Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian photographer and poet. He is the creator of the books Still Some Crazy Summer Wind Coming Through and When I Hear the Night. A third work of landscape photography and prose poems, titled The Book of Love and Mourning, is forthcoming in the autumn of 2025.

Ace Boggess is author of seven books of poetry, most recently My Pandemic / Gratitude List (Mōtus Audāx Press, 2025). His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble. His forthcoming books include the poetry collection Tell Us How to Live from Fernwood Press and his first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, from Running Wild Press.

K. McGinnis Brown’s fiction has appeared in national journals, his plays have been performed across the country, and his new autobiography about crime and creativity is searching for a home. His play, The Official Biography, premieres in Chicago March 26, 2026. His work on poverty and development issues took him to Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Peru, and Russia; a few lives perhaps are better for it. kurtmcginnisbrown.com

Geoff Howes is a translator, essayist, fiction writer, poet, musician, and retired professor who has lived in Bowling Green, Ohio, in the middle of the former Great Black Swamp, for nearly forty years. He considers Austria a second home.

Peycho Kanev is the author of 12 poetry collections and three chapbooks, published in the USA and Europe. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, such as Rattle, Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Front Porch Review, Hawaii Review, Barrow Street, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Adirondack Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review, and many others.

Clyde Liffey lives near the water.

John McKernan taught at Marshall University from 1967 to 2010. He held a Master’s Degree in English from the University of Arkansas, a Master of Arts Degree in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and a PhD in English from Boston University. His poetry appeared in many fine literary journals and magazines, among them the Boston Review, The Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, Field, The New York Quarterly Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review, to name only a few. He published four poetry books: Walking Along the Missouri River, Annex 21, Postcard from Dublin, and Resurrection of the Dead. His rhetoric book, The Writer’s Handbook, used nationally in English composition classes, was published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston in 1988 and went through three editions. He also founded and directed the West Virginia Writing Across the Curriculum Program for public school teachers. A finalist for the West Virginia Professor of the Year Award and winner of the Distinguished Artist and Scholar Award, he lived the life of a poet and professor well and loved doing it all.

Llewellyn McKernan has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from Brown University. She has authored six poetry books for adults and four for children. Her poems have been published in many literary journals, fifty-seven anthologies, and have won over one hundred prizes in state, regional, and national poetry contests. Her poetry mantra is taken from a statement by the French novelist Colette: “Look long and hard at what causes you the most pleasure but look even longer and harder at what causes you the most pain.”

Matt Morris has appeared in various magazines & anthologies. His first book, Nearing Narcoma, was selected by Joy Harjo as winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. His other books include Here’s How, Walking in Chicago with a Suitcase in My Hand, Reckoning Ball &, most recently, Ordinary Fish/Watt Worris. For nearly twenty years, he’s blogged at The Greater Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge, where you can find many of his poems. He is editor-in-chief of Home Planet News.

Joey Nicoletti is the author of ten poetry collections, including four chapbooks, most recently, Breakaway (Broadstone Books, 2023) and Extinction Wednesday: A Memoir (Bordighera Press, 2024). Joey is also the Reviews Editor of Voices in Italian Americana (VIA) and teaches creative writing at Buffalo State University. Connect with him on Insta @joeynicoletti and Bluesky @joeynicoletti.bsky.social.

Kirby Olson studied poetry with Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso at Naropa Institute.  His first book of poetry is entitled Christmas at Rockefeller Center. His poems have appeared in Partisan Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry East, and many dozens of others. He lives in upstate New York where he teaches at SUNY Delhi.

John Popielaski is the author of a novel, The Hollow Middle (Unsolicited Press), as well as a few poetry collections, including the chapbook Isn’t It Romantic? (Texas Review Press). His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as The Broadkill Review, Clade Song, Roanoke Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig. The poems in this issue are part of his most recent collection, That Special Something (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2025).