Dan Morris grew up in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains just east of Seattle. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of Utah, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (poetry) from Eastern Washington University, and a Ph.D. in English Literature and Creative Writing (poetry) from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. He taught writing and literature at Auburn University for five years before moving back to the Pacific Northwest in 2015. Tree, Moss, Fungus, and Fern, his first full-length collection, was published by Willow Springs Books in 2025. His work has appeared in Connecticut Review, Terrain.org, The Penn Review, the minnesota review, Zone 3, Tar River Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, and Stoneboat, among others.

Cindy Veach is the author of three poetry collections: Monster Galaxy (MoonPath Press); Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) an Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist; and Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press) a Paterson Poetry Prize finalist and Massachusetts Center for the Book “Must Read.” Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Philip Booth Prize and Samuel Allen Washington Prize. Cindy is co-poetry editor of MER (Mom Egg Review).

https://www.cindyveach.com/

Daniel Tam-Claiborne is a multiracial writer, multimedia producer, and nonprofit director. He is the author of the short story collection What Never Leaves, and his writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, HuffPost, Catapult, Literary Hub, Off Assignment, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. His debut novel, Transplants (Simon & Schuster, 2025), was a finalist for the 2023 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. A 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, he has also received fellowships and residencies from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Poets & Writers, Bread Loaf, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Swatch Art Peace Hotel, and others. Daniel holds degrees from Oberlin College, Yale University, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.