Ruth Madievsky is a poet and essayist, born in Moldova (former USSR), now living in L.A. Her debut collection, Emergency Brake (Tavern Books, 2016), spent five months on Small Press Distribution's Poetry Bestsellers list. Her debut novel, "All-Night Pharmacy," is forthcoming from Catapult Books in 2023. She was the winner of The American Poetry Review's Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize, a Tin House scholarship in poetry and The Iowa Review's Tim McGinnis Award for fiction. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, Harper's Bazaar, Tin House, Guernica, them, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Poem-A-Day, and elsewhere. She writes a personal essay column for Catapult, "Eldest Immigrant Daughter." When she is not writing, she works as an HIV and primary care clinical pharmacist.
Nancy Lynée Woo is the author of the collection I'd Rather Be Lightning (GASHER Press, 2023) and two chapbooks, Bearing the Juice of It All (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and Rampant (Sadie Girl Press, 2014). She is a 2023 recipient of the California Creative Corps grant, and has received fellowships from Artists at Work, PEN America, Arts Council for Long Beach, California Center for the Book, Idyllwild Writers Week and Literary Women. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Radar Poetry, Confrontation Magazine, The Rusty Toque, and Stirring. She has co-founded multiple nonprofit arts organizations, including the Long Beach Literary Arts Center. She has degrees in sociology and creative writing from UC Santa Cruz and Antioch University LA.
Salvadoran-American poet Cynthia Guardado is the author of two collections, Cenizas (Univ. of Arizona Press, 2022) and ENDEAVOR (World Stage Press, 2017). She was winner of the Concurso Binacional De Poesía Pellicer-Frost 2017 (México) and, in 2019, her manuscript, Cenizas, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Huizache, Bozalta Journal, The Acentos Review, and The Packinghouse Review, among other publications. She has translated interviews with journalist and Cuban exile, Normando Hernandez Gonzalez which were published in The Madrid Conversations (New Orleans Press, 2013). She is the editor-in-chief of LiveWire, an online literary magazine at Fullerton College where she is a professor of English.
Grant Chemidlin is a queer poet and author. His collections include What We Lost in the Swamp (Central Avenue Publishing, 2023) and He Felt Unwell (So He Wrote This), illustrated by Alexandra Lenihan, released in 2020. He is also the author of the chapbook, New in Town (Bottlecap Press, 2022). He was a finalist for the Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award and the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and has had work published in Quarterly West, Iron Horse Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and Saranac Review, among others. He posts his poems on Instagram @grantpoetry.
Charlotte Innes is the author of the collection Descanso Drive (Kelsay Books, 2017) and three chapbooks, Twenty Pandemicals (Kelsay Books, 2021), Reading Ruskin in Los Angeles (2009) and Licking the Serpent (2011), both from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in many journals in the U.S. and U.K., including The Hudson Review, The Raintown Review, Rattle, The Sewanee Review, Agenda, Antiphon Review, and The High Window. Her articles on literature and the arts have appeared in many publications, including the Los Angeles Times and The Nation. Originally from England, she now lives in Los Angeles.
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
Genevieve Kaplan is the author of the collections "(aviary)" (Veliz Books, 2020) and "In the ice house" (Red Hen Press, 2011), winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation's poetry publication prize. She has authored four chapbooks: "I exit the hallway and turn right" (above/ground press, 2020), "In an aviary" (Grey Book Press, 2016), "travelogue" (Dancing Girl, 2016), and "settings for these scenes" (Convulsive Editions, 2013). Her poems can be found in Third Coast, Puerto del Sol, Denver Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Poetry, and other journals.Kaplan earned her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and her PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. She co-edited Et Al.: New Voices in Arts Management (IOPN, 2022). Since 2003, she has edited the Toad Press International chapbook series.
Ron L. Dowell is the author of Watts UpRise (World Stage Press, 2022), finalist of the Press 53 Award for Poetry. A 2018 PEN Emerging Voices Fellow, Dowell's work reflects his deep bond with South Central Los Angeles where he was born and lives to this day. After a lifetime of occupations--including accountant, counselor, anthropologist, journalist, criminal justice critic, and community activist--Dowell has turned his focus to writing poetry and fiction. His short story collection, Crooked Out of Compton, is forthcoming from Running Wild Press's RIZE imprint.
Rae Armantrout, celebrated Language poet and recipient of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for her collection, Verse (Wesleyan, 2009), is the author of more than a dozen poetry books, most recently, Conjure (Wesleyan Poetry Series, 2020. Her numerous honors also include a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2007 Foundation for Contemporary Arts award in poetry. She has written that her "poems investigate the uneasy relations among words, the dissonance and the resonance. I hope readers will do a double-take or experience what Charles Bernstein has called 'turbulent thought.'" Born in Vallejo, CA, Armantrout earned her BA at UC Berkeley-where she studied with Denise Levertov-and earned her MA at San Francisco State. She is a professor emerita at UC San Diego, where she taught for over 20 years and directed the New Writing Series.
