A proud mother of three, Christine Adams is the author of two collections of poetry, Setting The Table in the Age of Reason and Quatrains. She is currently working on Homespun, a piece of creative non-fiction about the history and renovation of a 225 year-old New England cottage, a former fullers mill.  Chris, who earned a BA in English and Creative Writing from Gettysburg College, also writes on a freelance basis, mostly for not-for-profits, and is a certified grant writer. 

Victor Alcindor is an American poet of Haitian descent whose poems have appeared in various online and literary journals. Stand Mute, his first poetry collection, contains a series of unapologetic and candid poems that according to Randall Horton, author of Pitch Dark Anarchy, and Hook: A Memoir expressed that Alcindor’s collection “…will break your heart, but in the breaking, there is rebuilding—for empathy, for human compassion for reshaping what we think we know of men. Victor Alcindor’s poems shatter the false narrative of masculinity.” When he is not writing poems, Victor serves as an English teacher at West Orange High School in New Jersey. 

Joanne Childs Ashe is a mother, ex-wife, spoken word artist/poet, author, grandmother, perpetual volunteer, educator and stand-up comic who currently teaches in the Montclair Public Schools and has volunteered for decades as a tutor, mentor and poetry instructor. Childs-Ashe also directed, produced and performed as a member of the steering committee for “The Gathering”, a women’s writers group, founded by the Oscar winning actress, Olympia Dukakis. As a spoken-word artist, Joanne (also known as, N’Jie) has performed from San Francisco to Senegal, and more locally, in New York City, at the famed Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, The Knitting Factory, The Schomberg Institute, etc.

Bestselling author of Missing Pages, Out Of My Life, Elijah M. Brown hails from Newark, NJ. He is a motivational speaker, educator, actor and director of manUP The Play, curator for Planet Hip Hop at NJPAC, producer, publisher, creative writing instructor and mentor. He also authored It Takes a Child to Raise a Village, In Two Weeks, and his first children’s book, Letters Make Words, where alphabets are given human characteristics. 

Theresa Burns' poetry, reviews, and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Times, Prairie Schooner, America Magazine, New Ohio Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018, and her chapbook Two Train Town was recently published. The founder and curator of Watershed Literary Events in New Jersey, she has taught writing at Seton Hall University, The Fashion Institute of Technology, and the 92nd Street Y. 

Marina Carreira is a queer Luso-American writer and artist from Newark, NJ who holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University, NJ. Marina’s chapbook, I Sing to That Bird Knowing It Won’t Sing Back, was published May 2017 by Finishing Line Press. Her first full-length poetry collection, Save the Bathwater, is out now and published by Get Fresh Books. Her work is featured in Paterson Literary Review, The Acentos Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Hinchas de Poesia, Luna Luna, among others. Marina has showcased her art in group exhibitions and festivals at the Ironbound Cultural Center’s Shiman Gallery, Hahne & Co., Gallery 211, and Living Incubator Performance Space {LIPS} in the Gateway Project Spaces in Newark, NJ. She is founding member of “Brick City Collective”, a Newark-based multicultural, multimedia group working for social change through the arts. She lives in Union, NJ with her partner and daughters.

Sharon Dennis-Wyeth is an award winning children’s book author and poet. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Hollins University. She has visited numerous schools throughout the country, sharing her writing process and conducting workshops. She is a graduate of Harvard University and has an MFA in Memoir from Hunter College. www.sharondenniswyeth.com

Erika Dreifus is the author of Birthright: Poems (Kelsay Books, 2019) as well as Quiet Americans: Stories (Last Light Studio, 2011), a collection largely inspired by her paternal grandparents, German Jews who escaped Nazi persecution and immigrated to the United States. Born in Brooklyn and raised there and in suburban New Jersey, Erika currently lives in New York City.

