Fran Abrams’s (Maryland) poems have been published in numerous journals and in more than a dozen anthologies. Her poetry collections include the full-length I Rode the Second Wave: A Feminist Memoir (November 2022), and two chapbooks, The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras (April 2023), and Arranging Words (October 2023). Her poem, “Flying Away,” published in Gargoyle Online (2003), was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Website: franabramspoetry.com.
Margaret Adams’s (Vermont) stories and essays have appeared in over two dozen publications, including The Threepenny Review, Best Small Fictions 2019, Joyland, and Pinch. She is a healthcare worker and a writer, and she currently lives in Vermont. Website: www.margaret-adams.com.
Chris Arthur (Scotland, UK) was born and grew up in Northern Ireland. After working as warden of a nature reserve on the shores of Lough Neagh, he went to university in Scotland. He’s now based in St Andrews. His most recent book is What Is It Like to Be Alive? Fourteen Attempts at an Answer (2024), which includes his essay “Remembering Stranathan’s.” Among his author’s awards are the Michael Steinberg Nonfiction Prize. Website: www.chrisarthur.org.
Iain S. Baird (North Carolina) left Annapolis, Maryland in 2015 for the mountains of western North Carolina and settled in the town of Asheville, where aside from enjoying the mountains, the music and food scene, and a beer from one of the more than fifty local breweries, he continues, like Ahab pursuing the white whale, to scribble away in his search for the perfect word. His most recent publication is his award-winning collection of short stories, “The Guy in the Box,” published by Southern Yellow Pine Publishing.
Philip Barbara (Virginia) was a senior journalist at Reuters for three decades, an editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology, and a staff writer for The Bergen Record, where he has shared national awards for public service reporting. “The Church” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and adapted into a radio play by NPR affiliate Delmarva Public Radio. His novella The Hartford Atonement (2024 Koehler Books), about an approach to reducing gun violence. His short stories have appeared in a number of publications.
Linda Blaskey (Delaware), recipient of the 2022 Masters Fellowship in Poetry from DDOA, is past coordinator for Dogfish Head Poetry Prize, past poetry/interview editor for Broadkilll Review, and current editor of Quartet, an online poetry journal for women fifty and over. She is the author of the prize-winning chapbook Farm, full-length collection White Horses, and coauthor of Walking the Sunken Boards, and Season of Harvest. Her work was included in Best New Poets 2014.
Jamie Brown (Delaware) (MFA, American University) taught at GWU, Georgetown University, University of Delaware and Wesley College, and led the first Creative Writing Workshop (in poetry) at the Smithsonian Institution. He was a member of the Poetry Committee of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Poetry Critic for The Washington Times, and is a member of PEN, the American Academy of Poets, the National Book Critics Circle, the Delaware Press Association and others. His poetry has been widely published in little literary magazines.
Jerry Burger (California) is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Santa Clara University. His short stories have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, Harpur Palate, and the Briar Cliff Review, among other outlets, and in The Best American Mystery Stories 2020. His novel, The Shadows of 1915 (Golden Antelope Press), explores the generational effects of the Armenian Genocide. His nonfiction book, Returning Home: Reconnecting with Our Childhoods (Rowman & Littlefield), explores the psychological connection many individuals feel with their childhood homes.
Catherine Carter’s (North Carolina) poetry collections with LSU Press include Larvae of the Nearest Stars, The Swamp Monster at Home, and The Memory of Gills, with a fourth, By Stone and Needle, forthcoming in fall 2025. Her work has also appeared in The Best American Poetry, Orion, Poetry, Ploughshares, RHINO, and Ecotone, among others, and she lives with her spouse in Cullowhee, where she is a professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University. Catherine Carter was the Featured Writer for Poetry in Volume 15.
Roberto Christiano (Virginia) won the 2010 Fiction Prize from The Northern Virginia Review for “The Care of Roses.” He received a Pushcart nomination for poetry in Prairie Schooner. His poetry is anthologized in the Gávea-Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry and From The Belly. His poetry collection, Port of Leaving, is published by Finishing Line Press. Website: robertochristiano.weebly.com.
