Poet Talk on WMUA

Samantha Pious translates women's poetry, especially sapphic women's poetry. Her aim is to contribute to a canon—or canons—of our own. So far, she has translated the selected poems of Renée Vivien, Natalie Barney, and Judith Teixeira. Her translations of Teixeira have been shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award and for a Golden Crown Literary Award. She has also translated A Lover and His Lady: One Hundred Ballades, by Christine de Pizan, which is forthcoming with The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series through Iter Press. A volume of her original poems, Sappho Is Dead, is available through Headmistress Press. 

Amy Gordon's poems have appeared in Antiques Magazine, The Amsterdam Review,  Ekphrastic Review, The Massachusetts Review, and other journals. She is the author of three chapbooks: Deep Fahrenheit (Prolific Press) and The Yellow Room (Finishing Line Press).  Leaf Town is the winner of the 2023 Slate Roof Press Elyse Wolf Chapbook Prize. Before turning to poetry, she wrote and published primarily for young readers. She taught drama at the Bement School for almost forty years and now she runs an after-school theater program for the elementary school kids in Gill. 

In a career spanning six decades, Ted Pearson has published thirty-two books of poetry, most recently Epistrophy and Trilogy. He also co-authored The Grand Piano, a ten-volume experiment in collective autobiography; edited Epilogue, a posthumous edition of Craig Watson’s last poems, and co-edited Bobweaving Detroit: The Selected Poems of Murray Jackson. His work has appeared in Canada, England, France, Spain, and India. Ted was born and raised on the San Francisco peninsula, a seventh generation Californian. His musical education began in 1960. His first sa teacher was Lee Konitz. In 1964, he began writing poetry at the suggestion of Paul Desmond, a family friend. He subsequently attended Vandercook College of Music, Foothill College, and San Francisco State University.  His first book appeared in 1976, when he began his life-long association with the San Francisco Language Poets. He has been a visiting lecturer in poetics at Cornell University, and has taught Composition and Rhetoric at Wayne State University and the University of Redlands. He now lives in Northampton. 

Born 1947 in Northampton, Robin Barber, M.A., is a writer, teacher, and photographer.He loves writing workshops--first joined Pat Schneider's workshop in 1987, then Gene Zeiger's, then Carol Edelstein's from 1994 to the present. Certified by Amherst Writers and Artists leadership program,  he's been leading the Wednesday evening and Monday morning workshops since 1997. In 2010, Robin helped Carol Edelstein ( they're married ) establish non-profit Gallery of Readers Press, using a small annual grant and donations to fund Carol's reading series with 18 writers each season, a website with many resources, and the publication of 21 books. Find out more at www.galleryofreaders.org

JK Lawson is a visual artist and poet. Over the past 30 years his work has been exhibited extensively throughout the USA including the American Visionary Museum in Baltimore, the Californian African American Museum in Los Angelos, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Time and Space Limited, Hudson, NY and currently at the New England Visionary Arts museum, in Northanpton, Ma.He is the author of seven books, including Zombie Love, his third collection of poems in the Some Guy Upstairs Trilogy. His novel, Hurricane Hotel, set at the Audubon Hotel in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, has been successfully adapted for the theater with several staged readings both in the USA and UK. JK helped establish a poets/songwriter residency at the Rame Center for the Arts in Cornwall, U.K. and along with the poet Jane Ormerod, hosts the Galerie of Poetic Autopsies. A monthly gathering of poets, songwriters, and other undisrables, held at the Park Theatre in Hudson, NY.He is the recipient of both the Mass Individual Grant and the Berkshire Taconic grant and currently lives in Sheffield,Ma with his wife and son and 16-year-old puppy ,Sunshine. For more information, please visit www.lawsonworks.com or follow him on social media.

Suzanne Stroh’s new book, published last December by Headmistress Press, is the first English translation of the only book length prose poem by Natalie Clifford Barney, one of the Brilliant Exiles living in Paris between the two World Wars. Suzanne’s writing has been anthologized in NPR’s Story Project, edited by Paul Auster, and by Peacock Press in the Defying Gravity Series edited by Richard Peabody. She’s at work on her first poetry collection.

