Eric Charles May is an associate professor in the English/Creative Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago and the author of the novel Bedrock Faith, the 2021 One Book, One Chicago selection by the Chicago Public Library, and a 2014 Notable African American Title by Publisher’s Weekly. A Chicago native and a former reporter for The Washington Post, May is a past recipient of the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award, president of the Guild Literary Complex, a company member of 2nd Story, a curatorial board member of the Ragdale Foundation, and a selection committee member for the Harold Washington Literary Award. 

William Betcher is a psychiatrist in private practice in the Boston area and a fine art photographer. His photographic work has been exhibited at the Griffin Museum, Catamount Art, the Danforth Art Museum, PhotoPlace Gallery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Mass Audubon Habitat, and at other places. He published a book of landscape photography, “Anthem: For a Warm Little Pond,” which was included in the Griffin Museum’s Photobook exhibition in 2016, and he is the author of four nonfiction books. He received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, an MD from Harvard Medical School, and a PhD in clinical psychology from Boston University

Richard Hoffman is the author of nine books, including the memoirs Half the House and Love & Fury; the story collection Interference and other stories; the essay collection Remembering the Alchemists and other essays; and five books of poems: Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, which won the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Motton Book Award; Emblem; Noon until Night, winner of the 2018 Massachusetts Book Award for poetry; and People Once Real. 

Barbara Siegel Carlson‘s third poetry collection What Drifted Here was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2023. Her previous books are Once in Every Language (Kelsay Books 2017) and Fire Road (Dream Horse Press 2013). A chapbook Between the Hours was published in 2022. She is co-translator (with Ana Jelnikar) of Look Back, Look Ahead, Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel  and Open (2018) as well as a co-editor of A Bridge of Voices: Contemporary Slovene Poetry and Perspectives (2017) Her poetry and translations have appeared in Verse Daily, The Cortland Review, Mid-American Review, American Journal of Poetry, Salamander, Ezra and Avatar Review among others. Carlson is Poetry in Translation Editor of Solstice. She teaches in Boston and lives in Carver, Massachusetts. 

Annaka Saari is a writer from Michigan. She earned her MFA from Boston University, where she is now the administrator for the Creative Writing Program. She serves as managing editor for Solstice Literary Magazine as well as a poetry reader for The Los Angeles Review, and is the recipient of a Florence Engel Randall Graduate Fiction Prize and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. Her work has been named a finalist for the Prufer Poetry Prize, longlisted for the DISQUIET Literary Prize, and has appeared in or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, Pleiades, Poetry Wales’s “How to Write a Poem” series, Image, Cleveland Review of Books, and other publications. Her website is annakasaari.com.

Jill Frances Johnson grew up overseas, schooled in Jordan, Nepal, and Nigeria. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA in 2017 after graduating from Smith College in the Ada Comstock Scholars Program for nontraditional (older!) students. Her work appears in Under the Gum Tree and Clockhouse. Her current project is a memoir Water Skiing in Kashmir about expat life during the ’60’s. She divides her time between the green hills of Vermont and the creative city of St Petersburg, FL.

Iain Haley Pollock’s second collection of poems, Ghost, Like a Place, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in September 2018. His debut collection, Spit Back a Boy, won the 2010 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He teaches English at Rye Country Day School in Rye, NY, and is a member of the poetry faculty at the Solstice MFA program of Pine Manor College.

Dzvinia Orlowsky is a Pushcart Prize poet, translator, and a founding editor of Four Way Books. She is also the author of six poetry collections published by Carnegie Mellon University Press including Bad Harvest (2019, Massachusetts Book Awards “Must Read”); Silvertone (2013); and Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones (2009).Her translations include Alexander Dovzhenko’s novella, The Enchanted Desna (House Between Water, 2006), Memorials by Mieczysław Jastrun (Dialogos, 2014, co-translated with Jeff Friedman), and Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow by Natalka Biolotserkivets (Lost Horse Press, 2021, co-translated with Ali Kinsella). Dzvinia is Writer-in-Residence at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Betsy Sholl served as Poet Laureate of Maine from 2006 to 2011.  She is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Rough Cradle (Alice James Books), Late Psalm, Don’t Explain,and The Red Line.  Her awards include the AWP Prize for Poetry, the Felix Pollak Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and two Maine Individual Artists Grants.  Recent poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Image, Field, Brilliant Corners, Best American Poetry, 2009, Best Spiritual Writing, 2012.  She teaches at the University of Southern Maine and in the MFA Program of Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Ben Berman is the author of Strange Borderlands (Able Muse Press), which won the 2014 Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Poetry Book and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award. He has received awards from the New England Poetry Club and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Somerville Arts Council. He teaches in the Boston area, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. You can visit him at www.ben-berman. com

