Speakers

Curious to learn more about the poets speaking at the 5th Annual New Hampshire Poetry Fest on Saturday, September 14, 2019?

Ilya Kaminsky

Ilya Kaminsky is the author of the widely acclaimed Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019), which Kevin Young, writing in The New Yorker, called a work of “profound imagination.” Poems from Deaf Republic were awarded Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize and the Pushcart Prize. He is also the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), and Musica Humana (Chapiteau Press, 2002). Kaminsky has won the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and the Foreword Magazine’s Best Poetry Book of the Year award. Recently, he was on the short-list for the Neusdadt International Literature Prize. His poems have been translated into numerous languages and his books have been published in many countries including Turkey, Holland, Russia, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain and China, where his poetry was awarded the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize.

Chen Chen

Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, the GLCA New Writers Award, and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. The collection was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and named one of the best of 2017 by The Brooklyn Rail, Entropy, Library Journal, and others. His work has appeared in many publications, including Poetry, Tin House, Poem-a-Day, The Best American Poetry, Bettering American Poetry, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Chen earned his MFA from Syracuse University and PhD in English and Creative Writing from Texas Tech University. He lives in frequently snowy Rochester, NY with his partner, Jeff Gilbert and their pug dog, Mr. Rupert Giles. Chen is the 2018-2020 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University.

Patrick Donnelly

Patrick Donnelly is the author of four books of poetry, Little-Known Operas (Four Way Books, 2019), Jesus Said (a chapbook from Orison Books, 2017), Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin (Four Way Books, 2012), and The Charge (Ausable Press, 2003, since 2009 part of Copper Canyon Press), which was a 2013 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Donnelly is director of the Poetry Seminar at The Frost Place, Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, NH, now a center for poetry and the arts, and he has taught at Smith College and Colby College. Donnelly’s translations with Stephen D. Miller of classical Japanese poetry were awarded the 2015-2016 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Donnelly’s other awards include a U.S./Japan Creative Artists Program Award, an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and a 2018 Amy Clampitt Residency Award.

Maudelle Driskell

Maudelle Driskell, who lives in Franconia, New Hampshire, is the executive director of The Frost Place. She holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College and is the recipient of the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, awarded by Poetry magazine and the Modern Language Association. Her first poetry collection, Talismans, was published by Hobblebush Books in 2014. She was a featured poet at Vanderbilt University’s Millennial Gathering of the Writers of the New South. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Kenyon Review, CAIRN, New Orleans Review, All Shook Up, The Made Thing, The Cortland Review, and Inch, among others. She is a past winner of the Pablo Neruda Award for Poetry in Translation and the Agnes Scott Writer’s Festival chosen by Eavan Boland, and many others. Driskell volunteers with poetry and arts organizations and serves on several boards.

Joan Houlihan

Joan Houlihan is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, Shadow-feast (Four Way Books, 2018). Other books include Hand-Held Executions: Poems & Essays (2003); The Mending Worm, which received the 2006 Green Rose Award from New Issues Press; The Us (2009) which received a Must-Read distinction from the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and Ay (2014), a sequel to The Us, both from Tupelo Press. In addition to publishing in a wide array of journals, including Boston Review, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Arts, Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, Plume and Poetry, her poems have been anthologized in The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (University of Iowa Press, 2005); The Book of Irish-American Poetry, 18th Century to Present, (University of Notre Dame, 2007); The World Is Charged: Poetic Engagements with Gerard Manley Hopkins, (Clemson University Press, 2016), and The Eloquent Poem: 128 Contemporary Poems and Their Making (Persea Books). She has taught at Columbia University, Emerson College and Smith College, and she currently serves on the faculty of Lesley University’s Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is Professor of Practice in Poetry at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Houlihan founded and directs the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference.

Participant Bios

Rose Auslander is the author of four poetry collections, including the Folded Word title Hints (2014). Her most recent collection, Wild Water Child, won the Bass River Press 2017 Chapbook Prize. She is Folded Word’s poetry editor and founding editor of its Masters Series. She has also served as Secretary and Trustee of the Copyright Society. A graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA program, she finds inspiration while walking Cape Cod, ice skating in Boston, and visiting her daughters in Maine and New York.