Anthony Walton’s poems have appeared widely, in such magazines and journals as The New Yorker, The American Scholar, The Black Scholar, 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, Black Renaissance Noire, Poetry Ireland, Oxford American, Obsidian, Notre Dame Review, The Library of America, and The Academy of American Poets, among many others. He is the author of a chapbook of poems, 1968, and his full-length collection, Celestial Mechanics, will be published in September by Godine. A celebrated writer of prose, he is the author of Mississippi: An American Journey and The End of Respectability. With the late Michael S. Harper, he edited two landmark anthologies, Every Shut-Eye Ain’t Asleep: African American Poetry Since World War II, and The Vintage Anthology of African American Poetry. He teaches at Bowdoin College.

Heather Treseler is author of Auguries & Divinations, which received the 2025 Massachusetts Book Award in poetry, and two chapbooks, Hard Bargain and Parturition. Her work has received a Pushcart Prize, the W. B. Yeats Prize, and the Editors’ Prize from The Missouri Review, and support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her poems appear in Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, The Irish Times, and Kenyon Review, and her essays appear in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, and in eight books about poetry. She is professor of English at Worcester State University and a scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center. 

Isa Gitana is a Romani, Indigenous Mexican, and Italian queer femme poet writing about ancestry, survival, and the sacred ordinary. Her work moves between lyric tenderness and cultural critique, exploring life in a body shaped by migration, erasure, and resilience. She has been published in the Dear Sister anthology and in Meat for Tea literary magazine. A lifelong community builder, she treats poetry as woven into kitchens, classrooms, altars, and conversation. She is drawn to work that holds softness as power and storytelling as resistance. Isabella is a non-traditional student at Holyoke Community College, preparing to transfer for her bachelor’s degree. She lives in Western Massachusetts, writing, studying, and tending the small, persistent magic of community.

D M Gordon is the prize-winning author of Fourth World (Adastra Press), Nightly, at the Institute of the Possible(Hedgerow Books)—a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award, and Loosestrife for Porcupines, 2026, finalist for the Blue Light Book Award. Two novels, Gabriel, about a lost boy trying to find himself and home among northern islands in the 1960's, and Edda, about his grandmother and the destructive love of her life during WW II, are slated for publication by Sibylline Press in 2027 and 2028.  Gordon's past history includes, as a classical pianist with a masters from B.U., teaching, and performing chamber music; as political activist, fundraising, campaign staffing for Kamala Harris in Bucks County, PA, and writing a weekly Good News blog for FridayAction, and as an equestrian—schooling high level dressage mounts with Olympic team members. Her oddest job, briefly held, was as a courier for stallion semen. After a major course correction, following aptitude testing with The Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation, she dedicated herself to becoming a writer.  10,000 hours later, she is a novelist, poet, creative non-fiction writer, reader, and editor. She owes her literary skill to the support of many, including professors at Smith College who welcomed her dogged auditing. Poets, authors, and editors who sharpened her abilities include Eleanor Wilner, Ellen Bryant Voight, Tony Earley, Sigrid Nunez and the inimitable Kurt Vonnegut who, for a time, was holed up in a lonely office in the far reaches of Smith’s Neilson Library and dispensing wisdom.  As an editor at Hedgerow Books, she midwifed the publication of ten poetry collections, several of which were honored as finalists for The Montaigne Medal, Eric Hoffer Award and Massachusetts Book Award. Short works have been published widely in journals such as The Cincinnati Review, Poetry Daily, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet—a zine by Small Beer Press, run by local literary heroes Gavin Grant and Kelly Link. Awards include, but are not limited to, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in fiction and Glimmer Train’s First Prize for her short story, “The Work of Hunters is Another Thing." Apart from the novels and latest poetry book, she's also launching a new Substack called Leaf Sheep, offering poems, classic and new, about animals living among us, and how we live among them.  You can find her at www.dmgordon.com. 

Rebecca Hart Olander’s poetry has appeared recently or is forthcoming in On the Seawall, Poetry Northwest, and Shō Poetry Journal, and her collaborative visual and written work has been published in multiple journals and in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing, from Black Lawrence Press. A Women's National Book Association Poetry Award winner, Rebecca’s books include Dressing the Wounds (a dancing girl press chapbook, 2019), Uncertain Acrobats (CavanKerry Press, 2021), a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award and the Massachusetts Book Award, and Singing from the Deep End (CavanKerry Press, 2026). Her work has been supported by Straw Dog Writers Guild and the Mass Cultural Council. Rebecca recently served as the James Merrill Visiting Poet at Amherst College, she works with graduate student poets at Wilkes University, and she is the editor/director of Perugia Press, a feminist press publishing emerging women poets. She grew up on Boston’s North Shore and lives in Western Massachusetts.

