78 authors and artists contributed to Incandescent Mind: Selfish Work. Read through their bios and learn more about them.

Born in Danbury, Connecticut, Alex Diffin moved to Southern California at the age of seven, and currently lives in Long Beach. While always an artist at heart, Alex didn’t fully pursue her passion until 2014. That year, her mother tragically suffered from a ruptured brain aneurysm and barely survived. After that, Alex dove in full steam as an artist in order to help care for her mom, as well as simply realizing life was too short not to. Her pop contemporary abstract portraiture, often displaying themes of bright, chaotic color, can be found in galleries around Southern California. She has been previously published in Incandescent Mind: Issue Two, Winter 2017.

Alexis Rhone Fancher is the author of How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen and other heart stab poems, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), and Enter Here (2017). She is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Rattle, Slipstream, Hobart, Cleaver, The MacGuffin, Plume, and elsewhere. Her photographs are published worldwide. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. Find her at: http://www.alexisrhonefancher.com.

Allegra Forman is a senior in high school working on her AP Studio Art Concentration. Her series of self-portraits chronicles the worst few months of her life when she suffered from severe panic attacks, consuming OCD, intense sleep deprivation and more. Allegra has been using these drawings as a healing process, giving her the chance to reflect and share her hidden experiences with others. She has always been one who keeps to herself, and this has given her the courage to open up about a time period she thought would never end.

Alyssa J. Wynne is a closet writer trying to open the door and enter the room. She has been writing for years, but realized her voice in college. Her writing was featured in an art exhibition called “Life in Print,” which gave her the courage to share her words. Alyssa is influenced by dreams, emotions, and conversation. When she isn’t posting pictures of her travels, she shares her poetry on her Instagram account, @ajwynne.

Amanda Rochelle Martin, a.k.a. Misangry, is a single mother, artist, and feminist killjoy from the Inland Empire. She has had art and poetry appear in publications by Lucid Moose Lit, Tribe de Mama magazine, and Incandescent Mind: Issue One, Summer 2016.  Amanda currently resides in the foothills of the Sequoia forest with her son. She believes in self-love as resistance, worships the moon, and is perpetually unraveling her cocoon.

Amanda Mathews is the Big Dipper, the soft moon in the cool blue night, the last gas station on Route 17 in upstate New York, waiting and open. She has been published in Incandescent Mind: Issue One and Two. Find more of her work at: society6.com/amandamathews/prints.

Amy Bassin is a fine arts photographer. “Selfie Fictions” were exhibited at Photo Center Northwest and Bronx ArtSpace.  Some publishing credits include F-Stop, Columbia University’s Journal of Art, Great Weather For Media Press, and Three Rooms Press annual Dada anthologies,  Maintenance 9 and 10(0). Her text-based art collaboration with writer Mark Blickley, “Dream Streams,” was featured as an art installation at the 5th Annual NYC Poetry Festival on Governors Island and in DUMBO at Brooklyn’s Ray Gallery. “Selfie Fictions” is her response to the invasion of the nascent narcissism of selfie culture that has permeated social media.

Ana Jovanovska was born in 1991 in Macedonia. She got her MA in Printmaking from the Faculty of Fine Arts – Skopje in 2016. During that time she received many awards and recognitions for her art and spent a semester studying abroad attending École supérieure d’arts & médias de Caen/Cherbourg in France with a scholarship. Has eight solo exhibitions and takes part in more than 70 group exhibitions. Participates in group exhibitions in Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and the United States.

Angela Topping’s eighth poetry collection, The Five Petals of Elderflower, came out in 2016 (Red Squirrel Press). She is the author of several chapbooks and critical books, the most recent on the poetry of John Clare. Her poems have been included in a range of journals including Poetry Review and The Dark Horse. Her work has also featured in Poetry Please (BBC Radio 4). In 2013, she was writer in residence at Gladstone’s Library. She is a seasoned reader of her work and has appeared at many festivals. She blogs at angelatopping.wordpress.com.

Anney E. J. Ryan is a writer, teacher, and photographer, who started regularly making art at the age of seven. Her stories, poems, and photos have been featured in The Kenyon Review, Gravel Magazine, Post Road Magazine, Fogged Clarity, Pif Magazine, The New England Review, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. When not writing, she and her significant other run their own garlic farm in Berks County, Pennsylvania.

