Poet Samaa Abdurraqib’s work can be found in Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, Writing the Land: Streamlines, I Tried Not to Write: a Snapdragon Journal Anthology, and Cider Press Review. She is the editor of the recently published collection From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast (Natureculture, 2023). She lives in Brunswick, Maine.

Abdul Ali’s poems have appeared in numerous journals including Copper Nickel, The Hopkins Review, and Little Patuxent Review. In 2014, for his debut collection, Trouble Sleeping  (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2015), Ali won the New Issues Poetry Book Prize selected by Fannie Howe. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Cave Canem, Robert Deutsch Foundation, MD State Arts Council, and DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Sewanee, and Virginia Center for Creative Arts (VCCA). Currently, Ali teaches creative writing in the graduate English program at Morgan State University. When not teaching or writing, he advises community arts organizations and artists through his consultancy.

Dennis (DJ) DiDonna has dedicated his career to commercializing social science research to create organizations which positively impact the world. He founded The Sabbatical Project to explore when and why sabbaticals lead to positive outcomes for working professionals. The Sabbatical Project is now exploring the role and effects of companies in making sabbatical policies mainstream. DJ teaches entrepreneurship in the first year required curriculum at Harvard Business School. He previously cofounded EFL Global, which enabled over $2 billion in capital to underbanked businesses and individuals across more than twenty countries before being acquired in 2017. On his sabbatical, DJ walked 900 miles on pilgrimage in Shikoku, Japan and ran a poverty research lab (LEO) at his alma mater, Notre Dame.

Kristin Kearns was born in New York City and grew up in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. Now a resident of Northport, Maine, she has had short stories published in journals including Fiction, Alaska Quarterly Review, Confrontation, failbetter, and Calyx. A 2024 Monson Arts resident and 2023 Martin Dibner Memorial Fellow, she was recently a finalist for the Maine Chapbook Contest and the Summer Fishtrap Fellowship. Outside of her writing, she works as a freelance copy editor for cultural institutions and art publishers.

Tod Lending is an Academy Award–nominated and national Emmy Award–winning producer, director, writer, and cinematographer whose work, spanning thirty-eight years, has broadcasted nationally on all the major networks, and internationally on Arte, CBC, ABC, BBC, RAI, ZDF, among others. His work has screened theatrically and received awards at top national and international festivals, including Sundance, and is streaming on popular platforms. Major foundations have supported his work, including the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Sundance Film Institute, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Wallace Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, and others. Recently, Tod pivoted his career to novel writing. His debut novel, The Umbrella Maker’s Son, is slated to be published by HarperCollins in early 2025.

Jennifer Lunden is an award-winning writer who explores the intersection of health and the environment. Her debut book, a work of creative nonfiction called American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life, was published by Harper Wave in 2023. Her essays have been published in Creative Nonfiction, Orion, River Teeth, DIAGRAM, Longreads, and other journals; selected for several anthologies; and praised as notable in Best American Essays. A former therapist, she was named Maine’s Social Worker of the Year in 2012.

Leila Christine Nadir is an Afghan-American artist and writer whose work appears in literary and scholarly journals, in museums and galleries, and in forests, classrooms, and kitchens. She explores intersections of ecological destruction, colonial traumas, immigration upheavals, and family violence and how individuals and communities rebuild and grow after their worlds fall apart. Her writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Khôra, Black Warrior Review, North American Review, ASAP, and Aster(ix), and has been supported by awards and fellowships from MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Bread Loaf, Tin House, the de Groot Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Aspen Words, and Maine Arts Commission. She holds a PhD in English and is the Founding Director of an Environmental Humanities Program in upstate New York. More info: https://leilanadir.xyz/.

Jenny O’Connell is a writer and outdoor guide from Portland, Maine. Her debut book project, Finding Petronella, is an adventure memoir about her solo trek across Finland following the footsteps of a female legend beyond the Arctic Circle. Jenny’s award-winning nonfiction has appeared in magazines across the country, including Creative Nonfiction, Down East, Backcountry, Maine Magazine, and Appalachia Journal. She earned an MFA at Stonecoast, and currently teaches creative writing at Seguinland Institute, Hugo House, and Maine Media Workshops. Aside from gifting her with lots of stories, Jenny’s sixteen-year career as an outdoor guide has brought her all over the globe leading backpacking, sea kayaking, cultural exchange, winter adventure, and river expeditions from the Peruvian Andes to the wild waters of her home state of Maine, where she guides creative writing-focused expeditions. She never leaves home without a trusty pair of adventure pants and a waterproof ukulele.