Maya Janson’s second poetry collection, “On the Mercy Me Planet” was published in 2022 by Blue Edge Books and was selected as a “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Janson’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Threepenney Review, Plume, Best American Poetry and elsewhere. She has been a recipient of a Massachusetts Artist Grant and has been a fellow at MacDowell. Janson has been a lecturer in poetry at Smith College and is currently employed as a nurse with Windhorse Integrative Mental Health in Northampton. 

Casper Lucia is a trans artist and writer living in the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts. He grew up in Los Angeles. His work thus far mostly exists in limited and ephemeral forms, like broadsides, drawings, and self-published zines that he no longer has any copies of. Email him at [email protected] to stay updated on his work.

Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His new book of poems is called Jailbreak of Sparrows (2025). His previous book, Floaters, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2021. Other poetry collections include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016), The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006), Alabanza (2003) and Imagine the Angels of Bread (1996). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019). Espada has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/Revson Fellowship, a Letras Boricuas Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The title poem of his collection Alabanza, about 9/11, has been widely anthologized and performed. His book of essays and poems, Zapata’s Disciple (1998), was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program outlawed by the state of Arizona. A former tenant lawyer with Su Clínica Legal in Greater Boston, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Mydalis Vera is a Puerto Rican writer  and social worker with an MFA in Nonfiction Creative Writing from Bay Path University. Her body of work includes the self-published collection Warrior Guerrera: Sayings and Affirmations para las Guerreras and a poetry chapbook titled Warrior Guerreras and Broken Hearts, Burning Suns. She is also the author of the Guerrera Writer Journal.Her writing has appeared in various publications, including Multiplicity Magazine, The Nasiona, The Latino Book Review, A Queen’s Narrative, WordPeace, Zonta, and the MultiCreative Wisdom Anthology. In addition to her published works, she is actively involved in the writing community, hosting the Guerrera Writing Group, a free weekly gathering for writers that meets every Monday evening from 7 PM to 8 PM.She is the founder and owner of Guerrera Writer LLC, a business dedicated to empowering writers and storytellers through workshops, publications, and community initiatives. In recognition of her impact and leadership, Guerrera Writer LLC was recently honored with a 40 Under 40 Business Award in 2025.

Lauren Marie Schmidt is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Two Black Eyes and a Patch of Hair Missing; The Voodoo Doll Parade, selected for the Main Street Rag Author’s Choice Chapbook Series; and Psalms of The Dining Room, a sequence of poems about her volunteer experience at a soup kitchen in Eugene, Oregon. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Rattle, The Florida Review, The MacGuffin, The Progressive, and others. Her awards include the So to Speak Poetry Prize, the Neil Postman Prize for Metaphor, The Janet B. McCabe Prize for Poetry, and the Bellevue Literary Review’s Vilcek Prize for Poetry. Her fourth collection, Filthy Labors, a finalist for the Brittingham/Pollak Poetry Prize, chronicles her volunteer teaching experience at a transitional housing program for homeless women in her native New Jersey.  

Born in Westerly, RI, Carla Panciera was raised on her family’s dairy farm. She graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a BA in English and has a graduate degree in poetry from Boston University where she studied with George Starbuck and Derek Walcott. She has published three collections of poetry: One of the Cimalores (Cider Press Award Winner), No Day, No Dusk, No Love (Bordighera Press Award) and One Trail of Longing, Another of String (Bordighera 2025).  Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines including Poetry, Painted Bride Quarterly, Nimrod, Water~Stone Review, the Carolina Quarterly, and the Los Angeles Review. Her collection of short stories, Bewildered, received the 2013 Grace Paley Short Fiction Award from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (Pam Houston, judge) and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in the fall of 2014. Her short stories have appeared in the New England Review, the Clackamas Review, Slice, and other magazines. Her short story, “The Kind of People Who Look at Art” was indexed by Junot Diaz as a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories for 2017.Barnflower: A Rhode Island Farm Memoir was published in the spring of 2023 by Loom Press, Amesbury, MA. Her essays and reviews have appeared in several journals including the Chattahoochee Review, the Georgetown Review, Sugar House Review, and Under the Sun.She has received support from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.A retired high school English teacher, Carla lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts. 