Charlie Clark (Texas) studied poetry at the University of Maryland. His work has appeared in The New England Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Delmarva Review, Smartish Pace, Threepenny Review, West Branch, and other journals. A 2019 NEA fellow and recipient of scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, he is the author of The Newest Employee of the Museum of Ruin (Four Way Books, 2020). He lives in Austin, TX.
Wendy Mitman Clarke’s (Maryland) poetry has been published in Blackbird, Rattle, Little Patuxent Review, Summerset Review, Delmarva Review, Blue River Review, Gargoyle, MUSE/A Journal and the Quills Edge Press anthology 50/50 (2018). She won the Pat Nielsen Poetry Prize in 2015 and 2017, and she is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her nonfiction has been published in River Teeth and Smithsonian. Website: www.wendymitmanclarke.com.
Jona Colson (District of Columbia) is a poet, educator, and translator. His poetry collection, Said Through Glass, won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. He is also the translator of Aguas/Waters by Miguel Avero and the coeditor of This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry and Fiction from D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (2021). His poems, translations, and interviews have appeared in Ploughshares, The Southern Review, LitHub, and elsewhere. He is a professor of ESL at Montgomery College.
*John Elsberg (1945 – 2012; Virginia) was one of the founding mentors and an early poetry editor of the Delmarva Review. He was the author of over a dozen books and chapbooks of poetry. His last works were: A Week in the Lake District, Small Exchange, O F F S E T S, and Sailor. He was the editor of the long-running magazine Bogg, and he has hosted Sunday open readings at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland. His daytime job was editor in chief of the U.S. Army Center of Military History.
Irene Fick (Delaware) is the author of The Wild Side of the Window (Main Street Rag) and The Stories We Tell (Broadkill Press). Both received first place awards from the National Federation of Press Women. Her poems have been published in Delmarva Review, The Broadkill Review, The Blue Mountain Review, and Willawaw Journal, among others. Her essays have appeared in River Teeth Journal, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Hippocampus. Her third book of poetry will be published in 2025 by Broadstone Books. She is from Lewes.
Gwen Florio (New Jersey) grew up on a Delaware wildlife refuge now named for her father. She’s the author of a dozen novels, including three crime series and a standalone literary novel set in Afghanistan. Her first novel, Montana, won a High Plains Book Award and the inaugural Pinckley Prize for debut crime fiction by a woman. After nearly two decades in Montana, she now lives in Swedesboro, New Jersey. Gwen Florio was the Featured Writer in Volume 3. Website: gwenflorio.net.
Tara Gilson Fraga (Oregon) grew up in a logging town in rural Oregon, and although she’s lived all over the state, she’s never left it; Oregon is her favorite. Currently, she lives in Gresham with her large, fabulous family. Tara’s writing journey began as a child, and she writes frequently to the amazement and bewilderment of her own children. Tara is also a teacher and believes stories have the power to change the world.
Michael Keenan Gutierrez (North Carolina) is the author of The Swill and The Trench Angel and earned degrees from UCLA, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of New Hampshire. His work has been published in The Rumpus, The Guardian, The Collagist, and Public Books. His screenplay, The Granite State, was a finalist at the Austin Film Festival, and he has received fellowships from the University of Houston and the New York Public Library. He teaches writing at the University of North Carolina. Website: www.michaelkeenangutierrez.com.
Meredith Davies Hadaway (Maryland) is the author of five books of poetry including At The Narrows (winner of the Delmarva Book Prize for Creative Writing) and Small Craft Warning, a collaborative chapbook with artist Marcy Dunn Ramsey. Her latest collection, [Among the Many Disappearing Things] was issued in fall 2024 from Grayson Books. She is currently the Sophie Kerr Poet-in-Residence at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Website: www.meredithdavieshadaway.com.
