An Anthology of Florida Poets. An Anthology of Florida Poets. An Anthology of Florida Poets. An Anthology of Florida Poets. An Anthology of Florida Poets. An Anthology of Florida Poets. An Anthology of Florida Poets. An Anthology of Florida Poets. An Anthology of Florida Poets
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Gabrielle Aboki received her Bachelor of Science in Sales and Marketing from Tuskegee University in 2019 while minoring in English. She graduated from Florida State University with an MFA in Creative Writing - Poetry in the Spring of 2023. She currently has publications in Obsidian Journal and Leavings Literary Magazine. Her poetry centers on themes of home, family, matriarchy, memory, and rememory.
Elisa Albo was born in Havana. Her chapbook Passage to America conveys her family immigrant story, and Each Day More is a collection of elegies. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Bomb, Crab Orchard Review, Notre Dame Review, SWWIM Every Day, Two-Countries: Daughters & Sons of Immigrant Parents, and Vinegar and Char. A professor of English and ESL at Broward College, she lives in Fort Lauderdale.
Yael Valencia Aldana is a Caribbean Afro-Latinx writer and poet. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Stonecoast Review, Superstition Review, and Cutbank Literary Journal, among others. She teaches creative writing in South Florida, where she lives with her son and too many pets. You can find her online at YaelAldana.com.
Blaise Allen, Ph.D., Publications include: The American Journal of Poetry, Pink Panther Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Long Island Literary Review, Naugatuck River Review, The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Blue Fifth Review, Long Island Quarterly, and Mothering Magazine.
Dr. David B. Axelrod was Suffolk County, Long Island’s Poet Laureate, and is now Volusia County, Florida, Poet Laureate, and the director of the Creative Happiness Institute in Daytona Beach. Dr. Axelrod has published in hundreds of magazines and anthologies, as well as twenty-four books of poetry, the newest of which is The Official Rules for Olympic Bed Riding (Bold Venture Press, 2023). He is the recipient of three Fulbright Awards including his being the first official Fulbright Poet-in-Residence in the People’s Republic of China.
Clayre Benzadón is a queer Jewish poet who received her MFA from the University of Miami. She will begin working as a teacher at Riviera Preparatory School in Miami, FL this fall (2023). Her chapbook, “Liminal Zenith” was published by SurVision Books in 2019. She was awarded the Alfred Boas Poetry Prize for "Linguistic Rewilding", another one her pieces ("God's Broken [Body]") was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she has been published in places including ANMLY, Olney Magazine, and SWWIM. You can find more about her at clayrebenzadon.com. Clayre doesn't have to venture too far to enjoy the Coconut Grove enclave (the water's super close, it feels close enough to a "walkable" area, and she especially loves A.C's Icees).
Richard Blanco was selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history. More recently, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal from the NEH by President Biden. In 2022, he was appointed the first-ever Poet Laureate of Miami Dade County, where he currently lives in Surfside. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami, cultural identity characterizes his many collections of award-winning poetry, including Homeland of My Body, forthcoming from Beacon Press in October 2023.
Mary Block lives and writes in her hometown of Miami, Florida. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mudfish, Best New Poets 2020, RHINO, Nimrod International Journal, and Sonora Review, among other publications. Her work can be found online at Rattle, SWWIM Every Day, Aquifer—The Florida Review Online, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of New York University's Creative Writing Program, a 2018 Best of the Net finalist, a 2012 finalist for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Mary is an editor at SWWIM. Her website is www.maryblock.net.
Chris Bodor is a first generation American. He was born in Connecticut to an English mother and a Hungarian father. During the past three decades, his poems have appeared in many independent, small, and micro-press publications, such as the Lummox Journal, Live Nude Poems, and New Generation Beats-2022 Anthology. He is currently serving a two-year term as the Florida State Beat Poem Laureate (2023-2025). Bodor is the Editor-In-Chief of the international literary journal A.C. PAPA, which stands for Ancient City Poets, Authors, Photographers, and Artists. He lives and works in St. Augustine, the Nation's Oldest City.
Steven Bradbury is a Florida-based landscape artist, writer, and translator.
Dustin Brookshire’s (he/him) chapbooks include Never Picked First For Playtime (Harbor Editions, 2023), Love Most Of You Too(Harbor Editions, 2021), and To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). He is the co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023). Visit Dustin online at dustinbrookshire.com.
A Fulbright fellow (Albania, 2011) Gregory Byrd’s poems have appeared in journals such as the Tampa Review, Apalachee Review, Cortland Review, Poeteka (Albania, in translation). Among his poetry books are Salt and Iron (Snake Nation, 2014), At Penuel (Split Oak, 2011) and Florida Straits (Yellowjacket Press, 2005). The Name for the God Who Speaks won the Robert Phillips Prize in 2018. He has received a Creative Pinellas Rapid Returns Fellowship, an SPC Distinguished Teaching Award and a Pushcart Prize Nomination. Greg has degrees in writing and literature from Eckerd College, Florida State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Greg fishes the flats near Clearwater, rides his bicycle and works on his 1966 Ford pickup. He teaches writing and humanities at St. Petersburg College.
Collin Callahan's first collection of poetry, Thunderbird Inn (Silver Medal winner in the 2022 Florida Book Awards), is now available from Conduit Books & Ephemera. His poems have appeared in Granta, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Collin holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas and a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, where he currently lives and teaches. You can find his work at collincallahanwrites.com
Howard Camner is the author of 25 books including the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Poems from the Mud Room. He was a founding member of New York's Literary Outlaws and The West End Poetry Troupe. His major literary works are housed in the Emerson Archives in Boston. Six of his poems will be sent to the moon in a time capsule aboard Griffin Mission One as part of the Polaris Archive of Contemporary Culture in November of 2024.
Rick Campbell is a poet and essayist living on Alligator Point, Florida. His most recent book is a collection of essays, Sometimes the Light (Main Street Rag Press.) Poetry collections include Provenance (Blue Horse Press) and Gunshot, Peacock, Dog; The History of Steel; Dixmont; Setting the World in Order; The Traveler’s Companion, and A Day’s Work. His poems and essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Georgia Review, Fourth River, Kestrel, Alabama Literary Review, and Prairie Schooner. He’s won a Pushcart Prize and a NEA Fellowship in Poetry. He teaches in the University of Nevada-Reno’s MFA program.
Sarah Carey grew up in Tallahassee and has lived in Florida most of her life. A resident of Gainesville for the last 33 years, she is a graduate of the Florida State University creative writing program and the author of two poetry chapbooks, including Accommodations, winner of the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award. Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Sugar House Review, Valparaiso Review and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Orison Anthology. Visit her at SarahKCarey.com or on Twitter @SayCarey1.
Sarah Carleton writes poetry, edits fiction, plays the banjo, and knits obsessively in Tampa, Florida. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Nimrod, Tar River Poetry, Cider Press Review, The Wild Word, Valparaiso, and New Ohio Review. Sarah’s poems have received nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her first collection, Notes from the Girl Cave, was published in 2020 by Kelsay Books.
C.M. Clark’s work has appeared throughout the U.S., in Canada, and internationally. Publication credits include Painted Bride Quarterly, West Trade Review, Wild Roof Journal, Bookends Review, Prime Number Magazine, Vallum Magazine (Montreal), Punt Volat (Barcelona), The Paddock Review, Ovenbird, and the South Florida Poetry Journal. Her work has been anthologized in collections including Anhinga Press’s Rumors, Secrets and Lies, Demeter Press’s Travellin’ Mama, in Voices from the Fierce Intangible World (SFPJ), and in Chasing Light (Yellow Jacket Press). Clark was a finalist for the Anhinga Press 2021 Chapbook Prize, and runner-up for the Slate Roof Press Elyse Wolf Prize. She also served as inaugural Poet-in-Residence for the Deering Estate Artists Village in Miami. Clark is the author of full-length works Exoskeletal (Solution Hole Press, 2019), Dragonfly (Solution Hole Press, 2016), Charles Deering Forecasts the Weather & Other Poems (Solution Hole Press, 2012), The Blue Hour (Three Stars Press, 2007. A chapbook of new work, The Unreliable Narrator, will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2024.
David Colodney is a poet living in Boynton Beach, Florida. He is author of the chapbook, Mimeograph, and his poetry has or will appear in journals including rust + moth, South Carolina Review, and Door = Jar. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, David holds an MFA from Converse College and an MA from Nova Southeastern University and has written for the Miami Herald and the Tampa Tribune. He currently serves as an associate editor of South Florida Poetry Journal.
Cynie Cory is the author of Here on Rue Morgue Avenue, (Hysterical Books), American Girl, (New Issues Prize). Her poems have appeared in several journals and magazines, including The American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, New American Writing, Ploughshares, and Triquarterly. Cory’s book reviews can be found online at LitPub. A native of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Cory makes her home in Tallahassee, Florida. You can find her on Substack at Self-Help Is Not My Friend or cynie.substack.com
Dorsey Craft is the author of Plunder (Bauhan Publishing 2020), winner of the May Sarton NH Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared recently in Blackbird, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She teaches at University of North Florida and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at Agni. She is also co-organizer with Jessica Q. Stark of the Dreamboat Poetry Series in Jacksonville, FL.
Letisia Cruz is a Cuban-American writer and artist. She is the author of Migrations & Other Exiles (Lost Horse Press, 2023), selected by Dzvinia Orlowsky as winner of the 2022 Idaho Prize for Poetry, and The Lost Girls Book of Divination (Tolsun Books, 2018). She is the recipient of a 2022 artist grant from the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance and was selected as a 2022 Dali Dozen Emerging Artist for her project Rituales: An Exploration of Faith in the Caribbean. Her writing and artwork have appeared in [PANK], Ninth Letter, The Acentos Review, Gulf Stream, Saw Palm, Third Coast, Duende, Moko, 300 Days of Sun, and Black Fox Literary Magazine, among others. She is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA program and lives in a witchy cottage on 6th (The Witch On 6th) in Saint Petersburg. Find more of her work at lesinfin.com.
P. Scott Cunningham is the author of Ya Te Veo (University of Arkansas, 2018), selected by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins for the Miller Williams Poetry Series. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in The Nation, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, POETRY, A Public Space, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Monocle, and The Guardian, among others. A graduate of Wesleyan University, he lives in Miami, FL, where he serves as the Executive and Artistic Director of O, Miami.
Silvia Curbelo is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Falling Landscape and The Secret History of Water, both from Anhinga Press, and two chapbooks. She has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, the Cintas Foundation and the Writer’s Voice, as well as the Jessica Noble Maxwell Memorial Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review. Her poems have been published widely in literary journals and more than three-dozen anthologies and textbooks. A native of Cuba, Silvia has lived in Tampa all her adult life.
Howard Richard Debs is a recipient of the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. His essays, fiction, and poetry appear internationally in numerous publications; His book Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words is a 2017 Best Book Awards and 2018 Book Excellence Awards recipient. His chapbook Political is the 2021 American Writing Awards winner in poetry. He is co-editor of New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust winner of the 2023 International Book Awards for anthologies. He is listed in the Poets & Writers Directory. https://www.pw.org/content/howard_debs
Lenny DellaRocca co-hosted Poetry In A Pub on the yacht, Livingstone's Landing, which sunk into the New River in Fort Lauderdale. He dubbed the poets who read their The Boat Poets. Some of them appear in this anthology. His chapbook Things I see in the Fire won the Yellowjacket Chapbook contest. In 2016, DellaRocca started Interview With A Poet, which became South Florida Poetry Journal-SoFloPoJo. Nominated for a Pushcart, he is the curator of this anthology. He invented the Epoem, and is publisher and editor of Witchery.
Anjanette Delgado is a Puerto Rican author who has received recognition for her novels The Heartbreak Pill (Atria Books, 2009) and The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho (Kensington Books and Penguin Random House, 2014). Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in the New York Times' "Modern Love" column and opinion sections, Vogue, NPR, HBO, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades Mag, CUNY's Hostos Review, The Rumpus, and the Boston Review. As an editor, Anjanette curated the anthology Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness (University of Florida Press, 2021), which earned her a gold medal at the International Latino Book Awards and was recognized as one of three notable anthologies by Poets & Writers in 2021. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University and currently resides in Miami, Florida.
Deborah DeNicola is the author of three full collections of poetry, The Impossible from Kelsay Press 2021, Original Human, from Word Tech, Where Divinity Begins from Alice James Books, four chapbooks, and her memoir, The Future That Brought Her Here from NicholasHays 2009. She edited Orpheus & Company; Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology (UPNE.) Among other awards. She’s been a recipient of an NEAfellowship. Her web site is www.intuitivegateways.com
Regina Dilgen, Ph.D., served as Professor of English and Department Chair at Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth, Florida. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in the journals Quartler(ly), The Dewdrop, Persimmon Tree, Passager, and Apollo’s Lute. Her prose has been published in Radical Teacher, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and in the anthology The Reality of Breastfeeding: Reflections by Contemporary Women. She was a featured poet at a Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches reading. She lives in Delray Beach, Florida, where she writes and paints.