In 2015, Armine Iknadossian retired from teaching in order to support the literary arts and to focus on her two manuscripts god(l)ess: the L is silent and Resident Alien. She is currently one of the bookstore managers at Beyond Baroque Bookstore aka The Scott Wannberg Poetry Lounge where you can purchase her newly released chapbook United States of Love & Other Poems. She was recently selected by Red Hen Press to be a Writer in the Schools (WITS). Please visit http://www.armineiknadossian.com to view her previously published work.

Ashley Elizabeth is a 20-something black poet from Baltimore who draws inspiration from her city, her space, and her body. She has been featured in online journals such as Rose Water, Passages North, and For the Sonorous among others. She has a chapbook forthcoming from Red Paint Hill. Ashley is also an Associate Editor of Sundress Publications.

Avalon Graves is a 28-year-old Miami native, who writes poetry for the open mind and reckless heart. She’s currently managing an art studio and majoring in Creative Writing. Miss Graves has been published in Kram Magazine as well as Sick Lit Magazine and she is a fan of matcha green tea, trail blazing, and watching cult classics on rainy afternoons. You can usually find her making collage art with an old record playing in the background, usually Bob Dylan, or Joni Mitchell.

Bailey Share Aizic is a poet, editor, and Oxford comma enthusiast based in Los Angeles. Read her recent work in Rogue Agent Journal, Right Hand Pointing, and Calamus Journal, and read her mind @sortabailey.

Boris Salvador Ingles was born and raised in the small community of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. His style is a mix of humor, vulnerability and dark street realism. His poems and photography have appeared in, the Coiled Serpent Anthology, Spectrum, Spectrum 2, In-Flight Literary Magazine, Incandescent Mind: Issue One and Two, Cadence Collective: Year Two Anthology, Then & Now: Conversations With Old Friends, and in the forthcoming anthology: Lullaby of Teeth, published by Moon Tide Press.

Brenda Matea is a California native living in Southern California. Self-taught, she creates hand-made collages and multi-layered photo compositions from her digital images using an iPhone and Apps. She uses flowers as a common theme to express her emotions and connections. In 2016 she started Sugar Beauty Photography to tell her visual stories and to share the beauty of the people and places she visits.

Carolyn Agee is an actress and author whose work is inspired by her experiences teaching English overseas and a passion for performing Shakespeare. When she isn’t suffering from existential depression, she enjoys petrichor, walking down unknown forest trails and intimate gatherings of kindred spirits. Her forthcoming books include the multi-genre chapbook Drowning Ophelia (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2017) and the YA novella The Ambiguous Tides of Saudade (Wolfsinger Publications, 2017). Website: sites.google.com/view/carolynagee/  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CarolynAgee.

Luna Lark (née Christine Stoddard) is a Salvadoran-Scottish-American writer and artist who lives in Brooklyn. Her visuals have appeared in the New York Transit Museum, the Ground Zero Hurricane Katrina Museum, the Poe Museum, the Queens Museum, the Condé Nast Building, George Washington University’s Gallery 102, and beyond. In 2014, Folio: Magazine named her one of the top 20 media visionaries in their 20s for founding Quail Bell Magazine. She is a former artist-in-residence at Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Art Center, a Smithsonian affiliate in Maryland, and a current Connor Art Fellow at the City College of New York.

Cindy Rinne creates art and writes in San Bernardino, CA. Cindy is the author of several books-in 2017, Listen to the Codex (Yak Press) and Breathe In Daisy, Breathe Out Stones (FutureCycle Press). She is a founding member of PoetrIE, a literary community and a finalist for the 2016 Hillary Gravendyk Prize. Her poetry appeared or is forthcoming in: Birds Piled Loosely, CircleShow, Home Planet News, Outlook Springs, The Wild Word (Berlin), Storyscape Journal, Cholla Needles, and others. http://www.fiberverse.com

Clifton Snider, faculty emeritus at Cal State University Long Beach, is the internationally celebrated author of eleven books of poetry. His new book, The Beatle Bump, has been published by Los Nietos Press. A career retrospective of his work, Moonman: New and Selected Poems, was published to great acclaim by World Parade Books in 2012. He has published four novels, including his first historical novel, The Plymouth Papers (Spout Hill Press, 2014).  A Jungian/Queer literary critic, his book, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made On, was published in 1991, and he has published hundreds of poems, short stories, reviews, and articles internationally.  He pioneered LGBT literary studies at CSULB.  His work has been translated into Arabic, French, Spanish, and Russian.

