poetry

Ayokunle Falomo is Nigerian, American, and the author of African, American (New Delta Review, 2019) and two self-published collections. A recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and MacDowell, his work has been featured in/on Write About Now, The New York Times, Houston Public Media, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Texas Review, New England Review and elsewhere. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from University of Houston, a Specialist in School Psychology degree from Sam Houston State University and is currently an MFA (Poetry) student at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. Photo by B.A. Moye.

Darius Atefat-Peckham is an Iranian-American poet and essayist. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Texas Review, Brevity, Crab Orchard Review and elsewhere. In 2018, Atefat-Peckham was selected by the Library of Congress as a National Student Poet, the nation’s highest honor presented to youth poets writing original work. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (University of Texas Press). Atefat-Peckham currently studies Creative Writing at Harvard College.

Dorsía Smith Silva is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a three-time Best of the Net nominee, Cave Cavem Poetry Prize Semifinalist, Obsidian Fellow, and Full Professor at the University of Puerto Rico. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize Shortlist (2021) and has recently been published or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Poetry Northwest, Cream City Review, The Minnesota Review, The Offing, and Shenandoah. She has attended the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, Tin House Winter Workshop, and the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop. She has a Ph.D. in Caribbean Literature.

henry 7. reneau, jr. the author of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press) and the e-chapbook, physiography of the fittest (Kind of a Hurricane Press), now available from their respective publishers. Additionally, his collection, The Book Of Blue(s) : Tryin' To Make A Dollar Outta' Fifteen Cents, was a finalist for the 2018 Digging Press Chapbook Series. His work has also been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Kathleen Hellen’s collections include Meet Me at the Bottom, The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, and Umberto’s Night, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, her work has appeared widely in such journals as Arts & Letters, Colorado Review, Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, West Branch, and Witness, among others. She is the recipient of the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House, the Thomas Merton prize for Poetry of the Sacred, and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review.

Madari Pendas is a Cuban-American writer, painter, and poet living in Miami. Her works focus on the ways Latinidad intersects with other salient parts of her identity. She has received literary awards from Florida International University in the categories of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The Acentos Review, Pank Magazine, The New Tropic, Lambda Literary, Jai-Alai Books, Politicsay, The Beacon, The Courtship of Winds, Saudade County Press, WLRN (Miami's NPR affiliate), and The Miami New Times, among others. She is currently a graduate student at Florida International University.

Marcy Rae Henry is a Latina born and raised in Mexican-America/The Borderlands. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Columbia Review, Epiphany, Hobart, Cathexis Northwest, Black Coffee Review and Writers Resist, among others. Her work has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship and has been shortlisted for the Fish Short Memoir Prize and longlisted for the Disquiet Literary Prize. One of her stories received Honorable Mention in the New Millennium Writing Awards and another was a semi-finalist in the American Short(er) Fiction Contest. DoubleCross Press will publish a chapbook of poems.

Quintin Collins (he/him) is a writer, editor, and Solstice MFA Program assistant director. His work has appeared in many print and online publications, and his first full-length collection of poems, The Dandelion Speaks of Survival, is forthcoming from Cherry Castle Publishing in 2021.

Sjohnna McCray is the author of the poetry collection Rapture, which won the 2015 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. His poems have appeared in numerous journals including the Chicago Quarterly Review, Tin House Online, and the Tahoma Literary Review. He lives in Athens, Georgia and teaches at Georgia Gwinnett College.

Tori Cárdenas is a trans poet from northern New Mexico. They earned their MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico in 2020, and currently live and work in Albuquerque.