Her poetry appears in the journals F(r)ictionLog, Snapdragon, Sampsonia Way Magazine, and Pittsburgh City Paper; in the anthologies Show Us Your Papers (Main Street Rag, 2020), Is It Hot in Here or Is It Just Me? Women Over 40 Write on Aging (Social Justice Anthologies, 2020), Nasty Women & Bad Hombres (Lascaux Editions, 2017), and Pittsburgh Love Stories (The New Yinzer, 2004); as part of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art’s Bridging the Gap/Analog Scroll public art project; and on WESA-FM’s Prosody.
Laurin Wolf was born and raised in McKees Rocks, PA. She has an MFA from Kent State University and BA from the University of Pittsburgh in poetry writing. Her chapbooks include come back mother (Dancing Girl Press 2020) and about staying in (Finishing Line Press 2018). Recently, her poems have appeared in Hog Hardin Literary Review, The Dodge, and other journals. Formerly, she hosted the monthly reading series MadFridays and guest hosted the radio show Prosody on WESA, Pittsburgh. Originally from Pittsburgh, PA, she teaches writing at Rhodes State College in Lima, Ohio.
Christine Aikens Wolfe is president of Pittsburgh Poetry Society. She released a full-length book of poetry, Garlanding Green (Dos Madres Press) in August 2018. Her poetry appears in Chapter & Verse, (Pittsburgh City Paper), Gargoyle, Nerve Cowboy, Paterson Literary Review, Poetry Magazine, Sonnetto Poesia and more. She’s anthologized in Phoenix Rising from the Ashes, Fission of Form and Love & Ensuing Madness (on-line from Rats’Ass Review). Christine takes poetry workshops with the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University and has studied with such Pittsburgh poets as Jan Beatty, Toi Derricotte, Terrance Hayes, Yona Harvey and Joy Katz
Lawrence Wray’s first book of poems, The Wavering Fledge of Light (Wipf & Stock), was published in March. The poems are split between Pittsburgh and the Sonoran Desert where he grew up. His poems appear in Presence, Crab Orchard Review, Relief, Coal Hill Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and Poetry Salzburg Review. He is also published in the Post Gazette anthology Verse Envisioned. One of his poems was recorded by Gray Jacobik for a pandemic project called In This Together. He teaches literature and composition at an online high school.
Andrena Zawinski’s poems have received accolades for free verse, lyricism, spirituality, social concern and have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Artemis, Rattle, Progressive Magazine, and others with work online at Women’s Voices for Change, Verse Daily and elsewhere. Her fourth full-length collection of poetry is Born Under the Influence (2022 WordTech). Zawinski was born and raised in Pittsburgh but lives now in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Vincent Zepp is a Pittsburgh poet whose work has appeared most recently in the anthology A Critique of the Gods
