Students

Jamie Dawson (aka DawsonTheArtist) is a professional performer and award-winning spoken word poet who inspires, heals and entertains through poetry and music. Her world-renowned words with feelings have touched thousands from Brazil to Denmark and have appeared alongside the likes of literary star Rupi Kaur and cultural masters The Last Poets. Her latest work, God is At Your Feet, awarded her the international Arthur Flowers Fellowship to Disquiet Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal. Jamie finds hope in multigenerational and interdisciplinary collaboration. Jamie credits life in Tampa, FL for the vibrancy she embodies. If you pass by a stranger taking a picture of the sky, chances are it’s her.

Harris Zahoor Gondal is a writer and translator from Mandi Bahauddin, Panjab, Pakistan. His work has appeared in Dazed MENA, Lakeer Magazine, Pancham Magazine, and Jaeza.

Shauna AV Gunnell is a writer and editor from the American West. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, she has also lived in Phoenix, Seattle, and Utah. She holds a BA in English/Creative Writing from Weber State University, where she served as editor-in-chief for their undergraduate literary journal, Metaphor. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Isele Magazine, where she was shortlisted for the 2024 Isele Poetry Prize. She is greatly inspired to craft works that speak to the intersectionality of her mixed-race background and her experiences with medical motherhood. Shauna works at Gibbs Smith as a publishing associate, helping develop meaningful K–12 social studies materials for students and teachers across the country. When she isn’t reading or writing, she’s likely holding either a video game controller or a pair of knitting needles.

Mercedes Hawks is a poet from North Carolina. She attended Lees-McRae College earning her B.A. in English, with minors in Creative Writing and Appalachian Studies. She has been working on building her own theoretical lens surrounding women's feet/movement for her undergraduate research that she hopes to turn into a graduate thesis. Her poetry focuses on the body and its animality, Appalachia and its forgiveness. She weaves the suffering into the beauty, reeling in the sun to carry her back and forth between girl and woman, while staying in the mouth and limb of her body.

Ashlyn Peralta is a fiction writer from West Texas. She received a Bachelor of Arts in the Writing Seminars from Hopkins in 2024 and has spent time supporting the office of Jodi Reamer while interning at Writers House. Her favorite authors are Eliza Clark, Stephanie Meyers, Marguerite Duras, and Jacqueline Harpman.

Sandra Riffler is a Hispanic American living in the Midwest. She holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from University of Cincinnati. She specializes in poetry and parallel parking on the left. Her themes often center around social change, the natural world, and the alchemy of human interaction. She has led countless writing workshops and open mics, and encourages others to face the fear in stepping up (to the mic, to the page — you name it). You can find some of her work previously curated online in Short Vine, Eunoia Review, BRAWL, and in print through SOLID STATE LITERARY MAG.

Pamela K. Santos is a Pinayorker writer and student of tenderness, impermanence, and besties (past and present). She earned her B.A. in Liberal Arts from The New School, with an independent study on WWII Filipino American soldiers. Her multilingual poetry has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and recently for Best of the Net, appearing in Anomaly, Cultural Daily, Snail Trail Press, and elsewhere. Pamela has received support from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Oregon Literary Fellowship, Imagining America, and Caldera Arts, among others. She writes what she holds precious: ferocious lolas, Queens, literary lineages, multiverses, and her favorite dead gay uncle.

Rae Simmons is a neuroqueer writer + cryptid from the Pennsylvania woods. Their writing explores the extremes and ordeals of flesh. They attended Clarion West and hold a B.A. in History and Russian Studies from Smith College. Their work has appeared in Reckoning.

Liz Tresidder is a writer from London, UK. She has been shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Jerwood Arvon Writer Residency, was a member of the London Library Emerging Writing Programme and reads for the Bridport Prize. Her writing often focuses on bored people trapped in weird places and takes inspiration from the work of Ann Patchett, Claire Messud and Lucy Ellman.

Makenzie Anderson is a writer from South Carolina. She attended Clemson University, earning her B.A. in English and Departmental Honors in English with her poetry thesis, Birdlime. While at Clemson, she served as an editor for The South Carolina Review. Her poetry explores girlhood and womanhood, sapphic identity, and familial relations. She channels her southernness while simultaneously addressing coastal South Carolina’s haunting and alienating powers in her writing.

