Ben Riggs is a writer, teacher, and podcaster. He traveled the world teaching in his 20s. During his journeys, he tutored a princess, saw both the Sahara and Mt. Fuji at dawn, and discovered his wife and fellow traveler, Tara. He has settled down in his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he teaches English and […]
A citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Santee Frazier earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Syracuse University. He is the author of the poetry collections Aurum (2019) and Dark Thirty (2009). Offering non-romanticized and realistic portraits of great beauty, Santee’s poems afford a rare look at the truths of survival
Zubair Ahmed is a Bengali-American poet and the author of City of Rivers (McSweeney’s, 2012). He lives in Oakland, California.
C. G. Hanzlicek was born in Owatonna, Minnesota, in 1942. He received a B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1964 and an M.F.A. from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1966. He is the author of nine books of poetry: Living in It, Stars (winner of the 1977 Devins Award for Poetry), Calling the Dead,
“His feet leapt inches from God-given ground./His smile was toothy, laugh snapped toothy joy./His head—his heart—his head was tightly wound:” | by Ben Riggs
“We live on separate planets now,/And she mulls and mulls,/Wanting to join me in my world,/Where sometimes I’m a son, sometimes not,” | by C.G. Hanzlicek
My Mother’s Memory Read More »
“Her work/in the quiet corners of barns on the hay, on hot days/when locusts launch themselves out of thickets.” | by Santee Frazier
“Sometimes in these Bengali summers/When dust sticks to our skins/And the crows shit on our heads/We bond like hydrocarbons,” | by Zubair Ahmed
DAVID KEPLINGER is the author of eight books of poetry, including Ice (Milkweed Editions 2023) and Another City (Milkweed Editions, 2018) which was awarded the 2019 UNT Rilke Prize. He’s the recipient of two fellowships from the NEA, the Emily Dickinson Prize from PSA, the T.S. Eliot Award, the Colorado Book Award, and other honors.
ALLEN SHADOW’s poetry has been published widely in the small press, including two chapbooks. Billy Collins has called his work “Engaging,” while Library Journal has cited it for “startling imagery.” He has been a finalist in one of Poetry International’s Tiny Chapbook competitions, a finalist for the 2022 Omnidawn Poetry Broadside Prize, and a quarterfinalist
“the smell somehow staying with me//well beyond his walking into the living room naked” | by Allen Shadow
It Was the Coffee in the Mornings Read More »
Born in New Delhi, India, VANDANA KHANNA is a writer, educator, and editor. Her third collection of poetry, Burning Like Her Own Planet, was recently published by Alice James Books in 2023. Her previous books have won the Crab Orchard Review First Book Prize, The Miller Williams Poetry Prize, and the Diode Editions Chapbook Competition.
ANNA ABRAHAM GASAWAY (She/Her) is a stroke-surviving, disabled writer that has been published in Mom Egg Review, the Los Angeles Review, Literary Mama and others. She has performed curated essays for So Say We All and recently received her MFA with an emphasis on Poetry at San Diego State University. She is currently working on her chapbook
GOLDBERRY LONG is the author of the novel Juniper Tree Burning. Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, New Orleans Review, and The Rumpus. She lives in California with her family, where she teaches fiction writing at the University of California, Riverside. poems
“We sew my mother’s body into the blanket. I make stitches. My sister makes stitches. My brother’s wife, my half sister. Other women.” | by Goldberry Long
Litany for My Mother’s Body Read More »
CHRISTIAN CAMPBELL is a Trinidadian Bahamian poet, essayist and cultural critic, and the author of Running the Dusk (Peepal Tree Press, 2010), which won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, was a finalist for the Forward Prize for the Best First Collection and the Cave Canem Prize among other awards. Running the Dusk was also translated
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STEVE SCAFIDI is the author of Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), For Love of Common Words (LSU 2006), The Cabinetmaker’s Window (LSU 2014), To the Bramble and the Briar (University of Arkansas Press, 2014) and a chapbook Songs for the Carry-On (Q Avenue Press, 2013). He has won the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the James Boatwright Prize and
“in a nest in the middle branch/of the pine sleeps. We find peace.” | by Steve Scafidi
To Gaze is a Ghost Read More »
“for language swaying with the branches,/soon picked to silence by crows—” | by Christian Campbell
“One of the saints dipped her forehead/Into a candle, another tasted the flame.” | by Edward Hirsch