Read: "Hurricane Family," published at Moist Poetry Journal.

Marlanda Dekine’s debut full-length poetry collection, Thresh & Hold, is the winner of Hub City Press's 2021 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize and is forthcoming in March 2022.

MARLANDA DEKINE’S WORK HAS BEEN PUBLISHED OR IS FORTHCOMING IN OXFORD AMERICAN, POETRY, EMERGENCE MAGAZINE, BEESTUNG, ANNULET, SHUDDHASHAR MAGAZINE, AND ELSEWHERE. THEY ARE THE 2021-2022 CASTLE OF OUR SKINS SHIRLEY GRAHAM DU BOIS CREATIVE-IN-RESIDENCE, A RECIPIENT OF THE 2022 PALM BEACH POETRY FESTIVAL LANGSTON HUGHES FELLOWSHIP, A 2021 TIN HOUSE SCHOLAR, AND A WATERING HOLE FELLOW. CURRENTLY, MARLANDA SERVES AS HEALING JUSTICE FELLOW WITH GENDER BENDERS AND IS WORKING WITH THE AWARD-WINNING COMPOSER/PERFORMER COLLECTIVE, COUNTER)INDUCTION, ON A MUSO-POETIC WORK ENTITLED ARS POETICA. THEY ARE A GRADUATE OF FURMAN UNIVERSITY (B.A. PSYCHOLOGY) AND THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA (MASTER OF SOCIAL WORK). THEY LIVE IN GEORGETOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA WITH THEIR AMAZING DOG, MALACHI. 

Purchase: Thresh & Hold (Hub City Press, 2022)

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google, and more

Read: a selection of haiku by Lenard D. Moore at the North Carolina Haiku Society

Lenard D. Moore is an internationally acclaimed poet and anthologist. His literary works have been published in more than sixteen countries and translated into more than twelve languages.

His poems, essays, short stories and book reviews have appeared in more than 400 publications. His poems have appeared in more than 100 anthologies.  He has taught Creative Writing and African American Literature.  He is a U.S. Army Veteran.  Moore is the author of Long Rain; The Geography Of Jazz; A Temple Looming; Desert Storm: A Brief History; Forever Home; The Open Eye, among other books.  He is the editor of All The Songs We Sing; One Window’s Light: A Collection of Haiku, and other books.  He has collaborated with poets, visual arts, musicians and dancers on several projects.  He is the founder and executive director of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective and co-founder of the Washington Street Writers Group. He also is the longtime Executive Chairman of the North Carolina Haiku Society.  He is the First African American President of the Haiku Society of America, serving two terms. Among his numerous awards are the North Carolina Award for Literature; Furious Flower Laureate Ring; Haiku Museum of Tokyo Award; Margaret Walker Creative Writing Award; Cave Canem Fellowships, and a Soul Mountain Retreat Fellowship.  He earned his Master of Arts in English and African American Literature, from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. He also earned his Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies with a minor in English (Magna Cum Laude) from Shaw University.

Purchase: Long Rain (Wet Cement Press, 2021) and The Geography of Jazz (Blair, 2018)

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google and elsewhere. 

Read: Amanda Moore's poem "Labor as an Exotic Vacation," which she reads on Episode 20.

Amanda Moore’s debut collection of poetry, Requeening, was selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong and published by HarperCollins/Ecco in October 2021. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Best New Poets, ZZYZVA, and Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting, and her essays have appeared in The Baltimore Review, Hippocampus Magazine, and on the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s blog. She is the recipient of writing awards, residencies, and fellowships from The Brown Handler Residency, In Cahoots, The Writers Grotto, The Writing Salon, Brush Creek Arts Foundation, and The Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Poetry Co-editor at Women’s Voices for Change and a reader at VIDA Review and INCH, Amanda is a high school English teacher and lives by the beach in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco with her husband and daughter. 

Purchase: Requeening (HarperCollins/Ecco, 2021)

Check out: Aganetha Dyck's collaborative sculptures with bees!

Donna Vorreyer is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Waxwing, Poet Lore, Cherry Tree, Salamander, Harpur Palate, and other journals. She lives in the suburbs of Chicago where she serves as an associate editor for Rhino Poetry and hosts the monthly online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey.

