Fran Abrams’s (Maryland) poems have been published in The American Journal of Poetry, The Raven’s Perch, Gargoyle 74, and many others. Her poetry appears in thirteen anthologies. She won the Washington Writers Publishing House Winter Poetry Prize (2021). Her first chapbook, The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
Website: franabramspoetry.com
Gale Acuff (Palestine) has taught university English in the United States, China, and Palestine, where he currently teaches at Arab American University. He holds a PhD in English/Creative Writing from Texas Tech University and has published hundreds of poems in over a dozen countries. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives
Carol Alexander’s (New York) most recent poetry collection is Fever and Bone. Her individual poems have appeared in About Place Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, The Common, Denver Quarterly, One, Ruminate, Southern Humanities Review, Terrain.org, and Third Wednesday. Forthcoming publications include Free State Review, Matter, Potomac Review, Verdad, and The Westchester Review. Alexander co-edited Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (Cave Moon Press, 2022).
Jacob M. Appel (New York) is a physician in New York City. He is the author of twenty volumes of fiction and nonfiction, and most recently the novel Shaving with Occam.
Website: www.jacobmappel.com
Chris Arthur (Scotland, UK) is an Irish essayist currently based in St. Andrews, Scotland. He is the author of several books of essays, most recently Hummingbirds Between the Pages (2018). A new collection, Hidden Cargoes, will be published in 2022. His awards include the Sewanee Review’s Monroe K. Spears Essay Prize. Website: www.chrisarthur.org.
Gustavo Adolfo Aybar (Missouri) is a writer, father, and martial artist. He’s published We Seek Asylum (Willow Books, 2017) and Between Line Breaks (Spartan Press, 2016), among other texts in anthologies, journals, and online. Aybar is a Cave Canem and Artist Inc fellow. His work discusses immigration, baseball, fatherhood, the dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, and, recently, his law enforcement officer experience.
Robert Bachner (New York) is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Three of his novels have been published. His most recent two novels, including Killing Jack Armstrong, were finalists in the Faulkner/Wisdom competition. He practices real estate law in New York City where he lives with his wife, Barbara Bachner, a multi-media artist.
Roy Bentley (Ohio) is a finalist for the Miller Williams prize and has published ten books of poetry. Over the years, his work has appeared in Blackbird, Shenandoah, december, Crazyhorse, The Southern Review, and Prairie Schooner among others. His latest collection, Beautiful Plenty, is available from Main Street Rag.
Sallie Bingham’s (New Mexico) recent books are Little Brother (a memoir, 2022, Sarabande Books), and The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke (2020, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). Her first novel was published in 1961. She has published six additional novels, three collections of poetry, plays, and the family memoir, Passion and Prejudice (1989, Knopf). Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, New Letters, Best American Short Stories, Forty Best Stories from Mademoiselle, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and The Harvard Advocate Centennial Anthology. She founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, she lives in Santa Fe. Website: salliebingham.com
Jerry Burger’s (California) short stories have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, Harpur Palate, and Briar Cliff Review, among others, and in Best American Mystery Stories 2020. His novel, The Shadows of 1915 (Golden Antelope Press), explores the generational effects of the Armenian Genocide.
Roxanne Cardona’s (New Jersey) poems have been published in One Art, Pine Hills Review, Mason Street, Constellations, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Poetic Medicine, and others. She has a BA/MS degree from Hunter College and MS from College of New Rochelle. She is a former elementary school teacher and principal in the South Bronx, New York, and now lives in Teaneck, New Jersey with her husband.
Catherine Carter (North Carolina) is the Featured Writer for Poetry in the Delmarva Review (2022, Volume 15). Raised on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, she lives with her husband in Cullowhee, NC, near Western Carolina University, where she is a professor in the English Education program and interim managing editor of Cider Press Review. Her most recent full-length collection is Larvae of the Nearest Stars (LSU Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2009, Orion, Poetry, North Carolina Literary Review, Asheville Poetry Review, and Ploughshares, among others. On a good day, she can re-queen a hive of honeybees and roll a whitewater kayak. On less good days, she collects stings, rockburn, and multiple contusions.
