Thank you to our 2026 presenters.

Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad (an Oprah’s Book Club selection and winner of the 2016 National Book Award and 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. He was named New York’s 11th State Author in 2018. His New York Times bestseller The Nickel Boys won the 2020 Pultizer Prize for Fiction (making him only the fourth writer to win two Pulitzers in the Fiction category), the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Fiction, and the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. His latest bestselling novels are Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto.

Colson Whitehead’s reviews, essays, and fiction have appeared in a number of publications, such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Harper’s and Granta.

He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, A Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Dos Passos Prize, a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the 2020 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and the National Humanities Medal in 2021.

He has taught at the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, New York University, Princeton University, Wesleyan University, and been a Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and the University of Wyoming. He lives in New York City.

Julia Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960, at the age of ten. She is the author of numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including her beloved first novel, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, and In the Time of the Butterflies, which was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its Big Read program. She was the subject of an American Masters documentary, Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined, on PBS and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. She lives in Vermont.

Sasha Bonét is a writer and cultural critic based in New York City. Her criticism and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Aperture, New York Magazine, Vogue, and BOMB, among other publications. Bonét is a professor of creative writing for Columbia University and Barnard College.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a fiction writer, poet, and essayist. She is the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller and Oprah’s Book Club pick The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was nominated for the National Book Award; as well as five poetry collections, including the NAACP Image Award–winning The Age of Phillis, also nominated for the National Book Award.

 

Photo taken by Sydney A. Foster.

Dr. Imani Perry is the Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Perry is the author of 9 books, including the New York Times Bestseller South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation which received the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the inaugural Inside Literary Prize, the only book award judged by incarcerated Americans. Perry's other award-winning titles include: May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem, and Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry. Her work has been recognized by the Pen America Foundation, Phi Beta Kappa, The Hurston Wright Foundation, The NAACP, and the National Magazine Awards. Her most recent book: Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, was published in January of 2025. Perry has written for numerous publications including: The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Bitter Southerner, The Paris Review, Harper's and Harper’s Bazaar. Perry is a 2023 recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. She has also received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Pew Foundations. She has been awarded honorary degrees from Georgetown University, Mt. Holyoke College, and Wesleyan University. Perry earned her Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an L.L.M. in 19th century property and contract law from Georgetown University Law Center, and a B.A. in American Studies and Literature from Yale College. Prior to Harvard, she served on the faculties of Princeton University's Department of African American Studies and Rutgers Law School.

Danzy Senna is the bestselling author of six previous books, including Caucasia, New People, and most recently Colored Television. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, she teaches writing at the University of Southern California.

Kevin Young is the author of sixteen books of poetry and prose, including his most recent, Night Watch, which won the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is the poetry editor of The New Yorker, where he hosts the Poetry Podcast, and the editor of eleven volumes, including A Century of Poetry in the New Yorker, 1925-2025 and the acclaimed anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song. From 2021-2025, Young was the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. From 2016-2021, he was the director of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He currently serves as the Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. Starting in fall 2026, Young will serve as the Rosenkranz Writer-in-Residence at Yale University, a post formerly held by Nobel laureate Louise Glück.

Kamau Ayubbi is an Imam, Chaplain, published author, soul care facilitator who has served as a healthcare chaplain for 19 years helping serving patients, families, and medical staff promoting wellness through  reflection, meditation, spiritual health. For decades he has supported and taught body, mind, spirit practices rooted in compassion, authenticity and sacred space. He co-founded a unique consult service to promote equitable health care where he currently serves at Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor. Born and raised in a family of artists, activists, thinkers and healers, Kamau has a creative and down to earth way of supporting health and healing practices to promote health of the soul in community. He is the Co-founder of SoulCare313. 

Charisse Bailey is a creative facilitator, storyteller, and Executive Director of Lake Erie Ink, a writing space for youth in Cleveland. Her work centers voice, creativity, and community, often blending writing with visual art, performance, and collaborative storytelling. She is interested in how creative expression can hold identity, memory, and everyday experience. Through her community-based work, Charisse creates spaces where people of all ages can explore, share, and trust their own voice through story.

Ali Black is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio, and the author of the poetry collection We Look Better Alive (Burnside Review Press, 2025) and the chapbook If It Heals At All (Jacar Press, 2020). We Look Better Alive was nominated for a 2026 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry and was a finalist for both the Ohioana Book Award and the Julie Suk Award. Selected by Jaki Shelton Green for the New Voices Series, If It Heals At All was also a finalist for the 2021 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry. Ali is the recipient of the 2025 Cleveland Arts Prize in the Emerging Artist category. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Atticus Review, jubilat, Literary Hub, The Offing, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere.

