Darrell Parry is a writer, artist and event organizer from Easton, Pennsylvania. He founded the online publication Stick Figure Poetry Quarterly and the monthly Stick Figure Poetry open mic. He also co-hosts Lehigh Valley Poetry’s Virtual Salon, which meets on Zoom the first Monday of every month. His alter ego works in higher education, not a professor, but as one of those reviled peddlers of unaffordable course materials. Believe it or not, he even sometimes sells poetry books.

https://www.stickfigurepoetry.com

Steve Goldberg has been part of the Cleveland poetry scene for longer than anyone expected. Steve has been published in many of Cleveland’s small press zines and is included in the book Cleveland Poetry Scenes: A Panorama & Anthology (Bottom Dog Press) and the coffee table book, Hotel Poem, Poets of Cleveland (Language Foundry). As a poetry event organizer, Steve led the legendary Literary Café Reading Series for four years, the bombastic Metrical Singularity Supernova festival, and Broken Pulpit poetry weekend and crawl in Cleveland. He has read all across the country and participated in poetry festivals such as Kansas City’s Unregulated Word, Oakland’s Beast Crawl, the Tremont Art and Cultural Festival, and has been the MC for Rainy Day in Seattle poetry festival. He has written chapbooks, Corner Café Drugstore and other Poems (Inkstained Dagger Press) and sold out in its 3^rd printing Tremont Crawl (WhatsInTheBag Press). His full length book, History is An Afterthought (Spartan Press), is due out in October.

Youssef Alaoui is a Latino Arab. His family and heritage are an endless source of inspiration for his varied, dark, spiritual and carnal writings. He has an MFA in Poetics from New College of California. He is a quiet individual experiencing the swirling cosmos as it taps against his window in a house not far from the sea. www.youssefalaoui.info Photo by Robert Fischer.

Richard Loranger is a multi-genre writer, performer, musician, visual artist, and all-around squeaky wheel, currently residing in Oakland, CA. He is the founder of Poetea, a monthly literary conversation group. His recent book of poetry titled Be A Bough Tit (as in “be a songbird on a branch”) from Be About It Press was released during the pandemic, and he has a new book coming soon from Collapse Press titled Unit of Agency. He’s also the author of the books Sudden Windows, Poems for Teeth, The Orange Book, ten chapbooks, and has work in over 100 magazines and journals. Before COVID, he curated the reading series Babar in Exile, and the queer talk and reading series #we; he is considering restarting Poetea and #we once we can all be safely in rooms together. You can find more about his work and scandals at www.richardloranger.com.

Karen Lillis is a bookseller and the author of four novellas, including Watch the Doors as They Close (Spuyten Duyvil Press). She writes at the intersection of poetry and prose, and she runs Karen's Book Row, a bookshop based in Pittsburgh and focused on feminist fiction.

Check out Karen's Book Row:

http://karensbookrow.etsy.com