Annie Diamond (Illinois) is a poet, Joycean, and breakfast enthusiast living and working on the traditional unceded homelands of the Council of the Three Fires. She has been awarded fellowships by MacDowell, Luminarts Cultural Foundation, The Lighthouse Works, and Boston University, where she earned her MFA. Her poems have appeared and are forthcoming in No Tokens, Yemassee, Tar River Poetry, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere.
Saoirse E. Doyle’s (California) writing has appeared in Bryant Literary Review, Agave Magazine, White Wall Review, Sweet Tree Review, Big Muddy, The Ignatian Literary Magazine, Entropy, and The Magic of Memoir. Her work focuses primarily on her Irish upbringing and what she carries inside of a troubled country and its history. She enjoys photography, searching for the elusive “perfect chair,” and public speaking.
John Philip Drury (Ohio) is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Sea Level Rising (Able Muse Press, 2015). “Full Moon on the Water” is the last chapter in his memoir, Bobby and Carolyn: Two Women with a Boy in the 1950s, which is seeking a publisher. His awards include a Pushcart Prize, two Ohio Arts Council grants, an Ingram Merrill Foundation fellowship, and the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review. A native of Cambridge, Maryland, he is professor emeritus of English at the University of Cincinnati. Website: www.john-drury.com
George Freek (Illinois) is a poet and playwright living in Belvidere, Illinois. His poetry has recently appeared in The Chiron Review, Off Course, The Big Windows Review, Torrid Literature, and The Adelaide Magazine. His poem “Written At Blue Lake” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. “Enigmatic Variations” was recently nominated for Best of the Net.
Robin Gow (Pennsylvania) is a trans and queer poet and young adult/middle-grade author from rural Pennsylvania. They are the author of Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy (Tolsun Books, 2020), the chapbook Honeysuckle (Finishing Line Press, 2019), and a young adult novel, A Million Quiet Revolutions (2022, with FSG). Gow’s poetry has recently been published in Poetry, New Delta Review, and Washington Square Review.
Kerry Graham (Maryland) lives, teaches, writes, and kayaks in Baltimore, MD. Her most recent essays have appeared in HuffPost, and her vignettes have been published in several literary journals. She is among the inaugural Creatives-in-Residence at The Baltimore Banner.
Website: www.mskerrygraham.com
A. J. Granger (Virginia) is a graduate and former Centennial Scholar of James Madison University with a BA in Media Arts and Design. His poems have appeared in Red Weather, Gardy Loo, and Black Fox Literary Magazine. Currently, he lives in Norfolk, Virginia where he dabbles with photography and voice-over while vigorously at work on his first collection of poems.
King Grossman’s (California) poems and short prose have appeared in Crack the Spine, The Round, Forge, Tiger’s Eye, Qwerty, Burningword, Ignatian, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Midwest Quarterly, The Borfski Review, and numerous other journals. His novel, Letters To Alice, received several literary awards. He lives in Carmel-by-the-Sea with his wife Lisa, his dog Bogart, and a sun conure parrot named Sunny.
Richard Hacker (Washington) lives and writes in Seattle. His work has won best novel in the SFF category at the Texas Writers’ League and has been a finalist in the Pacific Northwest Writers’ League. Of his six published novels, the last three, Die Back, The Vengeance of Grimbald and The Bifurcation of Dungsten Crease, have been published by Del Sol Press. Website: www.richardhacker.com
Alison Hackett (Ireland) is the founder of Twenty First Century Renaissance publishing house (in Ireland), and author of The Visual Time Traveller, a 500-year journey through history, art and science in five-year time jumps. Her poetry has been featured in literary journals in the US, Australia, India, and Ireland. She and her husband sail a classic wooden dinghy—a Water Wag, the oldest one-design dinghy in the world. Website: www.21cr.ie
Jessica Claire Haney (Virginia) is a Northern Virginia-based writer, editor, and writing tutor. Her work has appeared in The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Gargoyle Magazine, Porcupine Literary, Washington Writers’ Publishing House, Earth’s Daughters, Scary Mommy, and anthologies, including the Grace & Gravity DC Women Writers series, and Written in Arlington.