K. T. Landon’s debut collection, Abide, was selected by Kim Addonizio as the winner of the 2025 Richard Snyder Memorial Poetry Prize and will be published by Ashland Poetry Press in 2026.  Her poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Sun, New Ohio Review,  North American Review,Nimrod, Narrative, and Best New Poets among others.  Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and she is a reader for Lily Poetry Review. She received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Deborah Gorlin is the author of two previous books of poems, BODILY COURSE, White Pine Poetry Press Prize, 1997, and LIFE OF THE GARMENT, Bauhan Publishing, winner of the 2014 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize.  Her new book of poems, OPEN FIRE, Bauhan Publishing, has been published this Spring, 2023. She has published in a wide range of journals including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Bomb, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and Best Spiritual Writing 2000. Recent poemsappear in Plume, On the Seawall, the Ekphrastic Review, Mass Poetry, the Hard Work of Hope, The Common, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies, Swwim. Her lyric essay, “Jack of All Trades,” was published as a finalist in Calyx magazine’s 2022 Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing.  Emeritus co-director of the Writing Program at Hampshire College, she served for many years as a poetry editor at The Massachusetts Review.

Lori Shine received her MFA from UMass Amherst in 2004. Her poems have appeared in 6x6, APR, Boston Review, Conduit, New American Writing, Tin House, and other magazines, and in the chapbooks Weather Eye (2025) and Coming Down in White (2007), both with artwork by Kathranne Knight. She and Knight have worked together on multiple collaborative projects, including Correspondence Publishing. Lori has given readings at St. Mark's Church, in art studios, backyards, bars, lecture halls, festivals, and at James Turrell's Roden Crater. For twelve years she worked as a managing editor to independent publishers including Wave Books and Catapult. She currently writes for UMass Magazine and other publications. She lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

Karen Keough-Huff, also known as ‘Q’, has self-published 4 books and recently published a book of poetry, When I Was 8.  Her background in education and in business includes curriculum and handbook writing, as well as technical writing as a documentation specialist.  She is a member of the Writing Sisters, a group of BIPOC and LBGTQ+ women writers in western Massachusetts. You can find her book When I Was 8, at www.Blurb.com.

Kali Lightfoot lives in Salem, MA. She worked as a teacher, wilderness ranger in Washington state, executive at Road Scholar, and retired from her position as founding Executive Director of the National Resource Center for Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes. Kali earned an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2015. Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies; been nominated for Pushcart prizes by Lavender Review, and Poetry South, and for Best of the Net by *82 Revies. Her first full-length collection of poems, Pelted by Flowers, was published by CavanKerry Press in April, 2021. The book was chosen as a Must Read book for 2022 by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and was selected as a Best-Dressed by Sundress Publications. Kali’s reviews of poetry books have been published by Broadsided Press, The Hopper, and Solstice. Kali's recent poetry collection is Big Band Night at the Good Life Bar, Moon Pie Press.

Poet Eric Wasileski (M.Div), is a long time writer and facilitator for Warrior Writers, a national veterans writing group out of Philadelphia. His poetry book, Live Free (or die) is available from Human Error Publishing. He has also been included in many anthologies including Warrior Writers, Massachusetts Bards, and locally in Silkworm. His second collection Consoling the Weeping Willow is nearing readiness for publication. His Children's book, How the Rainbow Became Truly Beautiful is only available directly. Critics have called him a protest poet. Eric is a lifetime member of Veterans for Peace, DAV and VFW. Rev Wasileski has worked professionally in ministry in Quaker, UU and Buddhist settings. He resides in Pittsfield with his dogs. He is a father, poet, preacher, activist, veteran and man of conscience. 

Darlene’s professional career spans 32 years from working on youth leadership development programs with the United Way, runaway youth and their families for RAP, then a program of the YWCA, a s a social worker for Holyoke DCF, a crisis worker for Mount Tom, a clinician, a Juvenile Probation Officer, and now she works to mediate civil petitions in Family Court, and also by helping individuals with their recovery journey from substances and trauma. Darlene has been known to be on the frontline leading Black Lives Matter marches, advocating for housing, education, and immigrant rights, fighting for labor rights as a union Stewart, also for diversity equity and inclusion in the workplace, she has run for political office both as a city councilor and vice president of the United States with the Green Party. She is currently the treasure for Alianza DV services, a cause that is near and dear to her heart as a survivor. She is now embarking upon a career as an author, as her passion is writing and poetry. She is the 2025 Strawdog Emerging Writer Fellow, and recipient of the Valley Creates Assets 4 Artists Building Capacity grant. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Mount Holyoke College, and a master’s in social work from Springfield College. Her first loves are her children, and grandchildren. She proudly boasts about the Writing Sisters, a collective of BiPOC and LGBTQ writing women who convene regularly to write, share their work, grow as literary artist and make a difference in the community, which she helped co-found. She currently is working on her memoir and a poetry collection, and her family, friends, and writing sisters serve as her daily inspiration as she feels very loved and supported by them. Her favorite saying is “love heals all wounds, so love as much as you can.” Darlene lives in Holyoke with her partner, and their two dogs Bella and Daisy.