Kate Gale has authored seven poetry collections, including The Loneliest Girl (Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2022), The Goldilocks Zone (Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2014), Echo Light (Red Mountain Press, 2014). She has written six librettos including Rio de Sangre, an opera composed by Don Davis, which premiered at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee in 2010, and Paradises Lost, co-authored with Ursula K. LeGuin, composed by Stephen Andrew Taylor, and performed at the New York City Opera in 2006. Gale is managing editor of Red Hen Press which she co-founded with Mark E. Cull In 1994. She is editor of the Los Angeles Review, an annual print and online literary journal established in 2003. She teaches in the Low Residency MFA program in poetry at the University of Nebraska and speaks on independent publishing at schools around the US, including Columbia and the University of Southern California; and in England at Oxford University.
Will Alexander's collection, Refractive Africa (New Directions, 2021) is a 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Poetry. He is the author of over 30 works, including poetry collections, novels, essays, and plays. He is also a graphic artist. His collection, Singing In Magnetic Hoofbeat: Essays, Prose, Texts, Interviews, and a Lecture (2013) received an American Book Award. His other honors include a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry, a California Arts Council Fellowship, and the 2016 Jackson Poetry Prize. He has taught at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, the University of California, and Hofstra University among other educational institutions. He is poet-in-residence at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center.
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Ruth Madievsky is a poet and essayist, born in Moldova, now living in L.A. Her debut collection, Emergency Brake (Tavern Books, 2016), spent five months on Small Press Distribution's Poetry Bestsellers list. She was the winner of The American Poetry Review's Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize, a Tin House scholarship in poetry and The Iowa Review's Tim McGinnis Award for fiction. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, Harper's Bazaar, Tin House, Guernica, them, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Poem-A-Day, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of the Cheburashka Collective, a community of women and nonbinary writers whose identity has been shaped by immigration from the former Soviet Union to the United States. She writes a personal essay column for Catapult, "Eldest Immigrant Daughter." When she is not writing, she works as an HIV and primary care clinical pharmacist.
Marilyn Chin, recipient of the 2019 American Academy of Arts and Letters' prize for Exceptional Accomplishments in Literature, was born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon. Her works have become Asian American classics, taught in classrooms internationally. Her most recent collection is A Portrait of the Self as Nation (W.W. Norton, 2018). Her poems have been featured in many anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century Poetry, and The Best American Poetry. Chin has been awarded five Pushcart Prizes, a United Artist Foundation Fellowship, the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard, among other honors. A Professor Emerita at San Diego State University, she is a Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets.
Diana Arterian's collection Playing Monster :: Seiche (1913 Press, 2017) received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was the Editors' Selection for the 1913 First Book Prize. She is author of the chapbooks: With Lightness & Darkness and Other Brief Pieces (Essay Press, #94), Death Centos (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2018) and is co-editor of Among Margins: Critical & Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics (Ricochet, 2016). Her nonfiction, criticism, conversations, and translations have been featured in BOMB, Brooklyn Rail, Los Angeles Review of Books, NPR, The New York Times Book Review, and The Poetry Foundation website, among others, and she is a regular contributor at LitHub.
A Poetry Editor at Noemi Press, her creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Banff Centre, Caldera, Millay, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo.
Douglas Manuel's first full length collection, Testify (Red Hen Press, 2017), won an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for poetry. His poems are featured on Poetry Foundation's website and have appeared in Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, The Los Angeles Review, Superstition Review, Rhino, North American Review, The Chattahoochee Review, New Orleans Review, Crab Creek Review and elsewhere. He is a Middleton and Dornsife Fellow at the Univ. of Southern California, pursuing a PhD in literature and creative writing. Manuel has served as poetry editor for Gold Line Press and managing editor of Ricochet Editions. A native of Indiana, he received a BA in Creative Writing from Arizona State Univ. and an MFA from Butler Univ. where he was managing editor of the literary journal, Boot.
Michelle Brittan Rosado is the author of Why Can't It Be Tenderness (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2018), winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Her chapbook, Theory on Falling into a Reef (Anhinga Press, 2016) won the Rick Campbell Prize. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Poet Lore, among others, and the anthologies, Time You Let Me In -- 25 Poets Under 25 (Greenwillow Books, 2010); and Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience (Triangle Square, 2019)
For Erin Rodoni, 2017 was a big year. Her poem "Caesura" won the $20,000 Montreal International Poetry Prize, judged by Michael Harris, while her collection, Body, in Good Light, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in April and her collection, A Landscape for Loss, was released by NFSPS Press in May, having won the National Federation of State Poetry Societies 2016 Stevens Manuscript Award, judged by Tony Barnstone. Rodoni's work has appeared in Colorado Review, Cimarron Review, Drunken Boat, Verse Daily, and Spoon River Poetry Review, among others. Her poetry was included in the Best New Poets 2014 anthology and received awards from the Assoc. of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) and Ninth Letter. She holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MFA from San Diego State. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two young daughters.