Ames O'Neill is a writer and artist originally from Maryland. They are currently writing queer eco-fiction from the desert of Arizona, where they are working toward an MFA in Fiction.

Cassandra Powers’s writing explores our perennial quest for connection and meaning, the fallout of failed relationships and dreams, and the murky territory of self-deception. Her short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart and she received her MFA from the University of Oregon. When not writing, she works as a nurse practitioner in community mental health in Portland, Maine.

Kyra Spence is a poet from Philadelphia. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Anacapa Review, Lammergeier, Bodega Magazine, DIAGRAM, Mantis, Bennington Review, and elsewhere.

Anthony Tognazzini has recent work published or forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, StoryQuarterly, Guernica, and TriQuarterly, among other journals, as well as on NPR's “Selected Shorts.” His collection of short fiction and hybrid work, I Carry A Hammer in My Pocket for Occasions Such As These, was published by BOA Editions. He has received fellowships from Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Millay, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. He currently lives in Ohio, and teaches in Kent State University’s undergraduate and NEOMFA Creative Writing programs.

John Bosworth is a writer from west Texas. He is the recipient of the 2018 Most Promising Young Poet Award from the Academy of American Poets and a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Philadelphia.

Gregory Brown is the author of the novel The Lowering Days (HarperCollins, 2021). His stories have appeared in Tin House, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Epoch, and Narrative Magazine. His non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, LitHub, The Rumpus, and The Millions. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Napa Valley Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and MacDowell. He grew up along Penobscot Bay and still lives in Maine with his family.

Joi Haskins is a poet from Maryland. She holds a BS in Neuroscience and the Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and is an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Talia Isaacson is a Poe-Faulkner fellow at the University of Virginia's MFA program, where she writes about farming, disability, queerness, and memory. She also teaches poetry to undergraduates. She grew up in the unceded Kumeyaay territory known as San Diego, California, and has spent time farming across various North American bioregions. When she's not writing, she's usually working with kids, stressing over an unfinished knitting project, or trying to figure it out, whatever that means.

Kadiatou Keita is a recent graduate of Yale University with a degree in English Literature. She has a deep love for literature and fiction writing, focusing on the nexus between her cultural home in West Africa and her current home in New York City. At Yale, Kadiatou worked as editor and writer in various undergraduate publications, as well as serving as an editorial fellow for The Yale Review. Kadiatou is exploring opportunities in the literary world and considering pursuing a graduate degree in English or creative writing. In her free time, she loves learning languages, painting with watercolor and oil, and tutoring residents of Harlem.

Juliana Lamy is a Haitian fiction writer from South Florida. She received a bachelor’s degree in history and literature from Harvard University. While there, she was also the recipient of the university’s Le Baron Russell Briggs Prize for Undergraduate Fiction, as well as the Gordon Parks Essay Prize for Nonfiction. She is the author of You Were Watching from the Sand (Red Hen Press, 2023). She is currently a fiction candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She really is 6’ 2”, she swears.

Amy Neswald is a fiction writer and screenwriter. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Normal School, Bat City Review, and Green Mountain Review, among others. Her debut novel-in-stories, I Know You Love Me, Too (New American Press, 2021), is a recipient of the New American Fiction Prize and was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. Her most recent short film, Solitaire, was a semifinalist for the Beverly Hills Arthouse Film Festival and the San Francisco Arthouse Short Film Festival. Prior to moving to rural Maine, she had a long career as a wigmaster for Broadway shows. She teaches creative writing at the University of Maine in Farmington and continues working on her next novel and a collection of short films.

Robin Beth Schaer is the author of the poetry collection Shipbreaking (Anhinga Press, 2015). Her current project on art and atrocity was included on the Creative Capital Award Shortlist in 2022. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, Yaddo, MacDowell, and others. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Bomb, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She teaches writing in Ohio.

Courtney Sender's essays have appeared in The New York Times' Modern Love, The Atlantic, and Slate, and her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, AGNI, The Kenyon Review, and others. Her debut book, In Other Lifetimes All I've Lost Comes Back to Me (West Virginia University Press, 2023), was called "fierce" by Danielle Evans and "wholly original" by Alice McDermott. She is staff writer for the iHeartMedia podcast “Noble Blood.” Courtney is a graduate of Yale University, The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars (MFA, Fiction), and Harvard Divinity School. She currently serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor and Fiction Writer-in-Residence at Connecticut College.