Since 2012, Carla Manene Cooke has facilitated writing groups in and from her home in Northampton, Massachusetts.  Her poetry has appeared in the literary journals Emulate, Meat for Tea, Naugatuck River Review, Persimmon Tree, Pineapple, Plum, RavensPerch, Silkworm, and Wordpeace.  She is a freelance copy editor and 2022 Pushcart nominee.

Brad Crenshaw has published four collections of poetry. His most recent book, Chased by Lunacies and Wonders, has won the 2023 Catamaran Poetry Prize. His other books include My Gargantuan Desire, Genealogies, and Memphis Shoals. His work has appeared in a wide range of journals including Catamaran, Shenandoah, Chicago Review, Massachusetts Review, and recent poems appear in Salt, Hawaii Pacific Review, Pacifica Literary Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Phren-Z. His poems have also been anthologized in Bear Flag Republic, The Hard Work of Hope, and California Fire and Water. He can be found at https://wordpress.com/view/bradcrenshaw.me.

Carolyn Zaikowski is a fiction writer, poet, essayist, and death doula. She is the current Poet Laureate of Easthampton, Massachusetts.Carolyn is the author of two prose poetry/experimental novels: A Child Is Being Killed (Aqueous Books, 2013), which poet Eileen Myles called a "saint of a little book", and In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse, which won the Mainline Contest at Civil Coping Mechanisms and was released in 2016.Her fiction, poetry, and essays have been published widely, in such publications as Washington Post, Alaska Quarterly Review, West Branch, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, PANK, Sixth Finch, Heavy Feather Review, DIAGRAM, Dusie, Huffington Post, and Everyday Feminism.​Carolyn holds a BA summa cum laude in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she researched trauma, the psychology of meat eating, and political protest movements. She then earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, where she studied trauma and narrative, the subversion of Western literary genre constructs, and the roles that poetry and storytelling play in anti-fascist, anti-colonialist, and feminist resistance. She has taught English and gender studies in the USA and abroad, including in Kolkata, India's red light districts and to political exiles in safe houses at the Thai-Burma border.Carolyn works as a creative writing teacher, manuscript consultant, and funeral celebrant/death doula. Sign up for her newsletter here for updates. Webpage:carolynzaikowski.com

Ellen Miller-Mack is a nurse practitioner (retired/rewired) with an MFA in Poetry from Drew University. Her book reviews have appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso, Bookslut, the Rumpus, the Poetry Cafe, and the Poetry Foundation. Her poems have appeared in Lavender Review ( journal and anthology January 2025), Lily Poetry Review, Antiphon, 5 A.M., Redheaded Stepchild, Affilia, and The Lake Rises: poems to and for our bodies of water. Ellen co-wrote The Real Cost of Prisons Comix ( PM Press) and the comic books are downloadable from the Real Cost of Prisons website.

DeMisty D. Bellinger lives with her family in Central Massachusetts, where she teaches creative writing. She has a BA in English from University of Wisconsin-Platteville, an MFA from Southampton College, and a PhD from the University of Nebraska. She is an alum of Bread Loaf and Marge Piercy’s Intensive Writing Workshop. Also, she was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center on a fellowship and at Gullkistan in Iceland with support from friends and family.

I am the daughter of Lie Chenn Lin and Yin Chou Lin, born in Taiwan into a big extended farming family from which I was taken away when we immigrated to Canada for my father’s graduate education. I’m an interdisciplinary artist, writer/poet and educator in love with the forests of cedar as they burn up in fires stoked by colonialism. Through storytelling and ceremonial activism, I am co-becoming a world of kincentric justice. I pray for the water beings slipping through our fingers. I live in Nonotuck/Nipmuc Land, Western Massachusetts in a town named after a genocidal invader of Turtle Island. I listen to places for ancestral hauntings. I love co-creating kincentric immersive arts with communities restoring and restory-ing good relations with Land, Water, Earth. My burning questions: “how can the arts heal relationships harmed (almost irreparably) by colonization? What is the relationship between healing and justice?” These questions are leading me into unknown territories and becomings where I’m lost in the good company of Bayo Akomolafe, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Mia Mingus, Zoe Todd, Karen Barad, and many other companions.JuPong was a faculty member in the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College for nearly 20 years before the College closed in 2024. She recently completed her doctorate in Environmental Studies at Antioch University New England. JuPong's webpage: www.juponglin.net.