Alexa Doran recently completed her PhD in Poetry at Florida State University. Her full-length collection DM Me, Mother Darling won the 2020 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and was published in April 2021 (Bauhan). She is also the author of the chapbook Nightsink, Faucet Me a Lullaby (Bottlecap Press 2019). You can look for work from Doran in recent or upcoming issues of Pleiades, Witness, Massachusetts Review, pidgeonholes, NELLE, and Gigantic Sequins, among others. For a full list of her publications, awards, and interviews please visit her website at alexadoran.com.
PM Draper is semi-retired and finally finding her inner poet in Vero Beach, FL. Publications include: The Tao of Hibiscus and a chapbook, After Pyre.
Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Second Story (Pittsburgh, 2021) and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami and lives in Hollywood.
Sara Ries Dziekonski holds an MFA in poetry from Chatham University. Her first book, Come In, We're Open, which she wrote about growing up in her parents' diner, won the 2009 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition. Her chapbooks include Snow Angels on the Living Room Floor (Finishing Line Press 2018) and Marrying Maracuyá (Main Street Rag 2021), which won the Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Competition. Her poems have appeared in American Life in Poetry, Slipstream, LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Cordella Magazine, 2River View, Earth’s Daughters, Thimble Literary Magazine, Waterwheel Review, Potomac Review, SWWIM Every Day, among others. She is the co-founder of Poetry Midwives Editing Services and teaches creative writing with Keep St. Pete Lit.
Abel M. Folgar (b. 1977) is a poet from Caracas, Venezuela of Lebanese and Corsican heritage. He’s the coauthor of Odas a Futbolistas (Hinchas de Poesía Press, 2018, with Yago S. Cura) and translator of Facundo Soto’s Juego de Chicos (Jitney Books, 2018). His poetry has appeared in Pidgeonholes, Noble/Gas Qtrly and LaFovea.org, among others. His articles on art, music and food have appeared across the New Times/Village Voice family of publications, PureHoney Magazine and numerous digital and print entities since 1999. Renault 30, his debut collection of poems, is available from HINCHAS Press, a Los Angeles-based micropress that publishes zines, poetry, poetry in translation, and library science non-fiction.
Born in Manhattan, New York, to immigrant parents from Honduras, Oscar Fuentes is a multidisciplinary artist based in Miami, who has been sharing his talents and love of the arts for more than 30 years. Known by his moniker, The Biscayne Poet, Oscar is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, including Beautiful Women Will Never Know (2013), 4 Nights With Betsy (2014), Vagabond: Selected Poems, Short Stories, and Plays (2015), and Honey & Sting (2023). Oscar was most recently honored by Mayor Daniella Levine Cava with the inaugural Miami-Dade Mayoral Poetry Commendation in recognition of outstanding contributions to the county’s literary art community. Connect with Oscar on Social: @thebiscaynepoet
Pamela Hill Epps’ work has most recently appeared in the anthology, 101 Jewish Poems For The Third Millennium (Ashland Poetry Press) as well as in other literary publications such as Heartwood Literary Magazine, The Closed Eye Open, Poetry Breakfast, The Sandhill Review, Poetica, Wild Violet, and has published A Last Glance, a chapbook published by YellowJacket Press. She is a psychologist, poet and jazz musician living in Tampa, Fl. She spends a great deal of time looking out at the river.
Mary Galvin (1961 – 2022) was the author of Queer Poetics (Greenwood/Praeger, 1999), a critical study of Modernist women poets. Her poetry was published in South Florida Poetry Journal, Southern Women’s Review, Homestead Review, and East Coast Literary Review. She held a Doctor of Arts from the State University of New York, Albany, and served as Professor of English for many years at Palm Beach State College, Lake Worth, Florida. She lived in Lake Worth with her wife, Laura Petrella, and their cat and dog, Pandora and Honey.
Stephen Gibson is the author of eight poetry collections: Frida Kahlo in Fort Lauderdale (Able Muse Press finalist book prize, forthcoming), Self-Portrait in a Door-Length Mirror (2017 Miller Williams Prize winner, University of Arkansas Press), The Garden of Earthly Delights Book of Ghazals (Texas Review Press), Rorschach Art Too (2014 Donald Justice Prize Winner, Story Line Press; 2021 Legacy Title Red Hen Press), Paradise (Miller Williams finalist, University of Arkansas Press), and three others.
Tyler Gillespie is an award-winning educator and writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, GQ, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Playboy, and elsewhere. He's the author of the nonfiction collection The Thing about Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State (University Press of Florida, 2021) and two poetry collections Florida Man: Poems (Red Flag Poetry, 2018) and the nature machine! (Autofocus, 2023). He’s a fifth-generation Floridian who currently lives in St. Petersburg. His website is TylerGillespie.com and his Instagram handle is @tyler_gills).
Terry Godbey’s poetry collections are Hold Still, Beauty Lessons, Flame and Behind Every Door. A winner of the Rita Dove Poetry Award, she has published poetry in Rattle, Poet Lore, CALYX Journal, Florida Review, Apalachee Review, Crab Creek Review and other literary magazines. She works as a corporate writer in Orlando.
Landis Grenville holds MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Florida State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Hanging Loose, Gulf Stream, and elsewhere. Currently, she lives and teaches in Tallahassee, Florida.
Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the author of Tortillera (TRP 2021), winner of The TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series: Florida, and the chapbook Visionware (Finishing Line Press 2009). She is a Contributing Editor for Grabbed: Poets and Writers Respond to Sexual Assault (Beacon Press, 2020) and Associate Editor for SWWIM Every Day an online daily poetry journal for women identifying poets. Her recent work can be found at America’s Best Poetry Blog, Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology, Poesia De Protesta, Split This Rock, Limp Wrist Magazine, and others. She resides in Miami, Florida with her family.
Andrew Rader Hanson lives in Delray, Florida and takes photos, hikes, lifts weights, and reads history and philosophy in his free time. His work has been accepted by Pembroke Magazine, Midway Journal, Spectrum Literary Journal, and more. He was also selected as a finalist for the Key West Literary Seminar’s Scotti Merril Poetry Award.
Peter Hargitai is the recipient of the Harold Morton Landon Translation Prize from the Academy of American Poets for his translation of Attila József in Perched on Nothing’s Branch (1988). His poem “Mother’s Visit No. 29” was published in Sixty Years of American Poetry, Introduction by Robert Penn Warren, Preface by Richard Wilbur (Abrams, 1996). He is listed in Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon: The Books and School for the Ages.
Lola Haskins’ seventeenth book Homelight, will be published by Charlotte Lit Press in September 2023. Her previous collection, Asylum: Improvisations on John Clare (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), was featured in the New York Times magazine.
Michael Hettich’s most recent book of poems, The Mica Mine, won the Lena Shull Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society. A book of new and selected poems in forthcoming in 2023 from Press 53.
Carolina Hospital’s poetry collections include Key West Nights and Other Aftershocks (Anhinga Press) and The Child of Exile: A Poetry Memoir (Arte Público Press), as well as Myth America (Anhinga Press) and How to Get into Trouble (forthcoming from Anhinga Press), both collaborative collections with Maureen Seaton, Holly Iglesias, and Nicole Hospital-Medina; plus the novel A Little Love, under the pen name C. C. Medina (Warner Books). Her work has appeared in publications such as the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature; Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Occupy the Workplace; and Rumors Secrets and Lies: Narrative Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. She currently lives in Palm Coast, FL.
Michael R. Howard was born in Jacksonville, Florida and returned to his native state after an exciting twenty-six year career as a Naval Officer and Navy SEAL. Florida's eclectic and disparate environment now fuels his imagination and literary efforts. However, at an early age he was inspired by and absorbed the works of adventurous authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Rudyard Kipling and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Michael's first book of poetry, The Lightning and the Gale was published in 2022. His second book The Impeded Stream will soon be published.
Holly Iglesias is a poet, translator, and teacher who has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her poetry collections are Souvenirs of Shrunken World, Angles of Approach, and Sleeping Things. She is also the author of one work of literary criticism, Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry.
Judy Ireland is the author of Cement Shoes, a poetry collection that won the Sinclair Poetry Prize in 2013. Her poems have appeared in Hotel Amerika, Calyx, Saranac Review, Eclipse, Cold Mountain, Coe Review, SWWIM, the South Florida Poetry Journal, and other journals, as well as in two anthologies, the Best Indie Lit New England anthology and Voices from the Fierce Intangible World. She is Senior Poetry Editor & Reading Series Producer for the South Florida Poetry Journal, Co-Director of Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches, and teaches at Palm Beach State College.
Christine Jackson is a poet living in Plantation, Florida. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Verse-Virtual, Ekphrastic Review, and Down in the Dirt. A recovering academic, Chris holds a Ph.D. in literature, and taught literature and creative writing for thirty years at a South Florida university.
Yuki Jackson is a Black and Japanese poet and educator. Her poetry has been published in literary journals such as Four Way Review and Cream City Review, for which she was nominated for a 2021 Best of the Net Award and the 2020 Summer Poetry Prize. Yuki is a regular contributor for the "Poet's Notebook" column of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay and her work has been featured by NPR Next Gen, Spady Cultural Heritage Museum and the Goodwin-Procter law firm. She was also featured as a playwright for The Straz Center’s BIPOC Play-Reading Series, showcasing her writing through an interdisciplinary and collaborative performance. For more, her website is YukiJackson.com.
Elizabeth Jacobson’s third collection of poems, There are as Many Songs in the World as Branches of Coral, will be published by Free Verse Editions, 2024. Her previous full-length collection, Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air won the New Measure Poetry Prize (Free Verse Editions, 2019). She is an Academy of American Poets 2020 Laureate Fellow and a reviews editor for the online magazine Terrain.org. Quantum Foam was written in Miami Beach, where Elizabeth lived for ten years. She now lives in Lake Worth Beach. Quantum Foam was originally published by the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day
Holly Jaffe's poems have been pubished in such journals as Red Fez, Unlikely Stories, Kleft Jaw. She resides in South Florida with her husband and parson terrier, Oliver, and is working on her first manuscript.
Brad Johnson’s second book Smuggling Elephants Through Airport Security (Michigan State University Press) was selected by Carolyn Forche for the 2018 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. Work of his has also been accepted by Carolina Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, J Journal, Meridian, Poet Lore, Tar River Poetry and others. He teaches at Palm Beach State College.
The winner of the 2022 Cider Press Review Book Award for Inheritance with a High Error Rate (January 2024), Jen Karetnick is the author of 10 additional poetry collections, including the chapbook What Forges Us Steel: The Judge Judy Poems (Alternating Current Press, July 2024). Her work has won the Tiferet Writing Contest for Poetry, and Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition and more. Jen is co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, she has recent or forthcoming work in The American Poetry Review, Bellevue Literary Review and others . Jen lives in El Portal, Florida. See jkaretnick.com or visit her on Instagram at JenKaretnick or on Twitter at Kavetchnik.
Gary Kay was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba where he lived for 31 years. He married and relocated to Florida, where he still resides. He is a retired professor who taught at Broward College for 30 years. He was voted professor of the year and won two endowed teaching awards. His poems have been published in more than 35 journals. He has placed second in two contests and has had several honorable mentions.
James Kimbrell’s poems have appeared in anthologies including the Best American Poetry and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. The recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, his most recent collection is Smote (2015, Sarabande Books). He has taught for over two decades at Florida State University.
Stacie M. Kiner is a former fellow at the Vermont Studio Center and Hannah Kahn Memorial Award recipient. Her poems have appeared in The Charlotte Poetry Review, Madison Review, Comstock Review, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Apalachee Quarterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Lavender Review, Panoply, Rhino, SWWIM and, Finishing Line Press, New Women’s Voices Series – the chapbook, Inventory. Stacie is the former moderator of a poetry talk show in Miami, the Essays Editor for the South Florida Poetry Journal and an urban gardener.
David Kirby teaches at Florida State University, where he is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English. He has published fifteen poetry collections, including The Temple Gate Called Beautiful from Alice James Books in 2008. His latest books are a poetry collection, Help Me, Information, and a textbook modestly entitled The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them. Kirby is the author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which the Times Literary Supplement described as “a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense” and which was named one of Booklist’s Top 10 Black History Non-Fiction Books of 2010. Entertainment Weekly has called Kirby’s poetry one of “5 Reasons to Live.” In 2016, Kirby received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Florida Humanities, which called him "a literary treasure of our state."
Steve Kronen's collections are Homage to Mistress Oppenheimer (Eyewear), Splendor (BOA), and Empirical Evidence (University of Georgia). His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Poetry, APR, Salmagundi, The American Scholar, The Southern Review, Plume, The Threepenny Review, Agni, The Paris Review, SoFloPoJo, Image, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, The Sewanee Review, and elsewhere. Awards include an NEA, Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences fellowships, the Boatwright Prize from Shenandoah, the Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America, and three Florida Arts fellowships. He lives with his wife, novelist Ivonne Lamazares in South Miami.
Laurie Kuntz has published two poetry collections: The Moon Over My Mother’s House, (Finishing Line Press) and Somewhere in the Telling, (Mellen Press), and three chapbooks Talking Me Off The Roof, (Kelsay Books), Simple Gestures, (Texas Review Press), and Women at the Onsen, (Blue Light Press). Simple Gestures, won the Texas Review Poetry Chapbook Contest, and Women at the Onsen won the Blue Light Press Chapbook Contest. She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net Prize. She currently resides in Florida, where everyday is a political poem waiting to be written. Visit her at: https://lauriekuntz.myportfolio.com/home-1
Max Lasky is a poet from New Jersey, now residing in Tallahassee, Florida. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Leavings, and an assistant poetry editor for Narrative Magazine. His poems are published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Frontier Poetry, the Academy of American Poets Anaïs Nin Poetry Prize, The Indianapolis Review, OxMag, and elsewhere.
