Features Overview
Alina Kalontarov > Poetry > New York, USA
Alina Kalontarov is an educator, poet, and amateur photographer based in New York City. In both written and visual form, her work explores themes of duality, loss, emergence and the shifting relationship of self to home. Alina is committed to creative dialogue and collaborates on the editorial teams of various literary publications. She is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee with work that can be found or is forthcoming in ONLY POEMS, Sky Island Journal, Gather, Wildscape, Thimble, Sand Hills and elsewhere.
Allison Mei-Li > Poetry > California, USA
Allison Mei-Li is a poet, mother, and speech-language pathologist living in Southern California. She is the author of A History of Holding, a poetry collection that explores life through the lens of motherhood. When she’s not writing, she reads poetry submissions for The Turning Leaf Journal and designs tote bags and stickers for poets. Her work has appeared in anthologies, podcasts, and journals including Rust & Moth, MER Literary, Voicemail Poems, and Coffee + Crumbs, among others.
Annalise Parady > Poetry > Arizona, USA
Annalise Parady is a poet and a social worker. Born and raised in southwestern Wyoming, she now lives, writes, and grieves in the Sonoran Desert. Her work has previously been published by Sonora Review, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Corporeal Lit Mag, Gather, and more. Annalise would love to tell you about the flora and fauna of the desert she calls home. is a poet and a social worker. Born and raised in southwestern Wyoming, she now lives, writes, and grieves in the Sonoran Desert. Her work has previously been published by Sonora Review, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Corporeal Lit Mag, Gather, and more. Annalise would love to tell you about the flora and fauna of the desert she calls home.
Anne Ramallo > Poetry > California, USA
Anne Ramallo is a writer, editor, and mom living in Los Angeles, California. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in literary journals, zines, and anthologies and awarded in competitions by Reedsy, the Royal City Literary Arts Society, and Uncharted Magazine. She placed third in the national Pen Parentis 2026 Fellowship for parent writers. Anne is a co-founder of the micro press and creative collective Poets in the Pines, whose first anthology, Made from Midnight: a requiem, was released in 2025.
Athena Serbourne > Poetry > Canada
Athena Serbourne is a Métis poet from Ontario, Canada, and a BFA Creative Writing student at the University of British Columbia. She loves to explore themes of brilliant and striking nature intertwined with our experiences of love, grief, and intergenerational trauma. Her poems have been selected to appear in The Malahat Review, Queen’s Quarterly, Red Cedar Review, and Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature.
Bex Hainsworth > Poetry > United Kingdom
Bex Hainsworth is a poet and teacher based in Leicester, United Kingdom. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words, and her work has appeared in Nimrod, The McNeese Review, Sonora Review, and Columbia Journal. She is the author of two pamphlets: Walrussey (The Black Cat Poetry Press, 2023) and Circulaire (Written Off Publishing, 2025).
Bray McDonald > Poetry > New Mexico, USA
Bray McDonald finished a triple major degree in Environmental Issues from the University of South Alabama in 2000 where he studied poetry under Sue Brannan Walker and Walt Darring. He retired as Senior Educator at the Tennessee Aquarium and moved to Rio Rancho, New Mexico where he spends much of his time focused on writing. In the last few years, he has had multiple poems published in over one hundred journals and magazines in the U.S., Canada, Germany and England.
Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas > Poetry > California, USA
Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas is a recent graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts with an MFA in Writing. In 2012, her chapbook, Before I Go to Sleep, won the Red Ochre Press Chapbook Contest. In 2019, her chapbook, An Ode to Hope in the Midst of Pandemonium, was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Award. In 2021, her collection, Alice in Ruby Slippers, was short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and received honorable mention in the poetry category. She was recently awarded a certificate of achievement by the California Writers Club and named Centennial Poet for her contribution to their 100-year celebration. She has served as Editor-In-Chief for both The Orchards Poetry Journal and Tule Review. A thirteen-time Pushcart Prize nominee and seven-time Best of the Net nominee, she is a recent member of the Board of Directors for Women’s Wisdom Art in Sacramento and is currently working as an editor for Kelsay Books.
Christian Knoeller > Poetry > Indiana, USA
Christian Knoeller is Professor Emeritus of English at Purdue University and a past President of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature. His first collection of poems, Completing the Circle from Buttonwood Press, was awarded the Millennium Prize. He is also author of Reimagining Environmental History, published by the University of Nevada Press, an ecocritical study tracing the trajectory of landscape change in Midwest as depicted in literature over the past two centuries. The poem first appearing in this issue, “Islands of Time,” is incorporated into his next collection, Time Signatures, forthcoming from Cornerstone Press at the University of Wisconsin in 2026.
Dara Goodale > Poetry > Switzerland
Dara Goodale (they/she) is a Romanian-American lesbian, poet, and university student living in Lausanne, Switzerland. Their work has appeared in the American Poetry Journal, Cleaver Magazine, Thimble Literary Magazine, and more. Dara was also a finalist for the Gasher Press 2025 Bennett Nieberg Transpoetic Broadsize Prize.
Dick Altman > Poetry > New Mexico, USA
Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, Beyond Words, New Verse News, Wingless Dreamer, Blueline, Sky Island Journal and others here and abroad. His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press. Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored some 280 poems, published on four continents.
Elda Oreto > Flash Fiction > Italy + Sweden
Elda Oreto is an Italian writer and art historian based in Stockholm, Sweden. Her writing has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and appears in Sky Island Journal, About Place Journal, Gigantic Tentacles, Men Matters Online Journal, and other international publications. She is the author of Bright Nightmares and The Secret Lodge. Her current projects engage questions of identity, eros, and the archaeology of memory.
Elizabeth Rosen > Flash Fiction > Pennsylvania, USA
Elizabeth Rosen (she/her) is a native New Orleanian and a transplant to small-town Pennsylvania. She misses gulf oysters and Southern ghost stories but has become appreciative of snow and colorful scarves. Her stories have appeared in places such as North American Review, Baltimore Review, Pithead Chapel, Flash Frog, and New Flash Fiction Review. Colorwise, she’s an autumn. She still wants her MTV.
Filiz Fish > Poetry > California, USA
Filiz Fish is a student and writer from Los Angeles, California. An alumna of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, she has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the National Poetry Quarterly, and The New York Times. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Gone Lawn Journal, and more. In her free time, she enjoys reading and listening to music.
Gabrielle Munslow > Poetry > United Kingdom
Gabrielle Munslow is a poet and nurse practitioner based in West Sussex, UK. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Neon Origami, Bristol Noir, the Wild Sound Writing Festival, and internal NHS publications, with new work forthcoming in Flash Phantoms and Half and One. She writes at the intersection of myth, grief, and defiance—often in the margins of a busy healthcare life.
Grace Crouthamel > Flash Fiction > Pennsylvania, USA
Grace Crouthamel is a queer writer from the coal-veined hills of Northern Appalachia. She studied literature at Bennington College, where she developed a fondness for strange stories. She shares her home with two mutinous dogs, a lizard, and a novella-in-progress.