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Sean G. Clark is a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who has lived and worked in New Orleans for over a decade. He has completed artist residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center, the Santa Fe Art Institute, and Stove Works. Clark recently received his MFA from Tulane University and is currently an instructor in painting, drawing, and printmaking at Dillard University.

Hadara Bar-Nadav is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Animal Is Chemical, selected by Jericho Brown for the Levis Prize in Poetry. Her other books are The New Nudity; Lullaby (with Exit Sign), awarded the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize; The Frame Called Ruin; and A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight, awarded the Margie Book Prize. Her poetry has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Believer, The Kenyon Review, and Ploughshares. A current reader for POETRY, Bar-Nadav is a professor of English and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. 

Michael Bazzett is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Echo Chamber and the forthcoming The Morphologist (Milkweed, 2026)—as well as a verse translation of the creation epic of the Maya, The Popol Vuh, named by The New York Times as one of the best poetry books of 2018. He is the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in both poetry and translation, and his writing has appeared in Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, The Nation, The Paris Review, The London Magazine, and The Sun.

Caleb Braun earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington and a PhD in English at Texas Tech University. He is an assistant professor of English at Bethany College. Braun’s poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2022, The Gettysburg Review, Blackbird, The Cincinnati Review, Gulf Coast, and 32 Poems.

James Ciano’s debut collection, The Committee of Men, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in May 2026. He holds an MFA from New York University and a PhD  in Creative Writing & Literature from the University of Southern California. Ciano  is the 2025–2027 Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University.

Translator, essayist, and poet Jo Ann Clark is author of the collection 1001 Facts of Prehistoric Life. Her writing has appeared in The New Republic, The Paris Review, Boston Review, and Prairie Schooner. A native Alabaman who grew up foremost in Alaska and Maine, she is also a teacher and non-profit administrator whose international career has taken her to Italy, China, and Hong Kong. Clark lives in the Hudson River Valley.

Colby Cotton is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. A graduate of the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, he is a recipient of scholarships from Bread Loaf and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His work appears or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, The Cincinnati Review, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, Copper Nickel, and Best New Poets 2020.

Melissa Crowe is the author of Dear Terror, Dear Splendor and Lo, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. She is chair of the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where she teaches poetry and publishing.

Leila Farjami is an Iranian-American poet and psychotherapist. Her debut poetry collection, Daughter of Salt, an Editor’s Selection at Trio House Press, is forthcoming in July 2026. She is the recipient of The Iowa Review Award in Poetry, The Cincinnati Review’s Schiff Award in Poetry, and PEN America’s Emerging Voices Fellowship. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Pleiades, swamp pink, AGNI, The Cincinnati Review, Mississippi Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Farjami lives in Los Angeles.

Rebecca Foust’s new chapbook inspired by George Orwell’s 1984, You Are Leaving the American Sector: Love Poems, was just released from Backbone Press. New poems are in The Common, The Hudson Review, POETRY, Ploughshares, and The Southern Review. Foust works as a senior fiction editor for Narrative.

Ariela Gittlen is the founder of Poetry Table, a community workshop for readers and writers. Her work has recently appeared in The New York Times Magazine and Angel Food. She was raised in the Midwest and lives in New York.

Amanda Gunn is a doctoral candidate in English at Harvard where she writes on Gwendolyn Brooks. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she is the recipient of The Missouri Review Editor’s Prize, the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. Gunn’s work has appeared in POETRY, Gulf Coast, and Narrative. Her debut collection, Things I Didn’t Do With This Body, was published by Copper Canyon Press.

Shelby Handler is a writer, translator, and organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY, The Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Redivider, Poetry Northwest, The Journal, and Four Way Review.

Luther Hughes is the author of A Shiver in the Leaves and the chapbook Touched. They are the founder of Shade Literary Arts, an online platform for queer writers of color, and co-host of The Poet Salon podcast with Gabrielle Bates and Dujie Tahat. Honors include the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Rosenberg Fellowship, 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize, and Cascade PBS’s Black Arts Legacies. Their writing has been published in The Paris Review, Orion, and The American Poetry Review. Hughes lives in Seattle.

Jasmine Khaliq is the author of Somewhere Horses, winner of the Barrow Street Press Editor’s Prize, forthcoming April 2027. Her poetry is found in Best New Poets 2023, Poetry Northwest, 32 Poems, Passages North, Poet Lore, The Rumpus, and Bennington Review. She holds an MFA from the University of Washington, Seattle. Currently, Khaliq is a PhD candidate at the University of Utah.