Zuleyha Ozturk Lasky is a poet currently living in Tallahassee working towards an MFA in poetry at Florida State University. She is the co-founder and editor in chief of Leavings and an assistant poetry editor at Narrative Magazine. Her poems have appeared in Adroit, North American Review, Salamander, Nimrod, Palette and elsewhere. She was selected as a finalist for the 2022 Gregory Djanikian Scholars Prize.
Daniel Lawless is the author most recently of The Gun My Sister Killed Herself With; his next book, [I tell you this now] will be released in March 2024. Recent poems in FIELD, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Poetry International, Los Angeles Review, upsteet, SOLSTICE, Manhattan Review, Massachusetts Review, ,JAMA, and Dreaming Awake: New Prose Poetry from the U.S., Australia, and the U.K., among others. A recipient of a continuing Shifting Foundation grant, he is the founder and editor of Plume: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry, Plume Editions, and the annual Plume Poetry anthologies.
Amanda Leal is a 30-year-old poet from Lake Worth FL. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in CAROUSEL, Tampa Review, White Wall Review, and others.
Lúcia Leão is a translator and a writer originally from Rio de Janeiro. Her poems have been published in South Florida Poetry Journal, SWWIM Every Day, Gyroscope Review, The Blue Mountain Review, among others. She is a board member of The Cream Literary Alliance, a non-profit organization based in West Palm Beach, Florida, and a reviewer for RHINO Magazine. She holds a master’s degree in Brazilian Literature (UERJ, Rio de Janeiro) and a master’s degree in print journalism from the University of Miami (Florida).
Susan L. Leary’s most recent collection, Dressing the Bear, was selected by Kimberly Blaeser to win the 2023 Louise Bogan Award and will be published with Trio House Press in 2024. She is also the author of A Buffet Table Fit for Queens (Small Harbor Publishing, 2023), winner of the Washburn Prize; Contraband Paradise (Main Street Rag, 2021); and This Girl, Your Disciple (Finishing Line Press, 2019), finalist for The Heartland Review Press Chapbook Prize and semi-finalist for the Elyse Wolf Prize. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami, where she also teaches Writing Studies.
Mia Leonin is the author of four poetry collections: Fable of the Pack-Saddle Child (BkMk Press), Braid, Unraveling the Bed, and Chance Born (Anhinga Press), and a memoir, Havana and Other Missing Fathers (University of Arizona Press). Leonin has published poetry and creative nonfiction in New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Guernica, Indiana Review, Witness, North American Review, and others. She teaches creative writing at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
Susan Lilley served four years as Orlando’s inaugural Poet Laureate. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in Gulf Coast, Poet Lore, American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, Drunken Boat, Saw Palm, The Florida Review, Apalachee Review, Sweet, and other journals. Her two chapbooks are Night Windows and Satellite Beach. She is a past winner of the Rita Dove Poetry Award and has held a State of Florida Individual Arts Fellowship. She has taught at University of Central Florida and Rollins College, and Trinity Preparatory School. Her full collection, Venus in Retrograde, was published spring of 2019 by Burrow Press. She lives in Winter Park and is a proud native of her beautiful but beleaguered state of Florida.
Jennifer Litt is the author of the chapbook, Maximum Speed Through Zero (Blue Lyra Press, 2016) and the full-length poetry collection, Strictly from Hunger (Accents Publishing, 2022). Jennifer’s work has appeared in several publications, including Gulf Stream, Jet Fuel Review, Lumina, Naugatuck River Review, nyc BigCityLit, South Florida Poetry Journal, Stone Canoe, and Witchery. She lives in Fort Lauderdale with her cat Tiger Lily where she writes poetry and works as a free-lance editor.
William May first began writing poetry when he was a young boy at a school for learning-disabled students in New York City. Being dyslexic, reading and writing were skills William had to work hard to master, but he believes that the effort and struggle taught him to appreciate language and recognize its power from an early age. William has always had an interest in presenting his works, not only in written formats but through reading and performance. While, in the past, this often took the form of readings in his local community, he is currently focusing on growing his audience through social media posts presenting his poetry in various formats, as well as through his personalized newsletters. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the University of North Carolina’s MFA in Creative Writing, William currently resides with his fiancée Melissa Myers on the southeast Florida coast. For samples of his work, further information, and links to his social media, please visit WilliamMayWrites.com.
Rita Maria Martinez’s current writing raises awareness about triumphs and challenges inherent in navigating life with chronic daily headache (CDH) and migraine. Her Jane Eyre-inspired poetry collection--The Jane and Bertha in Me (Kelsay Books)— was a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize and a semi-finalist for the Word Works Washington Prize. Martinez’s poetry has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears in places like The Best American Poetry Blog, Ploughshares, Wordgathering, and the textbook Three Genres: The Writing of Fiction / Literary Nonfiction, Poetry and Drama. Instagram @rita.maria.martinez.poet , on Twitter @cubanbronteite, or visit https://comeonhome.org/ritamartinez.
Laura McDermott Matheric's first book of poetry, Visions on Alligator Alley, is an ekphrastic story in verse published by Lominy Books in 2015 was inspired by a 2014/2015 residency with Girls' Club Fort Lauderdale. A two-time Endowed Teaching Chair recipient of Broward College and named the 2022 Distinguished Professor by the Association of Florida Colleges, Laura regularly teaches writing workshops and literature courses at Broward College. She was appointed the first Poet Laureate of the City of Coconut Creek in 2022. A native of Broward County, Laura lives in Coconut Creek, Florida, with her husband Walter, their two daughters Jordan and Lena.
Maureen McDole is the author of three books of poems, Exploring My Options (2006), Longing for the Deep End(2011), and Feast (2021). She has an English B.A., with Literary Studies Concentration from University of South Florida. Her poetry has been set in a variety of different ways including: film, dance, spoken word, art installations, Sprechstimme, and traditional vocal works. She hosts a weekly podcast called The Write Life and has monthly column in The Artisan Magazine with the same name, where she is also the literature editor. She is also the host of her literary non-profit Keep St. Pete Lit’s weekly podcast Typewriter Talks.
Campbell McGrath is the author of eleven books of poetry, most recently Nouns & Verbs: New and Selected Poems, and XX: Poems for the Twentieth Century, a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in scores of literary journals and anthologies, as well as the New Yorker, Atlantic Magazine, Harper's and the New York Times. McGrath's writing has been recognized with some of the most prestigious awards in American letters, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, a United States Artists Fellowship, and a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Award." He lives with his wife in Miami Beach, and teaches in the MFA program at Florida International University.
Becka Mara McKay is a poet and a translator of Hebrew literature. She directs the Creative Writing MFA at Florida Atlantic University, where she serves as faculty advisor to Swamp Ape Review. Her newest book of poems is The Little Book of No Consolation (Barrow Street Press). She lives in Delray Beach.
Llewellyn McKernan lives in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. She has a Master’s Degree in English (University of Arkansas) and a Master’s Degree in Writing (Brown University). She has had six books of poems published for adults and four for children. Her poems have also been published in many journals and in fifty-seven anthologies. It has won 107 regional, state, and national awards and prizes. Her writing mantra is based on a quotation by the French novelist, Colette: “Look long and hard at what gives you the most pleasure, but look even longer and harder at what gives you the most pain.”
M.B. McLatchey is a poet and writer living, writing, and teaching in Florida. Author of five books, including the award-winning titles Beginner’s Mind (Regal House Publishing, 2021) and The Lame God (2013 May Swenson Award, Utah State University Press), she is recipient of the American Poet Prize from American Poetry Journal. McLatchey is Professor of Humanities at Embry-Riddle University. She received her graduate degree in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, Master of Arts in Teaching from Brown University, MFA in Poetry from Goddard College, and her B.A. from Williams College. Visit her at www.mbmclatchey.com
Peter Meinke (Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg, 2009-2015) is now Poet Laureate of Florida. He’s published more than 20 books, including eight in the prestigious Pitt Poetry Series, most recently Lucky Bones (2014). His book, The Piano Tuner, received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His latest publication (2015) is a children’s book, The Elf Poem, illustrated by his wife, artist Jeanne Clark.
Jesse Millner’s poems and prose have appeared most recently in the Grist and Book of Matches. His work was included in The Best American Poetry 2013 and Best Small Fictions 2020. His latest poetry book, Memory’s Blue Sedan, was released in March 2020 by Hysterical Books of Tallahassee, Florida. Jesse teaches writing courses at Florida Gulf Coast University and lives in Estero, Florida, with his dog, Lucy.
Donald Morrill is the author of three volumes of poetry, including Awaiting Your Impossibilities (Florida Book Award), from Anhinga Press, and four books of nonfiction, including The Untouched Minutes (Riverteeth Nonfiction Prize). His debut novel Beaut won the Lee Smith Fiction Prize and was published by Blair https://www.blairpub.com/shop/beaut He’s been the Bedell Visiting Writer in the Nonfiction Program at the University of Iowa and Writer-in-Residence at the Smith Poetry Center. He was founder of the Low-Residency MFA at the University of Tampa https://www.donaldmorrill.com
Rhonda J. Nelson’s collections include: A Cold Fruit, Mythological (Red Mare #24, 2022) Musical Chair, (Anhinga Press. 2004), Kahlo (audio collection w/ Irritable Tribe of Poets, 2004), The Undertow, (Rattapallax Press, 2001), and more. She is a Florida Fellow in Poetry 2000-2001, winner of Writer's Exchange 2000, (Poets & Writers, Inc.. NYC), Named Creative Loafing Magazine Best Spoken Word Artist 2018, Rhonda received the Romeo LeMay Award in Poetry for her in the 2020 issue of The Odet. She has work in many literary journals and anthologies, including the Grabbed Anthology from Beacon Press (2020), the final anthology for Yellow Jacket Press, Chasing Light (2020), and the Rumors, Secrets and Lies Anthology (Anhinga Press (2022).
Hayden Nielander is from the Florida Heartland. He's an MFA candidate at Florida State University and assistant poetry editor for The Southeast Review.
Ellen Nielsen attended South Dade High School, and after earning her undergraduate degree at Tulane University she returned to earn a BA in English at the University of Miami. After teaching there for several years she made a radical change in her life, moving to Vermont with her first husband and becoming a social worker. She ended up living in an intentional community deep in the woods in New Hampshire for eighteen years. She represented her rural district in the New Hampshire State Legislature for two years. After forty years of shoveling snow every winter she moved back to Florida in 2009 and now lives in Ormond Beach. Ellen started writing poetry in the early 1980s following a difficult divorce. After moving back to Florida, she joined a local poetry group and began to take her work more seriously. She published her first collection of poetry, Blue Flame, in 2022.
Barbra Nightingale’s 10th book of poetry is Spells & Other Ways of Flying (Kelsay Books, 2021). She has seven chapbooks and three full volumes of poetry with small presses. Over 200 of her poems have appeared in National and International Journals and Anthologies. She is an Associate Editor with the South Florida Poetry Journal, a semi-retired professor, and lives in Hollywood, Florida, with her two and four-legged menager.
Diana Noble lives in Coral Springs. Her background is in film production, photography and design. A mother and dreamer, she started writing poetry under the unwavering tutelage of Sally Naylor during Covid and found the process challenging, exhilarating, and satisfying- a bit like gardening. She considers herself a student of life and most definitely a student in the art of poetry.
Cara Nusinov, poet, teacher, collage artist, Poetry Therapy Practitioner, Laughter Yoga Leader, Certified Art Journal teacher, speaker, has joyfully led workshops for decades, at The Poetry Buffet Party, Laughter Yoga clubs, writer’s groups, and conferences, presenting original prompts, enabling participants to develop and write and share new work, and to laugh & meditate at any age. She is the author of Unrequited Loves and Other French Kisses, and the artist/editor of the anthology/sculpture, The Polka Dot Poetry Peacock, and occasionally submits one of her thousands of poems for publication. A Grandmama, Cara calls quirky Lake Worth Beach home.
Michael Mackin O'Mara, born in Brooklyn, lives in West Palm Beach, Florida. The submitted poem was written on the ride home after a poetry reading by Lenny DellaRocca at Warehouse 57 in Hollywood thirty or forty years ago.
Sharlyn Page, a life-long poet, grew up as one of six children in the backwaters of Florida. Her quest is the exploration of the nature of reality, where she has made some progress. The author of over 600 works, she has recently published several winning works in various contests and online journals. One book, Gradient is online at Amazon. She currently facilitates a poetry critique group which meets in her home town, Mount Dora, Florida. Her website is sharlynpagepoet.com
Yaddyra Peralta is a Honduran-American poet, essayist, and editor. She has been the recipient of residencies from The Betsy Writer’s Room, Jaffe Center for Book Arts at FAU, and O,Miami Poetry Festival’s Off-Shore virtual residency for poets of the Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in BOMB, Grist, Ploughshares, The Florida Review, and the anthologies Eight Miami Poets (Jai Alai Books), The Breakbeat Poets, Vol. 4: LatiNext (Haymarket Books) and Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness (University of Florida Press), among others. Yaddyra is the recipient of the 2023 Marjory Stoneman Douglas Poetry Award and lives in Miami, FL.
