Carol V. Davis is the author of Because I Cannot Leave This Body (Truman State Univ. Press, 2017) and Between Storms (TSUP, 2012). She won the 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize for Into the Arms of Pushkin: Poems of St. Petersburg. Her first book, It’s Time to Talk About…, was published in an English/Russian edition by Symposium, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1997. Her poetry has been read on National Public Radio, the Library of Congress and Radio Russia. Twice a Fulbright scholar in Russia, she also taught in Siberia, winter 2018 and teaches at Santa Monica College, California and Antioch Univ. Los Angeles. She was awarded a Fulbright Specialist grant for Siberia in 2020, postponed because of Covid restrictions and again now.

Mathew Weitman was the winner of the 2021 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize. His work appears or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, The Evergreen Review, Bennington Review, The Southwest Review, and other outlets. He received his MFA from the New School, and will begin his PhD candidacy at the University of Houston this fall. In February 2022, he was a Creative Resident at Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island, WA.

Chelsey Richardson’s writing is the electrical current that flows between words and the spiritual world.  She grounds her work in the notion that her role as an artist is to tell the bittersweet truth. She is a mother, teacher, and poet.  The CD Forum for Arts and Ideas, said this about her work, “Her writing requires you to think critically and examine the world in which we live. She is a writer that truly represents independent poetic expression. There is a cleverness and creativity in her prose that draws the reader or listener in.” In 2019-2020 she was awarded the role of “Master Poet” by The Center for Washington Cultural Traditions, Speakers Bureau. She released her debut poetry book, All Water has Perfect Memory February 27th, 2021. You may have read or heard her work in Poetry on the Bus, The South Seattle Emerald, and The Carter Center Forum on Human Rights in Atlanta.  She holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington and Master’s in Teaching English Education.  Look for her upcoming work in Natasha Marin’s, Black Imagination.  She currently works as an educator in the Federal Way School District.