Prize Winner & Finalists

Marqus Bobesich received his BFA from York University (Toronto) majoring in visual arts. His poems have appeared in El Portal, SLAB, and Concho River Review. He works as a writer, musician and voice artist and is currently pitching original projects for film and television.

Instagram: @marqusbobesich

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2upaEvi2b5Bk5OZFRRZRqS

Lucinda Zoe is an Eastern Kentucky native and transplanted southerner who moved from Kentucky to New York City in 1989. A librarian and archivist by training, and a chef by desire, her fields of study and interests are in philosophy, theology, ancient manuscripts and the culinary arts. After a thirty-year career in higher education at the City University of New York, she retired in 2022 to pursue her first loves and great passions — cooking, traveling and writing. She has written and produced numerous plays and monologues, both in Kentucky and New York, and recently completed a collection of poetry. She divides her time between New York City and a home in upstate New York in the Catskills Mountains where she likes to read, walk, write, bake and tend to her three cats. 

Christa Fairbrother, MA, is a Florida-based writer living with chronic illnesses. Her poetry has appeared in Cadence, DMQ Review, Honeyguide Magazine, The London Reader, and Unbroken, among others. She has work upcoming in Instant Noodles, Stoneboat, and Sunlight Press. She’s also the author of the multiple award-winning book Water Yoga (Singing Dragon, 2022).  Currently, she’s excited about a residency at The Sundress Academy for the Arts.  Besides loving books and the pool, she drinks gallons of tea.  Connect with her: instagram.com/christafairbrotherwrites or www.christafairbrotherwrites.com.

Elizabeth Sylvia is a poet and teacher from Massachusetts whose first book, None But Witches: Poems on Shakespeare’s Women (2022), won the 2021 3 Mile Harbor Press Book Award. She has been a semi- or finalist in competitions sponsored by C&R Press, DIAGRAM, 30 West, and Wolfson Press, and is a reader for SWWIM Every Day.  Sylvia has been a presenter for the Mass Poetry Festival and received a Shirley Lim fellowship from the West Chester University Poetry Center. She is the  winner of the 2023 riverSedge Poetry Prize.

Chiwenite Onyekwelu’s debut poetry chapbook, EXILED, will be published in 2024 by Red Bird Chapbooks. His poems appear in Adroit Journal, Frontier, Cincinnati Review, Palette, Hudson Review, Lolwe, Chestnut Review, Mizna, and elsewhere. He recently won the Hudson Review Inaugural Frederick Morgan Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Prize 2023. He won the 2020 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize. Chiwenite has served as Chief Editor at The School of Pharmacy Agulu, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, where he’s currently an undergraduate. He’s on Twitter as @chiwenite9

Marie-Louise Eyres received her MFA from Manchester Writing School in 2020 after a multiple brain tumour diagnosis in 2018. Her recent work can be found in Shearsman, Poetry Magazine, Acumen, Agenda, Stand, Modern Poetry in Translation, Portland Review and the anthologies for the Bridport, Bedford, Ginkgo AONB and Live Canon prizes. She has 6 pamphlets with the following small presses: Maverick Duck, Ghost City, Alien Buddha & Finishing Line. Originally from London she lives in California with her family. 

Kate Caoimhe Arthur lives in Co. Down in Ireland. She spent some years in the Cambridgeshire Fens, where she was Fenland Poet Laureate.  She worked in collaboration with the fine art print-maker Iona Howard.  She has been published in The Tangerine, The Stinging Fly and Blackbox Manifold.  She is working on her first collection of poetry.

Susan L. Lin is a Taiwanese American storyteller who hails from southeast Texas and holds an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Her novella Goodbye to the Ocean won the 2022 Etchings Press novella prize, and her short prose and poetry have appeared in over fifty different publications. Find more at https://susanllin.wordpress.com.

Aimee R. Cervenka is a writer, climate activist, and professional baker. Her work has appeared in more than a dozen publications, including Poet Lore, Ascent, and Slab, and her poem “Thinking of Basements” won the 2022 Briefly Write Poetry Prize. Her micro-collection “(Not Quite) Political Animals” was published in March 2023 by Rinky Dink Press. She lives in Spokane, Washington with her husband, dog, and two rabbits.

Ana Reisens is a poetry farmer. She was the winner of the fall 2022 Sixfold competition, and you can find her poetry sprouting in Crannog, The Bombay Literary Magazine, and Bracken, among other places, and you can follow her on Instagram at @anareisenswrites. She was born on a Monday in March in a land where the snow had not yet melted.  

Rachel R. Baum is a Best of the Net nominated poet, kayak angler, dog behaviorist, and APA-ranked pool player. She is the editor of Funeral and Memorial Service Readings, Poems and Tributes (McFarland, 1999), recipient of Best Non-Fiction by Today’s Librarian. Rachel is the founder of Moving Mountains Poets, a group of women poets, as well as the Saratoga Peace Pod, crafters who create warm items for families in crisis. Her poems have been published in OneArt, Jewish Literary Journal, The Phare, Raven’s Perch, New Verse News, and others. Her chapbook Richard Brautigan’s Concussion, was published in 2023 by Bottlecap Press. She lives in Saratoga Springs, New York with her dog Tennyson.