Carol Willette Bachofner, MFA Vermont College of Fine Arts 2004, is poet, blogger, watercolorist, and photographer. She has published five books of poetry, most recently Test Pattern, a Fantod of Prose Poems (2018) and The Boyfriend Project (2017.) Her poems have appeared in the anthology, Dawnland Voices, an Anthology of Writings from Indigenous New England (2014). She was a finalist in the Maine Literary Awards for 2011 and won the Maine Postmark Contest 2017 for her poem, Passagassawaukeag, which was published in The Maine Review. Her photo, Rigged, received Honorable Mention in the Spirit of Place contest by Maine Media workshop and is printed in the contest anthology. She served as Poet Laureate of Rockland Maine from 2012-2016.

Brinda Charry has published two novels (The Hottest Day of the Year and Naked in the Wind) and a collection of short fiction (First Love and other Stories). She has won the Katha Award for Short Fiction, the Picador Short Story Competition, and prizes in the BBC and Commonwealth short story competitions and the Ewing award for the Literary Arts. Recent work has appeared in Litro magazine and anthologies of short fiction.

Eileen Cleary is a graduate of Lesley University’s and Solstice of Pine Manor’s MFA program. She has work published in Naugatuck River Review, J Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, West Texas Literary Review, and other journals. She co-founded and manages the Lily Poetry Salon and edits the Lily Poetry Review. Her debut manuscript Child Ward of the Commonwealth is published by Main Street Rag Press (2019.)

Elizabeth J. Coleman , editor of Here: Poems for the Planet, is also author of The Fifth Generation (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016) and Proof (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014) (Brittingham and Pollak prizes finalist). She has also written two poetry chapbooks, and is co-author of Pythagoras in Love/Pythagore, Amoureux (translator into French of a bilingual sonnet collection) (Folded Word Press, 2015). Elizabeth’s poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies and journal. In addition, Elizabeth is a public interest attorney, mindfulness teacher and environmental activist.

Lori Desrosiers’ poetry books are The Philosopher’s Daughter, Salmon Poetry, 2013, and Sometimes I Hear the Clock Speak, Salmon Poetry, 2016. A third full-length book, Keeping Planes in the Air, will be released by Salmon Poetry in 2020. Two chapbooks, typing with e.e. cummings (2019) and Inner Sky (2015) are from Glass Lyre Press. Her poems have appeared in New Millennium Review, Cutthroat, Peacock Journal, String Poet, Blue Fifth Review, Pirene’s Fountain, New Verse News, Mom Egg Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She was a finalist for the Joy Harjo poetry contest and the New Millennium contest. Her poem “about the body” won the Liakoura poetry award from Glass Lyre Press. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New England College. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She founded and edits Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry and Wordpeace.co, an online journal dedicated to social justice. She teaches Poetry in the Interdisciplinary Studies program for the Lesley University M.F.A. graduate program. Her website is http://loridesrosierspoetry.com.

Jeff Friedman’s new book, The Marksman, is scheduled for publication with Carnegie Mellon University Press in fall 2020. Friedman is the author of seven previous collections of poetry, including Floating Tales (Plume Editions/Madhat Press, 2017) and Pretenders (Carnegie Mellon University Press (2014). Friedman’s poems, mini stories and translations have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, New England Review, Poetry International, Hotel Amerika, Flash Fiction Funny, Fiction International, New World Writing The New Republic and numerous other literary magazines. Dzvinia Orlowsky’s and his translation of Memorials by Polish Poet Mieczslaw Jastrun was published by Lavender Ink/Dialogos in August 2014. Nati Zohar and Friedman’s book of translations Two Gardens: Modern Hebrew Poems of the Bible, was published by Singing Bone Press in 2016. Friedman has received numerous awards and prizes including a National Endowment Literature Translation Fellowship in 2016 (with Dzvinia Orlowsky) and two individual Artist Grants from New Hampshire Arts Council.

Robbie Gamble holds an MFA in Poetry from Lesley University. His poems and essays have appeared in Scoundrel Time, Writers Resist, MassPoetry, RHINO, Slipstream, and Poet Lore. He was the winner of the 2017 Carve Poetry prize, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. He is the assistant poetry editor for Solstice: a Magazine of Diverse Voices. He works as a nurse practitioner caring for homeless people in Boston.