Zoraida “Ziggy” Pastor is the daughter of Cuban exiles. While completing her bachelor's degrees at Florida International University. Her Everglades poems were exhibited at the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center in the park. She was featured in Z Publishing House, Best Emerging Writers of Florida two years in a row. Zoraida is the author of Bear Echoes, a poetry chapbook sponsored by O, Miami and The Knight Foundation. She has several poems published in Ice on a Hot Stove: A Decade of Converse MFA Poetry, edited by Rick Mulkey and Denise Duhamel.
Geoffrey Philp, a Silver Musgrave Medal recipient, is the author of Archipelagos, a collection of poems about climate change. Philp’s poem, “A Prayer for My Children,” is featured on The Poetry Rail--an homage to 12 writers that shaped Miami culture. He lives in Miami and is working on a graphic novel about Marcus Garvey, My Name is Marcus.
Liz Robbins’ poetry collection Night Swimming won the 2023 Cold Mountain Press Book Contest. Her collaborative chapbook on mental health, Fire Carousel, is newly out from Main Street Rag Press. Her other collections are Freaked (Elixir P); Play Button (Cider Press Review P); Hope, As the World Is a Scorpion Fish (U Nebraska); and Girls Turned Like Dials (YellowJacket P).
Chloe Rodriguez is a poet, writer, and South Florida native. Chloe has her BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing and a minor in Philosophy from Florida International University. She is currently an MFA candidate for Creative Writing with a focus in Poetry at Florida State University while working on her book. Some of her poems have been featured in the Windward Review. When she's not writing or has a book in hand, you can find her exploring and foraging the outdoors with her dogs.
Jonathan Rose is an editor, educator, immigration lawyer, internationally published poet, judge of local, national, and international contests, translator, and arts activist. He has earned the Shining Star Award (from the Arts & Business Council) -- "to honor an individual who has been a mobilizing, resourceful and innovative leader, enhancing the quality of life in Greater Miami through the arts.”
Laura Sobbott Ross has worked as a teacher and a writing coach for Lake County Schools in Florida and was named Lake County’s poet laureate. Her poems have been featured on Verse Daily and have appeared in Meridian, 32 Poems, Blackbird, Main Street Rag, National Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Art & Letters Poetry Prize and won the Southern Humanities Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks and three full-length poetry books. She resides with her husband and granddaughter in Mount Dora, Florida.
Gianna Russo served as the inaugural Wordsmith of The City of Tampa, appointed by Mayor Jane Castor in 2019. She is the author of the poetry collections, All I See is Your Glinting: 90 Days in the Pandemic, with photographer Jenny Carey (Madville Publishing, 2022); One House Down (Madville Publishing, 2019); and Moonflower, winner of a Florida Book Award. She has published poems in Green Mountains Review, Gulf Stream, Negative Capability, and others. She is the founding editor of YellowJacket Press, which published chapbooks by over 40 Florida poets from 2006-21.
Richard Ryal is a writer and professor with a marketing background, he finds the beauty of this world still outmuscles the gloom. But new lines stalk him whether he’s busy or not. My favorite poets push me around, like life itself, and give me a new view. It’s like driving around an unfamiliar bend in Northern Arizona.
Mary Jane Ryals hails from the Tallahassee area of North Florida. She's a novelist, short story writer and a poet. At Florida State University she taught professional writing for the business college’s Management Department before retiring in 2021. The Moving Waters is a collection of her poems. Her latest novel is Cutting Loose in Paradise. Additionally, she's an associate editor for the Apalachee Review. Mary Jane has frequently taught for FSU in London, Florence, and Valencia, Spain.
Craig Ryan is a 34-year-old English instructor who teaches at FAU, where he earned his Master's in creative writing. He lives in Lake Worth, the town he was born in, with his fiancé and 5-year-old step son.
Brook J. Sadler is a poet, writer, and professor of philosophy. Her writing can be found in many journals including Greensboro Review, Missouri Review, Cortland Review, Boiler Journal, Ms. Magazine, CALYX, Kestrel, and South Writ Large. Despite cane toads, hurricanes, alligators, mosquitoes, lightning strikes, theme parks, pythons, rip tides, red tides, and pernicious politicians, she lives in Tampa, Florida.
Ismael Santos is a First-gen Latino poet born, raised, and still living in Miami, Florida. Specifically Little Havana/Calle Ocho, and I love cuban coffee and Walt Whitman.
Jeff Santosuosso is a business consultant and award-winning poet living in Pensacola, FL. His chapbook, Body of Water, is available through Clare Songbirds Publishing House. He is Editor-in-Chief of panoplyzine.com, an online journal of poetry and short prose. Jeff’s work has been twice-nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Comstock Review, San Pedro River Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, The Blue Nib, Mojave River Review, The Lake (UK), Red Fez, Texas Poetry Calendar, Avocet, Pif, and other online and print publications.
Peter Schmitt is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Goodbye, Apostrophe (Regal House Publishing). He is a native Miamian." Miami remains his home.
Maureen Seaton has authored two dozen poetry collections, both solo and collaborative—recently, Undersea (JackLeg) and Sweet World (CavanKerry), winner of the 2019 Florida Book Award for poetry. Her honors include Lambda Literary Awards for both Lesbian Poetry and Lesbian Memoir, the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award, an NEA, and the Pushcart. She was voted Miami’s Best Poet 2020 by The Miami New Times and is professor emerita of English and creative writing at the University of Miami.
Sean Sexton was born in Indian River County and grew up on his family’s Treasure Hammock Ranch. He divides his time between managing a 700-acre cow-calf and seed stock operation, painting, and writing. He has kept daily sketch and writing journals since 1973. He is author three full volumes of poems including Blood Writing, Anhinga Press, 2009, May Darkness Restore, Press 53, 2019, and Portals, Press 53, 2023. He has performed at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV, Miami Book Fair International, Other Words Literary Conference in Tampa, FL and the High Road Poetry and Short Fiction Festival, in Winston-Salem, NC.
Gregg Shapiro is the author of nine books including Refrain in Light (Souvenir Spoon Books, 2023). Recent/forthcoming lit-mag publications include BarBar, Otherwise Engaged Literature and Arts Journal, The Penn Review, Gargoyle, Limp Wrist, Mollyhouse, Impossible Archetype, and confetti, as well as the anthology Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville, 2023). An entertainment journalist, whose interviews and reviews run in a variety of regional LGBTQ+ and mainstream publications and websites, Shapiro lives in South Florida with his husband Rick, and their dog Coco.
Susannah W. Simpson’s work has been published in: 13th Moon, The Wisconsin Review, SoFloPoJo, SWWIM, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Salamander, Xavier Review among others. She is Founder & Co-Director of Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches.
Jessica Q. Stark is the author of Buffalo Girl (BOA Editions, 2023), Savage Pageant (Birds, LLC, 2020) and four poetry chapbooks, including INNANET (The Offending Adam, 2021). She is a Poetry Editor at AGNI and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Florida. With Dorsey Craft she co-organizes the Dreamboat Reading Series in Jacksonville, Florida, where she currently resides.
An Ohio native and author of seven books of poetry, Jim Steele now resides in a small town in Central Florida. Retired from a long career in federal government, he spends his time golfing, writing, and traveling. His eighth book will be published in October, 202
Meryl Stratford’s chapbook, The Magician’s Daughter, won the YellowJacket Press Contest for Florida Poets, and her poem, “Why Things Are The Way They Are,” won the Modern Myth Match. Her poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies, most recently Amsterdam Quarterly. She is a senior poetry editor for South Florida Poetry Journal.
Virgil Suárez was born in Havana, Cuba in 1962. At the age of twelve he arrived in the United States. He received an MFA from Louisiana State University in 1987. He is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently 90 MILES: SELECTED AND NEW, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. His work has appeared in a multitude of magazines and journals internationally. He has been taking photographs on the road for the last three decades. When he is not writing, he is out riding his motorcycle up and down the Blue Highways of the Southeast, photographing disappearing urban and rural landscapes. His 10th volume of poetry, THE PAINTED BUNTING’S LAST MOLT, will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in the Spring of 2020.
Artist Statement:
Both my photographs and mixed media art try to capture the erasure of time. Both also concern themselves with decay, detritus, and the decomposition of man-made things. Both of these things also inform my poetry and writing. Nature wins each and every time. Humankind eventually will perish and the planet will recalibrate itself. Even in the face of some cataclysmic and or nuclear disaster the planet will survive and morph into something new. I am also concerned with the plight of the underdog, the inaudible voices that perish daily trying to survive. My attempt to preserve witness to the mundane and the daily grind of lives being worn down to nothing.
Kate Sweeney is the author of two books of poetry--Better Accidents (Yellow Jacket Press, 2009) and Worrisome Creatures (Madville Publishing, 2022), which won gold in the 2023 Florida Book Awards. Her work has also appeared in many literary magazines, such as Best New Poets 2009, Hayden’s Ferry, Meridian, Tampa Review, and Poet Lore, among others. You can learn more about her at www.katesweeney.org.
Nicole Tallman says about her poem-This poem was written in response to the question “Where are you from?”—a question people still ask me in Miami, even though I’ve been living in South Florida for 18 years. The answer is Michigan. This poem was first published in trampset under the title “Rifle Season,” and was republished under the title “Poem for the Soft Boys” in my second book, Poems for the People.
Romana Tarlamis was born in Bratislava, Slovakia and has lived in Canada and Australia. She currently resides in Sunrise, Florida. Her artistry has been evolving from the moment she sketched her first bouquet of Hydrangea at age seven. In her current art practice she works with water mediums, collage and writes poetry.
Kris Thurston has been published in The Nantucket Review and Focus: A Journal for Lesbians. She won Honorable Mention at the Marblehead Arts Festival in 1986. She’s had poems included as part of Yom Kippur services at Congregation Beth El in Sudbury Massachusetts and Temple Israel of West Palm Beach. She was invited to read in February 2021 in a joint poetry/art Zoom reading with Turtle Studios/Poetry Lab. She has been living in Boynton Beach, Florida since 2014.
Lauren Tivey is the author of four chapbooks, most recently Moroccan Holiday, which was the winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2019. Her full-length collection, Traveler in the Sunset Clouds (Main Street Rag Publishing Company) was released in 2022. Tivey's work has appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, Saw Palm, Connotation Press, and Split Lip Magazine, among dozens of other publications in the U.S. and U.K. She lives in St. Augustine, Florida, where she teaches English and Creative Writing at Flagler College.
Michael Trammell’s first novel is Rad Sick Record, published by Hysterical Books Press. He grew up in South Florida and currently lives in the Florida panhandle in Tallahassee. His poetry collection is Our Keen Blue House; other work has appeared in New Letters, The Chattahoochee Review, Pleiades, and the G.W. Review. He’s a Senior Lecturer at Florida State University and an associate editor for the Apalachee Review.
Julie Marie Wade is Professor of English & Creative Writing at Florida International University. Her most recent collections are Fugue: An Aural History (Diagram/New Michigan Press, 2023) and Otherwise: Essays (Autumn House Press, 2023), selected by Lia Purpura as the winner of the 2022 Autumn House Nonfiction Book Prize. She makes her home with Angie Griffin and their two cats in Dania Beach.
Sidney Wade resides six months in Maine and six months in Gainesville, FL. He has published eight volumes of poetry, the most recent of which is Deep Gossip: New and Selected Poems in 2020. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Florida, where she taught Creative Writing and Translation for 21 years.
Helen Pruitt Wallace’s first collection of poems, Shimming the Glass House, won the Richard Snyder Prize for Poetry and a Florida Book Award, and her chapbook, Pink Streets, was published by Yellow Jacket Press. Curator of the Dali Poetry Series at the Dali Museum, her individual poems have been published in journals and anthologies including The Literary Review, Harvard Review, Plume, and The Slowdown podcast. She earned her Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing from FSU, and taught poetry and non-fiction at Eckerd College before serving as Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg (2016-2022).
Brendan Walsh has lived in South Korea, Laos, and New England, and Hollywood, Florida. He's the author of six poetry collections. His latest, concussion fragment, is the winner of the 2022 Florida Book Award Gold Medal. He is co-host of the Fat Guy, Jacked Guy podcast with Stef Rubino.
Patricia Whiting is a West Palm Beach painter-poet. Publications include a chapbook and two collections of poetry. Her poems have appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, where she is now on staff, Thimble Literary Magazine, Slipstream, 2river, and others.
Susan R. Williamson is a poet and past Director of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Her poems have appeared in Beltway Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, Paterson Literary Review, Poetry Daily, Poetry East, Smartish Pace, StorySouth, and The Virginia Quarterly Review among others. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New England College and a BA in French Language and Literature from the University of Virginia. Her chapbook, Burning After Dark, won the Hannah Kahn Poetry Foundation’s 25th Anniversary Prize. Williamson lives in Boca Raton, Florida.