Author, songwriter, educator and performer, Regie Gibson, received his MFA in Poetry from New England College. He has read, taught, lectured and performed at universities, theaters and other venues in eight countries. Regie has performed with the Elgin Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra “X.” He and his work are featured in the New Line Cinema film “love jones” (a film based on events in his life). His poems have appeared in The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Iowa Review and Poetry Magazine among others. He is a National Poetry Slam Individual Champion and his book “Storms Beneath the Skin” received the Golden Pen Award. 

Marjan Kamali’s debut novel Together Tea (EccoBooks/HarperCollins) was a Massachusetts Book Award Finalist, an WBUR Good Read, and a Target Emerging Author Selection. Marjan graduated from U.C. Berkeley and earned an MBA from Columbia University and an MFA from NYU. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her stories appear in the anthologies Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been and Tremors. Her essays appear in The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She taught writing at Boston University and currently teaches at GrubStreet. Her second novel, The Stationery Shop, was published by Gallery/Simon & Schuster in 2019.

Helen Elaine Lee was educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School. She is author of The Serpent’s Gift (Atheneum, 1994) and Water Marked (Scribner, 1999). She recently finished two books: A Life Without  and The Hard Loss. Her stories have appeared in Callaloo, Prairie Schooner, Hanging Loose, and Best African American Fiction (2009). She is Professor of Fiction Writing in MIT’s Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies and a Writer in Residence with the Solstice Low-Residency MFA program. A member of the Board of Directors of PEN New England, she serves on its Freedom to Write Committee and volunteers with its Prison Creative Writing Program.

Patricia Ann McNair’s short story collection, The Temple of Air, won the Chicago Writers Association’s Book of the Year, Southern Illinois University’s Devil’s Kitchen Readers Award, and Society of Midland Authors Finalist Award. Her short story, “My Mother’s Daughter” won first prize in SolLit’s fiction awards in 2014. McNair’s work has appeared in American Fiction: Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers, Prime Number, River Teeth, Fourth Genre, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, and other publications. She teaches in the Department of Creative Writing, Columbia College Chicago.

Elizabeth Searle is the author of five books of fiction and the co-author of a Feature Film screenplay, I’ll Show You Mine (Duplass Brothers Productions, 2022). Elizabeth’s most recent novel, We Got Him, was a finalist for the Midwest Book Award and her previous books include A Four-Sided Bed, nominated for an ALA Book Award, and My Body to You, Iowa Short Fiction Prize winner. Her books Celebrities in Disgrace and A Four-Sided Bed are the basis of short films and her film scripts have won multiple awards. Her theater works have been featured on CBS, CNN, NPR, the AP and more.

Ilan Mochari’s Pushcart-nominated debut novel Zinsky the Obscure (Fomite, 2013) earned flattering reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. His short stories, poems, and essays have been widely published, appearing or forthcoming in McSweeney’s, Hobart, J Journal, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and elsewhere.  

Dewitt Henry is a Professor at Emerson College and the founding editor of Ploughshares (for which he won a Commonwealth Award in 1992).  He has authored The Marriage of Anna Maye Potts (winner of the Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel) and two memoirs, Safe Suicide: Narratives, Essays, and Meditations and Sweet Dreams: A Family History; he has also edited five anthologies, including Sorrow’s Company: Writers on Loss and Grief. For details see www.dewitthenry.com

Lou Jones’s eclectic career has evolved from commercial to the personal. It has spanned every format, film type, artistic movement and technological change.  He maintains a studio in Boston and has photographed for Fortune 500 corporations including Federal Express, Nike and the Barr Foundation; completed assignments for magazines and publishers such as Time/Life, National Geographic and Paris Match; initiated long term projects on the civil wars in Central America, death row, Olympics Games and pregnancy; and published multiple books including Final Exposure: Portraits from Death Row, Travel & Photography: Off the Charts and Speedlights & Speedlites: Creative Flash Photography at Lightspeed.  www.fotojones.com 

Richard Cambridge’s poetry, writings, and theatre productions address controversial themes on the American political landscape. He is a fellow emeritus at the Black Earth Institute. He has a poetry collection, PULSA—A Book of Books, and two spoken word CDs: The Cigarette Papers—A Journey from Addiction and One Shot News—Poetry of Conscience. His awards include the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize and the Master’s Slam at the National Poetry Slam. He received the City of Cambridge Peace and Justice Award for his contributions to art and activism. He curates the Poets’ Theatre, a monthly venue, in Somerville’s Arts at the Armory.