Alamgir Hashmi (Pakistan) is the author of twelve books of poetry and numerous volumes of literary criticism. His latest collection is The Shorter Poems 1993-2023 (Greenwich Exchange Ltd., 2024). He has taught at universities in North America, Europe, and Asia. A Rockefeller Fellow and a Pushcart Prize nominee, he has also judged many literary awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He is Founding President of The Literature Podium: An Independent Society for Literature and the Arts.
Wendy Elizabeth Ingersoll (Delaware) is a retired piano teacher living happily in upstate Delaware with her husband. Publications include two chapbooks, River, Farm and Tales of Silver Hill; a full-length collection, Grace Only Follows, winner of the National Federation of Press Women contest; Walking the Sunken Boards, a collection with three other poets; and journals such as Kestrel, Poetry East, Naugatuck River Review, Poetry South, The Lyric, Connecticut River Review, Cahoodaloodaling, Gargoyle. She has served as Assistant Poetry Editor for Delmarva Review, as well as Coeditor for Quartet, an online poetry journal for women over fifty. Wendy Elizabeth Ingersoll was the Featured Writer in Volume 4.
Luisa A. Igloria (Virginia) is the author of Caulbearer (Immigrant Writing Series Prize, Black Lawrence Press, 2024), Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Co-Winner, 2019 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Prize), The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis (2018), 12 other books, and four chapbooks. She is lead editor, along with coeditors Aileen Cassinetto and Jeremy S. Hoffman, of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the U.S. (Paloma Press, 2023), offered as a companion to the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5). Originally from Baguio City, she makes her home in Norfolk, VA, where she is the Louis I. Jaffe and University Professor of English and Creative Writing at Old Dominion University’s MFA Creative Writing Program. She also leads workshops for and is a member of the board of The Muse Writers Center in Norfolk. Luisa is the 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-22), Emerita. During her term, the Academy of American Poets awarded her a 2021 Poet Laureate Fellowship. Luisa A. Igloria was the Featured Writer for Poetry in Volume 12. Website: www.luisaigloria.com.
Mark Jacobs (Virginia) is a former foreign service officer and Peace Corps volunteer. He has published more than 200 stories in magazines including The Hudson Review, The Atlantic, Playboy, The Baffler, and The Iowa Review. His sixth book, a novel called Silent Light, was recently published by OR Books/Evergreen Review Books. Website: http://www.markjacobsauthor.com.
Ethan Joella (Delaware) teaches English and psychology at the University of Delaware. He is the author of A Little Hope, which was a Read with Jenna Bonus Selection, A Quiet Life, and The Same Bright Stars. He lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, with his wife and two daughters. Website: https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Ethan-Joella/178936526.
Martina Kado (Maryland) is Vice President of Research and Library Director at the Maryland Center for History and Culture, in Baltimore. She holds a PhD in English and is an author, researcher, and translator. Her work has appeared in Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, Overland, and The Quill Magazine. The piece published in this anthology, “The Entropy of Little Things,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Website: www.martinakado.com.
Holly Karapetkova (Virginia) is Poet Laureate Emerita of Arlington, Virginia, and a recipient of a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. She’s the author of two award-winning books of poetry: Towline from Washington Writers’ Publishing House and Words We Might One Day Say from Cloudbank Books. Website: https://www.karapetkova.com.
James Keegan (Delaware) is a writer, educator, and actor. His poems, essays, and short fiction have appeared in Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, and The Best of Small Fictions of 2015, as well as the Delmarva Review. He is a professor of English and theater at the University of Delaware, Georgetown. Keegan has appeared on stage at The American Shakespeare Center, Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theater, The Folger Shakespeare Theater, and Theatreworks. He lives in Milton, Delaware.
Susan Land’s (Maryland) fiction has appeared in Bethesda Magazine, Nimrod, Bellevue, Gargoyle, Potomac Review, Alaska Quarterly, and other journals. She has an MA from Johns Hopkins, and she was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Susan’s grateful to live and teach in Montgomery County, Maryland. Susan Land was the Featured Writer for Fiction in Volume 14.