D S Chapman is a transfeminine artist, organizer, and cultural producer based in Dallas, Texas, who is invested in the contemporary representation of trans* people in art and culture. Working across performance, video, and photography, the artist explores the construction of gender as a foundation for identity, relationships, and ritual. Their work has been exhibited and screened internationally in museums and artist-run spaces including the Czong Institute of Contemporary Art, RAIZVANGUARDA Associação Cultural, and Altes Finanzamt.

Daniel McGinn hosted a reading series at Beans Coffee House in Uptown Whitter, represented Los Angeles at the National Poetry Slam and worked with Tebot Bach. He’s taught workshops at bookstores, schools and the OC Rescue Mission. In addition to being published in numerous zines and anthologies, McGinn was a regular contributor for Next Magazine and the OC Weekly. Several chapbooks of his poems were included in the Laguna Poets series. His book-length collection of poems, 1000 Black Umbrellas was published by Write Bloody in 2011. He has an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Daniela Voicu is a Romanian poet and painter.  Her poems, interviews and articles and paintings have been published in more than 50 journals and magazines and in various anthologies. And her poetry collections include, Poems of Angels (2006), Blue in Vitro (2012), Surfing Silence (2012), Windows Without Dreams (2012), Sky Hands (2013) and Vulnerable Breeze (2013) Sunset and Love ( 2013), Plan for seduction (2014),  Tattoo Time, Love in Braille (2015). In 2009, she founded the international journal of culture and literature, Cuib Nest Nido; and in 2011 she founded the international poetry festival of music and contemporary art, The Art of Being Human and poetry group with the same name. She edited, in 2013-2015, 15 volumes of The Art of Being Human International Poetry Anthology in English and in Romanian. Since 2009, she has been a member of the Writers’ League of Romania.

Danielle Mitchell is the author of Makes the Daughter-in-Law Cry (Tebot Bach, 2017), selected by Gail Wronsky for the Clockwise Chapbook Prize. Her work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Eleven Eleven, Harpur Palate, The Leveler, Nailed, and others. Danielle is a member of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and the founding director of The Poetry Lab in Long Beach, California.

Don Kingfisher Campbell, MFA (Antioch University Los Angeles), has been a performing poet/teacher for Red Hen Press Youth Writing Workshops, coach and judge for California Poetry Out Loud, board member and Los Angeles Area Coordinator for CPITS, poetry editor of the Angel City Review, publisher of Spectrum and SGVPQ, leader of the Emerging Urban Poets writing and Deep Critique workshops, organizer of the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival, and host of the Saturday Afternoon Poetry reading series. Mr. Campbell has taught Creative Writing in the Upward Bound program at Occidental College and been a Guest Teacher for the LAUSD for 32 years. See dkc1031.blogspot.com for awards, features, and publishing credits.

Donna Hilbert’s latest book is The Congress of Luminous Bodies, from Aortic Books. The Green Season, World Parade Books, a collection of poetry and prose, is available in an expanded second edition. The work about the death of her husband appears in Transforming Matter, and in Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems, from PEARL Editions. Her work is widely anthologized, including Boomer Girls, A New Geography of Poets, Solace in So Many Words, most recently in The Widows’ Handbook, Kent State University Press and The Doll Collection, Terrapin Books. She lives in Long Beach, California. More at http://www.donnahilbert.com.

E R Zhang is a tiny genderqueer writer who likes to write LGBT themed fiction.

Ed Baines is an autodidact; part designer, inventor, builder, visual artist and tinkerer; mastering some things and dabbling in others. He uses sketching, drafting, acrylic painting, woodworking and sculpture to help maintain his mental health and just for the fun of creating beautiful and/or useful things. Baines attended Cal Poly University, Pomona: Biological Sciences studies, is the Inventor of record with the United States Patent Office, has had careers in the hospitality, manufacturing, and construction industries, and generally plays well with others. He, and his wife, Joanne, are native to the East San Gabriel Valley and together they host the monthly PondWater Society poetry and arts salon.

Edward Distor has had an admiration for photography since high school.  From the simple Yashika 35mm camera to his current Nikon DSLR camera, he has taken a variety of photographs in various subjects, such as architecture, nature, and self-portraits. Edward was born in the United States and raised in Southern California.  His mundane life is a 9-to-5 job in the back office of a company.  His hobbies include reading, video games, Sudoku, and going out on photo excursions to certain landmarks and places.

