Christopher Barnes won a Northern Arts writers award in 1998. In July 2000 he read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology, Titles Are Bitches. Christmas 2001 he debuted at Newcastle’s famous Morden Tower doing a reading of poems. Each year he reads for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and partook in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of his collection  LOVEBITES, published by Chanticleer Press.

Michael Carter has appeared in Ploughshares, Boulevard, Columbia Poetry Review, Western Humanities Review, MomEgg Review, The Rail, Provincetown Arts Magazine, and many others. He has poems upcoming in Cimeron, Spoon River Poetry Review, Willows Wept, and Kitchen Table Quarterly. Carter is a two-time Writers by Writing Tomales Bay Fellow, a Nadya Aisenberg Fellow at the Writer’s Room of Boston and was recently a Wolf House Resident.  

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Novus,  and Abbey. Latest books, Bittersweet, Subject Matters and Between Two Fires are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in MacGuffin, Touchstone, and Willow Review.

Alaina Hammond’s poems, plays, fiction, creative non-fiction, philosophical essays, paintings, drawings, and photographs have been published both online and in print. Over fifty of her original plays have been performed off-off Broadway. For her portrayal of Inez in No Exit, she received rave reviews and was nominated for a BroadwayWorld award. Her fiction has garnered her multiple Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction nominations. Her novelette entitled Jillian, Formerly Known as Frog Girl won the Magnum Foof, the award for best novelette bestowed by Foofaraw Press. She lives in Fishkill, NY with her husband and son.  A collection of her short stories, Tutor in Juvenile and Other Stories, is soon to be released by Half Inch Press. 

John Holman is the author of Squabble and Other Stories, Luminous Mysteries, and Triangle Ray. He teaches writing at Georgia State University.

Iwuagwu Ikechukwu is an African poet, essayist, screenwriter, and dramatist. A native of Umunkwo in Imo state, Nigeria, his reviews and short stories have appeared in several literary magazines across the world both online and in print. He was a recipient of an honourable mention in the IHRAF Creators of Justice award in New York – 2020 & 2022 editions respectively. He was shortlisted for the 2022 Alpine Fellowship Visual Arts Prize in London, UK, the ANTOA essay prize in Africa, the Wordweavers Poetry Prize, and the K.E.E.P Poetry Prize 2025. Recently, he was longlisted for the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize. When he is not writing, he can be found researching, teaching, or reading the works of Christopher Okigbo, Isidore Diala, Soyinka, Adichie, Buchi Emecheta & Ifésinàchi Nwàdiké.

Edward Johnson is a legal aid attorney from Portland, Oregon who has spent the past 30 years representing people living on and over the edge of homelessness. He is currently living fulltime in a log cabin in the North Cascades working on poems, old and new.  He has work recently out or forthcoming from Eclectica Magazine, Beatnik Cowboy, Indefinite Space, Main Street Rag, Ginosko Literary Journal, Packingtown Review, The Dissident Voice, Evergreen Review, Whisk(e)y Tit Journal, Abraxas Review, Dog Throat Journal and other outlets. 

Erik Korhel, based in Seattle, Washington, is an author and poet. His work has been recognized with a “Must Have Books and Resources” listing by the New York City Department of Education. He is also the owner and operator of EDK Books and Distribution, a publishing and distribution company located outside Seattle. His writing has appeared in Madness Muse Press, The Criterion, The Blue Nib, Poem Alone, and Meat For Tea.

Max S. Ma holds a Ph.D. in English Literature and works as an educator and poet based in suburban Pittsburgh. His poems have recently appeared in Lexicon, Cherry Bomb, and Eunoia Review, and are forthcoming in Tanasi River Review. Born in western China, he turned to poetry after moving to the United States as a necessary way to make sense of the new landscape around him.

Born in the USA, John Martino is a writer, photographer, and educator who has lived for the past decade in Hong Kong, where he holds permanent residency. His debut poetry collection, American Sonnet, a suite of 51 “little songs,” was published by Half Inch Press in 2025. Additional poems and stories appear or are forthcoming in Main Street Rag, Another Chicago Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, JONAHmagazine, Revolution John, and others. The poems printed here are from his upcoming second collection, Enemy Lines.

Ken Poyner has eleven available collections of poetry, flash fiction and micro-fiction, the latest The Lechery of Fish Tuners. He has suffered ten Pushcart nominations without a win, and has taught on an NEA Poets in the Schools grant. He spent 33 years herding computers. He is married to a world class female power lifter, who is still setting raw world records. www.kpoyner.com

Eva Skrande‘s publications include The Boat that Brought Sadness into the World (Finishing Line Press 2024), Bone Argot (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), and My Mother’s Cuba (River City Publishing Poetry Series, 2010). Her poems have appeared in Home Planet News, Agni, Smartish Pace, Cottonwood, Five Points, Plant Human Quarterly, Two Thirds North, and elsewhere. Originally from Cuba, she lives in Houston where she  teaches Creative Writing and tutors at Houston Community College.

Kevin Sweeney’s poems have appeared in Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, Nerve Cowboy, 5 AM, Wormwood Review, Pudding, Free Lunch, Big Hammer. He’s an assistant poetry editor for The Café Review for which he has done interviews with Kim Addonizio, Carl Dennis, Martin Espada, Margaret Randall, and William Carpenter. His most recent book is Imminent Tribulations from Moon Pie Press.

Gabriel Welsch is the author of Groundscratchers: Stories (Tolsun Books), and four poetry collections, including Four Horsepersons of a Disappointing Apocalypse (Steel Toe Books) and the chapbook An Eye Fluent in Gray (Seven Kitchens). Recent work appears in Allium, Crab Orchard Review, Potomac Review, Tar River Poetry, Moon City Review, Elm Leaves Journal, Lake Effect, and Southern Humanities Review. His work also has appeared in recent anthologies of poetry about Pennsylvania (Keystone Poetry) and work (The Book of Jobs), both published in 2025. By day a higher ed marketing executive, he works at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, where he lives with his family and serves on the board of Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures.

Watt Worris is a pseudonym concocted by poet & editor M– one night while lost & in need of sleep, sitting alone at a deserted diner, searching for the fork he never found, seeking coffee, maybe a danish if it’s not too much trouble, & a way to disambiguate himself from myriad others who share the selfsame name under which he has appeared for decades in a multitude of magazines, including but not limited to the one you’re reading now.  “Your Eyes Are Diamonds” is from his debut collection, Nearing Narcoma, selected by Joy Harjo as winner of the 2003 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. “Road Service” opens both Here’s How,  runner-up in the 2006 Pudding House chapbook competition, & his award-winning, illustrated (in color) full-length 2nd collection, Walking in Chicago with a Suitcase in My Hand, of which a text-only edition was recently reprinted by Half Inch Press. 

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa / New Zealand but now lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia. He has been publishing poetry for over sixty-five years, & is the author of around eighty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, non-fiction, art history, & an artist’s book. Recent books are Balance & From the Cave’s Jukebox  A new book, synecdoche, came out  in mid-April.