Hillary Behrman’s debut story collection, Lake Effect (Sarabande 2026) was chosen by Lauren Groff as the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction. Groff praised Lake Effect as a book of “great moral power and heart” by “an author of extraordinary grace." Hillary’s award-winning stories have been published in journals, magazines, short story dispensers, and anthologies. Hillary grew up in Cleveland and now lives in Seattle where she raised two kids and worked as a children’s civil rights lawyer, public defender, community educator, and activist.

Mir Benitz writes about imperfect people adventuring into love. Also, dragons. She is an eclectic reader, a haphazard gardener, and an overly ambitious carpenter. At various points in her life, she has worked as a high school English teacher, a college instructor, a janitor, an editor, the executive director of a writing nonprofit, a landscaper, and an extra in one movie. She lives in Western Pennsylvania with her husband and houseplants.

Mary Biddinger is a writer and professor who lives in Akron, Ohio. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Akron, where she directs the NEOMFA creative writing program. Her novella-in-flash titled The Girl with the Black Lipstick was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2025. Her most recent poetry collections are Department of Elegy (2022) and Partial Genius: Prose Poems (2019). She is also co-editor, with Julie Brooks Barbour, of A Mollusk Without a Shell: Essays on Self-Care for Writers (University of Akron Press, 2024). 

Matthew Breit is a writer and digital producer whose work explores myth making, technology, and mysticism. His writing has appeared at poets.org and in Crayfish Magazine. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Penn State and an MFA from the Northeast Ohio MFA program, and lives in Kent, OH.

Willow Campbell (they/them) is a creative writing candidate with the NEOMFA Program at Cleveland State University, where they currently serve as the Writing Center’s Senior Graduate Assistant. Willow’s writing has appeared in venues such as X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Cleveland Review of Books, Cleaver Magazine, Glass Mountain Magazine, American Literary Review, and more. Willow is an organizer and co-host for the local reading & music series 2x2 ("two by two") and a fiction editor for the University of Akron’s journal, Rubbertop Review.  

Johnny Caputo is an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). His speculative fiction has appeared in Escape Pod, Mithila Review, Cast of Wonders, and other venues. When not writing, he spends his time teaching at various institutions and wandering the woods around Cleveland, Ohio.

Rachel E. Cargle is a writer whose voice reaches far beyond the page. Born and raised in Akron, she is the author of A Renaissance of Our Own published with Penguin Random House's Dial Press and the owner of Elizabeth's Literary Studio & Shop. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, Essence, Cultured, and The Washington Post. Alongside her books and bylines, she has grown one of the most engaged literary communities online — more than a million readers. She is also the founder of The Loveland Foundation, an organization that has contributed over $10 million toward free access to therapy for Black women and girls across the country.  

Joseph Celizic teaches writing at Bowling Green State University. His fiction has been published in The Threepenny Review, Indiana Review, Third Coast, and North American Review, and was listed as an honorable mention in Best American Mystery Stories. He presents regularly at BGSU's annual creative writing conference, Winter Wheat.

Tiffany Graham Charkosky writes about motherhood, medicine, and health. Her creative work explores the dynamics at work within human relationships and has been featured in outlets such as Oprah Daily, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, The Educated Patient, Gordon Square Review, and MUTHA Magazine. Her essay Year of the Rat was the Ohio Prose Contest winner in 2022. LIVING PROOF: How Love Defied Genetic Legacy is Tiffany's debut. She is currently working on a novel.

CHIMI is a Nigerian interdisciplinary artist working at the intersections of sound, performance, installation, and visual art. With roots in gospel music and over a decade of an expansive collaborative practice, her work inspects a full spectrum of ancestral, spiritual and psychological legacies on the black femme body. As a singer and songwriter she has collaborated and toured internationally with powerhouses like Mourning [A] BLKstar and interdisciplinary legend, Lonnie Holley. 

As an improvisational performer, she builds immersive, altar-like environments. Her compositions, installations and performances have been exhibited and presented at Spaces Gallery, Waterloo Arts, Grace Exhibition Space, Harlan Levey Projects, New York Live Arts, Gallery Papillon, Abrons Art Center, and Festival Theaterformen.

In 2024 she was named a Premiere fellow at Cleveland Public Theater. In 2025 she took 1st place at the Groundhog Show. And most recently named 2027 ECHO Artist in Residence at SPACES gallery.

As an educator and community collaborator, she has worked with Cleveland Public Library, Cleveland Playhouse, Cleveland Art Workers, and Foluke Arts and Cultural center to develop programming that sets out to improve emotional well-being and cultural memory and artistic exploration/collaboration.

