Joanne Merriam is a writer, poet, and editor. She is also the owner and publisher of Upper Rubber Boot Books, and edits many of their titles.

She was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and lived thereabouts for her first three decades. In 2001, she quit her job as the Executive Assistant of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia to travel Canada by train, and then parts of the Northeastern and Southern United States. Her first book of poetry, The Glaze from Breaking, was written, in part, about those travels, and published by UK publisher Stride in 2005, and again by URB after Stride went out of business. In 2004, she immigrated to the USA, where she has lived in Kentucky and New Hampshire, and now resides in Nashville, Tennessee.

Joanne Merriam’s poetry and fiction has appeared in dozens of magazines and journals, including The Antigonish Review, Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Fiddlehead, The Furnace Review, Grain, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, The Mainichi Daily News, Per Contra, Riddle Fence, Room of One’s Own, Strange Horizons and Vallum Contemporary Poetry, as well as in the anthologies Ice: new writing on hockey, To Find Us: Words and Images of Halifax and The Allotment: New Lyric Poets.

Dave Moore is the afternoon radio personality for Philadelphia's #1 rated station - B101. His literary work has been featured in Mad Rush, Philadelphia Poets, Time of Singing, Modern English Tanka, Ambrosia: Journal of Fine Haiku, Seven by Twenty, Shamrock Haiku Journal, Riverbed Haiku, Prune Juice: Journal of Senryu & Kyoka, this, the 140 And Counting anthology, and many others. He lives in Bucks County, PA.

Carolyn Agee is an actress, author and spoken word performer living on the Puget Sound. When she isn’t suffering from existential depression, she enjoys petrichor, unknown forest trails and intimate gatherings of kindred spirits.

Her writing will be included in the forthcoming anthology “The Art of Breaking Up” (Harper Design, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2020). Her books include “Drowning Ophelia” (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2017), and “Ever Silence Menacing” (Mount Analogue— Political Pamphlet Series, 2016).

Website: http://www.carolynagee.com

Photo: KupkaPhoto

Julie Bloss Kelsey is a freelance writer and award-winning short-form poet with an educational and professional background in ecology and environmental science. She fell in love with haiku and scifaiku after the birth of her third child in 2009. Since that time, her short-form poetry has appeared in a variety of publications worldwide and she has won several awards, including second place in the 15th International "Kusamakura" haiku competition in 2010 and the Science Fiction Poetry Association's Dwarf Stars Award in 2011. Julie also enjoys writing creative non-fiction, microfiction, stories for children, and magazine articles.

Michael Donoghue grew up in a small fishing village on the East coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. Now he resides in Vancouver, Canada but still mostly lives in his head. Michael's stories have appeared in anthologies, literary journals, sci-fi magazines, and online. He has been a James White Award runner-up, a Sunburst Award finalist, won a Raven from Pulp Literature, and a reader at the Vancouver Word Festival. Michael works in public health, where he spends much of his time preoccupied with hand washing. You can find him on Twitter @mpdonoghue