Literary performer & educator, Regie Gibson, has lectured & performed in the U.S., Cuba & Europe. Representing the U.S., Regie competed for & received both the Absolute Poetry Award in Monfalcone, Italy & the Europa en Versi Award for performance poetry in LaGuardia di Como, Italy. He is a former National Poetry Slam Champion, has appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, On Point, Radio Boston, & other NPR programs. He’s received the Walker Scholarship for Poetry from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, a Mass Cultural Council Award, The Lexington Education Foundation Grant, a YMCA Writer’s Fellowship & the Brother Thomas Fellowship from The Boston Foundation.

JS Graustein is an ecologist by training, a poet by practice, and a publisher by accident. She is co-author of Water Ways with NEA Fellow William O’Daly, and is the calligrapher of numerous haiku collections. Her most recent calligraphy project, Wishbones by Ben Moeller-Gaa, won the Touchstone Distinguished Book Award 2018. She runs Folded Word, a Meredith-based micropress of ecolinguistic poetry and short prose. She also serves the Poetry Society of New Hampshire as the lead editor, designer, and typographer of its journal, The Poets’ Touchstone.

Krysten Hill is an educator, writer, and performer who has showcased her poetry on stage at The Massachusetts Poetry Festival, Blacksmith House, Cantab Lounge, Merrimack College, U35 Reading Series, and many others. She received her MFA in poetry from UMass Boston where she currently teaches. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in apt, Word Riot, The Baltimore Review, B O D Y, Muzzle, PANK, Winter Tangerine Review, Take Magazine and elsewhere. Hill is the recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award. Her chapbook, How Her Spirit Got Out, received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize.

Jennifer Jean was born in Venice, California, and lived in foster care until she was seven. She grew up in the San Fernando Valley (California) and earned her BA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and her MFA in poetry from Saint Mary’s College. Her debut poetry collection is The Fool (Big Table, 2013); her chapbooks include The Archivist (2011) and In the War (2010). She released Fishwife Tales (2011), a collaborative CD with composer Sarah Eide, which comprises art songs, rock ballads, and accompanied recitations. Jean’s poetry and prose have appeared in Rattle, Waxwing, Drunken Boat, Crab Creek Review, Caketrain, the Denver Quarterly, the Tidal Basin Review, Mud City, Solstice Magazine, and others. Her poems have been anthologized in Veils, Halos & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women (2016) and Inheriting the War: Poetry & Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees (2017). Her poetry manuscript Object, about objectification and human trafficking in the United States, was a finalist for the 2016 Green Mountains Review Book Prize and a semifinalist for the 2016 Akron Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of the 2016 Good Bones Poetry Prize. Jean is the founder of Free2Write: Poetry Workshops for Trauma Survivors. She is also a codirector of the Morning Garden Artists Retreats, poetry editor of Mom Egg Review, and managing editor of Talking Writing Magazine. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and children.

Hope Jordan is a candidate for an MFA in fiction at UMass Boston, where she won the 2018 Academy of American Poets University and College Poetry Prize. Her poetry chapbook, The Day She Decided to Feed Crows, was published in 2018 by Cervena Barva Press. Her poems have appeared/are forthcoming in Split Rock Review, Woven Tale Press, Nine Mile, and Comstock Review. She was the first official poetry slam master in New Hampshire.

Julia Lattimer is the Editor-in-chief of Breakwater Review. She runs a monthly queer poetry reading series in Boston and was most recently named Editor’s Choice in the 2019 Sandy Crimmons National Prize for Poetry. She races rejections with Megan, hopefully reaching 100 this year. She also reads for the magazine Mortar.

Sydney Lea, a former Pulitzer finalist, founded and for thirteen years edited New England Review. Here (Four Way Books, September 2019) is his thirteenth poetry collection and his twentieth book. He will soon publish The Music of What Happens: Lyric and Everyday Life, his collected newspaper columns from his years (2011-15) as Vermont Poet Laureate. His collaborative book of essays with former Delaware laureate Fleda Brown, Growing Old in Poetry: Two Poets, Two Lives, appeared in 2018. He has been active in literacy efforts and conservation, especially in Maine, where the land trust he chaired until 2018 conserved nearly 400,000 acres of working forest.