Deborah Garrison is the poetry editor of Alfred A. Knopf and a senior editor at Pantheon Books. Prior to joining the Knopf Publishing Group in 2000, she spent fourteen years at The New Yorker, where she edited both fiction and nonfiction and wrote criticism for the books section. She is the author of A Working Girl Can’t Win and Other Poems (1998) and The Second Child (2007). Her poems and pieces about poetry have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, The Yale Review, and other journals.

Born in Zaria, Nigeria, Hafizah Geter’s poetry and prose have appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s Indelible in the Hippocampus, Tin House, Narrative Magazine, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Longreads, among others. She is an editor for Little A and TOPPLE Books from Amazon Publishing, and serves on the poetry committee for the Brooklyn Book Festival. Hafizah lives in Brooklyn, New York where she is working on a novel about coming to America and a full-length nonfiction project about the racial landscapes of loss, grief, and becoming in America. Her debut poetry collection Un-American is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press in Fall 2020.

Brian Gilmore is a native of Washington DC, poet, writer, public interest lawyer, and author of four collections of poetry, including the latest, 'come see about me, marvin,' (Wayne State Press), a 2020 Michigan Notable Books recipient. He has written for The Crisis Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Jazz Times, and is a long time columnist with the Progressive Media Project. He has also been an NAACP Image Award nominee, a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award nominee, and runner up for the Larry Neal Writers Award. He is a Kimbilio Fellow and a Cave Canem Fellow and currently teaches social justice law at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. 

As a survivor of domestic violence, Saúl Grullon draws his creative inspirations from raw experiences. His endeavor to absolve himself from intellectual incarceration through the means of his mother’s zealous religious beliefs, as well as his father’s military surviving skills, has molded Saul to be a hero of two worlds —-dancing to the beat of a different drummer. In hardships, he has found the way to relinquish his pain on stage,  through storytelling and poetry slams that contain an intrinsic element that’ll soothe your soul.

Tina Kelley’s Rise Wildly is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press, joining Abloom and Awry, Precise, and The Gospel of Galore, which won the Washington State Book Award. She co-authored Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from Homelessness to Hope, and shared in a Pulitzer covering 9/11 at The New York Times.

Jessica de Koninck is the author of one full length poetry collection, Cutting Room (Terrapin Books) and one chapbook, Repairs (Finishing Line Press). Her poems appear in journals and anthologies including PoetryMagazine, Diode and The Valparaiso Poetry Review and have been featured twice on Verse Daily. Baron Wormser has said about her work, “A stubborn, jumpy vitality abides, capable of real truth-telling.” Jessica has been a finalist in the Raynes, Dobler, Juniper Press and Black Lawrence competitions. She leads poetry workshops at the Greenwich House Senior Center in Manhattan and serves on the editorial board of Jewish Currents magazine. For more information go to www.jessicadekoninck.com.

Marcia LeBeau’s poems have been published in Painted Bride Quarterly, Hiram Poetry Review, Rattle, SLANT, and elsewhere. Her work has also appeared in O: The Oprah Magazine and has been read on the radio. She has been a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize and nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. Recently, her chapbook, The Book of Bob, was shortlisted for the 2019 Wallace Award. She holds an MFA in poetry from VCFA. Marcia is an artist-in-residence in the schools, plays viola in her local symphony and has an energy healing business. In January 2020, she is launching The Write Space in the Valley Arts District of Orange, NJ; a co-working and event space for creative writers.

Elinor Mattern teaches classes and leads workshops on numerous aspects of writing, creativity, culture and communication at a variety of venues, including Czech Technical University in Prague. She’s a visual artist and poet, and received her MFA at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her poems and non-fiction have appeared in several dozen journals and newspapers, including Washington Square and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She can be reached at Elinorgrace@yahoo.com, or you can find her on Facebook. 