Jon Conley is a poet from Cleveland. He is the author of Deadheading (Community Mausoleum, 2025) and the chapbooks Orse (jagged edge, forthcoming) and House Hunters International :: Sonnets (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023). He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Fiction at Oberlin College. Find him online at conjonley.tumblr.com. 

Desiree Cooper is a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, former attorney, and editor of the groundbreaking 2026 anthology, Black Summers: Growing up in the Urban Outdoors. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Oprah Daily, MSNBC Daily, Flash Fiction America 2023, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, River Teeth, and noted in The Best American Essays 2019. Cooper is the author of the award-winning flash fiction collection, Know the Mother. Her children’s picture book, Nothing Special, is a 2023 Paterson Prizewinner and one of the New York Public Library’s “10 Best Children’s Books of 2022.”

Wilbert L. Cooper grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. He studied journalism at Ohio University and earned a master's degree in publishing at New York University. He has written for outlets such as The Guardian, The New York Times, the Marshall Project, and The Wall Street Journal. His Vice documentary The Cleveland Strangler was nominated for a National Magazine Award. In 2024, he was the recipient of the Richard J. Margolis Award. The Black Shield is his first book.

Jamie Stewart Crawford (she/they) is a writer and nonprofit administrator. Her short stories have appeared in literary journals such as Suburban Witchcraft, Lit Nerds, The Blunt Space, and AC|DC Journal. Her work has also been featured in the anthologies Unapologetic Love: A Queer Charity Anthology of Radical Resilience and Driftwood and Dreams: Stories Set Along the Great Lakes. Jamie’s short screenplay War Torn, a queer drama, has been a finalist in competitions at the Cindependent Film Festival, the Boston Screenplay Awards, the Nashville Film Festival Screenwriting Competition, and the Caledonia Short Script Competition. Jamie enjoys community building, improv comedy, and 70s rock n' roll. 

Sandra Doller is the author of several books of poetry, prose, translation, and the in-between from the most valiant small presses, most recently Not Now Now from Rescue Press. Her work has lately appeared in magazines such as Fence, Harp & Altar, Pamenar, Touch the Donkey, and Action, Spectacle. Doller is the founder of an international literary arts journal and independent press called 1913, where she remains l’éditrice-in-chief. She lives in the USA, for now.

Mallory Donoghue is a writer from Indialantic, FL. She is a graduate of the University of Kentucky's MFA in Creative Writing and has received support from the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, the UK Big Sky Writing Residency, the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flyway, the North American Review's "Open Space," New Letters, Fourth Genre, and the Chicago Quarterly Review. She currently lives in Lexington, KY and leads a Creative Nonfiction workshop with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. 

Eris Eady (They/She) is a Black, Bisexual, Non-binary & Disabled minister, consultant, advocate, author, artist and writer from Cleveland, Ohio. They have organized, facilitated, performed, presented, and curated healing spaces all over the country. Eris has worked in the nonprofit and advocacy sector for 25 years. Known as the “Come Out Coach,” Eris equips individuals and organizations with the tools needed to foster identity and cultivate equitably inclusive practices while integrating their role as a Movement Chaplain to ensure emotionally and spiritually safe environments. They have a Master’s of Science in Positive Organizational Development & Change from Case Western Reserve University. Eris is currently a student at Memphis Theological Seminary obtaining a Doctorate of Ministry in Womanist Preaching. They are the proud parent of Yahsiin Zora Venia.   

Danielle Evans is the award-winning author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies including The Best American Short Stories. She is an Associate Professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

Sonia Feldman is the author of debut novel Girl's Girl, a national bestseller and New York Times Editors' Choice book. A winner of the PEN America PEN/Dau Prize and a former Literary Cleveland Breakthrough Writing Resident, she runs the popular email newsletter Sonia's Poem of the Week. She lives and writes in Cleveland.  

Hattie Fletcher is one of the co-founders of Short Reads, a free literary email featuring flash nonfiction. She has edited prose for Autumn House Press and Belt Publishing and is the former managing editor of Creative Nonfiction and True Story magazines. She also teaches undergraduate creative writing courses at the University of Pittsburgh. 

Kisha Nicole Foster lives in Cleveland and is the recipient of the 2019 Cleveland Arts Prize for Emerging Artist in Literature. Foster is an alumnus of Cleveland State University-BA English and holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. She is the author of Poems: 1999-2014 and Bloodwork (Outlandish Press). Her work has appeared in Black in the Middle:  An Anthology of the Black Midwest (Belt Publishing). Foster’s poems are celebrated as public art on the Oriana House’s Cleveland Community Based Correctional Facility building on East 55th and its headquarters on Hough in Cleveland, thanks to her partnership with the Building Bridges Arts Collective. Her spoken word album BLK (black) Earth: SPK (speak) Poems can be found on Bandcamp. Foster is a Room in the House fellow for Karamu House and the Poet for the People. She is the mother of a dragonfly and Love. 