David Eileen Winn is a non-binary poet and Ohio native who earned his MFA from Florida Atlantic University while Editor-in-Chief of the school’s literary magazine, Swamp Ape Review. They are currently on the editorial board for Alien Magazine, and their work has appeared in Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net Anthology, Permafrost, Cherry Tree Review, and Small Orange, among others. On Instagram, they go by @thevibeguardian.
Elisa Albo was born in Havana. Her chapbook Passage to America conveys her family immigrant story, and Each Day More is a collection of elegies. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Bomb, Crab Orchard Review, Notre Dame Review, SWWIM Every Day, Two-Countries: Daughters & Sons of Immigrant Parents, and Vinegar and Char. A professor of English and ESL at Broward College, she lives in Fort Lauderdale.
Yael Valencia Aldana is a Caribbean Afro-Latinx writer and poet. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Stonecoast Review, Superstition Review, and Cutbank Literary Journal, among others. She teaches creative writing in South Florida, where she lives with her son and too many pets. You can find her online at YaelAldana.com.
Blaise Allen, Ph.D., Publications include: The American Journal of Poetry, Pink Panther Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Long Island Literary Review, Naugatuck River Review, The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Blue Fifth Review, Long Island Quarterly, and Mothering Magazine.
Dr. David B. Axelrod was Suffolk County, Long Island’s Poet Laureate, and is now Volusia County, Florida, Poet Laureate, and the director of the Creative Happiness Institute in Daytona Beach. Dr. Axelrod has published in hundreds of magazines and anthologies, as well as twenty-four books of poetry, the newest of which is The Official Rules for Olympic Bed Riding (Bold Venture Press, 2023). He is the recipient of three Fulbright Awards including his being the first official Fulbright Poet-in-Residence in the People’s Republic of China.
Clayre Benzadón is a queer Jewish poet who received her MFA from the University of Miami. She will begin working as a teacher at Riviera Preparatory School in Miami, FL this fall (2023). Her chapbook, “Liminal Zenith” was published by SurVision Books in 2019. She was awarded the Alfred Boas Poetry Prize for "Linguistic Rewilding", another one her pieces ("God's Broken [Body]") was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she has been published in places including ANMLY, Olney Magazine, and SWWIM. You can find more about her at clayrebenzadon.com. Clayre doesn't have to venture too far to enjoy the Coconut Grove enclave (the water's super close, it feels close enough to a "walkable" area, and she especially loves A.C's Icees).
Richard Blanco was selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history. More recently, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal from the NEH by President Biden. In 2022, he was appointed the first-ever Poet Laureate of Miami Dade County, where he currently lives in Surfside. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami, cultural identity characterizes his many collections of award-winning poetry, including Homeland of My Body, forthcoming from Beacon Press in October 2023.
Mary Block lives and writes in her hometown of Miami, Florida. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mudfish, Best New Poets 2020, RHINO, Nimrod International Journal, and Sonora Review, among other publications. Her work can be found online at Rattle, SWWIM Every Day, Aquifer—The Florida Review Online, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of New York University's Creative Writing Program, a 2018 Best of the Net finalist, a 2012 finalist for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Mary is an editor at SWWIM. Her website is www.maryblock.net.
Chris Bodor is a first generation American. He was born in Connecticut to an English mother and a Hungarian father. During the past three decades, his poems have appeared in many independent, small, and micro-press publications, such as the Lummox Journal, Live Nude Poems, and New Generation Beats-2022 Anthology. He is currently serving a two-year term as the Florida State Beat Poem Laureate (2023-2025). Bodor is the Editor-In-Chief of the international literary journal A.C. PAPA, which stands for Ancient City Poets, Authors, Photographers, and Artists. He lives and works in St. Augustine, the Nation's Oldest City.
Steven Bradbury is a Florida-based landscape artist, writer, and translator.
Dustin Brookshire’s (he/him) chapbooks include Never Picked First For Playtime (Harbor Editions, 2023), Love Most Of You Too(Harbor Editions, 2021), and To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). He is the co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023). Visit Dustin online at dustinbrookshire.com.
A Fulbright fellow (Albania, 2011) Gregory Byrd’s poems have appeared in journals such as the Tampa Review, Apalachee Review, Cortland Review, Poeteka (Albania, in translation). Among his poetry books are Salt and Iron (Snake Nation, 2014), At Penuel (Split Oak, 2011) and Florida Straits (Yellowjacket Press, 2005). The Name for the God Who Speaks won the Robert Phillips Prize in 2018. He has received a Creative Pinellas Rapid Returns Fellowship, an SPC Distinguished Teaching Award and a Pushcart Prize Nomination. Greg has degrees in writing and literature from Eckerd College, Florida State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Greg fishes the flats near Clearwater, rides his bicycle and works on his 1966 Ford pickup. He teaches writing and humanities at St. Petersburg College.
Collin Callahan's first collection of poetry, Thunderbird Inn (Silver Medal winner in the 2022 Florida Book Awards), is now available from Conduit Books & Ephemera. His poems have appeared in Granta, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Collin holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas and a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, where he currently lives and teaches. You can find his work at collincallahanwrites.com
Howard Camner is the author of 25 books including the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Poems from the Mud Room. He was a founding member of New York's Literary Outlaws and The West End Poetry Troupe. His major literary works are housed in the Emerson Archives in Boston. Six of his poems will be sent to the moon in a time capsule aboard Griffin Mission One as part of the Polaris Archive of Contemporary Culture in November of 2024.
Rick Campbell is a poet and essayist living on Alligator Point, Florida. His most recent book is a collection of essays, Sometimes the Light (Main Street Rag Press.) Poetry collections include Provenance (Blue Horse Press) and Gunshot, Peacock, Dog; The History of Steel; Dixmont; Setting the World in Order; The Traveler’s Companion, and A Day’s Work. His poems and essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Georgia Review, Fourth River, Kestrel, Alabama Literary Review, and Prairie Schooner. He’s won a Pushcart Prize and a NEA Fellowship in Poetry. He teaches in the University of Nevada-Reno’s MFA program.
Sarah Carey grew up in Tallahassee and has lived in Florida most of her life. A resident of Gainesville for the last 33 years, she is a graduate of the Florida State University creative writing program and the author of two poetry chapbooks, including Accommodations, winner of the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award. Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Sugar House Review, Valparaiso Review and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Orison Anthology. Visit her at SarahKCarey.com or on Twitter @SayCarey1.
Sarah Carleton writes poetry, edits fiction, plays the banjo, and knits obsessively in Tampa, Florida. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Nimrod, Tar River Poetry, Cider Press Review, The Wild Word, Valparaiso, and New Ohio Review. Sarah’s poems have received nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her first collection, Notes from the Girl Cave, was published in 2020 by Kelsay Books.
C.M. Clark’s work has appeared throughout the U.S., in Canada, and internationally. Publication credits include Painted Bride Quarterly, West Trade Review, Wild Roof Journal, Bookends Review, Prime Number Magazine, Vallum Magazine (Montreal), Punt Volat (Barcelona), The Paddock Review, Ovenbird, and the South Florida Poetry Journal. Her work has been anthologized in collections including Anhinga Press’s Rumors, Secrets and Lies, Demeter Press’s Travellin’ Mama, in Voices from the Fierce Intangible World (SFPJ), and in Chasing Light (Yellow Jacket Press). Clark was a finalist for the Anhinga Press 2021 Chapbook Prize, and runner-up for the Slate Roof Press Elyse Wolf Prize. She also served as inaugural Poet-in-Residence for the Deering Estate Artists Village in Miami. Clark is the author of full-length works Exoskeletal (Solution Hole Press, 2019), Dragonfly (Solution Hole Press, 2016), Charles Deering Forecasts the Weather & Other Poems (Solution Hole Press, 2012), The Blue Hour (Three Stars Press, 2007. A chapbook of new work, The Unreliable Narrator, will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2024.
David Colodney is a poet living in Boynton Beach, Florida. He is author of the chapbook, Mimeograph, and his poetry has or will appear in journals including rust + moth, South Carolina Review, and Door = Jar. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, David holds an MFA from Converse College and an MA from Nova Southeastern University and has written for the Miami Herald and the Tampa Tribune. He currently serves as an associate editor of South Florida Poetry Journal.
Cynie Cory is the author of Here on Rue Morgue Avenue, (Hysterical Books), American Girl, (New Issues Prize). Her poems have appeared in several journals and magazines, including The American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, New American Writing, Ploughshares, and Triquarterly. Cory’s book reviews can be found online at LitPub. A native of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Cory makes her home in Tallahassee, Florida. You can find her on Substack at Self-Help Is Not My Friend or cynie.substack.com
Dorsey Craft is the author of Plunder (Bauhan Publishing 2020), winner of the May Sarton NH Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared recently in Blackbird, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She teaches at University of North Florida and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at Agni. She is also co-organizer with Jessica Q. Stark of the Dreamboat Poetry Series in Jacksonville, FL.
Letisia Cruz is a Cuban-American writer and artist. She is the author of Migrations & Other Exiles (Lost Horse Press, 2023), selected by Dzvinia Orlowsky as winner of the 2022 Idaho Prize for Poetry, and The Lost Girls Book of Divination (Tolsun Books, 2018). She is the recipient of a 2022 artist grant from the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance and was selected as a 2022 Dali Dozen Emerging Artist for her project Rituales: An Exploration of Faith in the Caribbean. Her writing and artwork have appeared in [PANK], Ninth Letter, The Acentos Review, Gulf Stream, Saw Palm, Third Coast, Duende, Moko, 300 Days of Sun, and Black Fox Literary Magazine, among others. She is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA program and lives in a witchy cottage on 6th (The Witch On 6th) in Saint Petersburg. Find more of her work at lesinfin.com.
P. Scott Cunningham is the author of Ya Te Veo (University of Arkansas, 2018), selected by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins for the Miller Williams Poetry Series. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in The Nation, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, POETRY, A Public Space, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Monocle, and The Guardian, among others. A graduate of Wesleyan University, he lives in Miami, FL, where he serves as the Executive and Artistic Director of O, Miami.
Silvia Curbelo is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Falling Landscape and The Secret History of Water, both from Anhinga Press, and two chapbooks. She has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, the Cintas Foundation and the Writer’s Voice, as well as the Jessica Noble Maxwell Memorial Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review. Her poems have been published widely in literary journals and more than three-dozen anthologies and textbooks. A native of Cuba, Silvia has lived in Tampa all her adult life.
Howard Richard Debs is a recipient of the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. His essays, fiction, and poetry appear internationally in numerous publications; His book Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words is a 2017 Best Book Awards and 2018 Book Excellence Awards recipient. His chapbook Political is the 2021 American Writing Awards winner in poetry. He is co-editor of New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust winner of the 2023 International Book Awards for anthologies. He is listed in the Poets & Writers Directory. https://www.pw.org/content/howard_debs
Lenny DellaRocca co-hosted Poetry In A Pub on the yacht, Livingstone's Landing, which sunk into the New River in Fort Lauderdale. He dubbed the poets who read their The Boat Poets. Some of them appear in this anthology. His chapbook Things I see in the Fire won the Yellowjacket Chapbook contest. In 2016, DellaRocca started Interview With A Poet, which became South Florida Poetry Journal-SoFloPoJo. Nominated for a Pushcart, he is the curator of this anthology. He invented the Epoem, and is publisher and editor of Witchery.
Anjanette Delgado is a Puerto Rican author who has received recognition for her novels The Heartbreak Pill (Atria Books, 2009) and The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho (Kensington Books and Penguin Random House, 2014). Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in the New York Times' "Modern Love" column and opinion sections, Vogue, NPR, HBO, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades Mag, CUNY's Hostos Review, The Rumpus, and the Boston Review. As an editor, Anjanette curated the anthology Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness (University of Florida Press, 2021), which earned her a gold medal at the International Latino Book Awards and was recognized as one of three notable anthologies by Poets & Writers in 2021. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University and currently resides in Miami, Florida.
Deborah DeNicola is the author of three full collections of poetry, The Impossible from Kelsay Press 2021, Original Human, from Word Tech, Where Divinity Begins from Alice James Books, four chapbooks, and her memoir, The Future That Brought Her Here from NicholasHays 2009. She edited Orpheus & Company; Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology (UPNE.) Among other awards. She’s been a recipient of an NEAfellowship. Her web site is www.intuitivegateways.com
Regina Dilgen, Ph.D., served as Professor of English and Department Chair at Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth, Florida. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in the journals Quartler(ly), The Dewdrop, Persimmon Tree, Passager, and Apollo’s Lute. Her prose has been published in Radical Teacher, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and in the anthology The Reality of Breastfeeding: Reflections by Contemporary Women. She was a featured poet at a Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches reading. She lives in Delray Beach, Florida, where she writes and paints.
Alexa Doran recently completed her PhD in Poetry at Florida State University. Her full-length collection DM Me, Mother Darling won the 2020 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and was published in April 2021 (Bauhan). She is also the author of the chapbook Nightsink, Faucet Me a Lullaby (Bottlecap Press 2019). You can look for work from Doran in recent or upcoming issues of Pleiades, Witness, Massachusetts Review, pidgeonholes, NELLE, and Gigantic Sequins, among others. For a full list of her publications, awards, and interviews please visit her website at alexadoran.com.