Erika Ayón grew up in South Central, Los Angeles and graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in English. She was selected as a 2009 PEN Emerging Voices Fellow. She has taught poetry to middle and high school students across Los Angeles.  Her work has appeared in The Acentos Review, Splinter Generations Literary Journal, Strange Cargo Anthology, Orangelandia Anthology, Wide Awake Anthology, and Coiled Serpent Anthology among others.

Fernando Gallegos is a Long Beach artist born and raised. He is heavily inspired by the human form and always searching to evoke the feeling of movement and emotion. He loves the power of the brain, to take a simple stroke of color on paper and piece it together to an image with depth and feeling. He has illustrated many projects for Sadie Girl Press. Find more info and keep updated at: facebook\fernando.gallegos.lbc and instagram\@fgraphix.

G. Murray Thomas writes both poetry and prose. He is currently working on a book about his life as a music fan. He has been an active member of the SoCal poetry community for over 20 years.

Born in Italy to Russian immigrants, Jenni Belotserkovsky grew up in Germany where she studied graphic design.  There she worked as a graphic designer and a typesetter before setting out to explore the world. She now lives in Vermont, where she teaches art and curates an art kiosk. Jenni has had her art exhibited throughout Central Vermont.

Jennifer Takahashi is an artist without the ability to commit to one material.  Jennifer explores mixed media, watercolor, fiber arts, silk painting as well as creating crochet ocean meditation stones, fine silver jewelry and once-was-a-sweater plush animals.  On a quest to deepen her creative practices, while learning more about herself, Jennifer feels a strong connection to nature and the goddess archetypes of the world. When she is not creating, Jennifer enjoys dancing, yoga, reading, tea and the ocean.

Jettie Krantz lives in Denver, Colorado with her husband and daughter.  She found traditional college too much like high school, and online college as a paper-writing, arbitrary-length joke, so she has no degree.  Instead, she has a well-paying job that she enjoys without a lot of stress.  This affords her the time and energy to enjoy time with her husband, daughter, and chosen family of pirates throughout the year.  http://www.facebook.com/jettie.scott.

Jill Emery a founding member of the rock band HOLE and was additionally a member of MAZZY STAR. A self-taught folk/expressionist painter, she had a solo show at Coagula Curatorial in Chinatown, Los Angeles on May 28, 2016. In these new works, philosophical and/or spiritual searches become realized as metaphoric self-portraits – whether as a dialogue between a woman and a rainbow, a horse harnessing its own energy to find its way, or a universal bra that offers what we may all need. a series she has been working on shows peace dove questioning its job and getting back on the saddle after glamping with its olive branch.

Jim Coke: b.1947 Santa Barbara, CA; North Dakota: Long Beach public schools; 1969 BA Humanities, UC Berkeley; travel and sustainable off-grid living until returning to LB 1986 – present. Self-taught, concentrating on varieties of photographic/cinematic experimentation and documentation (counter-culture of 1960’s, music performance, travel), on color/composition, on abstraction, on lens-less image making from early photocopy to current digital printing, including the Long Beach photomural “Flying Morrison” (2013) and the hybrid “slideo” documentary of Cuba, “CUCUiSLAND” (2016).

JL Martindale is a nerdy mama writer living in Southern California. She’s honored to have her writings published with Cadence Collective, Bank Heavy Press, Sadie Girl Press, Lucid Moose Press, A Poet is a Poet anthologies as well to have released The Bottle and the Boot, a chapbook and CD written and performed with one of her favorite poets and people, Daniel McGinn.

Jonathan Yungkans is a Los-Angeles-native poet, writer and photographer with an intense love for the sea and the outlook (and questions) of an outsider acutely aware that he doesn’t fit into his surroundings. His works have appeared in Lime Hawk, Poetry/LA, The Voices Project, Twisted Vine Literary Journal and other publications.

Joy Shannon, aka Triple Goddess Tattoos, is a printmaker, illustrator and tattoo artist who creates work inspired by mythology and ancient spiritual concepts.

Kelsey Bryan-Zwick dreams big (writes and draws) in Long Beach, California.  She is a graduate of UCSC, with a B.A. in Literature/Creative Writing-Poetry, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her art has featured on Cadence Collective, and is published in Like a Girl: Perspectives on Feminine Identity and Incandescent Mind: Issue Two.  Kelsey’s poetry can be found in East Jasmine Review, Lummox 5, and Short Poems Ain’t Got Nobody to Love.  Her chapbook, Watermarked (Sadie Girl Press), intermixes both poetry and artwork in bold tones.