Diana Marie Delgado is the author of Tracing the Horse (New Poets of America Book 43, BOA Editions Ltd., 2019), a New York Times "Noteworthy Pick" collection that follows the coming-of-age of a young Mexican-American woman trying to make sense of who she is amidst a family and community weighted by violence and addiction. Her chapbook, Late-Night Talks with Men I Think I Trust, was the 2018 Center for Book Arts winner. Her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Ninth Letter, New York Times Magazine, Colorado Review and Tin House. Also a playwright, Delgado is the Literary Director of the Univ. of Arizona Poetry Center and has more than twenty years of experience working in not-for-profits focused on advancing social justice and the arts. Her selected honors and awards include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Breadloaf Writers' Conference, and Hedgebrook.
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, translator, and the first undocumented student to graduate from the Univ. of Michigan's Creative Writing MFA program. His collection, Cenzontle (BOA editions, 2018), won the 2017 A. Poulin, Jr. prize. His chapbook, DULCE, was chosen by Chris Abani as the winner of the Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize. His memoir, Children of the Land, is forthcoming from Harper Collins. Castillo is a cofounder of the Undocupoets campaign which successfully eliminated citizenship requirements from all major first poetry book prizes in the country and was recognized with the Barnes and Noble "Writers for Writers" award. He has translated the work of Argentinian modernist poet, Jacobo Fijman and co-translated Mexican poet Marcelo Uribe with the late C.D. Wright. His work has appeared on the PBS NewsHour, in New England Review, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Southern Humanities Review, and BuzzFeed, among other publications. He lectures at Cal. State Univ., Sacramento, and teaches summers at The Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
Rocío Carlos has authored two collections, [the other room] (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2019) and Attendance, with co-author Rachel Mcleod Kaminer (The Operating System, 2018), in addition to three chapbooks, ex.her.pt (Wirecutter collective, 2016), In A World Below (Mindmade Books, 2014), Coyolxhauqui, Los Angeles (Archetype Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared in Chaparral, Angel City Review, The Spiral Orb and Cultural Weekly. Carlos' work was included in the LA County Museum of Art's Pacific Standard Time exhibition, Those of This America. With poet Terry Wolverton, she participated in the DIS.ARTICULATIONS project through Entropy Magazine in 2017. She was selected as 2003 PEN Center Emerging Voices fellow, collaborates as a partner at Wirecutter Collective, and is a teacher of the language arts.
Zachary Asher Greenberg, author of the chapbook Scarlight (Ravenna Press, 2014), has had poems published in The Columbia Review, CutBank, The Greensboro Review, Juked Magazine, Sleet Magazine and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vanderbilt University, where he was co-founding editor of the online literary arts and music journal Nashville Review. He has facilitated creative writing workshops for cancer patients and survivors and led poetry writing and meditation workshops. A native Californian, he currently teaches Language Arts at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles.
Maggie Glover's debut collection, How I Went Red, was published by Carnegie Mellon Univ. Press in 2014. Her work has been featured in several anthologies, including Best American Experimental Writing 2015 (Wesleyan Univ. Press), 12 Women: An Anthology of Poems (Carnegie Mellon Univ. Press, Dec. 2014), and Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods (West Virginia Univ. Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in over 40 journals, including Ninth Letter, jubilat, ECOTONE, Glass Poetry, Smartish Pace, and Stanford University's MANTIS. She lives in Los Angeles.
Jenny Minniti-Shippey is the author of After the Tour (Calypso Editions, 2018), her first full-length collection. Her chapbook, Done Dating DJs, won the 2008 Fool for Poetry Competition, sponsored by the Munster Literature Centre and Southword Editions of Cork, Ireland. Since 2009, she has been Managing Editor of Poetry International and a lecturer in the Department of English & Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. She is also Director of Development for the Contemporary Irish Arts Center, Los Angeles. Her poetry, translations, and reviews have appeared in Salamander, Cider Press Review, Spillway, Tar River Poetry, Jackson Hole Review, San Diego Poetry Annual, and The San Diego Union-Tribune, among other publications.
Ruben Quesada reads and discusses with host Lisa Grove three poem from his collection Next Extinct Mammal (Greenhouse Review Press, 2011). A native of Los Angeles and a first-generation Costa Rican American, Quesada is founder and publisher of Codex Journal, poetry editor for The Cossack Review, Cobalt Review, and Luna Luna Magazine. He has been a fellow and writer-in-residence at Red Lodge Clay Center, Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, Napa Valley Writers' Conference, Vermont Studio Center, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Canto Mundo.