*Barbara F. Lefcowitz (1935 – 2015; Maryland) was a professor of English at Anne Arundel College and an author of nine books of poetry. Her stories, essays, and poetry appeared in over 500 journals. Lefcowitz has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, Maryland Arts Council, and National Endowment for the Arts. She and her husband, Allan, were among the founders and early supporters of The Writer’s Center, in Bethesda.
John Lewis (Maryland) is a writer, educator, and curator living in Cambridge. He was Baltimore Magazine’s arts and culture editor for fifteen years and has written for many publications, including The Oxford American and Rolling Stone. He received a Literary Arts award from the Maryland State Arts Council in 2022. Lewis recently co-founded Choptank Arts & Culture Exchange, a nonprofit that supports Eastern Shore arts initiatives.
Steph Liberatore (Maryland) was the Featured Writer for Nonfiction in Volume 16. Her essays have appeared in River Teeth, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Cream City Review, Inside Higher Ed, and elsewhere. When she isn’t working on her first book–an investigative memoir–or chasing after her two young kids, she teaches writing at George Mason University. Website: www.stephliberatore.com.
Kerry Leddy Malawista (Maryland) is a writer, psychoanalyst, and co-chair of New Directions in Writing. Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Boston Globe, and Delmarva Review. She is coauthor of When the Garden Isn’t Eden (2022), Wearing my Tutu to Analysis and Other Stories (2011), The Therapist in Mourning: From the Faraway Nearby (2013), and Who’s Behind the Couch (2017). Her novel, Meet the Moon, a Kraken Prize finalist, was released in 2022. Website: www.drkerrymalawista.com.
Mia Mazzeo (Maryland) is from St. Michaels and is a senior at Easton High School. Mia was the recipient of the Talbot County High School-Talbot Arts-Delmarva Review Youth Writing Mentor Scholarship Award in 2023. The awarded student collaborates with one of the review’s editors to finalize the original prose for publication. The high school scholarship and mentoring initiative encourages outstanding writing among students. She is the president of her school's Latin Club and Latin Honor Society, co-president of her school's Interact Club, and a yearbook editor. In her free time, she enjoys volunteering, baking, crocheting, and reading.
Jean McDonough (Illinois) is a school librarian who is working on a collection of nonfiction inspired by Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. Essays within this series have been published in journals such as Colorado Review, Water~Stone Review, Under the Sun, and Catamaran. Several of her Guernica essays have also received writing awards, including finalist for Ruminate’s 2022 VanderMey Nonfiction Prize; notable in The Best American Essays, 2023; and 2024 Pushcart Prize nominations. Website: https://www.jeanmcdonough.com.
Adam McGee (Massachusetts) has been published in Prairie Schooner, Electric Lit, Poets & Writers, Raleigh Review, Painted Bride, Memorious, Cimarron Review, Assaracus, and elsewhere. He is the Managing Editor of Inquest, a magazine focused on ending mass incarceration. Before joining Inquest, he served as Managing Editor of Boston Review for nearly a decade, where he was also founding Arts Editor of the magazine’s Arts in Society project.
John J. McKeon (Maryland) comes from an Irish/German family, grew up in New York City, and has always been interested in the immigrant American experience. His career has included work as a newspaper reporter and magazine writer. He is the author of several novels and a short story collection, and his work last appeared in Delmarva Review in Volume 11, 2018. Website: www.johnjmckeon.com.
*George Merrill (1934 – 2022; Maryland) was a former nonfiction editor of the Delmarva Review and the Featured Nonfiction Writer for Volume 14. He was an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist as well as an accomplished author and photographer. He published two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. A native New Yorker, Merrill provided counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and Baltimore before moving to Maryland’s Eastern Shore. His essays, including a Pushcart Prize nomination, appeared in regional magazines and were broadcast on Delmarva Public Radio and published online by Spy Community Media. Upon his death, an anthology of his essays, Living into Darkness and Finding the Light: Spiritual Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter, was published by his artist wife, Jo Merrill, who illustrated the book.
Marda Messick (Florida) is a poet and theologian living in Tallahassee on land that is the traditional territory of the Apalachee Nation and other indigenous peoples. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Christian Century and Literary Mama.