Kas Armstrong is a poet and artist from central Arkansas. Their work explores the body as a process of becoming and strives to celebrate unconventional modes of art, identity, and existence. They graduated from the University of Central Arkansas with a BFA in English and creative writing where they served as editor-in-chief of Vortex Magazine of Literature and Fine Art. They are the 2025 second-place winner of the Pat Laster Collegiate Poetry Contest, and their work can be found in Screen Door Review, Smacked Zine, and Vortex Magazine.

Lauren Emo is a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a minor in Media, Art, Society, and Technology. Lauren is interested in cross-genre art that examines threads of queerness and feminism across history and daily life. She has won multiple awards for her journalism and poetry. When she is not writing and reading, you will likely find Lauren at a local cafe, nerding out on a Broadway musical, exploring nature, or building miniature houses to put on her bookshelf.

Lexi Kessens is a writer who grew up in Kodak, TN. She received a BA in English from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville where she completed an undergraduate thesis and received awards for other works. Although she considers herself to be a fiction writer, she also enjoys exploring other forms such as poetry and autofiction. 

Nurain Ọládèjì is a Nigerian writer and editor. His chapbook, Home is a Heart That Flees, was selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for inclusion in Kumi: New-Generation African Poets, A Chapbook Box Set, edited by them and published by the African Poetry Book Fund and Akashic Books in 2024. His work has appeared in Transition, Poetry Wales, OlongoAfrica, Acumen, and elsewhere. He holds degrees in the plant sciences.

Thao Vu is a graduate of Eastern Nazarene College (USA) in Psychology and National Taiwan University (Taiwan) in Business. Thao has spent the better part of ten years working in development projects supporting children and the environment. She is writing her debut novel in memories of interesting places, times, and people.  

Born and raised in Maryland, Josh Ward graduated with a degree in Wildlife Conservation from Virginia Tech in 2022, with a minor focus in creative writing. He is an avid wildlife photographer, birder, naturalist, and nature writer who has long sought a career that blends elements of language arts, education, and natural history. His goal is to resurrect the ways of the old naturalists, the scientists who recorded their theories through eloquent verse, and the poets who inspired science with their wisdom and patience. His passions have taken him from Alaska to Costa Rica, and from Belize to Maine, his work along the way all going toward a single pursuit: the re-unification of science and art. 

Maria Psarakis is a writer from Virginia. She holds a BA in Environmental Studies and Political Science from the University of Richmond.

Isaac Maxey is from Shawsville, VA. He has a piece upcoming in North American Review. Takes bad photos, calls them candid. Lies to your face.

Piper Fitzgerald grew up in the Meramec Area of Missouri and attended Saint Louis University to complete her undergraduate degree in English. When she isn’t reading or writing, she is hiking, practicing her photography, watching films, or spending time with her pets.

Brit Washburn is the author of the essay collection Homing In: Attempts on a Life of Poetry and Purpose (Alexandria Quarterly Press, 2023), and the poetry collections Notwithstanding (Wet Cement Press, 2019) and What Is Given (forthcoming from Wet Cement, Spring 2025). She is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at Interlochen Arts Academy in Northern Michigan, where she was born and raised, and of the soon-to-be late, great Goddard College in Vermont. Brit has been awarded an artist’s grant by the Vermont Studio Center and works as a freelance writer, editor, indexer, a Montessori teacher, and instructor in the Great Smokies Writing Program at University of North Carolina Asheville.

William Shaw is a writer from Sheffield. His writing has appeared in Strange Horizons, The Georgia Review, and Daily Science Fiction. His first book, a critical study of the Doctor Who episode The Rings of Akhaten, was published in 2020.

Dylan Ever spins stories out of folklore and fables, interweaving critters, creatures, and confused twenty-somethings. In her art she loves exploring combinations of music, visuals, and writing, and can often be found plucking at a guitar, building spaceship-esque synthesizers, or out writing poetry for passersby on her typewriter.