Raja Belle Freeman is a performance poet and visual artist. She has worked as a teaching artist for Lake Erie Ink and Twelve Literary Arts and as a member of the board of South Euclid's community development corporation One South Euclid. She also completed a visual arts residency with Akron Soul Train in 2023. She has been mentioned in several news articles and featured on WKYC. She has done readings all over the city for prominent organizations including The Western Reserve Historical Society, Literary Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art and many others. She graduated from Cleveland State University where she received a bachelor's degree in Creative Writing with a minor in Black Studies. Some of her readings can be found on Youtube. 

Siaara Freeman is from Cleveland, Ohio, where she is the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Cleveland Heights and University Heights and unofficially, the Lake Erie Siren.

She is a 2023 Room in the House Fellow with Karamu House, a 2022 Catapult Fellow with Cleveland Public Theatre, and a 2021 Premier Playwright Fellow, also with CPT. In 2021, she appeared in a commercial for the Cleveland Museum of Art. She is also a 2020 Watering Hole Manuscript Fellow, a 2018 Poetry Foundation Incubator Fellow, and a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee.

Her work appears in The Journal, Josephine Quarterly, Cleveland Magazine, and elsewhere. Multiple poems have gone viral, and she has toured both nationally and internationally.

Her debut full-length collection, Urbanshee (Button Poetry), was a 2023 finalist for the Audre Lorde Award from The Publishing Triangle and a 2023 Silver Winner of the Benjamin Franklin IPBA Award for Poetry.

When she’s not very busy serving as Programs Director for Sparrow’s Fortune, she’s running her literary based travelling bar “Juke n Jot”, if not she’s likely by a lake, thinking of Toni Morrison and talking to ghosts. I hear she’s growing her Afro so tall, she hopes God uses it as a microphone and speaks through her.

Peter Gelderloos is a writer and anarchist from Virginia, who lived half his life in Catalunya and now lives in Cleveland. He has written several nonfiction books that explore questions of the history, theory, and strategy of revolutionary movements, like How Nonviolence Protects the State, Anarchy Works, and The Solutions Are Already Here. Through journalistic writing he often looks at realistic responses to the ecological crisis. He has published one speculative fiction novel, Hermetica, under the pen name Alan Lea.

 After receiving her BA from Tulane University and MA from American University, Jody Gerbig taught college writing and high-school English in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio. In her spare time, she has served as a senior editor at Typehouse Magazine and 101 Words, judged submissions for Best of the Net, reviewed books for The Big Thrill, and taught through Literary Cleveland. Currently an agented writer, she teaches AP classes and writes literary suspense. Her work appears in Litro, Columbus Monthly, Brevity, Ruminate, and many others, and has been nominated for both a Pushcart and Best of the Net. Gerbig now lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband, three children, and rescued pets.

Stephanie Ginese is an author and stand-up comedian from South Lorain, Ohio. Her debut collection of poetry, Unto Dogs, was released in July of 2022 on Grieveland. She was a 2023 Cleveland Arts Prize recipient and a 2024 Creative Impact Fund awardee. She can be found at www.sginese.com.

Joe Hall’s books include Buffalo Free Rapid Transit (Black Ocean, 2026), People Finder, Buffalo (Cloak, 2024) and Fugue & Strike (Black Ocean, 2023). The Boston Globe: “Joe Hall’s poems move between a fist-pounding urgency, the fire and squelch of this moment of our endtime, and a vulnerability hushed and gentle as a nightgown on a laundry line.”

Quartez Harris is a poet, teaching artist and bestselling author. He was named Ohio Poet of the Year for his poetry collection We Made it to School Alive. His picture book Go Tell It: How James Baldwin Became a Writer is a Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award Honor and USA Today Bestseller. He spent many years as a second grade teacher in the Cleveland public school system. He currently holds a creative writing Artist-in-Residence at Cleveland School of Arts where he teaches poetry and fiction workshops.

Stafford Hartman is a musician, educator, and emerging writer based in Cleveland, OH. A Kentucky native, she spent a decade singing professionally before transitioning to music education. In 2021, she began exploring micro-memoir through @americangirltherapy, an Instagram project chronicling childhood memories tied to her American Girl doll collection. These posts evolved into longer-form writing that explores her experiences as a millennial coming of age in the Bible Belt. She is currently developing a full-length memoir which uses music as a central framework for exploring her lived experiences with class, identity, and recovery. In addition to writing and teaching, Stafford is passionate about creating affirming, accessible spaces for young musicians and encouraging other suburban mothers to fly their freak flags without apology.  

