Raad Kareem Abd-Aun, a native of Iraq, holds a PhD in English literature. He considers poetry, second to his family, the food of his spirit, and has been published in print and electronic journals. He currently teaches English literature and creative writing at the University of Babylon and has a book of poems in press.

Catherine Arra’s poetry has appeared in the Naugatuck River Review, the Perfume River Poetry Review, and Postcards Poems and Prose. Red Ochre Press published her first chapbook in March 2014. She lives in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. Her interests include hiking, biking, wildlife preservation, photography and yoga.

Sharon Auberle is the author of three poetry collections, two of which also contain her photographs. A Pushcart Prize Nominee, her poetry has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. Auberle’s blog— Mimi’s Golightly Café—contains a potpourri of her images and words.

Lois Baer Barr teaches Cocina y cultura and all things Spanish at Lake Forest College. Her books and essays on Spanish and Latin American literature appear here and abroad. She has received Pushcart Prize nominations for fiction and poetry. Her chapbook Biopoesis won Poetica Magazine’s 2013 chapbook contest. 

Jane Blanchard studied English at Wake Forest before earning a doctorate from Rutgers. She currently divides her time between Augusta and Saint Simon’s Island, Georgia. Her work has recently appeared in Blue Unicorn, Mezzo Cammin, and Tar River Poetry.

Kathleen Boyle’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in various literary journals, including Zyzzyva, Natural Bridge, Poet Lore, and many others. She works as a Public Defender.

Judith Waller Carroll is the author of Walking in Early September (Finishing Line Press 2012). Her work appears in such journals as Persimmon Tree, damselfly press, Apple Valley Review, Naugatuck River Review and Heron Tree, as well as several anthologies, and was nominated for Best of the Net.

Sherry Gage Chappelle cooks up applesauce and poetry in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Her chapbook Salmagundi won the 2011 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared previously in journals and anthologies, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

George David Clark is the author of Reveille (University of Arkansas Press), winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize. The editor-in-chief of 32 Poems, he teaches creative writing at Valparaiso University and has previously held the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship in Poetry at Colgate University and the Lilly Postdoctoral Fellowship. 

Michael Colonnese directs the Creative Writing Program at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he serves as managing editor of Longleaf Press. His latest book is a poetry collection entitled Double Feature. 

Barbara Crooker’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including The Bedford Introduction to Literature. She has four books of poetry, including Gold (Cascade Books, 2013). Selected Poems is forthcoming in 2015 from FutureCycle Press.  Her poetry has been read on the BBC, the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company), and by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac.

Carol V. Davis is the author of Between Storms (2012). Twice a Fulbright scholar in Russia, she won the 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize for Into the Arms of Pushkin: Poems of St. Petersburg. Her poetry has been read on NPR at the Library of Congress. She is poetry editor of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.

Gail Denham’s poems, essays, and photographs have been published for 36 years, recently in state poetry newsletters and anthologies. Her poem “Save That Smile” was chosen to be posted on buses in Highland Park, Illinois. She has published three poetry chapbooks and leads writing workshops.

Lucille Lang Day (www.lucillelangday.com) is the author of eight poetry collections and chapbooks, including The Curvature of Blue, Infinities, and Wild One. Her memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story, received a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and her poetry and prose have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies.

Janet Dinsmore has been writing poetry on and off for years. An editor and writer in her professional life, she authored multiple publications, dealing with juvenile/criminal justice reform, child welfare/abuse/domestic violence, health and drug policy, and higher education.

Carol Dorf’s poetry has been published in Spillway, Sin Fronteras, Antiphon, Composite, About Place, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Scientific American, Maintenant, OVS Best of Indie Lit New England, and elsewhere. She is poetry editor of Talking Writing.

Milton Paul Ehrlich is an 83-year-old psychologist who has published more than 100 poems in periodicals such as Descant, Wisconsin Review, Antigonish Review, Toronto Quarterly, Christian Science Monitor, Huffngton Post, and The New York Times.