Helen Mazarakis is a former community development specialist, who now works with several non-profit organizations when not writing. Her poetry has been published in Exit 13, Clementine, and Everyday Poetry, and the Princeton Alumni Weekly. She is currently at work on two middle-grade novels. She chairs the Board of the BRICK Education Network in Newark, as well as Impact100 Essex, a women’s collaborative giving organization. She was formerly the director of the Montclair Economic Development Corporation, and lives in Montclair.

Claudia Serea’s poems and translations have been published in Field, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, The Malahat Review, Oxford Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Twoxism, a collaboration with visual artist Maria Haro (8th House Publishing, 2018). Serea received the 2013 New Letters Readers Award, the Levure Littéraire 2014 Performance Award, and several honorable mentions for poems and chapbooks. Her poems have been translated in French, Italian, Arabic, and Farsi, and have been featured in The Writer’s Almanac. She is a founding editor of National Translation Month, and she co-hosts The Williams Poetry Readings.

Carol Stone is Distinguished Professor of English and creative writing, emerita, Montclair State University. Her poetry collections include Hurt: The Shadow and All We Have is Our Voice (Dos Madres Press), American Rhapsody (CavanKerry Press), and Traveling With the Dead, (Backwaters Press, Dos Madres Press). She has published five poetry chapbooks and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She received three Fellowships from The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and a fellowship from Rotheremere Institute, Oxford University, UK as well as residencies at Hawthornden Writers Retreat, Scotland and Chateau de Lavigny, Switzerland. 

John J. Trause, the Director of Oradell Public Library, is the author of Why Sing?, Picture This: For Your Eyes and Ears, Exercises in High Treason, Eye Candy for Andy, Inside Out, Upside Down, and Round and Round, Seriously Serial,  and Latter-Day Litany, the latter staged Off Broadway.  His translations, poetry, and visual work appear internationally in many journals and anthologies, including Rabbit Ears: TV Poems.  Marymark Press has published his visual poetry and art as broadsides and sheets.  He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, N. J., and the former host and curator of its monthly reading series.

David Wohl is from Brooklyn. He met his wife, Eileen McMahon, at Northwestern University in 1972. He is an actor by trade (50 years almost), husband (42 almost), father (3 grown sons) and grandfather (Eloise Mina, 1 year old). He began writing poetry in earnest in the winter of 2012 while playing Sigmund Freud in the play Freud's Last Session at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre. His poem, "Dog is the Father to Man" was published in the Latham Letter. He believes he was a dog in a previous life (if you go for that kind of thing). 

Kath Lynn Austin is an internationally recognized expert on arms trafficking, peace and security, and human rights. She is founder and Executive Director of the Conflict Awareness Project, an international nonprofit that investigates, exposes, and brings to justice major arms traffickers, war profiteering networks, and transnational criminal operations that fuel war and conflict around the world.­ ­ For nearly 30 years, Ms. Austin has carried out in-depth field investigations into the illegal trade in weapons, illicit trafficking operations, illegal resource exploitation, transnational crime and terrorism. Her award-winning documentaries include Follow The Guns (2018).  In 2012, she starred in A Short Film About Guns (winner, 2013 Tribeca Film Festival).

Marissa Rothkopf Bates writes about food for the New York Times, Food52, Newsweek and New Jersey Monthly, among others. She is currently working on a book about the history of technology and innovation in the American kitchen. Marissa has worked at SPY magazine, Nickelodeon, CondéNast and Oxygen TV. Marissa has a graduate degree in history and earned her professional qualification as a chef from the Institute of Culinary Education, yet still gets nervous when asked to make custard. In her spare time she enjoys writing about herself in the third person. For the best pizza in NJ, follow her: Twitter@MarissaRothkopf and Insta @MarissaRothkopfEats

Stefan Bondy is the NBA beat writer for the Daily News, where he has worked since 2010 while covering both the Knicks and Nets. He previously worked at the Bergen Record, the New Jersey Herald and the Associated Press. Thierry Henry said he asks stupid questions.