Aubrey Hirsch is the author of the book GRAPHIC RAGE: Comics on Gender, Justice, and Life as a Woman in America. Her stories, essays and comics have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, TIME, The Nib, Black Warrior Review, American Short Fiction and elsewhere.

Nathan Hoks is a poet whose books include Nests in Air, The Narrow Circle, Reveilles, and most recently, Moony Days of Being. His work has been awarded the National Poetry Series, the Tomaž Šalamun Prize, and the Iowa Review David Hamilton Prize. He has also published translations of work by Vicente Huidobro, Henri Michaux, Tristan Tzara, and Christian Dotremont. He teaches at the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and lives in Chicago with his family.

 Erin Hosier has been an agent with Dunow Carlson & Lerner literary agency (DCL) since 2007. She primarily works with authors of nonfiction and select literary fiction for adults, and has a special interest in memoir, secret histories, music biography and pop culture, science, humor, cultural criticism, and untold stories of all kinds. She is the author of the memoir Don’t Let Me Down (2019) and the co-author of drummer Patty Schemel’s Hit So Hard (2017); she is the co-host and producer of the Tell Me About Your Father podcast. She lives in Cleveland.

Raechel Anne Jolie is a writer based in Cleveland, Ohio. She holds a PhD from the University of Minnesota. Her writing has appeared in Playboy, The Baffler, Bitch, Teen Vogue, among other publications. Jolie is also the editor and co-creator of The Prison Arcana tarot zine, made in collaboration with incarcerated artists. Her memoir Rust Belt Femme received recognition in NPR's Favorite Books of 2020, was a finalist in the Heartland Bookseller's Award, and was the winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction. She also writes radical love letters, a weekly newsletter of essays and criticism. 

Carter Keane resides in and is inspired by the frequently odd and often horrifying state of Ohio. Keane writes books where the monster and the monstrous, in the end, are not the same. Morsel is their debut. Keane takes the timeless fear of being chased through deep, dark woods by something unknown and pairs it with modern existential terrors like being bodily consumed by our work, spiritually flayed by nationalism, and brutalized by the state. They spend their time in the Burning River City gardening, talking to their neighbors, training their dogs, and rereading David Graeber.

Annmarie Kelly is the author of Here Be Dragons, a memoir about the wonderful misery of raising children. She also hosts Wild Precious Life, a literary podcast about authors and their craft. Annmarie teaches writing at Cuyahoga Community College and Stanford University, and she works with incarcerated students trying to obtain their degrees. She’s received support from the Ohio Arts Council, Tin House, and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute, and she was recently named both an Erma Bombeck and Ernest Hemingway Writer-in-Residence. Annmarie lives in Cleveland where she’s currently writing a book with the ghost of her father.

Semyon Khokhlov is a librarian and writer living in Philadelphia. He edits LEAN magazine.

Virginia Konchan is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Requiem (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2025); a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017); and four chapbooks. She also coedited the craft anthology Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Atlantic, American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, The Believer, and the Academy of American Poets; her essays and criticism in Kenyon Review Online, Boston Review, American Poetry Review, Jacket2, Diode, and Guernica; her translations from French in The Brooklyn Rail, Asymptote and Circumference; and her fiction in StoryQuarterly, Joyland, and Memorious. 

Paula J. Lambert has published five full-length poetry collections including Terms of Venery, Revised (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2025) and six chapbooks including Sinkhole (Bottlecap Press 2025). Lambert is  also a literary translator, small press publisher, and visual artist. Her work has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her mentorship has been recognized by PEN America. A strong supporter of the intersection of poetry and science, she lives in Columbus with her husband Michael Perkins, a philosopher and technologist. More at www.paulajlambert.com.

 M. Carmen Lane is a two:spirit African-American and Haudenosaunee (Mohawk/Tuscarora) artist, writer and facilitator living in Cleveland, Ohio.  Lane’s work ranges from experiential educator to diversity practitioner to organizational systems consultant to experimental artist—all of it integrates ancestry, legacy, and spirituality; pursues expansion, experimentation, and play. Lane is founder and director of ATNSC: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership, an urban retreat center and social practice experiment in holistic health, leadership development, Indigenous arts and culture and the Akhsótha Gallery located in the historic Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood. Lane’s work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including the Yellow Medicine Review, Red Ink Magazine, Anomaly, and the Lambda Literary Award-nominated Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two Spirit Literatures. Lane’s first collection of poetry is Calling Out After Slaughter (2015). Lane has exhibited work during the FRONT 2018 triennial group show A Color Removed at SPACES Gallery, EFA Project Space’s Spring 2019 exhibition In The Presence of Absence, The Riffe Gallery’s SHIFT exhibition and the group exhibition CONVERGE at the Artist Archives of the Western Reserve. Lane was a 2018 Creative Fusion artist-in-residence; a recipient of the 2019 Room In The House artist residency at the historic Karamu theatre and a 2020 artist-in-residence at the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern University. In 2020, Lane was awarded a Joyce Award with ATNSC: Center for Healing and Creative Leadership.