C. Desirée Finley is a writer and artist now living in western Mass. Her poetry is published in Straw Dog Writers Pandemic Poetry, Silkworm Journal (print), Cape Cod Times & Willawaw Journal [Pushcart nomination] Meat For Tea and some local anthologies, and soon to be in The Brussels Review. Finley says, "I've lived on both coasts, in cities and ocean adjacent, but what has influenced my writing most of all is having a mountain in my backyard. In addition to poetry, I write quirky short stories and have experimented with hybrid forms. It all begins, as Ocean Vuong would say, with curiosity."

Jovonna Van Pelt is a writer, a lover of animals and trees, a reader of history, and an enthusiastic volunteer at the LAVA Center (Local Access to Valley Arts) in her home town of Greenfield. She has an M.A. in Ethics and can play the spoons. Her favorite job was running a puppet theater. All of this has helped Jo become a multiple finalist for the Poet's Seat prize and author of Unrelated Questions, from Human Error Publishing; a second collection is in process. She is a frequent participant at area open mics, most recently on the Word Stage at the Garlic & Arts Fest. Her work appears in a variety of anthologies and journals, including Compass Roads, Plum, and Valley and Beyond.--

Born in Brooklyn, NY, Ivy Schweitzer has lived for manyyears in Vermont and taught English and Women’s, Gender,and Sexuality Studies at Dartmouth College. Her poetry hasappeared, most recently, in Passager, Ritualwell, Tikkun,New Croton Review, Mississippi Review, Spoon River PoetryReview, Mid-Atlantic Review and The New England PoetryClub’s Prize Winners’ Anthology 2024. Dividing Rivers isher debut solo collection. For her extensive work, visit herauthor page at https://sites.dartmouth.edu/ivyschweitzer/

Susan Middleton edits science books and writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Her work has been published in regional and national literary publications, including most recently Raven's Perch, Silkworm, and WordPeace. Susan is a co-founder of the Northfield-based Slate Roof Press (slateroofpress.com), which in 2007 published her chapbook "Seed Case of the Heart." In 2018 she won 1st prize in the Beals Prize for Poetry. She has a poem in the spring issue of Plum, the literary journal of Greenfield Community College.

Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of two collections of poetry:  Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016) and Dispatch (Persea Books, 2019). His third collection, An Optimism, is forthcoming in October 2025 from Persea Books. Cameron’s creative work can be found in POETRY, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere, and has been supported by fellowships from Cave Canem, The Watering Hole, and the Lannan Foundation.Cameron’s critical/scholarly writing can be found, among other places, in Signs, Trans Studies Quarterly, and American Quarterly. His book The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment (Duke University Press, 2022) was awarded the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies and the Alan Bray Memorial Book Award for best book in LGBTQ literature and cultural studies. Presently, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

Beth Filson is a writer, poet and self-taught artist. She earned the MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop of the University of Iowa in poetry but works in multiple genres including playwrighting. Most recently Beth was awarded a writing fellowship from Hawthornden Foundation in Scotland where she gets to spend a month in a Scottish castle roaming its halls and libraries, meeting other fellows, getting to know the landscape and of course, writing. Beth has been a long time co-host of Writers Night Out with Jacqueline Sheehan and Rick Paar, a program of Straw Dog Writers Guild. She was the winner of the Wild Light Poetry contest sponsored by the Los Angeles Review and Red Hen Press, and the runner up in other contests too many times to count. Her poetry has appeared in the Los Angeles Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Compass Roads Anthology, Amherst Live Magazine, Naugatuck River Review, Meat for Tea, The Perch, and others. Beth’s one woman show, Telling the Story/Untelling the Diagnosis was produced by Pauline Productions and staged at The Blue Room in Easthampton. Her new play in progress was given a staged reading at the Lava Center last year. Beth was raised in Savannah Ga and spent most of her professional life in Atlanta working at the national and international levels to develop and implement Trauma-Informed Approaches and the reduction of seclusion and restraint in psychiatric settings. Beth is very happily at home now in Easthampton where she collects rare and of interest books, and is also a bookseller at Book Moon Books, also in Easthampton.     

