Rachel Attias is a writer, educator, and editor from the Hudson River Valley of New York, though she now calls Portland home. Her writing has appeared in n+1, Porter House Review, Portland Review, Columbia Journal and more, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions. She holds an MFA from Oregon State University. Her writing and her heart are concerned with relationships both present and ancestral, memory, time, everyday absurdity and, above all, humor.

Frances Badalementi is the author of the novels, I Don’t Blame You, published in 2019 and Salad Days,  published in 2021. Some of her shorter work can be found at The New Yorker, The Believer Magazine, BOMB Magazine, Longreads and elsewhere. She teaches writing workshops and also works individually as a mentor for writers.

Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Nigerian American writer and novelist. A graduate of Harvard Law School, and a recipient of a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, her work has appeared in various literary journals, including Ploughshares, Glimmer Train Stories, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, and elsewhere. She won the first-place prize in the Glimmer Train Short-Story Award for New Writers, and was the Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, a residency-fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View, and has received a Pushcart Special Mention for her writing. Her debut novel, The Edge of Water, set between Nigeria and New Orleans, is forthcoming from Tin House Books in February 2025.

Nora Ericson is the 2024 Oregon Book Award winner in Children’s Literature for her picture book Too Early. . She studied painting at Yale University and writing for children at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Originally from central New York, she now lives in Portland, Oregon, with two kids, two dogs, and two cats. She’s also the author of Dill & Bizzy: An Odd Duck and a Strange Bird and Dill & Bizzy: Opposite Day.

Gabriela Denise Frank’s essays, interviews, hybrids, and short fiction have been published in True Story, Tahoma Literary Review, Hunger Mountain, Bayou, Baltimore Review, Crab Creek Review, The Normal School, Lunch Ticket, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. An advocate for public art and artists, Gabriela serves as an arts commissioner for the City of Burien, on 4Culture’s arts advisory committee, and as the creative nonfiction editor of Crab Creek Review.

Perrin Kerns has been teaching creative writing for over 30 years.She currently teaches literature, creative writing and digital storytelling at Prescott College, Portland State University, Clark College, Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, Fishtrap Writers Conference and Literary Arts. Her own creative work has taken her from lyric essay to digital storytelling to personal narrative documentaries based on her lyric essays. She won the Director’s Choice award for her documentary, “Between Sasquatch and Superman: Living with Down’s Syndrome”, from the San Francisco Short’s festival and Best Short Animation for her film about her miscarriage from the Oregon Independent Film Festival.

Michele Kicherer writes about books and music for the San Francisco Chronicle, Willamette Week and others. She is also a writing coach and former ghostwriter specializing in fiction and memoir. Michelle’s fiction has been published in The Master’s Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, 8142 Review and many others, and her novella Sexy Life, Hello is out in audiobook in September ‘24 and in print March ‘25 on Banana Pitch Press.

Cari Luna is the author of The Revolution of Every Day, which won the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction. A fellow of Yaddo and Ragdale, her writing has appeared in The Nation, Guernica, Salon, Jacobin, Electric Literature, Catapult, PANK, and elsewhere. 

Daniela Naomi Molnar is a poet, artist, essayist, and pigment maker collaborating with the mediums of language, image, paint, pigment, and place. She is also a wilderness guide, educator, and eternal student. An entry in the Oregon Encyclopedia states, “Molnar pioneered the notion that art can speak to climate change.” Her debut book CHORUS won the 2024 Oregon Book Award in poetry and was selected by Kazim Ali as the winner of Omnidawn Press’ 1st/2nd Book Award. Her work is the subject of a front-page feature in the Los Angeles Times, an Oregon Art Beat profile, and a feature in Poetry Daily.

Wendy Noonan’s poetry has appeared in many journals, including Painted Bride Quarterly, Muzzle, Crazy Horse and 2River View. Her creative nonfiction, forthcoming in Diagram, was also featured in Meridian Journal as one of two finalists for their 2020 Editor’s Choice prize. Wendy teaches at Pacific Northwest College of Art and tutors at Portland Community College.

Rajesh K. Reddy (he/him) is an author of fiction and nonfiction whose work explores themes of race, gender, religion, and animality through the lens of justice. His work has appeared in the Silk Road Review, Asia Literary Review, Mandala, and elsewhere, and he has served in editorial roles at the Indiana Review, Callaloo, and Narratives. Raj earned his MFA in Creative Writing (fiction) and MA in English from Indiana University and his PhD in English (creative writing concentration) from the University of Georgia.

Radhika Sharma is the author of Parikrama, a collection of short stories and Mangoes for Monkeys, a novel. Radhika has been writing for over two decades and her byline has appeared in several publications including The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury News, India Currents, Tri City Voice and others. One of Radhika’s stories, ‘Just a Photograph’, was showcased by Kearny Street Workshop in APAture 2013; another story ‘Daddy Cool’ was published by The Santa Clara Review.

Thalia Stafford’s passion for writing can be traced to the 1st grade when they wrote their first story about taking a rocket to the moon. Since then, they’ve written many allegorical tales about vulnerability and healing. A first-generation Afro-Caribbean Canadian born in Toronto, Canada, Thalia is a storyteller by heart. Currently working on a Master of Fine Arts at Vermont College of Fine Arts for Writing for Children and Young Adults, Thalia has been a Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow in ‘23 within the Young Adult cohort and is working on their first novel, backward kismet.

Coleman Stevenson is the author of Breakfast, The Accidental Rarefication of Pattern #5609, The Dark Exact Tarot Guide, and a book of essays accompanying the card game Metaphysik. Her latest collection of poems is Light Sleeper. Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications such as Seattle Review, Mid-American Review, Louisiana Literature, tarot.com, and the anthology Motionless from the Iron Bridge. In addition to her work as a designer of tarot and oracle decks through her company The Dark Exact, her fine art work, exhibited in galleries around the Pacific Northwest, focuses on the intersections between image and text.

Emily Strelow has an MFA in Creative Writing from University of Washington in Seattle and an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science. Her debut novel, The Wild Birds, was published March of 2018 and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Foreword Indies Award. Emily was born and raised in Oregon’s Willamette Valley but has lived all over the West. For the last fifteen years she combined teaching writing with doing seasonal avian field biology. While doing field jobs she camped and wrote in remote areas in the desert, mountains and by the ocean. She is a mother of two boys, naturalist, conservation storyteller, and author living in Portland, Oregon.

Paige Thomas (she/her/hers) is a writer, visual artist, and arts educator in Portland, OR. She holds an MFA from Oregon State University, and during her time there, she was the Provost’s Distinguished Graduate Fellow. Her creative work has received support from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Spring Creek Project, and Hypatia-in-the-Woods. She has also been awarded the Hogue Family Centennial Literary Scholarship and the Leishman Reid English Award for her writing. Her visual work has been featured in exhibitions at Playground Gallery and Variable Creatives while her first solo show was held at 21ten Theatre. Some of her writing can be found in New Delta Review, Diode, and Columbia Journal.