Sara London is the author of two titles with Four Way Books: Upkeep (September 2019) and The Tyranny of Milk (March 2010). Her poems have appeared in many journals, including The Common, Quarterly West, Cortland Review, the Hudson Review, Poetry East, the Iowa Review, and the Poetry Daily anthology. She teaches at Smith College, and has also taught at Mount Holyoke and Amherst colleges. Sara grew up in California and Vermont, attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and lived for many years in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Also the author of two children’s books, she is the poetry editor at the Woven Tale Press magazine. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Jennifer Martelli is the author of My Tarantella (Bordighera Press), as well as the chapbook, After Bird (Grey Book Press, winner of the open reading, 2016). Her work has appeared in Verse Daily, The Bitter Oleander, Iron Horse Review (winner, Photo Finish contest), Sugar House, Superstition Review, Thrush, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. Her prose has been published in Gravel, The Baltimore Review, and Green Mountains Review. Jennifer Martelli has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes and is the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. She is poetry co-editor for Mom Egg Review.

Rodger Martin served as managing editor of The Worcester Review for twenty-seven years. His new book of poems in two languages: For All The Tea in Zhōngguó (Hobblebush) was released in 2019. His third poetry volume The Battlefield Guide (Hobblebush) uses locations on battlefields of the Civil War to reflect upon America today. Small Press Review selected The Blue Moon Series (Hobblebush) as its bi-monthly pick of the year. A translation of his work On The Monadnock appeared in China in 2006. Martin has received an Appalachia poetry award, a N.H. State Council on the Arts Fiction Fellowship, a series of Bruce Kellner/Monadnock Fellowships, and fellowships from The National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2012 he was chosen as poet to represent the U.S. at Hangzhou, China’s international cultural festival. He returned in 2015 to read and lecture on poetry at Nanjing University and Shanghai University of International Business and Economics. His poem “The Anchor” was etched in stone at a reflecting pool at Shanghai University for International Business and Economics. He serves as co-editor for The Granite State Poetry Series and teaches journalism at Keene State College and co-advises its award-winning student newspaper, The Equinox.

Michael McInnis served in the Navy chasing white whales and Soviet submarines. He was the founder of the Primal Plunge, Boston’s only bookstore dedicated to zines, underground culture, and small press literature. He is a co-founding editor and designer of Nixes Mate Review. His third book, Secret Histories, is forthcoming from Cervená Barva Press.

Kevin McLellan is the author of Hemispheres (Fact-Simile Editions, forthcoming), Ornitheology (The Word Works, 2018), [box] (Letter [r] Press, 2016), Tributary (Barrow Street, 2015), and Round Trip (Seven Kitchens, 2010). He won the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize and Gival Press’ 2016 Oscar Wilde Award, and his poems appear in numerous literary journals including American Letters & Commentary, American Literary Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, West Branch, Western Humanities Review, and Witness. Kevin lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Jennifer Militello is the author of Knock Wood, winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize (Dzanc Books, 2019), as well as four collections of poetry, including A Camouflage of Specimens and Garments (Tupelo Press, 2016), called “positively bewitching” by Publishers Weekly, and Body Thesaurus (Tupelo Press, 2013), named one of the top books of 2013 by Best American Poetry. Her work has been published widely in such journals as American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, POETRY, and Tin House. She teaches in the MFA program at New England College.

Gloria Mindock is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, I wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me (Nixes Mate books, 2018). She is the founding editor of Červená Barva Press and one of the USA editors for Levure Litteraire (France). Widely published in the USA and abroad, her poetry has been translated and published into the Romanian, Croation, Serbian, Montenegrin, Spanish, Estonian, and French. Gloria has been published in numerous literary journals including Gargoyle, Web Del Sol, Poet Lore, Constellations: A Journal of Poetry and Fiction, Muddy River Poetry Review, Unlikely Stories and Nixes Mate Review and anthology. She was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018. Her chapbook, Oppositions, is forthcoming by U Šoku Štampa.

Ben Moeller-Gaa is the author of four haiku collections, including the Folded Word title Wishbones (2018), which won the Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. His haiku and senryu have been translated into five languages. He has led numerous writing workshops nationwide, most recently at Robin White’s Haiku Gathering at Wild Graces (Deerfield, NH). He works as an e-commerce analyst in Missouri, spending his free time in the gardens, museums, and live-music venues of St. Louis.

