Karren LaLonde Alenier

Karren LaLonde Alenier is author of seven collections of poetry. Looking for Divine Transportation was 2002 winner of the Towson University Prize for literature. The Anima of Paul Bowles was 2016 top staff pick at Boston’s Grolier Books. Her eighth collection how we hold on launches spring 2021. She also authored The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas, a book about contemporary opera that includes her essays and contemporary opera reviews first published in Scene4 Magazine.

She is a poet and librettist. Her opera with William (Bill) Banfield, Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On premiered June 15-18, 2005 by Encompass New Opera Theater under direction of Nancy Rhodes. There were five performances at Leonard Nimoy Thalia, Symphony Space. It was favorably reviewed by Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times. She is currently working with composer Janet Peachey and dramaturg Nancy Rhodes on What Price Paradise, the turbulent love story of Jane and Paul Bowles.

She promotes Other People’s Poetry with publication and public programs through The Word Works.

Through New York’s School of Visual Arts (1982), she studied with Paul Bowles in Morocco. They worked on her poems about Gertrude Stein, which became part of

Her interview with Bowles was published in Gargoyle magazine and in Conversations with Paul Bowles edited by Gena Dagel Caponi.

Mervyn Taylor

Mervyn Taylor, Trinidad-born poet and longtime Brooklyn resident, has taught at Bronx Community College, The New School and in the New York City public school system. He is the author of seven books of poetry, including No Back Door (2010), The Waving Gallery (2014), and most recently, Country of Warm Snow (2020), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation that was long listed for the Bocas Poetry Prize. About his work, Derek Walcott said, “Taylor’s poems possess an admirable degree of subtlety, and a tone that keeps him separate and unique.” A chapbook of poems titled, News of the Living: Corona Poems was also published in 2020. Currently, he serves as co-editor of Slapering Hol Press, Hudson Valley, NY.

Julie Marie Wade

Julie Marie Wade is the author of 13 collections of poetry and prose, including When I Was Straight, P*R*I*D*E, and Same-Sexy Marriage: A Novella in Poems. Her most recent memoir is Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing, and her newest poetry collection is Skirted, just released in March 2021. Julie teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University and reviews regularly for Lambda Literary Review and The Rumpus. She is married to Angie Griffin and lives in Dania Beach.