Eric Forsbergh is the author of Imagine Morning: Poems of Companionship & Solitude (Richer Resources Publication, 2013). A two-time winner of the Poetry Society of Virginia’s Edgar Allen Poe Memorial Prize, he lives in Reston, Virginia, where he practices dentistry. He is a Vietnam veteran.

Patricia Frolander actively ranches in the Wyoming Black Hills, although at this stage of her life, she prefers her writing desk. Frolander, a Wrangler and Willa Cather Award recipient, has been widely published for eighteen years and was appointed Wyoming Poet Laureate by Governor Matt Mead in 2011-13.

Karen L. George, author of Into the Heartland, Inner Passage, Swim Your Way Back, and The Seed of Me, received grants from Kentucky Foundation for Women and Kentucky Arts Council. She holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University, reviews poetry at http://readwritepoetry.blogspot.com/ and is fiction editor of the journal, Waypoints.

Conrad Geller’s taste buds wore down long ago, but he is still eating and writing poetry. More than a hundred of his poems have been published, electronically and in print. A native Bostonian, he is living now in Northern Virginia.

E. Laura Golberg’s poetry has appeared in the Birmingham Poetry Review, RHINO, Pebble Lake Review, and Arlington Literary Journal, among other places, and will be published in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Free State Review, and Northern Virginia Review in 2015. She won first place in the DC Commission on the Arts Larry Neal Poetry Competition.

Mel Goldberg has taught literature and writing in California, Illinois, Arizona, and at Stanground College in Cambridgeshire, England. For seven years, he and his artist wife traveled in a small motorhome throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. They moved to Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico, where they live on a small income.

Erica Goss is the Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California. She is the author
of Wild Place (Finishing Line Press 2012) and Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets (PushPen Press 2014). Her poems, reviews, and articles appear widely. Please visit her at www.ericagoss.com.

Christie Grimes teaches at SUNY Jefferson and hosts the North Country Writers Festival in Northern New York. She has published in journals including Harpur Palate, Permafrost and Passages North. She earned graduate degrees from Florida State University, Texas State University, and Binghamton University. She adores Texas fruit kolaches.  

Atar Hadari’s Songs from Bialik: Selected Poems of H. N. Bialik (Syracuse University Press) was a finalist for the American Literary Translators’ Association Award, and his debut poetry collection, Rembrandt’s Bible, was published by Indigo Dreams. Lives of the Dead: Poems of Hanoch Levin is forthcoming from Arc Publications.

Gary Hanna received two Fellowships in Poetry and five individual artist awards from the Delaware Division of the Arts and a Residency Fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts from the Mid-Atlantic Art Foundation. His has published two chapbooks: The Homestead Poems and Sediment and Other Poems, both from the Broadkill Press.

Shayla Hawkins is a Detroit native whose writings have appeared in, among other publications, Passages North, Crab Orchard Review, Poets & Writers, Tidal Basin Review, and The Caribbean Writer. Her first book, Carambola, was published in 2012, and she is currently working on her second book. She lives in Michigan.

Zilka Joseph was nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and is a Hopwood award winner. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Quiditty, Review Americana, Gatronomica and Cutthroat. Lands I Live In and What Dread, her two chapbooks, were nominated for a PEN America and a Pushcart Prize, respectively. www.zilkajoseph.com.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of the poetry chapbooks Field Trip to the Museum (Finishing Line Press) and Stronger Than Cleopatra (ELJ Publications). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications, including Gargoyle and Christian Science Monitor. She is the author of thirty books for young readers. Visit her at www.jacquelinejules.com.

Derek Kannemeyer grew up in Cape Town and London, and lives and teaches in Richmond, Virginia. His writing has appeared in (for example) Marco Polo, The Saint Ann’s Review, The New Virginia Review, Rattapallax, Smartish Pace, and Rolling Stone. He drinks nothing immoderately, but eats with considerably less restraint.   

Lisa Kosow has published poems in Gargoyle, WordWrights! and other journals and had a poem included in the anthology Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin Miller’s Cabin.  Her chapbook, Dawn is Moving, was published by the Argonne Hotel Press. She lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, and works as a law librarian.

Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda served as Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2006 to 2008.  She has written seven books of poetry, including The Embrace, winner of the Art in Literature: Mary Lynn Kotz Award. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Poet Lore, and Best of Literary Journals.

Daniel W.K. Lee is Seattle-based poet whose work has been published in various print and online publications, including the recent issues
of White Stag, Floating Bridge Review, and the forthcoming Berkeley Poetry Review. Lee blogs at daniel extra (www.danielextra.net) and Obscene Vegan (www.ObsceneVegan.tumblr.com). He can be reached at strongplum@yahoo.com.

Michael H. Levin is a lawyer and renewable-energy developer based in Washington DC. He has published widely and has received poetry awards from Writers Digest and others. His recent collection Watered Colors (Poetica, 2014) was a Washington Independent Review of Books best poetry selection (May 2014). See www.MichaelLevinPoetry.com.

Anna Levine is an award-winning author of children’s and young adult books. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, raised in Montreal, Quebec, Levine has lived and collected recipes from the US through Europe to where she lives now in Israel. Levine has published poetry, short stories, and non-fiction articles. www.annalevine.org.

Diane Lockward is the author of The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop and three poetry books, most recently Temptation by Water. Her previous books are What Feeds Us, which received the 2006 Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize, and Eve’s Red Dress. Her poems have been included in such journals as Harvard Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner.

Christina Lovin is the author of Echo, A Stirring in the Dark, What We Burned for Warmth, Little Fires, & Flesh. Her award-winning writing is widely published and has been supported by Elizabeth George Foundation, Kentucky Foundation for Women, and Kentucky Arts Council. She lives in Kentucky, where she collects wool, dust, rejection letters, and shelter dogs.

Katharyn Howd Machan, professor of writing at Ithaca College, is the author of 32 published collections. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, and textbooks, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature and Sound and Sense. In 2012 she edited Adrienne Rich: A Tribute Anthology (Split Oak Press).

Rebecca Macijeski holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She serves as an Assistant Editor in Poetry for Hunger Mountain and Prairie Schooner. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Painted Bride Quarterly, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Whiskey Island, Fickle Muses, Phantom Drift, Fourteen Hills, and others.  

Charlotte Mandel has published eight books of poetry, the most recent, Life Work from David Robert Books. She is winner of the 2012 New Jersey Poets Prize.  Previous books include two poem-novellas of feminist biblical revision—The Life of Mary and The Marriages of Jacob. Her Through a Garden Gate, with Photographs by Vincent Covello, is forthcoming from David Robert Books.

Kimberly McClintock is the recipient of a Larry Levis Post-Graduate Fellowship from Warren Wilson College’s MFA Alumni Association. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Glassworks, Bird’s Thumb, Mountain Gazette, Chattahoocheeahoochee Review and Wazee. After many years by the ocean in New Jersey, she currently lives on the Front Range in Colorado.

Leslie Anne McIlroy won the Slipstream Chapbook Prize for Gravel, the Word Press Book Prize for Rare Space, and the Chicago Literary Awards. Liquid Like This was published by Word Press and SLAG by Main Street Rag. Leslie is a 2014 Pushcart Prize nominee and Managing Editor of HEArt— Human Equity through Art. Visit www.lamcilroy.org.

Anne Meek has had poems published in The Southern Poetry Anthology Volume VI: Tennessee, Skipping Stones, The Poet’s Domain, and The Small Farm. She is an editor and author of numerous works pertaining to education, now concentrating on a book manuscript about the Common Core, scheduled to be published in 2015.

Jane Miller is a poetry and flash fiction writer from Wilmington, DE. Her work has appeared in the Wilmington News Journal, Mojave River Review, Broadkill Review and Midwest Quarterly among others. She was awarded a poetry fellowship in 2014 from the State of Delaware.

Brad Aaron Modlin’s work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Florida Review, RHINO, River Teeth, the recent anthology A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford, and others. He is a PhD candidate at Ohio University, where he works for New Ohio Review and edits Quarter After Eight. 