Ian Fishman is a poet from Northampton, MA. Recent poems and writings can be found in b l u s h and BOMB. He edits and operates the poetry engine, Press Brake. His new chapbook Calm Down ! was published by Factory Hollow Press. www.factoryhollowpress.com

A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, Mary Warren Foulk (she/her) has been published in The Hollins Critic, Palette Poetry, Fjords Review, Silkworm, The Gay & Lesbian Review, and North American Review, among other publications. Her work also has appeared in Who's Your Mama? The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers (Soft Skull Press), (M)othering Anthology (Inanna Publications), and My Loves: A Digital Anthology of Queer Love Poems (Ghost City Press). She has two award-winning chapbooks, If I Could Write You a Happier Ending (dancing girl press) and Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter) (The Poetry Box). Her newest collection, The Show Must Go On, was a finalist for the 2021 Gival Press Poetry Award, and the Inlandia Institute's 2022 Hillary Gravendyk Prize, and a semi-finalist for the Word Works' 2022 Washington Prize.

Candace R. Curran was raised alongside Wachusett Mountain in rural Princeton by a Coyote and Ford mechanic doing the best they could. Curran is the founder and organizer of INTERFACE, exhibitions that included the work of twenty or more artists and poets over ten years of presentations throughout Western Massachusetts. Candace was also a co-founder of Exploded View, a five woman traveling collaborative art and poetry performance group. Her publications include the anthology, Bone Cages, with Doug Anderson and John Hodgen and others, Haley’s Press, 1996, and her book Playing in Wrecks, Haley’s Press, 2011.  Candace’s poetry has also appeared in journals, Meat For Tea, Silkworm, RAW NerVZ Haiku, and others. Her newest collection, The Sound of Her Good Name was published by Slate Roof Press. www.slateroofpress.com

Janet E. Aalfs is the author of 3 full-length books of poems and several small press and self-published chapbooks. Her writing is widely published in journals, anthologies, and online, most recently in Soundings East (Pushcart Prize nomination), How to Write a Form Poem, Words to Live By, Compass Roads, and Emulate. Former poet laureate of Northampton, MA (2003-2005), 8th degree black belt, master Tai Chi instructor, and founder/director of Lotus Peace Arts at Heron’s Bridge, Janet is the recipient of a Leadership and Advocacy in the Arts Award from the University of Massachusetts. She received an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and has been a featured presenter at many events and conferences including the Dodge Poetry Festival; the Mass Poetry Festival; Split This Rock; Power of Words Transformative Language Association; the Hudson Valley Writers Center, and performing arts teaching exchanges in Cape Town, South Africa. Janet has been offering interdisciplinary arts education rooted in feminist social justice activism locally, nationally, and internationally since 1977. www.heronsbridge.org

Dennis James Sweeney is the author of How to Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Literary Magazines and Small Presses, a guide for writers. His first book, In the Antarctic Circle, won the Autumn House Rising Writer Prize and was a Debut Poetry Book of 2021 in Poets & Writers. You’re the Woods Too, his second book, was a Small Press Distribution bestseller and a finalist for the Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Prize. Most recently, The Rolodex Happenings won the Stillhouse Press Novella Prize.His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Ecotone, Ninth Letter, The New York Times, The Southern Review, and Witness, among others. Formerly a Small Press Editor at Entropy and Assistant Editor at Denver Quarterly, he has an MFA from Oregon State University and a PhD from the University of Denver.Originally from Cincinnati, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he teaches at Amherst College.

In addition to her book Hive (Lily Poetry Review and Press), Suzanne Mercury is the author of two chapbooks, Sassafracas (Xerolage 69), a collection of photographs of visual poems that she made out of scraps of dichroic glass (2018, Xexoxial Editions) and Hand to Earth (2019, Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs). Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including SpoKe, Truck, Summer Stock, Bombay Gin, Sonora Review, Arts & Letters, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, as well as in the anthologies Let the Bucket Down and The Wisdoms of the Universes in a Single String of Letters. A graduate of Smith College and Syracuse University’s MFA program in creative writing, she lives in the greater Boston area where she creates sustainable gardens and keeps bees.