Lee Boudreaux is Executive Editor at Doubleday where she publishes a fiction list devoted to unusual stories, unexpected voices and a strong sense of place. Among the books she has edited are Patrick deWitt’s Booker-prize nominee The Sisters Brothers, Madeline Miller's #1 NYT bestseller Circe and Orange-prize winner The Song of Achilles, Andrew Sean Greer’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel Less, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang, and Leni Zumas’s Red Clocks. She moved with her husband and daughter to Montclair, NJ in 2018 and has learned that everything people tell you about buying old houses is true.

Peter Coyl has been the Director of the Montclair Public Library since March 2017. Previously he was the Manager of the Dallas Public Library's J. Erik Jonsson Central Library. He is a frequent presenter at regional, state, and national library conferences and workshops. He served as chair of the American Library Association's GLBT Round Table, chair of the Stonewall Book Awards Committee, and as a member on the Intellectual Freedom Committee. Currently he is a Trustee of the Freedom to Read Foundation and a member of the Public Library Association's Task Force on Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Social Justice.

Johanna Ginsberg is a senior writer for the New Jersey Jewish News. Trained as an attorney, Johanna figured out it was much more fun to work as a journalist. She’s been covering all facets of Jewish New Jersey for 17 years, and her articles have been picked up by The Forward, JTA, and The Jewish Week. Along the way, she won The David Twersky Journalism Award, as well as awards from the American Jewish Press Association and The New Jersey Press Association. She lives in Maplewood, NJ, where she raised two children with her husband. 

Indira Islas is a DACA recipient from Georgia who has lived in the U.S. for 15 years. She studies biology at Delaware State University, which she attends as a recipient of The Dream Act scholarship for undocumented students. After DACA was rescinded, she began to advocate for permanent bipartisan legislation that will give DACA beneficiaries a pathway to citizenship.

Jeh Johnson is a lawyer and former government official who served as the fourth United States Secretary of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2017. He previously was the General Counsel of the Department of Defense from 2009 to 2012 during the first years of the Obama Administration. He is currently a partner at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and a board of directors member at Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Jim Johnson is an American politician, attorney, and community activist, who was formerly an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and Under Secretary of the Treasury for Enforcement, where he received the Hamilton Award, the Department of Treasury’s highest award. He was a Democratic Party candidate in the 2017 New Jersey gubernatorial race.

Devany Kurtti is a junior at Montclair High School where she is a member of the Center for Social Justice. Devany has regularly volunteered for Succeed2gether, M.E.S.H (Montclair Emergency Services for the Homeless) and helped organize a sleep in outside of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Montclair to raise awareness for the homeless. She participated in the 2016 Women’s March in New York City. Devany also published an essay on NJ.com regarding biracial identity following the marriage of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. 

Marta López-Luaces was born in Spain, and lives in New York. She is a poet, writer and translator. She holds a Ph.D. in Spanish and Latin American Literatures from New York University (1998). She is a Full Professor at Montclair State University.  She published two novels and a book of short stories: La Virgen de la Noche (2009), Los traductores del viento (Madrid-Monterrey, Vaso Roto, 2013), won the International Latino Book Award for Best Fantasy Novel, 2014 and El Placer de matar a una madre (Madrid: Ediciones B, Penguin Random House, 2019). She also published five books of poetry Diatancia y destierros (1998), Las lenguas del viajero (2005), Los arquitectos del imaginario finalist of the prestigious award Ausiás March was published by Pre-Texto 2011) and Después de la oscuridad (Valencia, Pre-Texto 2016). 

