Steering Committee

Lisa Comforty trained as lawyer, has been a writer/producer of award-winning documentary films, a newspaper reporter, a writing instructor, a speechwriter, and, for most of her career, an editor of books and journals. Originally from Chicago, Lisa makes her home in Bloomington, Indiana.

Janine Harrison is the author ofTurning 50 on El Camino de Santiago, Weight of Silence, and If We Were Birds. Her work has appeared in Veils, Halos, and Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women, Gyroscope Review, and other publications. She is a former Highland (IN) Poet Laureate. She lives in Highland and teaches at Calumet College of St. Joseph. 

Derek Mong has three poetry collections from Saturnalia Books—Other Romes, The Identity Thief, and When the Earth Flies into the Sun and a chapbook, The Ego and the Empiricist, from Two Sylvias Press. His work has appeared in: the LA Times, the Boston Globe, the Kenyon Review, Blackbird, Free Inquiry, and Pleiades. He and his wife, Anne O. Fisher, received the Cliff Becker Translation Award for The Joyous Science: Selected Poems of Maxim Amelin. They co-edit the literary journal, At Length, from their home in West Lafayette, Indiana. He currently chairs the English Department at Wabash College.

Franklin Oliver is a consultant and veteran Social Studies teacher. His education includes a Master’s in Religious Studies and undergrad History degree. Oliver’s primary artistic medium is poetry and he co-hosts a general interest podcast called The Sunlight Express. 

Shana Ritter writes poetry and prose and pieces in between. Her work has appeared in such places as Lilith, Georgetown Review and Dulcet, and anthologies including Stormwash and Trigger Warnings. Her chapbook, Stairs of Separation was published by Finishing Line Press. In the Time of Leaving, a novel of exile and resilience, is set in late15th century Spain and newly published in 2024. She's been a recipient of the Indiana Individual Artist Grant on multiple occasions.  As an educator she worked with schools on issues of equity. Shana lives in the country outside Bloomington, Indiana.

Barbara Shoup is the author of nine novels for adults and young adults and three books about the creative process. Her young adult novels have been honored by the PEN Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Working Writer Fellowship, the American Library Association, and the International Reading Association. Shoup is the Writer-in-Residence at the Indiana Writers Center, where she teaches writing and directs a summer learning program for at-risk youth, a faculty member at Art Workshop International in Assisi, Italy and the host of the Substack newsletter Book Pilgrim.