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore’s first book of poetry, Dawn Visions, was published in 1964 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books, San Francisco. Since then he has published more than 50 poetry collections, most recently The Sweet Enigma of it All (The Ecstatic Exchange, 2015). A native Californian, Moore now lives in Philadelphia. See his work at ecstaticxchange.com, and www.danielmoorepoetry.com.

Ellen Birkett Morris is the author of Surrender (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry has appeared in journals including The Clackamas Literary Review, Juked, Thin Air Magazine, Alimentum, Blast Furnace, Gastronomica and Inscape. Her poem “Origins” was nominated for the 2006 Pushcart Prize. Ellen received a 2013 Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council.

Margaret S. Mullins lives in downtown Baltimore.   She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, the editor of Manorborn 2009: The Water Issue (Abecedarian Press) and author of Family Constellation (Finishing Line Press, 2012.)  Her poetry has appeared on Writer’s Almanac and been read by Garrison Keillor on NPR.

Carol Nolde’s poetry has been anthologized in Knowing Stones: Poems of Exotic Places, the second edition of Love Is Ageless—Stories About Alzheimer’s Disease, and Child of my Child. Her chapbook Comfort in Stone was published by Finishing Line Press in November 2014.

Susan Notar is a poet living in Northern Virginia. She is a member of the Poetry Society of Virginia and the Arlington Writer’s Group. In 2014 she received the Poetry Society of Virginia Cenie H. Moon first prize for her poem “Hands with Grapes.” Her work has appeared in Penumbra, Tortious and the Hare, and Tapestry. 

John O’Dell’s poetry has appeared in Potomac Review, Baltimore Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, George Mason Review, and others and in several anthologies, including Free State: A Harvest of Maryland Poets. He received a 1997 Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council and is the author of Painting at Night (Little Cove Press, 1994).

Cari Oleskewicz lives in Tampa, Florida, and Lucca, Italy. Her work has been published in several journals, including The Washington Post, The Found Poetry Review, Pork & Gin, Epiphany Magazine, The Commonline Journal, Imitation Fruit Literary Journal, and/span> Sasee Magazine. She is pursuing an MFA at the University of Tampa.

Andrea Potos is the author of five poetry collections, most recently New Girl (Anchor & Plume Press) and We Lit the Lamps Ourselves (Salmon Poetry, Ireland). Another book entitled An Ink Like Early Twilight is forthcoming from Salmon in 2015. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her family.

Michele Parker Randall holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from New England College. The author of Museum of Everyday Life,/span> a collection of poems, her work has been published locally and nationally.  She teaches First Year Writing at Stetson University and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Central Florida.

Rita Mae Reese is the author of The Alphabet Conspiracy and a recipient of numerous awards, including a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her second book, The Book of Hulga, won the Felix Pollak Prize and will be published by the University of Wisconsin Press. Visit her at www. ritamaereese.com.

Susan Rich is the author of four poetry collections, including Cloud Pharmacy and The Alchemist’s Kitchen. She co-edited The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders and has received awards from the Fulbright Foundation and the Times Literary Supplement of London. Rich’s work appears in the Harvard Review, Plume, and Poetry Northwest.

Kim Roberts is the author of four books of poems, most recently To the South Pole (Broadkill River Press, 2015).  She is editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC (Plan B Press, 2010), and co-editor of the web exhibit DC Writers’ Homes.  www.kimroberts.org.

Sarah Russell is in metaphor rehab after spending many years teaching, writing, and editing academic prose. Her short stories and poems have appeared in anthologies and online venues, including Poppy Road Review, The Houseboat, and Misfit Magazine. You can find more of her work at www. SarahRussellPoetry.com.

Nicholas Samaras won The Yale Series of Younger Poets Award with his first book of poetry. His new book, American Psalm, World Psalm, is now out (2014) with Ashland Poetry Press.

Rikki Santer’s work has appeared in various publications, including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Margie, Slab, Alabama Literary Review, Potomac Review, RHINO, Grimm and The Main Street Rag. Her published collections include Front Nine, Kahiki Redux, Fishing for Rabbits, and Clothesline Logic, published by Pudding House as finalist in their national chapbook competition.