Kimberly Cobian is an ESL teacher at Whittier College. She loves to absorb different cultures and taste new languages. She writes poetry to shimmy to. She is the “fearless leader” of the ZZyZx WriterZ and Creator/Director of Poetrypalooza LA 2011-2015. Her favorite color is turquoise. She hunts for spicy foods. Firewood burning soothes her. Humid weather is a loving embrace. Her goddess of devotion is Sarawati.

Kimberly Esslinger lives in Lakewood, CA with her wife and two dogs. She is a digital media artist and poet. She is currently working on a documentary based on women’s bar community in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Kimmy Alan is a wannabe poet from the land of Lake Woebegone.  A retired steel worker who was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, Kimmy Alan pursed his love of poetry as a distraction while undergoing chemo and radiation.  For him, poetry has proven to be a powerful catharsis as he is currently in remission.  When he isn’t writing he spends time with his four wonderful nieces, whom he says are driving him to pieces.

Kit Courter struggles to understand who he is, which is an endless task given that he can often understand who he wished he used to be better than who he actually has been.  Sometimes he is surprised to realize he has taken photos he has forgotten about.  The only certainty he can point to is that he has certainly lived in a long and interesting myth. He has been published in Incandescent Mind: Issue One, Summer 2016.

LaLa DeVille is a self-published book author, poet and self-taught artist who has been drawing artistic poetry for a short time. LaLa, who has been writing poetry for over 20 years, began embracing drawing in 2017 and now displays it as another form of visual poetry and therapy. LaLa is the creator of many powerful pieces such as “Black Girl Magic In The City” and “Amber Goddess,” that are directed toward the empowerment and beauty of the woman of color. LaLa is a widow and mother of two adult children. She is also a native of Compton, California and resident of Long Beach, California.

Larry Colker‘s poetry collection Amnesia and Wings was published by Tebot Bach (2013). Larry is co-host of the weekly Redondo Poets reading at Coffee Cartel, in Redondo Beach. He lives in Burbank, CA, and is a Senior Learning Consultant with Kaiser Permanente.

LeAnne Hunt lives with a sassy daughter, a sassier cat and a very quiet man. She is a regular at the Ugly Mug reading in Orange and at the Poetry Lab workshop in Long Beach. She has poems published in LUMMOX Three, Gutters & Alleyways: Perspectives on Poverty and Struggle and Cadence Collective.

Linda Singer has featured at several poetry venues. Her work appears in numerous poetry anthologies. Her current book, Wingless, is available through Nietos press.

Mahsa Hosseini is a student of life. She is immensely curious and has a long-standing relationship with words and languages. She’s studied English literature, poetry, Persian and Arabic at UCLA and holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She’s lived, studied Iran and Morocco. Her poetry examines relational dynamics, whether it be between words or people. She is constantly thinking about how these dynamics form and inform our reality.

Marc Cid is a lot more comfortable writing poems than he is writing author bios for poetry submissions, and would like to go to bed rather than stay up all night trying to think of a more appropriate, informative, and professional bio and in the process fall asleep and miss the submission deadline. He lives in Downey, California, and sometimes wishes he had a cat.

Marcela Marquez is Long Beach resident, teacher, and unpublished poet. She is currently working on a blog to showcase her poetry at marcymarquez.blogspot.com/.

Marianne Peel is a poet and a flute playing vocalist, learning to play ukulele, who is raising four daughters.  She shares her life with her partner Scott, whom she met in Istanbul while studying in Turkey on a Fulbright.  Marianne taught teachers in Guizhou Province, China for three summers. Recently, Marianne was invited to participate in Marge Piercy’s Juried Intensive Poetry Workshop in June 2016. She taught English at middle and high school for 32 years. Marianne has been published in Muddy River Review, Silver Birch Press, Persephone’s Daughters, Ophelia’s Mom, Remembered Arts Journal, and  Gravel, among others.

Matt Rouse is a queer pansexual poet from Orange County, California. He is a gadfly at the Ugly Mug in Orange on Wednesday nights. He has been published online at Cultured Vultures, Meteoritic, Right Hand Pointing, and Cadence Collective. You can find in in print in the anthology Short Poems Ain’t Got Nobody to Love and his chapbook The Final Word…. He is the founder and president of Black Napkin Press.