Safiya Sinclair's first full-length collection, Cannibal (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2016), won the 2015 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and a 2016 Whiting Writers' Award. It was one of BuzzFeed's Best Poetry Books of 2016, one of The New Yorker's "Books We Loved in 2016," and a Publishers Weekly "Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2016." Born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Sinclair is currently a PhD candidate in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including Poetry magazine, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, New England Review, Boston Review, TriQuarterly, and the Iowa Review. In 2015, she won the Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest. She has been awarded fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Amy Clampitt Residency Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner, and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
Keegan Lester's collection, this shouldn't be beautiful but it was & it was all i had so i drew it (Slope Editions, 2017), was selected by Mary Ruefle for the 2016 Slope Editions Book Prize. Born in Huntington Beach, Keegan splits his time between New York City and Morgantown, West Virginia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming from Boston Review, The Atlas Review, Powder Keg, Boaat Journal, The Journal, Phantom Books, Tinderbox, among other publications and has been featured on NPR. The co-founder and poetry editor for Souvenir Lit, he performs with the New York City Poetry Brothel and has taught at the West Virginia Young Writers' Holiday, Stonehill College. He earned his MFA from Columbia University.
Kim Dower reads and discusses with host Lisa Grove three poem from her third collection, Last Train to the Missing Planet (Red Hen Press, 2016). Her first collection, Air Kissing on Mars, (Red Hen Press, 2010) was on the Poetry Foundation's Contemporary Best Sellers list. Her work has been featured in Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac" and Ted Kooser's "American Life in Poetry," as well as in Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Rattle, and Eclipse. Her poems are included in the anthologies, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, (Beyond Baroque Books, 2015) and Coiled Serpent: Poets arising from the cultural quakes and shifts of Los Angeles (Tia Chucha Press, 2016).
Carly Joy Miller is the author of Ceremonial (Orison Books, 2018), selected by Carl Phillips as the winner of the 2017 Orison Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Like a Beast (Anhinga Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Rick Campbell Chapbook Prize. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Blackbird, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, West Branch and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor for Poetry International, the co-director of the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program and a co-founding editor of Locked Horn Press.
Angela Peñaredondo is the author of All Things Lose Thousands of Times (Inlandia Institute, 2016), winner of the Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Prize and the chapbook, Maroon (Jamii Publications). Born in Iloilo City, Philippines, she/siya is a Pilipinx/Pin@y poet and artist now living in Southern California, sometimes identifying as "a usual ghost, comet or part-time animal." Her work has appeared in The Margins, Drunken Boat, Four Way Review, Cream City Review, Southern Humanities Review among other journals. Peñaredondo is a VONA/Voices of our Nations Art fellow, a recipient of a University of California Institute for Research in the Arts Grant, Gluck Program of the Arts Fellowship, Naropa University's Zora Neal Hurston Award, Squaw Valley Writers Fellowship and Fishtrap Fellowship.
Mahtem Shiferraw is a poet and visual artist who grew up in Ethiopia and Eritrea and now lives in Southern California. Winner of the 2015 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, she is the author of a full collection, FUCHSIA (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Behind Walls & Glass (Finishing Line Press, 2016). She is founder and executive editor of black lioness press & studio, promoting the literary and artistic work of people of color. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including The 2River View, Cactus Heart Press, Luna Luna Magazine, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and The Bitter Oleander Press. Shiferraw holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Chen Chen's collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions Ltd., 2017) was selected by Jericho Brown for the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Other recent honors include New Delta Review's Matt Clark Editors' Choice Award in Poetry, Syracuse University's Joyce Carol Oates Award for Best Group of Poems (selected by Ishion Hutchinson), and Texas Tech Univ.'s Warren S. Walker Award for Best Critical Writing in a Graduate English Course. He has authored two chapbooks, Kissing the Sphinx (Two of Cups Press, 2016) and Set the Garden on Fire (Porkbelly Press, 2015). His work has appeared in Poetry and The Best American Poetry, among other places. He is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech Univ., where he is Managing Editor for Iron Horse. He is also the Prose and Social Media Editor of Gabby Journal.
Piotr Florczyk is the author of the collection East & West (Lost Horse Press, 2016), the chapbook Barefoot (Eyewear Publishing, 2015), and Los Angeles Sketchbook (Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, 2015), a collection of personal essays. Born in Kraków, Poland, and now living and teaching in Los Angeles, he has translated six volumes by prominent Polish poets. His poems, translations, essays and reviews have appeared in many journals, including The American Scholar, Boston Review, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry International, Slate, The Southern Review, and the London Times Literary Supplement. Florczyk is one of the founders of Calypso Editions, a cooperative press, and is translation editor of The Los Angeles Review.