Libby Maxey is a senior editor and poetry editor at the online journal Literary Mama, where she has been a member of the staff for over a decade. Her poems have appeared in Crannóg, Stoneboat, Whale Road Review, Blue Unicorn, and elsewhere. She is among the winners of the Princemere Poetry Prize, the Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest, and the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, and her chapbook, Kairos (2019), won the Finishing Line Press New Women's Voices Contest. Her full-length collection, Indwelling (Resource Publications), was released last year. Her nonliterary activities include singing classical repertoire, ringing bells at Smith, and administering the Department of Classics at Amherst College.

Zoe Tuck was born in Texas, became a person in California, and now lives in Massachusetts. She is the author Bedroom Vowel (Bunny Presse), Terror Matrix (Timeless, Infinite Light) and the chapbooks Vape Cloud of Unknowing (Belladonna*), and The Book of Bella (DoubleCross Press), the latter of which is bound in a dos-a-dos edition with Emily Hunerwadel's "Peach Woman”. In addition to teaching creative writing and literature classes, Zoe is the co-editor of Hot Pink Magazine with Emily Bark Brown.

Eliot Cardinaux is a neuroqueer poet, pianist, composer, translator, and publisher working at the intersection of the lyric and improvised music. The author of seven poetry collections, including On the Long Blue Night (Dos Madres, 2023), Eliot has produced and appeared on over a dozen albums of original music, including, most recently, Imminence, with percussionist Gary Fieldman. Eliot’s poems and translations have appeared in journals such as California Quarterly, Tupelo Quarterly, Meridian, Jacket2, Solstice, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Eliot is also the founding editor of The Bodily Press. You can find Eliot as @eliotcardinaux and @thebodilypress on Instagram.

James Haug’s most recent collections are Riverain (Oberlin College Press), Three Poems (Factory Hollow Press), and My Team Hates Friday (Press Brake). He publishes Scram Press in Northampton, Massachusetts, and drives a van for Riverside Industries.

Ian Fishman is a poet from the Connecticut River Valley. He runs Press Brake (@brake.press), a publishing arm of western Massachusetts. He divides time b/w Brooklyn and Northampton, and he holds an MFA from NYU.

Jayson Keery is the author of The Choice is Real (Metatron Press, 2023) and the chapbooks Sleepover Nervous (Midnight Mass, 2024) and Astroturf (o•blēk editions, 2022). They have been anthologized in Mundus Press’s Nocturnal Properties, Nightboat Books' We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, and Pilot Press London's A Queer Anthology of Rage. They received the 2022 Metatron Press Prize for Rising Authors, selected by Fariha Róisín, and the 2021 Daniel and Merrily Glosband MFA Fellowship, selected by Wendy Xu. ​They live in Western Massachusetts where they spend their time writing and running a little shop called Win/Win.

Daniel Hales is a writer, musician, artist, teacher, and salsa junkie living in western MA. He’s the author of ¿Cómo Hacer Preguntas? or, How To Make Questions: 69 Instructional Poems (Frayed Edge Press), the hybrid novel Run Story (Shape&Nature), and three poetry chapbooks: Tempo Maps, which comes with the companion CD: Miner Street Symphony (ixnay), Blind Drive (White Knuckle), and Shake My Ashes (Beard of Bees). His poems, flash fictions, and hybrid writings have been published in many print & online journals, including Verse Daily, Conduit, The Massachusetts Review, Quarter After Eight, Booth, and Bateau. In March 2017, Spork Press released Predawn to Postdusk on cassette: the debut by his psychdrone project, Umbral. His indie rock band, The Frost Heaves and Hales, has released 4 full-length albums, including: Contrariwise: Songs from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. He’s toured nationally, playing historic venues like the Iron Horse in Northampton, MA, the basements of anarchist collectives like the ABC House, in Olympia, WA, and every kind of venue in between. Two of his songs were featured on the NPR radio show, Cartalk. He also records and performs with The Ambiguities and Selah haleS. His sensei is The Cat of Many Names. Daniel's new book is How to Tie & Untie Mist (Frayed Edge Press).

Adam Munsey Tobin is a bookseller and poet of Ashfield, MA. He owns and operates Unnameable Books, a new and used bookstore with locations in Brooklyn NY and Unnameable Falls MA.  With Catherine/Corbett Bresner he edits a magazine called Spirit Duplicator, produced on machine of same name. His poems have appeared in Fence, EOAGH, 6x6, Antiphony, Spirit Duplicator, The Weekly Weakling and elsewhere, various pamphlets and chapbooks -- including, most recently, Animatronic Head Trophy (just out from Press Brake).