Website: JessicaClaireHaney.com
Jeanine Hathaway (Kansas) is the author of the novel, Motherhouse (NY: Hyperion, 1992), The Self as Constellation (UNT, 2002), winner of the 2001Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, the chapbook The Ex-Nun Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2011), and Long after Lauds (Slant Books, 2019) winner of a 2020 Catholic Book Award for Poetry. She is professor emerita of English at Wichita State University and a former mentor in the Seattle Pacific University MFA Creative Writing Program.
Martina Kado (Maryland) is director of publications at the Maryland Center for History and Culture, in Baltimore, where she serves as editor-in-chief of Maryland Historical Magazine. Researching maritime narratives for her PhD in English turned her life into a “traveling genre.” A Fulbright Fellow, translator, and flamenco dancer, she gets stir-crazy when exposed to only one language for too long. Her work has appeared in Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, Overland, and The Quill Magazine. Website: www.martinakado.com
Nicholas Katsanis’s (Florida) short stories and poetry have been published in Literally Stories, Penumbric, and The New Verse News, among others. He studied writing at the Tom Jenks Creative Writing Workshop and was a finalist for a national short story competition in his home country of Greece. Nico was a professor of Genetics at Johns Hopkins and Duke for twenty-five years before leaving academia to invest more time in his writing. He enjoys traveling and has visited half the planet; laptop and notebook underarm, he hopes to visit the other half while editing his debut novel.
Erik Harper Klass (California) has published stories in a variety of journals, including New England Review, Slippery Elm, Yemassee, Summerset Review, and Open: Journal of Arts & Letters. He lives in Los Angeles. Website: erikharperklass.com
Igor Kojadinović (Florida) is a Serbian poet. Born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, he relocated to the United States, where he has worked as a firefighter and paramedic for the last five years. He currently attends the University of Central Florida and is pursuing a BA in philosophy. His work appears in The Write Launch and You Might Need To Hear This.
Joshua Kulseth (Texas) earned a BA in English from Clemson University, and his MFA in poetry from Hunter College. He is currently a PhD student in poetry at Texas Tech University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, Rappahannock Review, East by Northeast, The Windhover, Presence, and others. His book manuscript, Leaving Troy, was shortlisted for the Cider Press Review Publication Competition.
V. P. Loggins (Maryland) is the author of The Wild Severance (winner of the Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Competition, 2021), The Green Cup (winner of the Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize, 2017), The Fourth Paradise (Main Street Rag, 2010) and Heaven Changes (Pudding House, 2007). His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Poet Lore, Poetry Ireland Review, and other journals.
Remy Lucien (North Carolina) is a nonbinary trans writer and poet from Charlotte. She is passionate about many mediums of creative expression, including visual art, music, and especially writing in all its forms. Having recently graduated from UNC Charlotte with a BA in English and Linguistics, she is currently working on her first novel.
Robert Manaster’s (Illinois) poetry has appeared in numerous journals including Birmingham Poetry Review, Image, Maine Review, Into the Void, and Spillway. His co-translation of Ronny Someck’s The Milk Underground was awarded the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation. He has published poetry book reviews in Rattle, Colorado Review, and Massachusetts Review. Website: robertmanaster.net
Carla McGill’s (California) work has been published in The Atlanta Review, Bryant Literary Review, Shark Reef, Euphony Journal, The Hungry Chimera, Neologism Poetry Journal, DASH Literary Journal, The Penmen Review, Cloudbank, Paragon Journal, Burningword, The Alembic, California Quarterly, Waxing & Waning, Broad River Review and others. She lives in Southern California where she writes poetry and fiction.
Patty McLaughlin (Virginia) is a retired educator, currently living on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. This is her first published essay.