E. Ethelbert Miller (District of Columbia) is a literary activist and author of two memoirs and several poetry collections. He hosts the WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and hosts and produces The Scholars on UDC-TV which received a 2020 Telly Award. Miller is Associate Editor and a columnist for The American Book Review. He was given a 2020 congressional award from Congressman Jamie Raskin in recognition of his literary activism, awarded the 2022 Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award by the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and named a 2023 Grammy Nominee Finalist for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album. Miller’s latest book is the little book of e published by City Point Press.
Jane C. Miller (Delaware) is the author of Canticle for Remnant Days (2024) and coauthor of Walking the Sunken Boards (2019), both published by Pond Road Press. A winner of the Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Contest and two state fellowships, her work has appeared in numerous journals including RHINO, Colorado Review, and Apple Valley Review. Miller coedits the online poetry journal, ൪uartet. She lives in Wilmington. Website: www.janecmiller.com.
Devon Miller-Duggan (Delaware) is the Featured Writer for Poetry in Volume 16. She teaches poetry writing and is associate professor of creative writing at the University of Delaware. Her books include Pinning the Bird to the Wall (Tres Chicas Books), Alphabet Year (Wipf & Stock), and The Slow Salute (Lithic Press Chapbook Competition Winner, 2018). Her poems have been published in The Antioch Review, Massachusetts Review, Margie, Spillway, and Delmarva Review, among others.
Nancy Mitchell (Maryland) is a 2012 Pushcart Prize winner, the author of The Near Surround, Grief Hut, and The Out-of-Body Shop, and coeditor of Plume Interviews I. Her poems have appeared in Agni, Green Mountains Review, Ploughshares, and Washington Square Review, among others. She serves as Editor of Special Features for Plume Poetry and is the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Salisbury, Maryland. She hosts the Poets’ Corner Reading Series in Salisbury.
Susan Bucci Mockler’s (Virginia) full-length poetry collection, Covenant (With) was published by Kelsay Books in 2022. She teaches writing at Howard University in Washington, DC. Her poetry has appeared in the Mid-Atlantic Review, Maryland Literary Review, peachvelvet, Maximum Tilt, Pilgrimage Press, Crab Orchard Review, Poet Lore, The Northern Virginia Review, Gargoyle, Delmarva Review, The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Cortland Review, The Paterson Literary Review, Lunch Ticket, and Voices in Italian Americana, and several anthologies.
Kristina Morgan’s (Arizona) full-length memoir, Mind Without a Home: A Memoir of Schizophrenia, was published by Hazelden in 2013. Her award-winning prose and poetry have appeared in several literary journals. Among her short stories, “Pink Cadillac” won the National League of American Pen Women Award in 2022. Her work has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize, for a short story and a personal essay in the Delmarva Review, and for a poem in Quartet.
Anne Moul (Pennsylvania) is a retired music educator pursuing her lifelong interest in writing. She has had work published in Hippocampus, Delmarva Review, Episcopal Café, Thread, AARP’s The Girlfriend, Chicago Story Press, and others, and has won several awards in the Pennwriters Annual Writing Contest. Anne does promotional writing for her choir, the Susquehanna Chorale, and blogs at www.secondactstories.com.
Bonnie Naradzay’s (Maryland) poetry manuscript will be published by Slant Books. For years, she has led regular poetry sessions at day shelters and a retirement community, all in Washington, DC. Her poems have been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Kenyon Review Online, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Dappled Things, and Cumberland River Review, among others. In 2010, she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize – a month’s stay in Northern Italy – in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter, Mary. There, Bonnie had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read Pound’s translations. Website: www.bonnienaradzay.com.
Amanda Newell (Maryland) is the author of Postmortem Say (Červená Barva, 2024) and I Will Pass Even to Acheron, a 2021 winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize. She is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, Bellevue Literary Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. An associate editor for Plume, she began her editorial career at Delmarva Review, serving as Poetry Editor for Volume 5 and as a member of the editorial board for Volume 4. Website: www.amandanewellpoet.com.