Purchase: To Everything There Is (Sundress Publications, 2020) and Donna's other full-lengths at Sundress Publications.

Also Donna's visually collaborative chapbook Encantado, which we talk about on the episode, from Red Bird Press.

Check out Christine Shank's art as well as Claire Morgan's art, featured on Donna's first and third full-length covers)

Twila Newey has an M.F.A. in Writing and Poetics from Naropa. Her poems were finalists for the 2019 Coniston Prize at Radar Poetry and won honorable mention in the 2019 JuxtaProse Poetry Contest. You can read recent work at Interim Poetics, Sugarhouse Review, Green Mountains Review, and Moist Poetry journal. Twila lives in Northern California at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers.

Read: Twila's poems "honeycomb" and "Theories of Heaven" at Green Mountain Review.

Natalie Solmer is the founder and Editor In Chief of The Indianapolis Review, and is an Assistant Professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College. She grew up in South Bend, Indiana, went to Clemson University in South Carolina and majored in horticulture. Before her return to grad school and career in teaching, she worked in the horticultural field, primarily as a grocery store florist for 13 years. Her poetry has been published in numerous publications such as: Colorado Review, North American Review, The Literary Review, and Pleiades. She also has published her visual poetry and visual art in places such as Yes, Poetry and Babel Tower Notice Board. 

Read: Natalie Solmer's poem "Girl of Water, I could Swallow a Garden" at EcoTheo Review.

Read: Kasey Jueds' poem "Kittatinny," which she reads on the episode.

Kasey Jueds a poet living in the Catskill Mountains in New York. Kasey poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications including American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Cave Wall, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Narrative, Ninth Letter, Pleiades, Provincetown Arts, River Styx, Salamander, The Southampton Review, Tinderbox, and Waxwing.Kasey has been a resident at the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Soapstone, and the Ucross Foundation; and a visiting poet at the University of Pennsylvania, LaSalle College, and the University of Northern Colorado. Kasey’s first book Keeper first book, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, and was published by Pitt in fall, 2013. Kasey’s second book, The Thicket, is has just been published by Pittsburg Press this month, November, 2021.

Purchase: The Thicket by Kasey Jueds (UPitt Press, 2021).

Read: "Mandala of the Soapy Water," that Chloe reads on the episode

Chloe Martinez is a poet and a scholar of South Asian religions. She is the author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works) and the chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah and elsewhere. She works at Claremont McKenna College. 

Purchase: Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works, 2021)

Read: Angie Mazakis's poem "Oh, My Kidneys," which she reads on the episode, and Han’s review of I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First.

Angie Mazakis's first book of poetry, I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First, was chosen by Billy Collins as a finalist for the 2020 Miller Williams Prize and was published by University of Arkansas Press in March 2020. The book was also a finalist for the National Poetry Series and was named by The Boston Globe as one of the Best Books of 2020. Her poems have appeared in The New Republic, Boston Review, The Iowa Review, Best New Poets, Washington Square Review, Columbia Journal, Indiana Review, Conduit, Lana Turner Journal, Nat. Brut and other journals. She is a PhD student in creative writing at Ohio University.

Purchase: I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First (UAPress, 2020).

Check out: Jeremy Geddes' Art

Listen: On Apple, Google, Spotify, and elsewhere.

Read: Alina's poem "Apologia," which she reads on Episode 14.

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina's poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She serves as poetry editor for several journals, reviewer and critic for others, and Co-Director of PEN America's Birmingham Chapter. She is currently working on a novel-like creature. 

Purchase: Dor (signed copy) directly from Alina Stefanescu.

Read: Christian's poem "when my days fill with ghosts" at Hayden's Ferry Review, which Christian reads on the episode.

Christian J. Collier is a Black, Southern writer, arts organizer, and teaching artist who resides in Chattanooga, TN. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review,The Michigan Quarterly Review, Atlanta Review, Grist Journal, and elsewhere. A 2015 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellow, he is also the winner of the 2020 ProForma Contest and the 2019-2020 Seven Hills Review Poetry Contest.

Pre-order Christian's chapbook The Gleaming of the Blade (Bull City Press, 2022)