Richard Blanco
https://richard-blanco.com/

Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in that role. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami in a working-class family, Blanco’s personal negotiation of cultural identity and the universal themes of place and belonging characterize Blanco’s many collections of poetry, including his most recent, Homeland of My Body, which reassess traditional notions of home as strictly a geographical, tangible place that merely exist outside us, but rather, within us. He has also authored the memoirs FOR ALL OF US, ONE TODAY: AN INAUGURAL POET’S JOURNEY and THE PRINCE OF LOS COCUYOS: A MIAMI CHILDHOOD.  Blanco has received numerous awards, including the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize, the PEN American Beyond Margins Award, the Patterson Prize, and a Lambda Prize for memoir. He was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and has received numerous honorary degrees.  Currently, he serves as Education Ambassador for The Academy of American Poets and is an Associate Professor at Florida International University.  In April 2022, Blanco was appointed the first-ever Poet Laureate of Miami-Dade County.

Nicole Tallman
nicoletallman.com

Nicole Tallman is a poet, writer, and editor. Born and raised in Michigan, she lives in Miami and serves as the official Poetry Ambassador for Miami-Dade County, Editor of Redacted Books, Poetry and Interviews Editor for The Blue Mountain Review, and an Associate Editor for South Florida Poetry Journal. She is the author of Something Kindred and Poems for the People (The Southern Collective Experience (SCE) Press). Her next book, FERSACE, is forthcoming in November 2023 from ELJ Editions. She is also the creator and host of ELJ Editions/Redacted Books’ Be Well Reading Series and the Lunchtime Poetry & Jazz Series at Miami-Dade County’s Main Library. Find her on social media @natallman and at nicoletallman.com.

Dr. Mark B Kelly
markbkelley.com

Mark B. Kelley earned his PhD from the University of California, San Diego. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Florida International University. He has held fellowships with the Peabody Essex Museum, Mystic Seaport Museum, the John Carter Brown Library, the University of Virginia, and the Library Company of Philadelphia. His book projects are Sentimental Seamen: Feeling Bodies in An American Age of Sail and Pirates of Sympathy: Oceanic Inheritances in Antebellum Domestic Culture concerning transoceanic sentiments on ship and onshore.

Jane Hanson

Instagram

Jane Hanson is a poet living in Italy. She regularly posts stunning views to her Instagram of her life and pets in Italy and her beautiful poetry. She is an editor for the forthcoming anthology Facing Goodbye from The Wee Sparrow Press.

Elisa Albo

Elisa Albo is an award-winning professor of composition, literature, ESL, and creative writing at Broward College. A contributing editor of Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Harassment, Empowerment, and Healing, her poetry chapbooks are Passage to America, based on her family immigrant story, and Each Day More, a collection of elegies. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Alimentum, Bomb, Crab Orchard Review, Irresistible Appetites, MiPoesias, Notre Dame Review, Poetry Super Highway, SWWIM Every Day, Two-Countries: U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents, and Vinegar and Char. Nominated in 2021 for a Best of the Net award, she is an associate editor for the South Florida Poetry Journal and co-produces the Seahawk Writing Conference at Broward College, where she also teaches a food-themed film and literature course. Born in Havana, she lives with her family in Fort Lauderdale.

Julie Marie Wade 
www.juliemariewade.com

Julie Marie Wade is the author of 16 volumes of poetry, prose, and hybrid forms, including the newly released lyric essay chapbook, Fugue: An Aural History (New Michigan Press, 2023) and the forthcoming lyric essay collection, Otherwise Autumn House Press (Autumn House Press, 2023), selected by Lia Purpura as the winner of the 2022 Autumn House Nonfiction Book Prize. A winner of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir and a recipient of grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Julie has taught in the creative writing program at Florida International University since 2012. She lives with her spouse Angie Griffin, and their two cats in Dania Beach.

Clayre Benzadón
clayrebenzadon.com

Clayre Benzadón is a University of Miami MFA graduate student alumni and graduate of Brandeis University. She is currently a poetry reader from Split Lip Magazine and Broadsided Press‘s Instagram editor. She is also the former Managing editor of Sinking City. Her chapbook, “Liminal Zenith,” was published by SurVision Books. https://www.survisionmagazine.com/bookshop.htm  She was awarded the 2019 Alfred Boas Poetry Prize for “Linguistic Rewilding.” Additionally, her work has been featured in places including ANMLY, Fairy Tale Review, Hobart, MudRoom Magazine, Pussy Magic, Kissing Dynamite, and other publications.

Lynne Barrett
www.lynnebarrett.com

Lynne Barrett’s third story collection, Magpies, received the Florida Book Awards fiction gold medal, and she’s the editor of Making Good Time, True Stories of How We Do, and Don’t, Get Around in South Florida. She’s received an Edgar Award for best mystery story, and teaches Creative Writing at Florida International University. 

Erik Ebright
http://Eeeb.com

Erik is a fine artist, a web designer, and a web programmer. He identifies himself as everyone’s brother. He’s a world traveler and most recently lived in Miami, Florida, O‘ahu, Hawaii, and currently lives in Puerto Rico. He’s also published several travel and art books.