Andrew Morgan is a professor, poet, editor and volunteer whose work can be found in magazines such as Conduit, Verse, Slope, Stride, Fairy Tale Review, New World Writing, Post Road, Pleiades (as part of a “Younger American Poets” feature) and is the recipient of a Slovenian Writer’s Association Fellowship which sponsored a month long writing residency in the country’s capital city of Ljubljana. Currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at New England College, his first book, Month of Big Hands, was published by Natural History Press in 2013.

William O’Daly, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, is a cofounder of Copper Canyon Press and has translated nine volumes of Pablo Neruda’s poetry for them. He is the author of the Folded Word titles Yarrow and Smoke (2018) and The Road to Isla Negra (2015). He also co-authored Water Ways (2017) after touring the Granite State’s blue spaces with JS Graustein. He lives, works, and writes in California, recently winning recognition from the state for his contributions to the California Water Plan.

Lexi Palmer is a junior studying English literature and writing. She recently received the Fred Fosher Excellence in Writing Award and placed third in the NH State Three-Minute Fiction Slam. In addition, she has been awarded a $4,000 SURF Grant to write modern gothic fiction that engages with the motif of the grotesque. Her pieces were written during her workshop classes with Professor Charry and Professor Friedman, two mentors whom she is very grateful to work with at Keene State College.

Jimmy Pappas served during the Vietnam War as an English language instructor training South Vietnamese soldiers. He received his MA in English literature from Rivier University. He is a retired teacher whose poems have been published in over 70 journals, including Sheila Na-Gig, Shot Glass Journal, Off the Coast, Boston Literary Magazine, and War, Literature and the Arts. He is the Vice-President of the Poetry Society of NH. His poem “Bobby’s Story” about the life of a Vietnam veteran won the Rattle 2018 Readers Choice Award. It is contained in his full-length book of war-related poems Scream Wounds (A15 Press, 2019). His chapbook Falling off the Empire State Building was selected as a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Contest and will be published in March 2020.

Dawn Paul’s poetry has been published in three anthologies—Birdsong, The Absence of Something Specified and the Old Frog Pond Farm Chapbook. Recent publications also include Stonecoast Review, Avalon Literary Review, Mom Egg Review, Lindenwood Review and forthcoming in the Comstock Review. She has an MFA from Goddard College and has been a recipient of residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, the Spring Creek Project and Friday Harbor Marine Laboratories. She teaches writing and interdisciplinary studies at Montserrat College of Art. Her chapbook What We Still Don’t Know, on scientist Carl Linnaeus, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Kyle Potvin’s chapbook, Sound Travels on Water (Finishing Line Press), won the 2014 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. She is a two-time finalist for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, Tar River Poetry, Mom Egg Review, The New York Times, JAMA, and others. Kyle lives with her husband and two sons in New Hampshire.

Eva Quill is a junior from Rindge, NH, and she’s majoring in English and Secondary Education. Her work here is taken from the manuscript she submitted to win the Eder Creative Writing Award at Keene State. The award carries a $4,600 stipend. She loves reading and writing, and especially writing prose poetry.

Jacob Rivers currently serves as the Assistant to the Director at The Frost Place in Franconia, NH, and is an MFA candidate at New England College. His poems appear or are forthcoming in The Cortland Review, Raleigh Review, Storm Cellar, and elsewhere.

Ashley Rollend is a Junior at Keene State College. She is currently majoring in English, with both Literature and Writing options. She was awarded a $4000 SURF grant in 2018 for the completion of a chapbook of fabulous prose titled Blackbird and has currently been awarded a second $4,000 SURF grant in 2019 through the honors program to write and illustrate a children’s book. Ashley has presented her writing at a variety of events – COPLAC Regional Conference, Academic Excellence Conference , KSC Poetry Slam, and more. In addition, she took first place in the 2018 Keene State College Poetry Slam and had her first poem published in Ethel Literary Journal.

Bonnie Shinn is an MFA candidate at New England College, with a dual-genre focus in poetry and fiction. Her poetry can be found in Visions Unlimited at River Valley Community College, as well as The Henniker Review.