Nicole Lachat was born in Edmonton, Canada, to a Peruvian mother and Swiss father. She holds an MFA in creative writing from New York University and recently earned a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her first collection, The Red We Silk, won the 2024 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and will be released in February 2026. Lachat's work has appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Ruminate Magazine, One by Jacar Press, Birdfeast, The Puerto Rico Review, and Poets.org, among others. She was awarded the 2022 Wilbur Gaffney Poetry Prize through the Academy of American Poets and received a 2024 Individual Arts Fellowship through the Nebraska Arts Council. Lachat is a Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity fellow.

Nate Marshall is an award-winning author and editor from the South Side of Chicago. His most recent book, Finna, was recognized as one of the best books of 2020 by NPR and The New York Public Library. Marshall is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin and lives in Madison, WI, with his wife, the writer Alison C. Rollins, and their very cute daughter.

Matthew Minicucci is author of four collections of poems including his most recent, Dual. His poetry and essays have appeared in The American Poetry Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The Kenyon Review, POETRY, and The Southern Review. He has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the National Parks Service, and the James Merrill House. Minicucci is currently an assistant professor in the Blount Scholars Program at the University of Alabama.

Jenny Molberg’s third poetry collection, The Court of No Record, was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. Her poems and essays have recently appeared The Adroit Journal, The American Poetry Review, AGNI, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, and Oprah Quarterly. Her work has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. Molberg is professor of Writing, Literature, and Publishing and editor-in-chief of Ploughshares at Emerson College.

Mihaela Moscaliuc is the author of the poetry collections Heartmoor (Alice James Books, 2026), Cemetery Ink, Immigrant Model, and Father Dirt; translator of Liliana Ursu’s Clay and Star and Carmelia Leonte’s The Hiss of the Viper; editor of Insane Devotion: On the Writing of Gerald Stern; and co-editor (with Michael Waters) of Fruits of the Earth: Harvest Poems (Knopf, 2025) and Border Lines: Poems of Migration. She is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow and teaches at Monmouth University.

Matthew Olzmann is the author of Constellation Route as well as two previous collections of poetry: Mezzanines and Contradictions in the Design. A recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, MacDowell, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Olzmann’s poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize, and The Kenyon Review. Olzmann is a senior lecturer of creative writing at Dartmouth College and also teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Joy Priest is the author of Horsepower, winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and the editor of Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, and the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the The American Poetry Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, The New Republic, Sewanee Review, and Transition Magazine. Priest currently teaches creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh and serves as Curator of Community Programs & Practice at the Center for African American Poetry & Poetics.

Emily Skaja is the author of BRUTE, winner of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her poems appear in The American Poetry Review, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Skaja is the founding editor of the Poetry Prompt Generator, an online resource for poets and educators, and she teaches in the MFA program at the University of Memphis.

Melanie Tafejian is a writer and educator from the Pacific Northwest. Her work appears in The Georgia Review, Nimrod, POETRY, Poetry Northwest, and The Los Angeles Review. Tafejian serves on the editorial staff for The Raleigh Review and received an MFA from North Carolina State University.

Alyson Hagy is the author of four collections of short stories and four novels, including Boleto and Scribe. She currently teaches in the creative writing  program at the University of Wyoming.

Matt Jones has appeared in The Southern Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, New England Review, The Threepenny Review, and Boulevard Magazine.

Mark Labowskie is a Jones Lecturer in the creative writing program at Stanford University, where he was previously a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His stories have appeared in The Missouri Review, ZYZZYVA, and American Short Fiction. 

Will Musgrove is a writer and journalist from northwest Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Florida Review, Pinch, Wigleaf, The Cincinnati Review,  Passages North, and Tampa Review. Connect on X @Will_Musgrove.

Kate Pyontek is a poet, writer, and artist who lives and works outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Work is published or forthcoming in Ecotone, Consequence, Another Chicago Magazine, Pithead Chapel, and Mississippi Review. 

Andrea Sielicki graduated from Cornell University and holds an MFA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her fiction has been published in No Tokens. She is currently at work on a novel.

Traci Brimhall is a professor of creative writing at Kansas State University, as well as the 2025 Poet-in-Residence at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Love Prodigal. Her  nonfiction debut, The Grief Artist, will be published by Sarabande Books in 2026. Brimhall’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Orion, The New Republic,  POETRY, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine.

Michael Cannistraci works as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. His  essays have been published in The Triquarterly Review, Entropy Magazine, Briar  Cliff Review, The Bangalore Review, Bryant Literary Review, and Glacial Hills  Review.

Neil Connelly has been teaching writing for over thirty years, most recently at Shippensburg University. His ninth book, Slubber Doffers (forthcoming from Fomite Press), is a series of interrelated monologues inspired by the citizen  comments he heard while serving on the local school board during Covid.  Connelly lives in Central Pennsylvania with his wife, Beth, and their dog, Ginsburg.

Angela Townsend is the 2024 winner of West Trade Review’s 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua,  Epiphany, Five Points, Indiana Review, The Normal School, and Pleiades.  Townsend graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College and works for a cat sanctuary.