Randon Billings Noble (District of Columbia) is an essayist. Her collection Be with Me Always was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2019, and her anthology of lyric essays, A Harp in the Stars, was published by Nebraska in 2021. Currently, she is the founding editor of the online literary magazine After the Art and teaches in West Virginia Wesleyan’s Low-Residency MFA Program and Goucher's MFA in Nonfiction Program. Website: www.randonbillingsnoble.com.
*Paul Otremba (1978 – 2019; Texas) received an MFA from the University of Maryland and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. He published three collections of poetry: Levee (Four Way Books, 2019), Pax Americana (Four Way Books, 2015), and The Currency (Four Way Books, 2009). In addition to his writing, he taught at Rice University, Southern Methodist University, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and in the Warren Wilson College MFA program. Otremba lived in Houston, where he died in 2019.
Suzanne Parker (New Jersey) is a winner of the Kinereth Gensler Book Award for her poetry collection Viral (Alice James Books, 2013). Viral was a Lambda Literary Award finalist and on the National Library Association’s Over the Rainbow List of Recommended Books. She is a winner of Tupelo Press’s Sunken Garden Chapbook Award for her collection Feed. She’s on the MFA faculty at Manhattanville College and a professor at Brookdale Community College. Website: http://www.suzanneparker.org.
Lara Payne (Maryland), once an archeologist, now teaches writing at the college level, to veterans and small children. Her poems, many of which explore the Chesapeake environment and people, have appeared in a museum, on buses, and in print and online journals. Recent poems have appeared in the Broadkill Review and online with SWWIM Daily.
Richard Peabody (Virginia), born in Washington, DC, raised in Bethesda, MD, and now living in Arlington, VA, is a poet, writer, editor, teacher, and publisher. He taught graduate fiction writing at Johns Hopkins University for seventeen years. His Gargoyle Magazine (founded in 1976) moved online only in 2022. Recent books include Guinness on the Quay (Salmon Poetry, 2019), and The Richard Peabody Reader, a career-encompassing collection (Alan Squire Publishing, 2015).
William Peak’s (Maryland) poetry and prose have been published in magazines and literary reviews. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Peak’s novel, The Oblate’s Confession, published by Secant Publishing, won four national awards, including the National Indie Excellence Award for Religion: Fiction. Kirkus Reviews named The Oblate’s Confession to its list of the best Indie books published in 2015. He writes a monthly column for The Star Democrat in Maryland.
Alejandro Pérez’s (Maryland) poems have appeared in Star 82 Review, Gravel, HEArt Online, Literary Orphans, SOMOS Latinx Literary Magazine, Letralia Tierra de Letras and elsewhere. His chapbook Maybe the Trumpet is Human is a winner of the Boston Uncommon Chapbook Series, 2018. Being half American and half Guatemalan, he has said he is caught between two cultures.
Leslie Pietrzyk’s (North Carolina) collection of linked stories set in Washington, DC, Admit This to No One, was published in 2021 by Unnamed Press. Her first collection of stories, This Angel on My Chest, won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Story Magazine, Hudson Review, Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, and Delmarva Review, among others. Her stories have also appeared in The Washington Post Magazine and The Sun. She won a Pushcart Prize in 2020. Leslie Pietrzyk was the Featured Writer for Fiction in Volume 16. Website: https://www.lesliepietrzyk.com.
Rita Plush (New York) is a writer, educator and storyteller. She is the author of the novels Lily Steps Out and Feminine Products and the short story collection Alterations. She is the book reviewer for Fire Island and Great South Bay News. Her stories and essays have been published in numerous journals and magazines, most recently in Write City Magazine, Hadassah Magazine, and Adelaide. Website: www.ritaplush.com.
Maxine Poe-Jensen (Maryland) was the recipient of the Delmarva Review Youth Writing Mentorship and Scholarship Award in 2022, as a senior at St. Michaels Middle/High School. The prize was funded by a grant from Talbot Arts and supported by Talbot County Schools. In addition to a financial award, the selected student collaborates with one of the review’s editors to finalize the student’s original prose for publication. The high school scholarship and mentoring initiative encourages outstanding writing among students in regional schools. Maxine is from Easton.