Michael Cantin is a poet and sloth fanatic residing somewhere in the wilds of Orange County, California. He writes fitfully between bouts of madness and periods of lucid concern. His poetry has appeared both online and in print.  You can find his work in The East Jasmine Review, Melancholy Hyperbole, 50 Haiku, several anthologies, and elsewhere.

Born and raised in NY, Michele Vavonese has been traveling, making, selling and teaching art for over 20 years. Michele Vavonese Studio opened its doors in 2006. Here original works made revolve around everything from politics to struggles of the internal psyche to the plights of agribusiness. It reflects the human condition and the culture we live in. Find the Michele Vavonese Studio on Facebook.

Nancy Lynée Woo is an incorrigible optimist, a 2015 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow, and the author of two chapbooks, Bearing the Juice of It All (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and Rampant (Sadie Girl Press, 2014). She’s also released a poetry-music CD, Face the Blaze (Blacksheep Music Productions, 2014) and has been delighted to have poems published in numerous journals. She teaches community poetry workshops in Long Beach, CA, and can also be found online at nancylyneewoo.com.

Natalie Hirt is a Southern California native recently transplanted to Portland, Oregon where she is adapting to water falling from the sky. She received an MFA in creative writing from UC Riverside and she has been published in various literary journals including The Wall, Kalliope, East Jasmine Review, Incandescent Mind, and Inlandia.

Nicole Connolly lives and works in Orange County, CA, which she promises is mostly unlike what you see on TV. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University, and her work has appeared in such journals as Assaracus, Pithead Chapel, The Rush, and Five 2 One. She currently serves as Managing Editor for the poetry-centric Black Napkin Press.

Odilia Galván Rodríguez, poet, writer, editor, and activist, is the author of five volumes of poetry. She has worked as an editor for various journals and magazines in print and online. She co-edited the award-winning anthology, Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, facilitates creative writing workshops nationally, and moderates: Poets Responding and Love and Prayers for Fukushima, both Facebook pages dedicated to organizing around social justice issues. Her poetry appears in numerous anthologies, and literary journals on and offline.

TEDx Poet, Rachel Kann, has been featured on Morning Becomes Eclectic on NPR and as The Weather on the podcast phenomenon, Welcome to Night Vale. She’s received accolades from the James Kirkwood Fiction Awards, Writer’s Digest Short-Short Story Awards, LA Weekly Awards, International Poetry Slam Idol and Write Club Los Angeles. She’s performed from The Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe to Disney Concert Hall. She teaches poetry through UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Visit her at rachelkann.com.

RaeAnn Yinger is playing with her name.  She’s had three last names so she is now unclear what her name should be.  She has had poetry published in Softblow, The Pittsburgh Review online, anderbo.com, JMWW, and PIF magazine, among others.  She has recently enjoyed the expression of creativity her iPhone camera offers her.

Raundi Moore Kondo is a writer, teacher, publisher and the founder of For the Love of Words Writing Collective. When she isn’t pushing poetry on people: she sings, dances, and plays bass in a punk rock band.

Ricki Mandeville is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, roving editor, and co-founder of Moon Tide Press. Her work has appeared in Penumbra, Gravel, Comstock Review, Galway Review, San Pedro River Review, and other publications. She lives and works not far from the waves in Huntington Beach, CA.

Robin Steere Axworthy is a native Californian who wandered off in search of adventure for many years before landing in Southern California in 1983.  She has been writing since childhood among the interstices of growing up, jobs, marriage, child rearing, teaching, and dancing.   She is currently working on poetry and some fiction.  Writing poetry helps her find her way between the known and the unknowable.

Sarah Thursday founded a poetry website called CadenceCollective.net, co-hosts a monthly reading with G. Murray Thomas, and founded Sadie Girl Press as a way to help publish local and emerging poets. She been published in many fine journals and anthologies, and received a 2017 Best of the Net nomination. Her first full-length poetry collection, All the Tiny Anchors, and her newest CD/chapbook, How to Unexist. Find and follow her to learn more on SarahThursday.com, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Sharon Elliott has been a poet activist especially in multicultural women’s issues over several decades beginning in the anti-war and civil rights movements in the 1960s/70s, and four years in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and Ecuador.  She is a Moderator of Poets Responding.  Her work has appeared in her book Jaguar Unfinished and in several other publications. Her poem “Border Crossing” appears in the anthology Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, Francisco X. Alarcón and Odilia Galván Rodriguez, editors, that received the 2016 Arizona/New Mexico book award.