Betsy Sholl is the author of nine poetry collections, including House of Sparrows: New and Selected Poems, Otherwise Unseeable, Rough Cradle, Late Psalm, Don’t Explain and The Red Line. A former poet laureate of Maine, Sholl teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

S Stephanie’s poetry, fiction, and book reviews have appeared in many literary magazines such as, Birmingham Poetry Review, Café Review, Cease, Cows, Iowa Review, Literary Laundry, OVS, One, Rattle, St. Petersburg Review, Solidus, Southern Indiana Review, The Southern Review, The Sun and Third Coast. Her chapbooks include: Throat (Igneus Press), What the News Seemed to Say (Pudding House – re-released by Igneus Press), So This is What It Has Come To (Finishing Line Press ). She is active in the Poetry Out Loud program, and many other community programs and events in NH. She is a juried Teaching Artist listed on both the Arts in Education and Arts in Health rosters for the NH State Council on the Arts She holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Lisa J. Sullivan hold an MFA from Solstice Low- Residency MFA Program at Pine Manor College, where she was a Kurt Brown Fellow. Her work appears in The American Journal of Poetry, The Comstock Review, Puckerbrush Review, and elsewhere. Her ekphrastic piece “To the Bog of Allen” was selected as the U.S. winner of the 2013 Ireland Poetry Project in collaboration with American Academy of Poets. She is a contributing editor for the Lily Poetry Review and a poetry editor for Pink Panther Magazine.

Marjorie Tesser received the 2019 John B. Santoianni Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry chapbooks are THE IMPORTANT THING IS (Firewheel Chapbook Award Winner 2010) and The Magic Feather (Finishing Line Press, 2011). She has co-edited three anthologies, most recently Travellin’ Mama: Mothers, Motherhood and Travel (Demeter Press, 2019), and is editor-in-chief of Mom Egg Review, momeggreview.com.

Daniel Tobin is the author of eight books of poems, most recently Blood Labors (Four Way Books, 2018). He has received the “Discovery”/The Nation Award, The Robert Penn Warren Award, The Greensboro Review Prize, the Robert Frost Fellowship, the Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award, the Julia Ward Howe Award and creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. He lives in Boston, MA and teaches at Emerson College.

Christie Towers is a poet living in the Boston area. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her work can be found in Narrative Magazine, the Ohio Edit, SummerStock and Reality Hands.

Tammi Truax, a recent MEd graduate of PSU, is a writer and teacher. Her poetry has appeared in ten anthologies, including The Widows’ Handbook: Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival with a foreword by Justice Ginsburg (Kent State University Press, 2014). Short fiction has appeared in two anthologies. A YA verse novel, For to See the Elephant, was released last May and two volumes of poetry are forthcoming. Her work can be found in several journals, newspapers, magazines, and online, including The Huffington Post. Tammi is a member of many writing and historical associations. She is serving as the Maine Beat Poet Laureate and the Portsmouth Poet Laureate, and is working on a two-book historical novel for adults.

Alexa Unger is a junior majoring in English Literature and Writing. One of her selected pieces is going to be published in Ethel Magazine in June and all of her pieces were written under the guidance of Professor Jeff Friedman in various classes. She mainly writes fiction pieces and prose poetry, and hopes more of her work will be published in the future.

Karla Van Vliet is a co-founder of deLuge Journal, an integrative dreamwork analyst, an artist, and the administrator for the New England Young Writers’ Conference at Bread Loaf. Based in Vermont, she is the author of three poetry collections, including Fragments: From the Lost Book of the Bird Spirit (2018). The publication of Fragments by Folded Word is a direct result of the first New Hampshire Poetry Festival, and was the press’ first poetry title edited and designed during in-person sessions.

Cindy Veach is the author of Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press), named a finalist for the 2018 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She received the 2019 Phillip Booth Poetry Prize (Salt Hill Journal) and the 2018 Samuel Washington Allen Prize (New England Poetry Club). Cindy is poetry co-editor for Mom Egg Review.

Chandler Veilleux is a trans poet and MFA candidate at New England College. Previous publications can be found in malasaña, sidereal, and Vagabond City.

Adam Vernon is a poet currently residing in New Hampshire. He is an MFA candidate at New England College and edits poetry for The Henniker Review.

Megan Waring is a poet, playwright and fiber artist who currently resides in Boston. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Virginia Tech and is currently earning her MFA in poetry from University of Massachusetts Boston. In between degrees, she worked in education and non-profits in China and California. She is the honored recipient of Virginia Tech’s Literary Award in 2010 and her work is forthcoming or published in Salamander, Nailed Magazine, Mortar Magazine, The Legendary, and Pulp Literature, among others. Her second co-authored play, Archer and the Yeti, is being produced by Greene Room Productions in October 2019.