Lawrence Schimel is the author of the chapbooks Fairy Tales for Writers and Deleted Names. His poems have appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, The Christian Science Monitor, Physics Today, etc., and in many anthologies, including Chicken Soup for the Horse-Lover’s Soul 2, The Incredible Sestina Anthology, and The Random House Treasury of Light Verse.

Danielle Sellers is from Key West, Florida. She has an MA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from the University of Mississippi. Her first book, Bone Key Elegies, was published by Main Street Rag. She teaches English at Trinity Valley School in Fort Worth, Texas.

Dianne Silvestri is author of the chapbook Necessary Sentiments (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in many publications, including Earth’s Daughters, The Comstock Review, The Pharos, The Somerville Times, Evening Street Review, Steam Ticket, Boston Literary Magazine, and Apeiron Review, as well as an anthology for healing.

Cary Bland Simpson is an alumna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she completed a major course study in English and Creative Writing. Cary has been published twice in The Cellar Door. She currently works as a freelance editor while moonlighting as a poet.

Sherry Weaver Smith seeks inspiration from the grasslands of the American West, travel memories, and her daughter. Her haiku collection, Land Shapes, was published by Richer Resources Publications (2011), and she is completing two children’s novels for Pauline Books. She has degrees from the University of Oxford and Duke University. She has received numerous poetry award and was a 2008 Pushcart nominee.

Nina Soifer is a freelance food writer who was an off-premises caterer for over twenty years in addition to owning a gourmet prepared-food shop and bakery. Her poems have appeared in The Literary Review, Small Batch—an Anthology of Bourbon Poetry, Alimentum—the Literature of Food, and other publications.

D. A. Spruzen earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte and teaches writing in Northern Virginia. Her poems and short stories have appeared in many online and print publications. A poetry collection Long in the Tooth (Finishing Line Press) and her novels are available on Amazon.com.

Margo Taft Stever’s poetry collections include The Lunatic Ball (Kattywompus Press, 2015); The Hudson Line (Main Street Rag, 2012); Frozen Spring (Mid-List Press First Series Award for Poetry, 2002); and Reading the Night Sky (Riverstone Press, 1996). She is the founding and current co-editor of Slapering Hol Press, Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Jo Barbara Taylor lives near Raleigh, North Carolina. Her poems and academic writing have appeared in journals, magazines, anthologies, and online; she leads poetry writing workshops through Duke Continuing Education. Of four chapbooks, the most recent, High Ground, was published by Main Street Rag, 2013.

Maria Terrone is the author of the poetry collections  Eye to Eye (Bordi-ghera Press), A Secret Room in Fall, co-winner of the McGovern Prize (Ashland Poetry Press), The Bodies We Were Loaned, and American Gothic, Take 2. Her work has appeared in magazines including Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Hudson Review and in more than 20 anthologies. 

Stefanie Wielkopolan is a Michigan poet who keeps moving back to Pittsburgh. In 2008, she received her MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University. Her first collection of poetry, Border Theory, was published by Black Coffee Press in 2011. She currently teaches students ages 2-82 in Pennsylvania.

Charan Sue Wollard’s poems and stories have been published in numerous anthologies and literary magazines. The former poet laureate of Livermore, California, she is the author of In My Other Life (Richer Resources Publications, 2009). A graduate of George Washington University, Wollard studied art at Las Positas College and has shown her artwork in local and regional shows.

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Broadkill Review, Edge, Emerge, Third Wednesday, and Evening Street Review and has won prizes from Poetry Virginia and Virginia Writers Club. Her books Insectomania (2013) and Arithmetic and other verses (2011) were published by Richer Resources Publications. She blogs at  butdoesitrhyme.com.

Annelies Zijderveld has been published in Blind Pen Journal, Arthouse America, and Sated Magazine.  She is associate editor of Poetry International. Alimentum Journal selected “The Food Poet,” her blog, as one of their favorite food blogs. Andrews McMeel is publishing her cookbook, Steeped: Recipes Infused with Tea, in April 2015.