Shelby Prendergast is a writer and musician out of Long Beach, California. He has played music throughout most of the United States and has been lucky enough to perform with many great poets from various publishing presses. He has no creative writing degree nor any real literary accomplishments to speak of, so instead he filled up the space talking about those things that’d otherwise be listed here.

Stephanie Harper received her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Fairfield University with an emphasis in fiction. Her debut poetry collection, Sermon Series, was published in September of 2017 with Finishing Line Press. Her work can be found in The Huffington Post, HelloGiggles, HerStories, Feminine Collective, The Montreal Review, Poetry Quarterly, Midwest Literary Magazine, Haiku Journal, and Spry Literary Journal. She lives in Denver, CO.

Steve Ramirez hosts the weekly reading series, Two Idiots Peddling Poetry. A former member of the Laguna Beach Slam Team, he’s also a former organizer of the Orange County Poetry Festival and former member of the Five Penny Poets in Huntington Beach. Publication credits include Pearl, The Comstock Review, Crate, Aim for the Head (a zombie anthology) and MultiVerse (a superhero anthology).

Born in Pomona, California, Steven “Lu” Lossing began drawing at an early age, and received his first rejection notice at 15, when his high school newspaper refused to publish his comic strip “Tommy The Dead Trojan Cat,“ which featured the school’s recently deceased mascot. In addition to serving as grillmaster for the performance poetry troupe Poets in Distress, he designed the group’s logo and is currently collaborating on projects with fellow members Brutus Chieftain and King Daddy. Steven lives in Riverside, California with his wife, Andrea, and their daughter, Afton.

Sukyi Naing is a visual artist whose artwork stems from her travels and the self-reflection that accompanies these experiences. She finds delight in observing facial features, mannerisms, and her external world (whether natural or artificial), all of which she infuses into her artwork. Watercolors are a relatively new medium of expression for Sukyi, which she appreciates for the flexibility. She brushes rich colors into her artwork to represent the enriching quality of emotions in the human experience.

Tamara Hattis has a B. A. in Communicative Disorders and Creative Writing from the University of Redlands in California, where she also did her graduate work in Communicative Disorders. She has been published in Deaf Poets Society, Incandescent Mind: Issue Two, and The Sand Canyon Review. Ghost Town Literary Magazine published part of her poetry series “Colors of My Pain.” She has performed and participated in writing workshops and readings throughout California and in El Rito, New Mexico. See more on her Facebook page: Tamara Hattis Art.

Taylor Xavier is an artist based in Everett, WA. When she is not being kicked out of a coffee shop at closing time, she can be found knitting under a pile of blankets at home.

Terri Niccum is a former journalist and special education teacher. She lives in Southern California where she continues to advocate for children with special needs. She was selected as a semi-finalist for the 2014 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Her chapbook, Looking Snow in the Eye, was released in 2015 by Finishing Line Press. Recently, her poems have appeared in Nimrod International Journal, The Poeming Pigeon: Poems About Food, Literary Orphans, Cadence Collective, River Poets Journal, Angel City Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, and Incandescent Mind Issue 2.

Tobi Alfier is a multiple Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee.  Current chapbooks are The Coincidence of Castles from Glass Lyre Press, Romance and Rust from Blue Horse Press, and Down Anstruther Way (Scotland poems) from FutureCycle Press. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).

Victor Ladd describes his work: “As a photographer it’s not my goal to fit in. It is my goal to discover my own unique talents and to get to know who I am and capture the beauty around me as I see it through my eyes and my lens. As a photographer I stop trying to make my photos adhere to everyone else’s rules, and hopefully by doing so they stop looking like everyone else’s photos. I am investing in myself and my uniqueness. A true photographer not only breaks the rules, but reinvents them.”

Wynne Henry is a poet, performer, educator, and blogger whose work has taken her to both coasts, as well as to her Barbadian roots.  Her poetry has taken flight over many airwaves including Speak and Be Heard Radio, Truly Underground Radio and It Takes Two Radio. Her recent spoken word credits include performances with Watts Village Theatre, Spoken Funk, Pinkspeak New York, Long Beach Community Theater, and The Pomona Valley Literary Festival. She is the author of 7 Blocks…and Two Stories Up, a journey from Langston Hughes’ home in Harlem NY, to the Brooklyn neighborhood where her mother grew up.