Lindsey N. Mach is the owner of Lindsey Noelle Publishing Services LLC. She is a freelance writer, editor, and marketer who is also a certified teacher. She has almost ten years of experience in the publishing industry and has worked in both trade and educational publishing. Her publishing experience includes editorial and publicity/marketing. Lindsey’s goal is to help writers and companies find and refine their voice and connect with their audiences. In addition to providing publishing services, she offers workshops to help writers bring their projects to publication and connect with readers. Find out more at Reedsy.com/Lindsey-Mach

Sarah McGrath is Vice President and Editor in Chief of Riverhead Books, where she acquires and edits a range of fiction and nonfiction. Among the many critically acclaimed, prize-winning, and New York Times-bestselling authors she currently works with are: Brit Bennett, Elizabeth Gilbert, Lauren Groff, Paula Hawkins, Khaled Hosseini, Chang-rae Lee, Maile Meloy, Sigrid Nunez, Helen Oyeyemi, Emma Straub, Gabriel Tallent, and Meg Wolitzer. Ms. McGrath began her career in publishing at Knopf in 1997 and spent seven years as an editor at Scribner, before coming to Riverhead in 2006.

Budd Mishkin has been a broadcast journalist for almost 40 years. He joined CBS News Radio in March, 2019 as an anchor/ correspondent. Mishkin spent 25 years as an anchor/reporter for NY1, New York City’s 24 hour television news channel. He was one of the station’s founding journalists in 1992. In 2003, he created NY1’s weekly series "One on 1 with Budd Mishkin," profiling influential and intriguing New Yorkers from a wide range of fields. From 1992-2017, Mishkin served as host and reporter for "Sports on 1: The Last Word," NY1's nightly sports show. 

In the American Southwest and its borderlands, no social justice advocate has made a greater impact on the lives of undocumented workers than internationally acclaimed Enrique Morones. As founder and Executive Director of Border Angels for 33 years, he continues to save lives and make a difference. His non-profit organization has given a human face to countless migrants, while offering them compassion in the form of food, water, clothing, education, advocacy, and hope. Also founder of GENTE UNIDA, a human rights border coalition, Morones is recognized as one of the 100 most influential Latinos in the USA by Hispanic Business Magazine. He is author of The Power of One: The Border Angels Story.

A past president of the National Book Critics Circle, Kate Tuttle is interim books editor at the Boston Globe. Her reviews and essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere. She lives in Montclair. 

Shelby Vittek is a journalist and essayist whose work has appeared in Longreads, Narratively, Catapult, the Washington Post, Wine Enthusiast, Bon Appétit, National Geographic, The Kitchn, The Record, among others. She holds a MFA in creative nonfiction from Rutgers–Camden, and teaches writing and journalism classes at Rutgers, Rowan University and Cedar Crest College. She's currently the associate editor for New Jersey Monthly.

Susan Weinberg is the publisher of Perseus Books, a division of Hachette Book Group, overseeing several non-fiction imprints including Avalon Travel, Basic Books, Da Capo Press, PublicAffairs and Running Press. Photo credit Phil Cantor.

Mary Alice Williams is the anchor of Public Media’s NJTV News. The highly acclaimed pioneering broadcast journalist was one of the primary architects behind the design of the first worldwide television network, CNN, where she also served as New York Bureau Chief, Principal anchor and Vice president, becoming one of the highest-ranking female executives in American television. Williams anchored NBC News programs from Sunrise and The Today Show to NBC Nightly News, and was an anchor on the NBC News team that won a national Emmy Award for its coverage of the fall of communism.  Williams has won multiple awards and 15 honorary doctorates for her work, including her specials and series for the Discovery Health Channel, The Hallmark channel, Lifetime and PBS.  

Kristian Winfield is a reporter covering the Brooklyn Nets and NBA for the NY Daily News. He is from Brooklyn, NY and a proud 2015 graduate of Hampton University. Kristian joined the Daily News in July 2019 after three seasons covering the NBA at SB Nation. He grew up in Bedstuy, and also writes about food and nutrition at the intersection of sports.

Kate Zernike has been a reporter for the New York Times since 2000, and was a member of the team that shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. She is the author of Boiling Mad: Behind the Lines in Tea Party America, published in 2010, and is writing a book about women in science.