Bethany Reid’s (Washington) stories, essays, and poems have recently appeared in One Art, Poetry East, Quartet, Passengers, Adelaide, Kithe, Descant, Peregrine, and Catamaran. Her fourth full-length collection of poems, The Pear Tree: elegy for a farm, won the 2023 Sally Albiso Award from MoonPath Press. She blogs about writing, reading, and life at http://www.bethanyareid.com.
Emily Rich (Maryland) is President of the Eastern Shore Writers Association and the Editor in Chief of the Bay to Ocean Journal. Her work has been published in The Pinch, Hippocampus, Cutbank, and Briar Cliff Review, among others. Her essays have been listed three times as a notable works in The Best American Essays. You can hear her interview with local authors on her “Shore Writers” program, Monday evenings on WHCP radio.
Everett Roberts (California) 36, is a writer, comedian, editor, a former UN Sanctions Violations investigator, and an award-winning poet living in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in the Write Launch, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and Oberon Poetry Magazine, where he won the 2021 Herbert Poetry Prize for his poem “John the Baptist.”
Kim Roberts (District of Columbia) will release two new books in 2025: Q&A for the End of the World, a collaboration with Michael Gushue (WordTech Editions), her seventh book of poems; and Buried Stories: Walking Tours of Washington, DC-Area Cemeteries (Rivanna Books), her second guidebook. She has edited two anthologies of poems by Washington, DC authors, and co-curates DC Pride Poem-a-Day each June. Roberts has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Humanities DC, and the DC Commission on the Arts, and has been a writer-in-residence at twenty artist colonies and nonprofits. Website: http://www.kimroberts.org.
Margaret Rodenberg's (Virginia) award-winning debut novel Finding Napoleon includes an adaptation of Napoleon Bonaparte’s real attempt to write a romantic novel. Her short story “Mrs. Morrisette” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She’s a former businesswoman, an avid traveler who has visited over sixty countries, and a director of the Napoleonic Historical Society. Website: https://mrodenberg.com.
Gibbons Ruark (North Carolina) was born in Raleigh in 1941. He has published his poems widely for sixty years. His books include Keeping Company, Rescue the Perishing, Passing Through Customs: New and Selected Poems, Staying Blue, and, most recently, The Road to Ballyvaughan. The recipient of many awards, including three NEA Poetry Fellowships, residencies at The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, in Ireland, a Pushcart Prize, and the 1984 Saxifrage Prize for Keeping Company, he lives with his wife Kay, in Raleigh. Gibbons Ruark was the Featured Writer for Poetry in Volume 10. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbons_Ruark.
Ellen Sazzman (Maryland) is a Pushcart-nominated poet whose work has been published in Clackamas Review, Slipstream, Atlanta Review, Delmarva Review, Folio, Peregrine, Sow’s Ear, Lilith, and Common Ground, among others. Her collection, The Shomer, was a finalist for the Blue Lynx Prize and a semifinalist for the Elixir Antivenom Award and the Codhill Press Award. She was awarded first place in the Dancing Poetry Festival, was shortlisted for the O’Donoghue Prize, and was awarded first place in Poetica’s Rosenberg competition. Her debut novel Wild Irish Yenta was published this spring.
Irene Hoge Smith (Maryland) is a graduate of the New Directions writing program of Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. Her memoir, The Good Poetic Mother (about her mother, the late Los Angeles poet, francEyE, who, after fleeing a bad marriage and four daughters, lived with Charles Bukowski in the early 1960s), was published in 2021 by IPBooks. Her current writing deals with marriage, leukemia, and a sudden deployment into the caregiving system of American healthcare.
Adam Tamashasky (Maryland) teaches at American University, in Washington, DC. His poetry has appeared in The Cold Mountain Review, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, and 491 Magazine. He grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and went to the University of Dayton for his undergraduate degree and to American University for his MFA.