Kayla Lightner (she/her) is an agent at Ayesha Pande Literary. Her clients include award winners and bestsellers like Annabelle Tometich, Isabel Yap, Minda Honey, and more. An adventurous reader who values fearless curiosity, Kayla is primarily looking for adult nonfiction that can masterfully straddle the line between storytelling and teaching readers something new (about the world or themselves) in the form of memoir, journalism/reportage, hidden histories, and prescriptive. More selectively, she’s looking for smart, propulsive literary and upmarket fiction with a speculative or historical lens and graphic novels for all ages. After managing APL’s subrights department for two years, she’s particularly excited by projects with legs in multiple formats (film, television, translation, etc). Kayla has served on the Adult Internship Grant Committee for We Need Diverse Books and as a Fellowship Director for Literary Agents of Change. A Georgia native, Kayla earned her B.A. in English from Vassar College. When not reading, she can be found reminiscing on her rugby days or writing. Her work has appeared in several publications and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, Wigleaf's Top 50, and Best of the Net.

Lincoln Michel's most recent novel is Metallic Realms (Atria Books). He is also the author of the story collection Upright Beasts (Coffee House Press) and the novel The Body Scout (Orbit). His fiction appears in The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney's, The Baffler, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Lightspeed. He writes the weekly literary newsletter Counter Craft.  

jessica Care moore’s publishing house, Moore Black Press, has published poets including Saul Williams, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, asha bandele, and Danny Simmons, and in 2024 she landed a distribution deal with HarperCollins. Throughout her career, moore has mentored youth across the United States and has lent her voice and time to juvenile detention centers, prisons, universities, and art institutions around the country. 

moore has recorded her poetry with hip hop legends including Common, Nas, Jeezy, Talib Kweli, Karriem Riggins, techno pioneer Jeff Mills, The Last Poets, Jose James, and Roy Ayers, with writer Greg Tate, calling her poetry “a black scream.” 

moore is the author of The Words Don’t Fit in My Mouth, The Alphabet Verses: The Ghetto, God is Not an American, and Sunlight Through Bullet Holes. Her fifth book, We Want Our Bodies Back (HarperCollins, 2020), won the American Library Association Black Caucus Poetry Honor. Her first children's book, Her Crown Shines (illustrated by Dare Coulter), was recently listed on Oprah Winfrey's “6 Books You Must Read.” 

moore is a 2019 and 2017 Knight Arts Recipient, a 2018 Joyce Award Winner, 2016 Kresge Artist Fellow, the 2013 Alain Locke Award Recipient, and the 2015 NAACP Great Expectations Award Recipient. 

Kortney Morrow is a poet and writer creating from her studio in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has received support from 68to05, The Academy of American Poets, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, and Transition Magazine. Her debut poetry collection, Run It Back, was the winner of the 2024 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize, judged by Carmen Giménez.

Dana Murphy is a literary agent at Trellis Literary Management, where she represents a wide range of fiction and nonfiction. Books by her clients have been New York Times, USA Today, and international bestsellers as well as Barnes & Noble Discover, Book of the Month, Read with Jenna, Indie Next and NYT Editors' Choice picks. Her taste is eclectic, but the titles on her list all aim to satisfy as much as they surprise—delivering equally on premise and craft. Prior to joining Trellis in 2022, Dana spent the first ten years of her career at The Book Group. She is based in Philadelphia.

Benvolio Nichols (he/him) is a fiction writer and gender studies scholar, who has presented research at the Gender, Culture, Women and Sexuality (GCWS) Graduate Student Conference out of MIT. He hosts and produces Kings on the Aux, a performing arts podcast focused on drag kings and queer/trans storytelling. Benvolio studies creative writing through the NEOMFA at Cleveland State University.

Nahomy Ortiz-Garcia is a Puerto Rican writer, artist, and marketing professional. She is also the creator behind @nahomyslibrary, a book-focused Instagram with over 11K followers, where she shares book recommendations, literary events, and content connecting readers. Beyond her creative work, she is passionate about theatre, horror movies, and community engagement.