PM Draper is semi-retired and finally finding her inner poet in Vero Beach, FL. Publications include: The Tao of Hibiscus and a chapbook, After Pyre.
Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Second Story (Pittsburgh, 2021) and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami and lives in Hollywood.
Sara Ries Dziekonski holds an MFA in poetry from Chatham University. Her first book, Come In, We're Open, which she wrote about growing up in her parents' diner, won the 2009 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition. Her chapbooks include Snow Angels on the Living Room Floor (Finishing Line Press 2018) and Marrying Maracuyá (Main Street Rag 2021), which won the Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Competition. Her poems have appeared in American Life in Poetry, Slipstream, LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Cordella Magazine, 2River View, Earth’s Daughters, Thimble Literary Magazine, Waterwheel Review, Potomac Review, SWWIM Every Day, among others. She is the co-founder of Poetry Midwives Editing Services and teaches creative writing with Keep St. Pete Lit.
Abel M. Folgar (b. 1977) is a poet from Caracas, Venezuela of Lebanese and Corsican heritage. He’s the coauthor of Odas a Futbolistas (Hinchas de Poesía Press, 2018, with Yago S. Cura) and translator of Facundo Soto’s Juego de Chicos (Jitney Books, 2018). His poetry has appeared in Pidgeonholes, Noble/Gas Qtrly and LaFovea.org, among others. His articles on art, music and food have appeared across the New Times/Village Voice family of publications, PureHoney Magazine and numerous digital and print entities since 1999. Renault 30, his debut collection of poems, is available from HINCHAS Press, a Los Angeles-based micropress that publishes zines, poetry, poetry in translation, and library science non-fiction.
Born in Manhattan, New York, to immigrant parents from Honduras, Oscar Fuentes is a multidisciplinary artist based in Miami, who has been sharing his talents and love of the arts for more than 30 years. Known by his moniker, The Biscayne Poet, Oscar is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, including Beautiful Women Will Never Know (2013), 4 Nights With Betsy (2014), Vagabond: Selected Poems, Short Stories, and Plays (2015), and Honey & Sting (2023). Oscar was most recently honored by Mayor Daniella Levine Cava with the inaugural Miami-Dade Mayoral Poetry Commendation in recognition of outstanding contributions to the county’s literary art community. Connect with Oscar on Social: @thebiscaynepoet
Pamela Hill Epps’ work has most recently appeared in the anthology, 101 Jewish Poems For The Third Millennium (Ashland Poetry Press) as well as in other literary publications such as Heartwood Literary Magazine, The Closed Eye Open, Poetry Breakfast, The Sandhill Review, Poetica, Wild Violet, and has published A Last Glance, a chapbook published by YellowJacket Press. She is a psychologist, poet and jazz musician living in Tampa, Fl. She spends a great deal of time looking out at the river.
Mary Galvin (1961 – 2022) was the author of Queer Poetics (Greenwood/Praeger, 1999), a critical study of Modernist women poets. Her poetry was published in South Florida Poetry Journal, Southern Women’s Review, Homestead Review, and East Coast Literary Review. She held a Doctor of Arts from the State University of New York, Albany, and served as Professor of English for many years at Palm Beach State College, Lake Worth, Florida. She lived in Lake Worth with her wife, Laura Petrella, and their cat and dog, Pandora and Honey.
Stephen Gibson is the author of eight poetry collections: Frida Kahlo in Fort Lauderdale (Able Muse Press finalist book prize, forthcoming), Self-Portrait in a Door-Length Mirror (2017 Miller Williams Prize winner, University of Arkansas Press), The Garden of Earthly Delights Book of Ghazals (Texas Review Press), Rorschach Art Too (2014 Donald Justice Prize Winner, Story Line Press; 2021 Legacy Title Red Hen Press), Paradise (Miller Williams finalist, University of Arkansas Press), and three others.
Tyler Gillespie is an award-winning educator and writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, GQ, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Playboy, and elsewhere. He's the author of the nonfiction collection The Thing about Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State (University Press of Florida, 2021) and two poetry collections Florida Man: Poems (Red Flag Poetry, 2018) and the nature machine! (Autofocus, 2023). He’s a fifth-generation Floridian who currently lives in St. Petersburg. His website is TylerGillespie.com and his Instagram handle is @tyler_gills).
Terry Godbey’s poetry collections are Hold Still, Beauty Lessons, Flame and Behind Every Door. A winner of the Rita Dove Poetry Award, she has published poetry in Rattle, Poet Lore, CALYX Journal, Florida Review, Apalachee Review, Crab Creek Review and other literary magazines. She works as a corporate writer in Orlando.
Landis Grenville holds MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Florida State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Hanging Loose, Gulf Stream, and elsewhere. Currently, she lives and teaches in Tallahassee, Florida.
Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the author of Tortillera (TRP 2021), winner of The TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series: Florida, and the chapbook Visionware (Finishing Line Press 2009). She is a Contributing Editor for Grabbed: Poets and Writers Respond to Sexual Assault (Beacon Press, 2020) and Associate Editor for SWWIM Every Day an online daily poetry journal for women identifying poets. Her recent work can be found at America’s Best Poetry Blog, Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology, Poesia De Protesta, Split This Rock, Limp Wrist Magazine, and others. She resides in Miami, Florida with her family.
Andrew Rader Hanson lives in Delray, Florida and takes photos, hikes, lifts weights, and reads history and philosophy in his free time. His work has been accepted by Pembroke Magazine, Midway Journal, Spectrum Literary Journal, and more. He was also selected as a finalist for the Key West Literary Seminar’s Scotti Merril Poetry Award.
Peter Hargitai is the recipient of the Harold Morton Landon Translation Prize from the Academy of American Poets for his translation of Attila József in Perched on Nothing’s Branch (1988). His poem “Mother’s Visit No. 29” was published in Sixty Years of American Poetry, Introduction by Robert Penn Warren, Preface by Richard Wilbur (Abrams, 1996). He is listed in Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon: The Books and School for the Ages.
Lola Haskins’ seventeenth book Homelight, will be published by Charlotte Lit Press in September 2023. Her previous collection, Asylum: Improvisations on John Clare (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), was featured in the New York Times magazine.
Michael Hettich’s most recent book of poems, The Mica Mine, won the Lena Shull Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society. A book of new and selected poems in forthcoming in 2023 from Press 53.
Carolina Hospital’s poetry collections include Key West Nights and Other Aftershocks (Anhinga Press) and The Child of Exile: A Poetry Memoir (Arte Público Press), as well as Myth America (Anhinga Press) and How to Get into Trouble (forthcoming from Anhinga Press), both collaborative collections with Maureen Seaton, Holly Iglesias, and Nicole Hospital-Medina; plus the novel A Little Love, under the pen name C. C. Medina (Warner Books). Her work has appeared in publications such as the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature; Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Occupy the Workplace; and Rumors Secrets and Lies: Narrative Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. She currently lives in Palm Coast, FL.
Michael R. Howard was born in Jacksonville, Florida and returned to his native state after an exciting twenty-six year career as a Naval Officer and Navy SEAL. Florida's eclectic and disparate environment now fuels his imagination and literary efforts. However, at an early age he was inspired by and absorbed the works of adventurous authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Rudyard Kipling and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Michael's first book of poetry, The Lightning and the Gale was published in 2022. His second book The Impeded Stream will soon be published.
Holly Iglesias is a poet, translator, and teacher who has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her poetry collections are Souvenirs of Shrunken World, Angles of Approach, and Sleeping Things. She is also the author of one work of literary criticism, Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry.
Judy Ireland is the author of Cement Shoes, a poetry collection that won the Sinclair Poetry Prize in 2013. Her poems have appeared in Hotel Amerika, Calyx, Saranac Review, Eclipse, Cold Mountain, Coe Review, SWWIM, the South Florida Poetry Journal, and other journals, as well as in two anthologies, the Best Indie Lit New England anthology and Voices from the Fierce Intangible World. She is Senior Poetry Editor & Reading Series Producer for the South Florida Poetry Journal, Co-Director of Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches, and teaches at Palm Beach State College.
Christine Jackson is a poet living in Plantation, Florida. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Verse-Virtual, Ekphrastic Review, and Down in the Dirt. A recovering academic, Chris holds a Ph.D. in literature, and taught literature and creative writing for thirty years at a South Florida university.
Yuki Jackson is a Black and Japanese poet and educator. Her poetry has been published in literary journals such as Four Way Review and Cream City Review, for which she was nominated for a 2021 Best of the Net Award and the 2020 Summer Poetry Prize. Yuki is a regular contributor for the "Poet's Notebook" column of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay and her work has been featured by NPR Next Gen, Spady Cultural Heritage Museum and the Goodwin-Procter law firm. She was also featured as a playwright for The Straz Center’s BIPOC Play-Reading Series, showcasing her writing through an interdisciplinary and collaborative performance. For more, her website is YukiJackson.com.
Elizabeth Jacobson’s third collection of poems, There are as Many Songs in the World as Branches of Coral, will be published by Free Verse Editions, 2024. Her previous full-length collection, Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air won the New Measure Poetry Prize (Free Verse Editions, 2019). She is an Academy of American Poets 2020 Laureate Fellow and a reviews editor for the online magazine Terrain.org. Quantum Foam was written in Miami Beach, where Elizabeth lived for ten years. She now lives in Lake Worth Beach. Quantum Foam was originally published by the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day
Holly Jaffe's poems have been pubished in such journals as Red Fez, Unlikely Stories, Kleft Jaw. She resides in South Florida with her husband and parson terrier, Oliver, and is working on her first manuscript.
Brad Johnson’s second book Smuggling Elephants Through Airport Security (Michigan State University Press) was selected by Carolyn Forche for the 2018 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. Work of his has also been accepted by Carolina Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, J Journal, Meridian, Poet Lore, Tar River Poetry and others. He teaches at Palm Beach State College.
The winner of the 2022 Cider Press Review Book Award for Inheritance with a High Error Rate (January 2024), Jen Karetnick is the author of 10 additional poetry collections, including the chapbook What Forges Us Steel: The Judge Judy Poems (Alternating Current Press, July 2024). Her work has won the Tiferet Writing Contest for Poetry, and Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition and more. Jen is co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, she has recent or forthcoming work in The American Poetry Review, Bellevue Literary Review and others . Jen lives in El Portal, Florida. See jkaretnick.com or visit her on Instagram at JenKaretnick or on Twitter at Kavetchnik.
Gary Kay was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba where he lived for 31 years. He married and relocated to Florida, where he still resides. He is a retired professor who taught at Broward College for 30 years. He was voted professor of the year and won two endowed teaching awards. His poems have been published in more than 35 journals. He has placed second in two contests and has had several honorable mentions.
James Kimbrell’s poems have appeared in anthologies including the Best American Poetry and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. The recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, his most recent collection is Smote (2015, Sarabande Books). He has taught for over two decades at Florida State University.
Stacie M. Kiner is a former fellow at the Vermont Studio Center and Hannah Kahn Memorial Award recipient. Her poems have appeared in The Charlotte Poetry Review, Madison Review, Comstock Review, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Apalachee Quarterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Lavender Review, Panoply, Rhino, SWWIM and, Finishing Line Press, New Women’s Voices Series – the chapbook, Inventory. Stacie is the former moderator of a poetry talk show in Miami, the Essays Editor for the South Florida Poetry Journal and an urban gardener.
David Kirby teaches at Florida State University, where he is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English. He has published fifteen poetry collections, including The Temple Gate Called Beautiful from Alice James Books in 2008. His latest books are a poetry collection, Help Me, Information, and a textbook modestly entitled The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them. Kirby is the author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which the Times Literary Supplement described as “a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense” and which was named one of Booklist’s Top 10 Black History Non-Fiction Books of 2010. Entertainment Weekly has called Kirby’s poetry one of “5 Reasons to Live.” In 2016, Kirby received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Florida Humanities, which called him "a literary treasure of our state."
Steve Kronen's collections are Homage to Mistress Oppenheimer (Eyewear), Splendor (BOA), and Empirical Evidence (University of Georgia). His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Poetry, APR, Salmagundi, The American Scholar, The Southern Review, Plume, The Threepenny Review, Agni, The Paris Review, SoFloPoJo, Image, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, The Sewanee Review, and elsewhere. Awards include an NEA, Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences fellowships, the Boatwright Prize from Shenandoah, the Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America, and three Florida Arts fellowships. He lives with his wife, novelist Ivonne Lamazares in South Miami.
Laurie Kuntz has published two poetry collections: The Moon Over My Mother’s House, (Finishing Line Press) and Somewhere in the Telling, (Mellen Press), and three chapbooks Talking Me Off The Roof, (Kelsay Books), Simple Gestures, (Texas Review Press), and Women at the Onsen, (Blue Light Press). Simple Gestures, won the Texas Review Poetry Chapbook Contest, and Women at the Onsen won the Blue Light Press Chapbook Contest. She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net Prize. She currently resides in Florida, where everyday is a political poem waiting to be written. Visit her at: https://lauriekuntz.myportfolio.com/home-1
Max Lasky is a poet from New Jersey, now residing in Tallahassee, Florida. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Leavings, and an assistant poetry editor for Narrative Magazine. His poems are published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Frontier Poetry, the Academy of American Poets Anaïs Nin Poetry Prize, The Indianapolis Review, OxMag, and elsewhere.