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.
Mary Gayle Newton (Ohio) is a writer and retired teacher. She holds a BA in creative writing from UCLA, and an MA in English literature from San Francisco State University. Her work usually involves women’s issues. Her short stories have been published in The MacGuffin, Evening Street Review, isacoustic, Potato Soup Journal, Borrowed Solace, Atherton Review and October Hill.
Ernest O. Ògúnyẹmí (Nigeria) has published work or forthcoming in Kenyon Review, AGNI, Bodega, the Journal, Southern Humanities Review, Bath Magg, Cincinnati Review, Rust+Moth, South Carolina Review, Joyland, No Tokens, SAND, the Dark, 34 Orchards, Agbowó, the minnesota review, Mooncalves: An Anthology of Weird Fiction, and elsewhere. He is currently pursuing a BA in History and International Studies at Lagos State University.
Susan Okie (Maryland) is a doctor, poet, and former Washington Post medical reporter. She received her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College in 2014. Her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals. Her chapbook, Let You Fly, was published in 2019. She teaches patient-interviewing and clinical ethics to medical students at Georgetown University, and volunteers at a safety-net clinic for uninsured adults. Susan lives in Bethesda.
Esther Lim Palmer (California) is the author of two chapbooks, Stellar (Finishing Line Press, 2021) and Janus (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in California Quarterly, Plainsongs, White Wall Review, Poetry in the Time of Coronavirus (Volume 2), The Hungry Chimera, Brief Wilderness, and Oberon’s Seventeenth Annual Issue—selected to be archived in EBSCO’s Humanities’ database for universities and cultural entities interested in contemporary literary work.
Thalia Patrinos (District of Columbia) is a science writer by day, fire dancer by night. During mornings and afternoons (and yes, many weekends), Thalia strategizes communications for NASA Headquarters via Mori Associates. When the sun sets, Thalia puts together elaborate circus performances under the stage name Tippy Ki Yay. And in the little bit of spare time in between, she works on her latest project: The Spacecraft Tarot. You can find it here: tippykiyay.com
Lara Payne (Maryland) was once an archeologist and now teaches college-level writing to veterans and to small children. Her poem “Corn Stand, 10 ears for two dollars” was a winner of the Moving Words Competition and placed on buses in Arlington, Virginia. Her poems explore the environment and the hidden work of women. They have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly and Mom Egg Review.
Maxine Poe-Jensen (Maryland), a senior at St. Michaels Middle/High School, is the recipient of the Delmarva Review Youth Writing Mentorship and Scholarship Award (2022), funded by a grant from Talbot Arts and supported by Talbot County Schools. The awarded 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.
JC Reilly’s (Georgia) writing has been published or is forthcoming from Santa Clara Review, Rougarou, Barely South Review, Pine Row, and others. Her Southern Gothic novel-in-verse, What Magick May Not Alter, was published by Madville Publishing (2020). When she’s not writing, she crochets or practices her Italian, and serves as the managing editor of Atlanta Review.
Terry Riccardi (New York) is a philatelist and freelance editor. When not creating dark-hued tales, she can be found trying to bowl a perfect game, watching classic movies, and searching for lost jigsaw puzzle pieces. She hopes to be a world-famous author when she grows up. Her work has appeared in Newtown Literary, Corvus Review, Black Petals, and three literary anthologies.
Everett Roberts (District of Columbia), is a poet, technical writer, editor, and former UN Sanctions Violations Investigator living in DC. His work has appeared in The Write Launch, Beyond Words, and Oberon poetry magazine, where he won the 2021 Herbert Poetry Prize for his poem “John the Baptist.”
Joshua St. Claire (Pennsylvania) is a certified public accountant who works as a financial controller in Pennsylvania. He enjoys writing poetry on coffee breaks, after putting his sons to bed, and in collaboration with his wife. His work has been published in the Inflectionist Review, Blue Unicorn, Star*Line, and Eastern Structures, among others. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.