Michelle Park Lazette writes apocalyptic fantasy about hidden magic, impossible choices, and what survives when the world doesn’t. She independently published her debut novel, The Descended, shepherding it from messy draft to finished paperback, e-book, and audiobook — fueled by stubbornness, spreadsheets, and a mild caffeine dependency. A champion of practical, transparent indie publishing, Michelle shares the real numbers, real missteps, and real strategies behind building a book from scratch. She lives in Northeast Ohio, where she is either writing, plotting, or convincing people that the end of the world can be surprisingly hopeful.

Taylor Patterson is a multidisciplinary artist and writer from Northeast Ohio. A graduate of Kent State University in journalism and creative writing, she has taught poetry in settings ranging from public schools to juvenile detention centers. Patterson’s work confronts girlhood, addiction, class, and the breaking and remaking of home. Her current project is a chapbook of poetry and lyrical prose that renders survival, femininity, and the complicated holiness of Midwestern women.

Hilary Plum is a writer, editor, and teacher living in Cleveland. Her recent books include the novel State Champ (Bloomsbury), the long poem Important Groups (Community Mausoleum), and the essay collection Hole Studies (Fonograf Editions). She co-edits the Open Prose Series at Rescue Press and co-hosts the podcast Index for Continuance, on small press publishing, politics, and practice.

Before becoming an Amazon best-selling author, D.M. Pulley worked as a Professional Engineer rehabbing historic structures and assessing building failures. Her survey of a vacant building in Cleveland, Ohio inspired her debut, The Dead Key, the winner of the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Since then, Pulley has published three more mystery/thrillers inspired by true-crime in the Rust Belt and sold over 800,000 books worldwide. Her novel, No One’s Home, was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award and named "Best of Horror 2019" by Suspense Magazine. Look for Pulley's latest Gothic thriller, Stone Mad, due out October 13, 2026. 

Sara Abou Rashed is a Palestinian American poet, speaker, and the author of Theories of Return (Diode Editions, 2026). A former poetry fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, her work has been commended by the UK Forward Prize and received the 2023 Hopwood Award for Poetry from the University of Michigan, where she earned her MFA. Sara’s writing appears in The Kenyon Review, The LA Review of Books, Poetry Magazine, 9-12 McGraw Hill Language Arts Curriculum, among numerous others. A graduate of Denison University, she is the creator of the one-woman show, A Map of Myself, and is currently pursuing her PhD in English at The Ohio State University.

University at Buffalo Professor Emeritus Gary Earl Ross is the author of Blackbird Rising and the Nickel City mystery novels with Buffalo PI Gideon Rimes, as well as three collections of previously published short stories. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, journals, and anthologies, including Medium for Murder, Buffalo Noir, Intimacy, Black Cat Weekly, Mystery Tribune, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Nine of his eleven plays—produced in America, Canada, England, India, and China—are mysteries. Along with the MWA Edgar Award for Matter of Intent, his honors include a Saltonstall Fellowship, a NYSCA Individual Artist Award, two ASI-DEC fiction grants, and three Emanuel Fried Outstanding New Play Awards. The plays Matter of Intent and Scavenger’s Daughter were adapted into films in India. Ross lives in Buffalo, nicknamed for the bison head five-cent piece. For more information and contact, visit www.garyearlross.com. 

Zach Savich's latest books are Momently (Black Ocean, 2024) and A Field of Telephones (53rd State, 2025). He teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Prince Shakur is a queer Jamaican-American writer, filmmaker, educator, and organizer whose body of work spans memoir, journalism, video, and radical pedagogy. His debut memoir, When They Tell You To Be Good (Tin House), was named one of TIME Magazine’s Most Anticipated Books. His creative nonfiction spans explorations of Black iconography, queer media, and political resistance through an intersectional lens. Shakur has produced political and personal video essays for his growing YouTube platform, and co-hosts The Dugout, a podcast on Black anarchist history.

Michelle R. Smith is a writer, poet, educator, cultural facilitator, native Clevelander, and recipient of a 2026 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for poetry. She is the Programming Director for Literary Cleveland, 2025-2026 Poet Laureate for Cleveland Heights & University Heights, and author of the poetry collections Ariel in Black (2015) and The Vagina Analogues (2020). Her poetry microzine, black, live matters: a collection of katauta for an activist husband (rinky dink press), was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2024. She has been published in The Normal School, The Gasconade Review, New Note Poetry, Merge Magazine, io Literary Magazine, and other pages. 

Maggie Su is the author of the novel Blob: A Love Story (Harper, 2025) which was reviewed in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, and Associated Press. Blob was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award and named one of the best books of 2025 by The New Yorker. Maggie is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree and holds a PhD in fiction from University of Cincinnati. She serves as a fiction editor at New England Review and lives in South Bend, Indiana, with her partner, daughter, cat, and turtle.