Jennifer Gentile, a Melrose, MA native, received a liberal arts degree from Suffolk University and will graduate from Pine Manor College’s MFA program in the winter of 2017 with a degree in fiction. She is an editor of a weekly newspaper outside of Boston, a softball coach, and mother of three.

Jenifer DeBellis, M.F.A., is author of New Wilderness (Cornerstone Press, 2023), Warrior Sister, Cut Yourself Free  (Library Tales Publishing, 2021), and Blood Sisters (Main Street Rag, 2018).  She edits Pink Panther Magazine and directs aRIFT Warrior Project and Detroit Writers’ Guild (501c3). She’s featured in Psychology Today and Seattle’s My Independence Report and her writing appears in CALYX, the Good Men Project, Medical Literary Messenger, Solstice, and other fine journals. A former Meadow Brook Writing Project fellow, JDB facilitates summer workshops for Oakland University and teaches for Saginaw Valley State University.

Ruth Mukwana is a fiction writer from Uganda. She is also an aid worker working for the United Nations in New York. She’s a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars (MFA), a 2022 Bennington Alumni Fellow and a 2020 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil NYC Emerging Fellow. Her work has appeared in several magazines including Bomb, Solstice, and Consequence. Her short story, “Taboo” was a runner-up in the Black Warriors Review 2017 fiction contest. She is the Creator and Host of the Stories and Humanitarian Action Podcast. Her work in progress is a novel that follows Queen, a middle-aged woman working for the UN, as she’s forced to confront a past, she has worked for ten years to forget, and her quest for justice. Told through multiple points of view, the novel interrogates trauma, memory and forgiveness.

Eileen Cleary earned an MFA at Lesley University and is a candidate for a second MFA at Solstice. She co-founded the Lilly Salon of Needham and is a recent Pushcart nominee. Her work is published or forthcoming at Apeiron, Naugatuck River Review, The Main Street Rag and The American Journal of Poetry.

Rebecca Faulkner is a London-born poet and arts educator based in Brooklyn. Her work is published or forthcoming in journals including New York Quarterly, SWWIM, The Maine Review, CALYX Press, CV2 Magazine, On the Seawall, and Into the Void. She is the 2022 winner of Sand Hills Literary Magazine’s National Poetry Contest and the 2021 Prometheus Unbound Poetry Competition. Rebecca was a 2021 Poetry Fellow at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Her debut collection is forthcoming in the US and the UK from Write Bloody Press in spring 2023.

Linda Button’s essays have appeared in the New York Times Modern Love, Boston Magazine, Brevity Blog, and Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. She’s performed on Stories from the Stage, produced by World Channel for WGBH. She graduated from the Memoir Incubator and Essay Incubator at Grub Street, where she has also served on the board. Button spent 20 years running an award-winning ad agency and romping across six continents to speak on creativity.  Her memoir-in-progress, Fight Song, explores marriage, mental illness, and how martial arts saved her. She lives in Massachusetts with her sprawling, complicated family.

Amy Grier is a freelance writer and editor who earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Lesley University. A singer and classically trained pianist, she has taught music and English in the United States and Japan. Amy has an MA in East Asian Studies from Washington University in St. Louis and an MA in Literature and Writing from Rivier University. Her work has appeared in Solstice Literary Magazine, Poetry East, the Brevity Blog, eratio, Streetlight Magazine, and others. Her memoir-in-progress, Terrible Daughter, is about the events leading to her estrangement from her parents. She lives in Florida with her dog and piano.

Heather Labay is a writer and freelance editor. Her short story, Cuss Words, appeared in the inaugural volume of The New Southern Fugitives and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte and currently lives in Rochester, MI with her husband, children, and two cats.

Kurt Brown founded the Aspen Writers’ Conference, and Writers’ Conferences & Centers. He is the author of six chapbooks and six full-length collections of poetry, including his newest, Time-Bound, from Tiger Bark Press. He is currently an editor for the online journal MEAD: The Magazine of Literature and Libations and has edited ten anthologies of poetry, including his most recent (with Harold Schechter) Killer Verse: Poems about Murder and Mayhem. His memoir, Lost Sheep: A Portrait of Aspen in the 70s, was published by Conundrum Press in 2012. He taught for many years at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and now lives in Santa Barbara, California.