Michael Salcman (Maryland), a retired physician and teacher of art history, is past chair of neurosurgery at University of Maryland and past president of the Contemporary Museum, in Baltimore. He is a child of the Holocaust and a survivor of polio. His poems appear in Barrow Street, Cafe Review, Harvard Review, Hudson Review and Smartish Pace. Collections include The Clock Made of Confetti, A Prague Spring, Before & After (Sinclair Prize), Shades & Graces (inaugural winner Daniel Hoffman Legacy Book Prize), and Necessary Speech: New & Selected Poems (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022). Website: www.msalcman.com
Ellen Sazzman (Maryland) has been published in Another Chicago, Poetry South, PANK, Ekphrastic Review, WSQ, Sow’s Ear, Lilith, Beltway Quarterly, and CALYX, among others. She received an honorable mention in the 2019 Allen Ginsberg contest, was shortlisted for the 2018 O’Donoghue Prize, and won first place in Poetica Magazine’s 2016 Rosenberg competition. She was also a 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her collection The Shomer (Finishing Line Press) was a finalist for the 2020 Blue Lynx Prize and a semifinalist for the Elixir Antivenom Award and the Codhill Press Award.
Matthew J. Spireng (New York) won the 2019 Sinclair Poetry Prize for his book Good Work (Evening Street Press). An 11-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he is the author of two other full-length poetry books, What Focus Is and Out of Body (winner of the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award,) and five chapbooks. His poems have also appeared in North American Review, Tar River Poetry, Louisiana Literature Journal, Rattle, Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and Poet Lore. Website: matthewjspireng.com
Henry Stimpson’s (Massachusetts) poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Lighten Up Online, Rolling Stone, Muddy River Poetry Review, Mad River Review, Aethlon, The MacGuffin, The Aurorean, Common Ground Review, Asses of Parnassus, Bluepepper, The Boston Phoenix, Boston University Today, Snakeskinpoetry, Atlanta Review and On the Seawall. He lives in Massachusetts and hopes to see another Celtics championship sooner or later.
Josh Trapani (Maryland) is a scientist turned policy wonk who writes fiction and humor. He is senior editor at Issues in Science and Technology. Josh’s work has appeared in The Writing Disorder, The Del Sol Review, The Big Jewel, and other venues. He’s reviewed books for the Washington Independent Review of Books and peer-reviewed journals, including Science. For more information see: www.linkedin.com/in/joshtrapani
Carter Vance (Quebec, Canada) is originally from Cobourg, Ontario, and currently from Gatineau, Quebec. His work has appeared in The Smart Set, Contemporary Verse 2, and A Midwestern Review, among others. He was previously a Harrison Middleton University Ideas Fellow. His latest collection of poems, Places to Be, is available from Moonstone Arts Press.
Lauren Woods (Washington, DC) is a writer with fiction and creative nonfiction in The Antioch Review, The Normal School, Fiction Southeast, Hippocampus, Lit Hub, and other journals.
Chila Woychik (Iowa) is originally from “the beautiful land of Bavaria.” In addition to the Delmarva Review, she has been published in Cimarron, Passages North, among others, and has an essay collection, Singing the Land: A Rural Chronology (Shanti Arts, 2020). She won Storm Cellar’s 2019 Flash Majeure Contest and Emry’s 2016 Linda Julian Creative Nonfiction Award. She edits the Eastern Iowa Review. Website: www.chilawoychik.com
Arnie Yasinski (Ireland) is a retired college administrator, born American and now living in Ireland with his Irish wife. He’s a father and grandfather with a PhD in English and BA from Indiana University. He wrote his first poem at fifty and has published poetry in four dozen US journals. He has two collections, Proposition and God Lives in Norway and Goes by Christie, both published by 21st Century Renaissance press in Ireland. He earned an MBA in finance from University of Michigan. Website: arnieyasinskipainterpoet.com
Sepideh Zamani (Maryland and Iran) graduated from law school in 1999 and 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: sepideh-zamani.com