Adam Tavel (Maryland) is the author of five books of poetry, including Green Regalia (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2022). He was a professor of English at Wor-Wic Community College, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Tavel won the 2017 Richard Wilbur Award for his third poetry collection, Catafalque (University of Evansville Press). He is the recipient of the 2010 Robert Frost Award from the Robert Frost Foundation. Adam Tavel was the Featured Writer for Poetry in Volume 14.
Marcelle Thiébaux (New York) has published over thirty stories, appearing in The MacGuffin, decomP, Ignatian, Visitant, Perceptions, Grand Central Noir and elsewhere. Books on medieval themes include The Writings of Medieval Women and Unruly Princess, about a teenage Hungarian saint. Recipient of a Pen & Brush Club Award for fiction, she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an alumna of Smith College, BA; University of Connecticut, MA; and Columbia University, PhD.
Diane Thiel (New Mexico) is the author of twelve books. Her latest poetry collection, Questions from Outer Space, received the 2023 Independent Press Award. Her work has appeared widely in publications such as two Best American Poetry anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2023. Thiel received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Brown University. A Regents’ Professor at UNM, her awards include PEN, NEA and Fulbright. Thiel has traveled the world with her young family, working on literary and environmental projects. Website: http://www.dianethiel.net.
Sue Ellen Thompson (Maryland) is the author of six books of poetry—most recently Sea Nettles: New & Selected Poems. She has taught at Middlebury College, Binghamton University, Wesleyan University, Central Connecticut State University, and the University of Delaware. A resident of Oxford, Maryland for the past eighteen years, she mentors adult poets and teaches workshops at The Writer’s Center, in Bethesda. In 2010, the Maryland Library Association awarded her its prestigious Maryland Author Award. Sue Ellen Thompson was the Featured Writer for Nonfiction in Volume 13. Website: https://sueellenthompson.com.
Richard Tillinghast’s (Hawaii and Tennessee) 13th poetry collection, Blue If Only I Could Tell You, won the 2022 White Pine Press Poetry Prize. White Pine will release his next book, Night Train to Memphis, in 2025. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Paris Review, The New Republic, The Best American Poetry, APR, and elsewhere. The recipient of the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship, the James Dickey Prize, as well as grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA and the NEH, the British Council, and the Irish Arts Council, Richard lives in Hawaii and spends his summers in Sewanee, Tennessee.
Josh Trapani (Maryland) is a Washington, DC area-based writer, editor, and policy professional. He has led the production of congressionally mandated reports and authored short stories, humor, book reviews, and peer-reviewed papers. His work has appeared in venues including Delmarva Review (“Butchery” – Pushcart nominated), The Writing Disorder, The Del Sol Review, Issues in Science and Technology, Science, and the Washington Independent Review of Books. Josh Trapani was the Featured Writer for Fiction in Volume 15. Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshtrapani.
Katherine J. Williams (District of Columbia) is Associate Professor Emerita at The George Washington University. She has been published in journals such as Poet Lore, The Northern Virginia Review, Passager, Broadkill Review, Delmarva Review, Christian Century, 3rd Wednesday, and anthologies such as The Widow’s Handbook, How to Love the World and The Wonder of Small Things. Several poems were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her debut poetry collection, Still Life, was published in October 2022 by Cherry Grove Collections. Website: https://www.katherinejwilliamspoetry.com.
Anne Yarbrough's (Delaware) first collection, Refinery (Broadkill River Press), received the 2021 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, CALYX Journal, Cider Press Review, Spillway Magazine, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Rust & Moth, and elsewhere. She was a 2023 Delaware Division of the Arts Fellow. She lives along the lower Delaware River, which was once called Lenapewihittuck.
Sepideh Zamani (Maryland and District of Columbia) was born in Iran and graduated from law school in 1999. She moved to the United States a year later. Her novels, short stories, and essays focus on immigration, gender inequality, and the lives of ethnic and religious minorities under cultural cleansing. Website: www.sepideh-zamani.com.