Zuleyha Ozturk Lasky is a poet currently living in Tallahassee working towards an MFA in poetry at Florida State University. She is the co-founder and editor in chief of Leavings and an assistant poetry editor at Narrative Magazine. Her poems have appeared in Adroit, North American Review, Salamander, Nimrod, Palette and elsewhere. She was selected as a finalist for the 2022 Gregory Djanikian Scholars Prize.
Daniel Lawless is the author most recently of The Gun My Sister Killed Herself With; his next book, [I tell you this now] will be released in March 2024. Recent poems in FIELD, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Poetry International, Los Angeles Review, upsteet, SOLSTICE, Manhattan Review, Massachusetts Review, ,JAMA, and Dreaming Awake: New Prose Poetry from the U.S., Australia, and the U.K., among others. A recipient of a continuing Shifting Foundation grant, he is the founder and editor of Plume: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry, Plume Editions, and the annual Plume Poetry anthologies.
Amanda Leal is a 30-year-old poet from Lake Worth FL. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in CAROUSEL, Tampa Review, White Wall Review, and others.
Lúcia Leão is a translator and a writer originally from Rio de Janeiro. Her poems have been published in South Florida Poetry Journal, SWWIM Every Day, Gyroscope Review, The Blue Mountain Review, among others. She is a board member of The Cream Literary Alliance, a non-profit organization based in West Palm Beach, Florida, and a reviewer for RHINO Magazine. She holds a master’s degree in Brazilian Literature (UERJ, Rio de Janeiro) and a master’s degree in print journalism from the University of Miami (Florida).
Susan L. Leary’s most recent collection, Dressing the Bear, was selected by Kimberly Blaeser to win the 2023 Louise Bogan Award and will be published with Trio House Press in 2024. She is also the author of A Buffet Table Fit for Queens (Small Harbor Publishing, 2023), winner of the Washburn Prize; Contraband Paradise (Main Street Rag, 2021); and This Girl, Your Disciple (Finishing Line Press, 2019), finalist for The Heartland Review Press Chapbook Prize and semi-finalist for the Elyse Wolf Prize. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami, where she also teaches Writing Studies.
Mia Leonin is the author of four poetry collections: Fable of the Pack-Saddle Child (BkMk Press), Braid, Unraveling the Bed, and Chance Born (Anhinga Press), and a memoir, Havana and Other Missing Fathers (University of Arizona Press). Leonin has published poetry and creative nonfiction in New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Guernica, Indiana Review, Witness, North American Review, and others. She teaches creative writing at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
Susan Lilley served four years as Orlando’s inaugural Poet Laureate. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in Gulf Coast, Poet Lore, American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, Drunken Boat, Saw Palm, The Florida Review, Apalachee Review, Sweet, and other journals. Her two chapbooks are Night Windows and Satellite Beach. She is a past winner of the Rita Dove Poetry Award and has held a State of Florida Individual Arts Fellowship. She has taught at University of Central Florida and Rollins College, and Trinity Preparatory School. Her full collection, Venus in Retrograde, was published spring of 2019 by Burrow Press. She lives in Winter Park and is a proud native of her beautiful but beleaguered state of Florida.
Jennifer Litt is the author of the chapbook, Maximum Speed Through Zero (Blue Lyra Press, 2016) and the full-length poetry collection, Strictly from Hunger (Accents Publishing, 2022). Jennifer’s work has appeared in several publications, including Gulf Stream, Jet Fuel Review, Lumina, Naugatuck River Review, nyc BigCityLit, South Florida Poetry Journal, Stone Canoe, and Witchery. She lives in Fort Lauderdale with her cat Tiger Lily where she writes poetry and works as a free-lance editor.
William May first began writing poetry when he was a young boy at a school for learning-disabled students in New York City. Being dyslexic, reading and writing were skills William had to work hard to master, but he believes that the effort and struggle taught him to appreciate language and recognize its power from an early age. William has always had an interest in presenting his works, not only in written formats but through reading and performance. While, in the past, this often took the form of readings in his local community, he is currently focusing on growing his audience through social media posts presenting his poetry in various formats, as well as through his personalized newsletters. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the University of North Carolina’s MFA in Creative Writing, William currently resides with his fiancée Melissa Myers on the southeast Florida coast. For samples of his work, further information, and links to his social media, please visit WilliamMayWrites.com.
Rita Maria Martinez’s current writing raises awareness about triumphs and challenges inherent in navigating life with chronic daily headache (CDH) and migraine. Her Jane Eyre-inspired poetry collection--The Jane and Bertha in Me (Kelsay Books)— was a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize and a semi-finalist for the Word Works Washington Prize. Martinez’s poetry has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears in places like The Best American Poetry Blog, Ploughshares, Wordgathering, and the textbook Three Genres: The Writing of Fiction / Literary Nonfiction, Poetry and Drama. Instagram @rita.maria.martinez.poet , on Twitter @cubanbronteite, or visit https://comeonhome.org/ritamartinez.
Laura McDermott Matheric's first book of poetry, Visions on Alligator Alley, is an ekphrastic story in verse published by Lominy Books in 2015 was inspired by a 2014/2015 residency with Girls' Club Fort Lauderdale. A two-time Endowed Teaching Chair recipient of Broward College and named the 2022 Distinguished Professor by the Association of Florida Colleges, Laura regularly teaches writing workshops and literature courses at Broward College. She was appointed the first Poet Laureate of the City of Coconut Creek in 2022. A native of Broward County, Laura lives in Coconut Creek, Florida, with her husband Walter, their two daughters Jordan and Lena.
Maureen McDole is the author of three books of poems, Exploring My Options (2006), Longing for the Deep End(2011), and Feast (2021). She has an English B.A., with Literary Studies Concentration from University of South Florida. Her poetry has been set in a variety of different ways including: film, dance, spoken word, art installations, Sprechstimme, and traditional vocal works. She hosts a weekly podcast called The Write Life and has monthly column in The Artisan Magazine with the same name, where she is also the literature editor. She is also the host of her literary non-profit Keep St. Pete Lit’s weekly podcast Typewriter Talks.
Campbell McGrath is the author of eleven books of poetry, most recently Nouns & Verbs: New and Selected Poems, and XX: Poems for the Twentieth Century, a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in scores of literary journals and anthologies, as well as the New Yorker, Atlantic Magazine, Harper's and the New York Times. McGrath's writing has been recognized with some of the most prestigious awards in American letters, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, a United States Artists Fellowship, and a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Award." He lives with his wife in Miami Beach, and teaches in the MFA program at Florida International University.
Becka Mara McKay is a poet and a translator of Hebrew literature. She directs the Creative Writing MFA at Florida Atlantic University, where she serves as faculty advisor to Swamp Ape Review. Her newest book of poems is The Little Book of No Consolation (Barrow Street Press). She lives in Delray Beach.
Llewellyn McKernan lives in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. She has a Master’s Degree in English (University of Arkansas) and a Master’s Degree in Writing (Brown University). She has had six books of poems published for adults and four for children. Her poems have also been published in many journals and in fifty-seven anthologies. It has won 107 regional, state, and national awards and prizes. Her writing mantra is based on a quotation by the French novelist, Colette: “Look long and hard at what gives you the most pleasure, but look even longer and harder at what gives you the most pain.”
M.B. McLatchey is a poet and writer living, writing, and teaching in Florida. Author of five books, including the award-winning titles Beginner’s Mind (Regal House Publishing, 2021) and The Lame God (2013 May Swenson Award, Utah State University Press), she is recipient of the American Poet Prize from American Poetry Journal. McLatchey is Professor of Humanities at Embry-Riddle University. She received her graduate degree in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, Master of Arts in Teaching from Brown University, MFA in Poetry from Goddard College, and her B.A. from Williams College. Visit her at www.mbmclatchey.com
Peter Meinke (Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg, 2009-2015) is now Poet Laureate of Florida. He’s published more than 20 books, including eight in the prestigious Pitt Poetry Series, most recently Lucky Bones (2014). His book, The Piano Tuner, received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His latest publication (2015) is a children’s book, The Elf Poem, illustrated by his wife, artist Jeanne Clark.
Jesse Millner’s poems and prose have appeared most recently in the Grist and Book of Matches. His work was included in The Best American Poetry 2013 and Best Small Fictions 2020. His latest poetry book, Memory’s Blue Sedan, was released in March 2020 by Hysterical Books of Tallahassee, Florida. Jesse teaches writing courses at Florida Gulf Coast University and lives in Estero, Florida, with his dog, Lucy.
Donald Morrill is the author of three volumes of poetry, including Awaiting Your Impossibilities (Florida Book Award), from Anhinga Press, and four books of nonfiction, including The Untouched Minutes (Riverteeth Nonfiction Prize). His debut novel Beaut won the Lee Smith Fiction Prize and was published by Blair https://www.blairpub.com/shop/beaut He’s been the Bedell Visiting Writer in the Nonfiction Program at the University of Iowa and Writer-in-Residence at the Smith Poetry Center. He was founder of the Low-Residency MFA at the University of Tampa https://www.donaldmorrill.com
Rhonda J. Nelson’s collections include: A Cold Fruit, Mythological (Red Mare #24, 2022) Musical Chair, (Anhinga Press. 2004), Kahlo (audio collection w/ Irritable Tribe of Poets, 2004), The Undertow, (Rattapallax Press, 2001), and more. She is a Florida Fellow in Poetry 2000-2001, winner of Writer's Exchange 2000, (Poets & Writers, Inc.. NYC), Named Creative Loafing Magazine Best Spoken Word Artist 2018, Rhonda received the Romeo LeMay Award in Poetry for her in the 2020 issue of The Odet. She has work in many literary journals and anthologies, including the Grabbed Anthology from Beacon Press (2020), the final anthology for Yellow Jacket Press, Chasing Light (2020), and the Rumors, Secrets and Lies Anthology (Anhinga Press (2022).
Hayden Nielander is from the Florida Heartland. He's an MFA candidate at Florida State University and assistant poetry editor for The Southeast Review.
Ellen Nielsen attended South Dade High School, and after earning her undergraduate degree at Tulane University she returned to earn a BA in English at the University of Miami. After teaching there for several years she made a radical change in her life, moving to Vermont with her first husband and becoming a social worker. She ended up living in an intentional community deep in the woods in New Hampshire for eighteen years. She represented her rural district in the New Hampshire State Legislature for two years. After forty years of shoveling snow every winter she moved back to Florida in 2009 and now lives in Ormond Beach. Ellen started writing poetry in the early 1980s following a difficult divorce. After moving back to Florida, she joined a local poetry group and began to take her work more seriously. She published her first collection of poetry, Blue Flame, in 2022.
Barbra Nightingale’s 10th book of poetry is Spells & Other Ways of Flying (Kelsay Books, 2021). She has seven chapbooks and three full volumes of poetry with small presses. Over 200 of her poems have appeared in National and International Journals and Anthologies. She is an Associate Editor with the South Florida Poetry Journal, a semi-retired professor, and lives in Hollywood, Florida, with her two and four-legged menager.
Diana Noble lives in Coral Springs. Her background is in film production, photography and design. A mother and dreamer, she started writing poetry under the unwavering tutelage of Sally Naylor during Covid and found the process challenging, exhilarating, and satisfying- a bit like gardening. She considers herself a student of life and most definitely a student in the art of poetry.
Cara Nusinov, poet, teacher, collage artist, Poetry Therapy Practitioner, Laughter Yoga Leader, Certified Art Journal teacher, speaker, has joyfully led workshops for decades, at The Poetry Buffet Party, Laughter Yoga clubs, writer’s groups, and conferences, presenting original prompts, enabling participants to develop and write and share new work, and to laugh & meditate at any age. She is the author of Unrequited Loves and Other French Kisses, and the artist/editor of the anthology/sculpture, The Polka Dot Poetry Peacock, and occasionally submits one of her thousands of poems for publication. A Grandmama, Cara calls quirky Lake Worth Beach home.
Michael Mackin O'Mara, born in Brooklyn, lives in West Palm Beach, Florida. The submitted poem was written on the ride home after a poetry reading by Lenny DellaRocca at Warehouse 57 in Hollywood thirty or forty years ago.
Sharlyn Page, a life-long poet, grew up as one of six children in the backwaters of Florida. Her quest is the exploration of the nature of reality, where she has made some progress. The author of over 600 works, she has recently published several winning works in various contests and online journals. One book, Gradient is online at Amazon. She currently facilitates a poetry critique group which meets in her home town, Mount Dora, Florida. Her website is sharlynpagepoet.com
Yaddyra Peralta is a Honduran-American poet, essayist, and editor. She has been the recipient of residencies from The Betsy Writer’s Room, Jaffe Center for Book Arts at FAU, and O,Miami Poetry Festival’s Off-Shore virtual residency for poets of the Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in BOMB, Grist, Ploughshares, The Florida Review, and the anthologies Eight Miami Poets (Jai Alai Books), The Breakbeat Poets, Vol. 4: LatiNext (Haymarket Books) and Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness (University of Florida Press), among others. Yaddyra is the recipient of the 2023 Marjory Stoneman Douglas Poetry Award and lives in Miami, FL.
