Issue 121 Contributors
Steven Luria Ablon won Academy of American Poets' Prize 1961 and the National Library of Poetry, Editor’s Choice Award 1994. His poems have appeared in many anthologies and magazines. He has published five collections of poetry, most recently Dinner in the Garden (Columbia, South Carolina, 2018).
Ali Beheler (she/her) is a Virginia-born writer, professor, and doggie mama living in Nebraska. Her poems appear in Harpur Palate, Tupelo Quarterly, ballast journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, Willows Wept Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and elsewhere. Winner of the Milton J. Kessler Memorial Prize (2025), SRPR Editor’s Prize (2024), and Honorable Mention in the Rash Poetry Awards (2024), she teaches at Hastings College in Hastings, NE. Find her at www.alibeheler.com.
Hunter Blackwell is a Black and Native queer poet and author. They received their MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University. They are the recipient of the 2020 Diana Gabaldon Award and the 2018 Gorowny-Owen Prize for Group of Poems. Their previous works have appeared in wildscape. literary journal, Parentheses Journal, Kissing Dynamite, Barren Magazine, and others. Find them on Instagram @hun.t.blackwell.
Taylar Christianson is a poet from western Washington State. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in Sinister Wisdom, Sweet Tree Review, ArtsWA's Queer Poetry Anthology, and Jeopardy Magazine, where they were awarded the Don and Elaine Westhoff Jeopardy Magazine Award for Poetry in 2024. Their poetry tends to return to patterns of viscera, saltwater, repetition, junk, and women with problems.
J.L. Conrad is the author of the full-length poetry collections A World in Which (Terrapin Books) and A Cartography of Birds (Louisiana State University Press), as well as the chapbooks Recovery (Texas Review Press), and Not If But When (Salt Hill). Her poems have appeared in Pleiades, Sugar House Review, Jellyfish, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Her chapbook This Natal House is forthcoming from Harbor Editions in 2025. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
LC Gutierrez is a Southern and Caribbean writer living in Madrid, Spain. His work is most recently published or forthcoming in Notre Dame Review, Sugar House Review, Trampoline Journal, New York Quarterly, Ponder Review, Delta Poetry Review (Pushcart Nominee), Ballast Journal and Arkansas Review. He is a poetry reader for West Trade Review.
Angel Rosen (she/her) is a lifelong poet residing near Pittsburgh. She is the recipient of the 2025 Maureen Seaton Poetry Prize. She is a neurodivergent lesbian who is deeply passionate about art and community. Angel is involved in theater, improv, poetry performance, and her local art scene. Find her at angelrosen.com / @Axiopoeticus.
B Sven Telander {them/they} sometimes: a poet, writer of stories, an artist, a photographer, and videomaker--some could even say: a reclusive brain-damaged 'catperson' 'outsider artist' living somewhere in the wilds of the West--had a few of their poems published in Insomnia Journal back in the '90's, loved the lost Polyvore site where they made collages as B. Sven, and only recently remembered they had an Instagram with smattering of art posted as Branders Valentine.
Cindy Veach is the author of three poetry collections: Monster Galaxy (forthcoming), Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) finalist for the Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal and Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press) finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts Center for the Book ‘Must Read.’ Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, North American Review, Poet Lore and Salamander among others. Recipient of the Philip Booth Poetry Prize and the Samuel Allen Washington Prize, Cindy is poetry co-editor of MER.
Laura Grace Weldon lives in a township too tiny for traffic lights where she works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, and maxes out her library card. Laura served as Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books. She’s more a rapscallion than a rogue. .
Lisa Zerkle’s poems have appeared in Quartet, Heavy Feather Review, The Collagist, Nimrod, storySouth, LEON Literary Review and elsewhere.. A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, she serves as an editor for Painted Bride Quarterly and a reader for West Trade Review/Iron Oak Editions.