Mud & Cherry Blossoms: Poems for a Messy Season

Rebecca Clarren has been writing about the American West for more than twenty-five years. Her latest book, THE COST OF FREE LAND (Viking/Penguin, 2023) won an Oregon Book Award and was named a Best Book of 2023 by Kirkus Reviews and others. Her debut novel KICKDOWN (Arcade, 2018) was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize. Her poems appear in such places at North American Review and Poetry Northwest; she was longlisted for the 2025 Poet of the Year Prize from Only Poems. She lives in Portland with her family.

Margot Kahn is a biographer, editor, and poet. Her poetry debut, The Unreliable Tree, was published in 2025 by Northwestern University and her work has recently appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Society of America, American Poets, Literary Hub, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She is also the author of a biography, Horses That Buck (2008), which won the High Plains Book Award, and co-editor of two anthologies: This Is the Place (Seal, 2017) and Wanting (Catapult, 2023). Her work has been recognized with awards from the Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture, 4Culture, and Washington State’s Artist Trust, among others. She lives in Tacoma with her family.

Daniela Naomi Molnar is a poet and artist who creates with color, water, language, and place. Her art centers on memory — planetary, cultural, familial, and personal. She works with pigments she makes from plants, bones, stones, and specific waters such as rainwater and glacial melt. Poems are created alongside the visual art; the practices overlap and influence each other. Her debut book, CHORUS, won the 2024 Oregon Book Award for Poetry. PROTOCOLS: An Erasure was published by Ayin Press in June 2025 and is shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Award. Memory of a Larger Mind will be published in October 2026 by Omnidawn Press.