Zoraida “Ziggy” Pastor is the daughter of Cuban exiles. While completing her bachelor's degrees at Florida International University. Her Everglades poems were exhibited at the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center in the park. She was featured in Z Publishing House, Best Emerging Writers of Florida two years in a row. Zoraida is the author of Bear Echoes, a poetry chapbook sponsored by O, Miami and The Knight Foundation. She has several poems published in Ice on a Hot Stove: A Decade of Converse MFA Poetry, edited by Rick Mulkey and Denise Duhamel.
Geoffrey Philp, a Silver Musgrave Medal recipient, is the author of Archipelagos, a collection of poems about climate change. Philp’s poem, “A Prayer for My Children,” is featured on The Poetry Rail--an homage to 12 writers that shaped Miami culture. He lives in Miami and is working on a graphic novel about Marcus Garvey, My Name is Marcus.
Liz Robbins’ poetry collection Night Swimming won the 2023 Cold Mountain Press Book Contest. Her collaborative chapbook on mental health, Fire Carousel, is newly out from Main Street Rag Press. Her other collections are Freaked (Elixir P); Play Button (Cider Press Review P); Hope, As the World Is a Scorpion Fish (U Nebraska); and Girls Turned Like Dials (YellowJacket P).
Chloe Rodriguez is a poet, writer, and South Florida native. Chloe has her BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing and a minor in Philosophy from Florida International University. She is currently an MFA candidate for Creative Writing with a focus in Poetry at Florida State University while working on her book. Some of her poems have been featured in the Windward Review. When she's not writing or has a book in hand, you can find her exploring and foraging the outdoors with her dogs.
Jonathan Rose is an editor, educator, immigration lawyer, internationally published poet, judge of local, national, and international contests, translator, and arts activist. He has earned the Shining Star Award (from the Arts & Business Council) -- "to honor an individual who has been a mobilizing, resourceful and innovative leader, enhancing the quality of life in Greater Miami through the arts.”
Laura Sobbott Ross has worked as a teacher and a writing coach for Lake County Schools in Florida and was named Lake County’s poet laureate. Her poems have been featured on Verse Daily and have appeared in Meridian, 32 Poems, Blackbird, Main Street Rag, National Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Art & Letters Poetry Prize and won the Southern Humanities Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks and three full-length poetry books. She resides with her husband and granddaughter in Mount Dora, Florida.
Gianna Russo served as the inaugural Wordsmith of The City of Tampa, appointed by Mayor Jane Castor in 2019. She is the author of the poetry collections, All I See is Your Glinting: 90 Days in the Pandemic, with photographer Jenny Carey (Madville Publishing, 2022); One House Down (Madville Publishing, 2019); and Moonflower, winner of a Florida Book Award. She has published poems in Green Mountains Review, Gulf Stream, Negative Capability, and others. She is the founding editor of YellowJacket Press, which published chapbooks by over 40 Florida poets from 2006-21.
Richard Ryal is a writer and professor with a marketing background, he finds the beauty of this world still outmuscles the gloom. But new lines stalk him whether he’s busy or not. My favorite poets push me around, like life itself, and give me a new view. It’s like driving around an unfamiliar bend in Northern Arizona.
Mary Jane Ryals hails from the Tallahassee area of North Florida. She's a novelist, short story writer and a poet. At Florida State University she taught professional writing for the business college’s Management Department before retiring in 2021. The Moving Waters is a collection of her poems. Her latest novel is Cutting Loose in Paradise. Additionally, she's an associate editor for the Apalachee Review. Mary Jane has frequently taught for FSU in London, Florence, and Valencia, Spain.
Craig Ryan is a 34-year-old English instructor who teaches at FAU, where he earned his Master's in creative writing. He lives in Lake Worth, the town he was born in, with his fiancé and 5-year-old step son.
Brook J. Sadler is a poet, writer, and professor of philosophy. Her writing can be found in many journals including Greensboro Review, Missouri Review, Cortland Review, Boiler Journal, Ms. Magazine, CALYX, Kestrel, and South Writ Large. Despite cane toads, hurricanes, alligators, mosquitoes, lightning strikes, theme parks, pythons, rip tides, red tides, and pernicious politicians, she lives in Tampa, Florida.
Ismael Santos is a First-gen Latino poet born, raised, and still living in Miami, Florida. Specifically Little Havana/Calle Ocho, and I love cuban coffee and Walt Whitman.
Jeff Santosuosso is a business consultant and award-winning poet living in Pensacola, FL. His chapbook, Body of Water, is available through Clare Songbirds Publishing House. He is Editor-in-Chief of panoplyzine.com, an online journal of poetry and short prose. Jeff’s work has been twice-nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Comstock Review, San Pedro River Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, The Blue Nib, Mojave River Review, The Lake (UK), Red Fez, Texas Poetry Calendar, Avocet, Pif, and other online and print publications.
Peter Schmitt is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Goodbye, Apostrophe (Regal House Publishing). He is a native Miamian." Miami remains his home.
Maureen Seaton has authored two dozen poetry collections, both solo and collaborative—recently, Undersea (JackLeg) and Sweet World (CavanKerry), winner of the 2019 Florida Book Award for poetry. Her honors include Lambda Literary Awards for both Lesbian Poetry and Lesbian Memoir, the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award, an NEA, and the Pushcart. She was voted Miami’s Best Poet 2020 by The Miami New Times and is professor emerita of English and creative writing at the University of Miami.
Sean Sexton was born in Indian River County and grew up on his family’s Treasure Hammock Ranch. He divides his time between managing a 700-acre cow-calf and seed stock operation, painting, and writing. He has kept daily sketch and writing journals since 1973. He is author three full volumes of poems including Blood Writing, Anhinga Press, 2009, May Darkness Restore, Press 53, 2019, and Portals, Press 53, 2023. He has performed at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV, Miami Book Fair International, Other Words Literary Conference in Tampa, FL and the High Road Poetry and Short Fiction Festival, in Winston-Salem, NC.
Gregg Shapiro is the author of nine books including Refrain in Light (Souvenir Spoon Books, 2023). Recent/forthcoming lit-mag publications include BarBar, Otherwise Engaged Literature and Arts Journal, The Penn Review, Gargoyle, Limp Wrist, Mollyhouse, Impossible Archetype, and confetti, as well as the anthology Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville, 2023). An entertainment journalist, whose interviews and reviews run in a variety of regional LGBTQ+ and mainstream publications and websites, Shapiro lives in South Florida with his husband Rick, and their dog Coco.
Susannah W. Simpson’s work has been published in: 13th Moon, The Wisconsin Review, SoFloPoJo, SWWIM, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Salamander, Xavier Review among others. She is Founder & Co-Director of Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches.
Jessica Q. Stark is the author of Buffalo Girl (BOA Editions, 2023), Savage Pageant (Birds, LLC, 2020) and four poetry chapbooks, including INNANET (The Offending Adam, 2021). She is a Poetry Editor at AGNI and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Florida. With Dorsey Craft she co-organizes the Dreamboat Reading Series in Jacksonville, Florida, where she currently resides.
An Ohio native and author of seven books of poetry, Jim Steele now resides in a small town in Central Florida. Retired from a long career in federal government, he spends his time golfing, writing, and traveling. His eighth book will be published in October, 202
Meryl Stratford’s chapbook, The Magician’s Daughter, won the YellowJacket Press Contest for Florida Poets, and her poem, “Why Things Are The Way They Are,” won the Modern Myth Match. Her poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies, most recently Amsterdam Quarterly. She is a senior poetry editor for South Florida Poetry Journal.
Virgil Suárez was born in Havana, Cuba in 1962. At the age of twelve he arrived in the United States. He received an MFA from Louisiana State University in 1987. He is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently 90 MILES: SELECTED AND NEW, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. His work has appeared in a multitude of magazines and journals internationally. He has been taking photographs on the road for the last three decades. When he is not writing, he is out riding his motorcycle up and down the Blue Highways of the Southeast, photographing disappearing urban and rural landscapes. His 10th volume of poetry, THE PAINTED BUNTING’S LAST MOLT, will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in the Spring of 2020.
Artist Statement:
Both my photographs and mixed media art try to capture the erasure of time. Both also concern themselves with decay, detritus, and the decomposition of man-made things. Both of these things also inform my poetry and writing. Nature wins each and every time. Humankind eventually will perish and the planet will recalibrate itself. Even in the face of some cataclysmic and or nuclear disaster the planet will survive and morph into something new. I am also concerned with the plight of the underdog, the inaudible voices that perish daily trying to survive. My attempt to preserve witness to the mundane and the daily grind of lives being worn down to nothing.
Kate Sweeney is the author of two books of poetry--Better Accidents (Yellow Jacket Press, 2009) and Worrisome Creatures (Madville Publishing, 2022), which won gold in the 2023 Florida Book Awards. Her work has also appeared in many literary magazines, such as Best New Poets 2009, Hayden’s Ferry, Meridian, Tampa Review, and Poet Lore, among others. You can learn more about her at www.katesweeney.org.
Nicole Tallman says about her poem-This poem was written in response to the question “Where are you from?”—a question people still ask me in Miami, even though I’ve been living in South Florida for 18 years. The answer is Michigan. This poem was first published in trampset under the title “Rifle Season,” and was republished under the title “Poem for the Soft Boys” in my second book, Poems for the People.
Romana Tarlamis was born in Bratislava, Slovakia and has lived in Canada and Australia. She currently resides in Sunrise, Florida. Her artistry has been evolving from the moment she sketched her first bouquet of Hydrangea at age seven. In her current art practice she works with water mediums, collage and writes poetry.
Kris Thurston has been published in The Nantucket Review and Focus: A Journal for Lesbians. She won Honorable Mention at the Marblehead Arts Festival in 1986. She’s had poems included as part of Yom Kippur services at Congregation Beth El in Sudbury Massachusetts and Temple Israel of West Palm Beach. She was invited to read in February 2021 in a joint poetry/art Zoom reading with Turtle Studios/Poetry Lab. She has been living in Boynton Beach, Florida since 2014.
Lauren Tivey is the author of four chapbooks, most recently Moroccan Holiday, which was the winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2019. Her full-length collection, Traveler in the Sunset Clouds (Main Street Rag Publishing Company) was released in 2022. Tivey's work has appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, Saw Palm, Connotation Press, and Split Lip Magazine, among dozens of other publications in the U.S. and U.K. She lives in St. Augustine, Florida, where she teaches English and Creative Writing at Flagler College.
Michael Trammell’s first novel is Rad Sick Record, published by Hysterical Books Press. He grew up in South Florida and currently lives in the Florida panhandle in Tallahassee. His poetry collection is Our Keen Blue House; other work has appeared in New Letters, The Chattahoochee Review, Pleiades, and the G.W. Review. He’s a Senior Lecturer at Florida State University and an associate editor for the Apalachee Review.
Julie Marie Wade is Professor of English & Creative Writing at Florida International University. Her most recent collections are Fugue: An Aural History (Diagram/New Michigan Press, 2023) and Otherwise: Essays (Autumn House Press, 2023), selected by Lia Purpura as the winner of the 2022 Autumn House Nonfiction Book Prize. She makes her home with Angie Griffin and their two cats in Dania Beach.
Sidney Wade resides six months in Maine and six months in Gainesville, FL. He has published eight volumes of poetry, the most recent of which is Deep Gossip: New and Selected Poems in 2020. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Florida, where she taught Creative Writing and Translation for 21 years.
Helen Pruitt Wallace’s first collection of poems, Shimming the Glass House, won the Richard Snyder Prize for Poetry and a Florida Book Award, and her chapbook, Pink Streets, was published by Yellow Jacket Press. Curator of the Dali Poetry Series at the Dali Museum, her individual poems have been published in journals and anthologies including The Literary Review, Harvard Review, Plume, and The Slowdown podcast. She earned her Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing from FSU, and taught poetry and non-fiction at Eckerd College before serving as Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg (2016-2022).
Brendan Walsh has lived in South Korea, Laos, and New England, and Hollywood, Florida. He's the author of six poetry collections. His latest, concussion fragment, is the winner of the 2022 Florida Book Award Gold Medal. He is co-host of the Fat Guy, Jacked Guy podcast with Stef Rubino.
Patricia Whiting is a West Palm Beach painter-poet. Publications include a chapbook and two collections of poetry. Her poems have appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, where she is now on staff, Thimble Literary Magazine, Slipstream, 2river, and others.
Susan R. Williamson is a poet and past Director of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Her poems have appeared in Beltway Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, Paterson Literary Review, Poetry Daily, Poetry East, Smartish Pace, StorySouth, and The Virginia Quarterly Review among others. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New England College and a BA in French Language and Literature from the University of Virginia. Her chapbook, Burning After Dark, won the Hannah Kahn Poetry Foundation’s 25th Anniversary Prize. Williamson lives in Boca Raton, Florida.
David Eileen Winn is a non-binary poet and Ohio native who earned his MFA from Florida Atlantic University while Editor-in-Chief of the school’s literary magazine, Swamp Ape Review. They are currently on the editorial board for Alien Magazine, and their work has appeared in Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net Anthology, Permafrost, Cherry Tree Review, and Small Orange, among others. On Instagram, they go by @thevibeguardian.