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.
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.
Christian J. Collieris 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.
Amorak Huey is a poet and professor, a writer and sometime journalist, a decent dad and a mediocre slow-pitch softball player. He pronounces his first name uh-MOR-ack.
Amorak is author of four poetry collections: Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021); Boom Box (Sundress Publications, 2019); Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank Books, 2018), winner of the Vern Rutsala Poetry Prize; and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress Publications, 2015), as well as as two poetry chapbooks: The Insomniac Circus (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2014) and A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly Press, 2016).
In addition, he is co-author, with W. Todd Kaneko, of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, published by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2018, and the poetry chapbook Slash / Slash (Diode Editions, 2021).
Lyd Havensis a reader and writer currently living in Boise, Idaho. Their work has previously been published in Ploughshares, The Shallow Ends, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Foglifter, among others. They are the author of the chapbook I Gave Birth to All the Ghosts Here (Nostrovia! Press, 2018), the winner of the 2018 ellipsis… Poetry Prize, a finalist for the 2019 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, and a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Their chapbook Chokecherry was published by Game Over Books in May 2021.
Purchase: Lyd Havens’ Chokecherry(Game Over Books, 2021).
Anuja Ghimire is a Nepal-born writer of poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction. She is the author of Kathmandu (Unsolicited Press, 2020), fable-weavers (Ethelzine, 2022), and two poetry books in Nepali. A Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, Anuja works as a senior publisher in an online learning company. She reads poetry for Up the Staircase Quarterly and enjoys teaching poetry to children in summer camps. Most recently, her work found home in Bending Genres, Chestnut Review, and Moist Poetry Journal. Anuja lives near Dallas, Texas with her husband and two children. Find Anuja on twitter @GhimireAnuja.
Burgi Zenhaeusern [‘borghee ‘tsenhoisern] (she/her/hers) grew up in Switzerland. She majored in English and Spanish Literature and Linguistics at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and attended workshops led by Rose Solari, Jean Nordhaus, Laura Fargas, and Yvette Neisser at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD. Her chapbook Behind Normalcy (CityLit Press, 2020) won the 2019 Harriss Poetry Prize, chosen by Erica Dawson, final judge, and Kwame Alexander, series editor. She co-edited the translations of the bilingual poetry anthology Knocking on the Door of the White House (Zozobra Publishing, 2017, J. Ballesteros et al., editor), which was selected by Beltway Poetry Quarterly as a “2017 Ten Best” book. Her writing appears in various print and online journals. She volunteers behind the scenes for the Cafe Muse reading series and is a poetry consultant for River Mouth Review. She lives in Chevy Chase, MD. Find Burgi on twitter@Burgi323.
Purchase: Kathmandu (Unsolicited Press, 2020) by Anjua Ghimire and Behind Normalcy(CityLit, 2020) by Burgi Zenhaeusern
Esteban Rodríguez is the author of five poetry collections, most recently The Valley (Sundress Publications 2021), and the essay collection Before the Earth Devours Us (Split/Lip Press 2021). He is the Interviews Editor for the EcoTheo Review, Senior Book Reviews Editor for Tupelo Quarterly, and Associate Poetry Editor for AGNI. He currently lives in central Texas.
Laura Wetherington’s first book, A Map Predetermined and Chance (Fence Books 2011), was selected by C.S. Giscombe for the National Poetry Series. The Brooklyn Rail called the book “humble, folksy, romantic, tough, inventive, and not over-programmed.” Her second book, Parallel Resting Places, was chosen by Peter Gizzi for the New Measure Prize, was released with Free Verse Editions in January 2021. She has published three chapbooks: Dick Erasures (Red Ceilings Press 2011), the collaboratively written at the intersection of 3 (Dancing Girl Press 2014), and Grief Is the Only Thing That Flies (Bateau Press 2018), which Arielle Greenberg selected for the Keel Chapbook Contest. Her poem “No one wants to be the victim no one when there is a gun involved and blue” was adapted as an artist book by Inge Bruggeman.
Her poetry appears in Narrative, Michigan Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, FENCE, VOLT, Anomaly (Drunken Boat), among others, and in three anthologies: Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (Haymarket Books 2020), The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare (Nightboat Books 2012), and 60 Morning Talks (Ugly Duckling Presse 2014). Her essays and book reviews have appeared in The Volta, Hyperallergic, Full Stop, Jacket2, and 1508.
Laura co-founded and, for a decade, co-edited textsound.org: an online journal of experimental poetry and sound. Poets & Writers named textsound an “indie innovator,” one of a small group of “groundbreaking presses and magazines that are redrawing the publishing map.” She developed an integrated curriculum for graduate and undergraduate students working on the Sierra Nevada Review and for four years taught those classes. In 2014 she joined Baobab Press as their poetry editor.
Wetherington is a graduate of University of Michigan’s MFA program, UC Berkeley’s Undergraduate English Department, and Cabrillo College. She has taught for the French Ministry of Education, the University of Michigan, the New England Literature Program, Eastern Michigan University, Sierra Nevada University’s Humanities Department and Low-Residency MFA Program, and for the Nevada Arts Council’s writers in the schools program. She currently teaches creative writing at Amsterdam University College and with the International Writers’ Collective. Grants include a 2017 & 2015 Artist Fellowship in Literary Arts from the Nevada Arts Council and a 2014 Artist Grant in Literature from the Sierra Arts Foundation. She has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Camac.
Jessica Q. Stark is a California-native, Vietnamese American poet, editor, and educator that lives in Jacksonville, Florida. She holds a BA from UC Berkeley and dual MA Degrees in English Literature and Cultural Studies from Saint Louis University’s Madrid Campus. She received her PhD in English from Duke University. She has published scholarly articles on poetry and comics studies and teaches writing at the University of North Florida.
Her poetry has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Society of America, Pleiades, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Carolina Quarterly, Poetry Daily, The Boiler, The Southeast Review,Hobart Pulp, Verse Daily, Tupelo Quarterly, Potluck, and for the Glass Poetry Journal: Poets Resist series. Her first poetry manuscript, The Liminal Parade, was selected by Dorothea Lasky for the Double Take Grand Prize in 2016 and was published by Heavy Feather Review. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks, including her most recent titled INNANET (The Offending Adam, 2021).
Her full-length poetry collection, Savage Pageant, which was a finalist for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Book Prize, the 42 Miles Press Book Prize, and the Rose Metal Press Hybrid Book Prize, was published by Birds, LLC in March 2020. Savage Pageant was named one of the “Best Books of 2020” in The Boston Globe and in Hyperallergic. Her third poetry manuscript, Buffalo Girl, explores a short time in her mother’s life, Vietnamese-diasporic wolves, and different iterations of Little Red Riding Hood. She occasionally writes poetry reviews for Carolina Quarterly and is currently a Poetry Editor for AGNI and the Comics Editor for Honey Literary.
She has lived in several cities across the globe, including Seoul, South Korea, Madrid, Spain, and for a short time in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, where she ran a backpackers’ hostel with her partner and learned how to crack a coconut with a machete. In her free time, she is a cat-lover and has been trained as a Level Two Reiki practitioner.
Purchase Jessica Q. Stark’s Savage Pageant (Birds LLC, 2020).
C.T. Salazar is a Latinx poet and librarian from Mississippi. His debut collection, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking is forthcoming in 2022 from Acre Books. He’s the author of three chapbooks, most recently American Cavewall Sonnets (Bull City Press, 2021). He’s the 2020 recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award in poetry. His poems have appeared in The Rumpus, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, 32 Poems, RHINO, and elsewhere.
Of Poetry Podcast 