Rory Forsythe-Elder is a boy who hates beets, though he loves sour gummy worms. His illustrations appear in "Goldilocks and the Three BARs (Beyond Available Resources)." He makes his home in the woods of the Illinois Valley of Southern Oregon.
Ted Jean is a carpenter who also writes, paints, and plays tennis with lovely Amy Lee. His work appears in Beloit Poetry Journal, [PANK], DIAGRAM, Juked, Gargoyle, Magma, and dozens of other publications.
Gary Lark's other work includes Ordinary Gravity (Airlie Press 2019), River of Solace (Flowstone Press 2016), In the House of Memory (BatCat Press 2016), Without a Map (Wellstone Press 2013), Getting By (Holland Prize from Logan House Press 2009). His poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Catamaran, Hubbub, Poet Lore, and ZYZZYVA. Gary and his wife Dorothy live in Oregon's Rogue Valley.
Ken Letko teaches at the College of the Redwoods. He grew up on the seasonal rhythms of Lake Superior’s Chequamegon Bay. Travel in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, Ecuador, and China globalized his awareness of the natural world and diverse cultures. For the last 25 years, he has lived in the magical intersection of ocean, redwoods, and mountains in Del Norte County on California’s far Northern coast. He spent part of last summer as a fire lookout on Red Mountain in the Siskiyou Range. Ken’s poems have appeared in five chapbooks and numerous small-press journals and anthologies.
Darryl Lorenzo Wellington is the 2021-23 Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico. An uprooted Southerner who is now a New Mexican, he has been a professional journalist for the over 20 years, with articles, fiction and poetry in The Nation, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Boston Review, and many other places. His essays on poverty, economic justice, race relations, African American history, civil rights history, and post-Katrina New Orleans have appeared in The Nation, The Progressive, The Christian Science Monitor, The Atlantic, Dissent, Crisis (The NAACP magazine), The Guardian, and many more. He has appeared as a guest on the Tavis Smiley Radio Show and is presently a Writing Fellow at the Center for Community Change in Washington, DC. In the arts (sometimes in life) he loves playing with fire.
Vincent Wixon’s previous collections include Blue Moon: Poems from Chinese Lines, The Square Grove, and Seed. For many years he was a scholar in the William Stafford Archives at Lewis & Clark College, and, with former Archives director Paul Merchant, has edited four books by Stafford. In 2014, Vincent and his wife Patty received the Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award for contributions to the literary life of Oregon.
Sara Clancy is a Philadelphia transplant to the Desert Southwest by way of two lovely detours through Wyoming and Washington State. She is an associate editor for Good Works Review. Her poems have appeared in Off the Coast, Crab Creek Review, Kentucky Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Antiphon, Turtle Island Quarterly, Poppy Road, The Linnet’s Wings, Verse Wisconsin, and Houseboat, where she was a featured poet. She lives in Arizona with her husband, their two dogs, a cross-eyed cat, and a 24 year old goldfish named Darryl.
My name is Kailen Forsythe-Elder. I like blue. Dark blue is my favorite color. I go to the Dome School. I’m in Fourth Grade. I write because it’s fun.
Jared Smith is the author of thirteen volumes of poetry, two CDs, and multi-media stage presentations in New York and Chicago. He is Poetry Editor of Turtle Island Quarterly, and has served on the Editorial Boards of leading literary magazines, including The New York Quarterly, Home Planet News, and The Pedestal Magazine. He has also served on the Board of Directors of literary and arts non-profits in New York, Illinois, and Colorado. He is a former Director of Education and Research for an international research institute, as well as former advisor to several White House Commissions under President Bill Clinton, and Special Appointee to Argonne National Laboratory. He has served on the faculty of New York University, LaGuardia Community College, and Illinois Institute of Technology. Jared currently lives outside Boulder, Colorado and spends much of his time at an unimproved log cabin deep in Roosevelt National Forest where the nearest neighbors are bears, elk, and moose.