Tristan Summers has lived in four different countries and worked as everything from an English teacher at a rural Chinese school, to a physical therapist assistant teaching stroke patients to walk, to wilderness search and rescue operations in the Blue Ridge mountains. He is a multiple-time finalist of the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction contest, as well as the Cuyahoga Community College Emerging Writer Scholarship. He writes in several different genres, but his work is consistently strange, sad, and beautiful.

Julianne Taylor is a MFA candidate in the NEOMFA creative writing program.

Matthew Thompson—known as MATTMATT RAYBEAM— is a poet from Bedford Heights, Ohio working in music, performance, and American literature. His 2021 mixtape FAGGOT RADIO: The Death Tape and 2023 trilogy LAST 3 DAYS ON RYAN’S COUCH, 1 YEAR IN MOM’S APARTMENT, and PRAY FOR ME highlight his raw, spiritual lyricism. He’s made four films—A Study of Him (2018), FAGGOT RADIO: The Live Presentation (2023), A Love Joke (2024), and Notes on Black Fame (2025). He’s a Lambda Literary Fellow, and a Master of Fine Arts graduate of The New School. Matthew’s published in BOMB, Juked Poetry, Brooklyn Magazine, and more.

Coming soon!

Sara Moore Wagner is the author of three full-length books of poetry, Lady Wing Shot, winner of the Blue Lynx Prize (2024), Swan Wife (Cider Press Review Editors Prize, 2022), and Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize, 2022), and of three chapbooks, including Faery Rooted (forthcoming from Chestnut Review). She is a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has been featured most recently in Gulf Coast, The Journal, North American Review, and on The Slowdown. In 2023, she became the Managing Poetry Editor of Driftwood Press. 

Sara Wainscott is the author of Insecurity System (Persea, 2020) and The Star Cabins (Rescue Press, 2026). She lives in Chicago.

Michelle Tackla Wallace is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio. A daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she often finds herself negotiating different cultures and values, a struggle that informs her poetry. Her work has been published in Rise Up Review, which nominated her poem “An Orphan Argues With the Dead” for a Pushcart Prize; Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves, an anthology of Asian-American poets; Babel, a journal of the International Cities of Refuge Network; and it is slated for inclusion in Poets for Peace: Sunflowers Rising Anthology. She and her mother, Yvette Tackla, co-translated a poem entitled “After One Year of This War” from Arabic into English to be published this fall in the Manhattan Review. Michelle has an MA in English from John Carroll University and works in the healthcare field. 

 Laura Maylene Walter is the author of the novel Body of Stars (Dutton), an Ohioana Book Awards Finalist and UK Booksellers Association Book of the Month selection. Her work has appeared in publications including Kenyon Review, The Sun, Slate, The Masters Review, Poets & Writers, and many others, and she has received support from the Ohio Arts Council, Ohioana Library Association, Sewanee, Yaddo, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and elsewhere. She was a former Breakthrough Writing Residency Fiction Mentor and one of the founding editors of Gordon Square Review. She works for Cleveland Public Library.

Originally from Mississippi, Hannah V Warren is a poet, translator, and scholar dividing her time between Birmingham, AL, and Gambier, OH, where she works as The Kenyon Review Fellow. Along with authoring the poetry collections Hurricane Pastoral (Sundress 2027) and Slaughterhouse for Old Wives’ Tales (Sundress 2024), she has received support from Fulbright-Germany, the PEN/Heim Translation Grant, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

 Rachel Jamison Webster is the author of Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family, which was chosen as a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker, and Editor's Pick by The New York Times. This book of ancestral nonfiction explores race, gender, white-passing, and justice in American history. Rachel is also the author of four books of poetry and cross-genre writing, including Mary is a River, a book written in the voice of Mary Magdalene that was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Rachel is a Professor of Creative Writing at Northwestern, and she teaches online classes in ancestral writing and intuitive writing through www.meditativecreativewriting.com.

Kyle Winkler is the author of Enter the Peerless, Tone-Bone, Grasshands, The Nothing That Is, and other books. He is an Associate Professor of English at Kent State University at Tuscarawas. He received a Ph.D. in Composition & Rhetoric from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. His found document horror novel, The Ship of Death, is forthcoming from Avon A/HarperCollins Sept. 2026. 

Kevin Young is the author of sixteen books of poetry and prose, including his most recent, Night Watch, which won the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is the poetry editor of The New Yorker, where he hosts the Poetry Podcast, and the editor of eleven volumes, including A Century of Poetry in the New Yorker, 1925-2025 and the acclaimed anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song. From 2021-2025, Young was the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. From 2016-2021, he was the director of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He currently serves as the Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. Starting in fall 2026, Young will serve as the Rosenkranz Writer-in-Residence at Yale University, a post formerly held by Nobel laureate Louise Glück.