Poets

   Diana Tokaji  is a performance artist (London, SF, and Capital Fringe Festival award-winner) and the author of two books: SIX WOMEN IN A CELL, winner of the Best Indie Book Award for Nonfiction, 2021; and SURVIVING ASSAULT – Words that Rock & Quiet & Tell the Truth. (Next Generation Indie Book Finalist).

 

Awarded the Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Prize judged by Richard Blanco in 2020, her essays and poems are found in The Quarry, Bellevue Literary Review, Tiferet, Author, The New Guard (2019 poetry finalist), Solstice Literary Magazine (2022 essay finalist), Bourgeon Literary, The Mid-Atlantic Review, Frontier Poetry (2024 tanka award-winner), and in parenting rags, humor anthologies, feminist presses, and a bus in Virginia that displays her 2023 winning poem. 

 

Forthcoming are her collections: “BOOK OF ESSAYS BEFORE I DIE,” and “SPOKE: Poems of Squid, Cellmates, Love.” 

 

Diana is a Certified Yoga Therapist supporting female survivors of assault and trauma. She values the accessibility and beauty of the Origami Micro-chapbooks more than ever at this time. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

 

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   Mark Schardine is a New Jersey resident with a lifelong love of poetry, and the many pleasures it offers us. He believes that each of us is an heir to the remarkably beautiful tradition of poetry that previous generations have bequeathed to us, and which offers us insight for new paths to creativity.

  

 

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   Melissa Joplin Higley is the author of First Father (Bottlecap Press). Her poems appear in B_O_D_Y, Feral, Rogue Agent, Sleet Magazine, Whale Road Review, Writer’s Digest, and elsewhere. Melissa holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, co-facilitates the Poetry Craft Collective, co-edits Book Reviews for MER, and serves as the 2024-2026 Town of Mamaroneck Author Laureate. melissajoplinhigley.com

 

Facebook: Melissa Joplin Higley
Instagram: @mjhigleypoet
Twitter/X: @melissajhigley 

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Mary Capobianco is a former English teacher who now truly understands how difficult writing can be. Her focus is poetry, especially thoughts about the natural world.

 

 

 

 

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    Sam Calhoun is a writer and photographer living in Elkmont, AL. The author of two chapbooks “Apogee” (Origami Poetry Project), “Follow This Creek” (Foothills Publishing), and a collaborative work “The Hemlock Poems” (Present Tense Media), part of the Conservation Through Art: Saving Alabama's Hemlock program and exhibit. His poems have appeared in Pregnant Moon Review, Westward Quarterly, Eratos, Boats Against the Current, and other journals.

 

Follow him on Instagram @weatherman_sam, or his website, www.weathermansam.com. 

 

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   Diane DeSloover is is a retired elementary teacher pursuing her latest passions of personal historian, proclaimer of gratitude, poet and, best of all, grandma. Diane has lived in Juneau, Alaska for forty-five years where the glory of nature awaits just outside her door. She has published her poems in various Alaska publications.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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   Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had about 500 stories and poems published so far, and ten books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories where he manages a posse of seven review editors, and as lead editor at 'Scribes Micro'.

 

 

  

 

 

  

 

   Karen O'Leary is a freelance writer from West Fargo, ND. She has published poetry, short stories, and articles in a variety of venues including, Hedgerow, Haikuniverse, Frogpond, Setu, Tipton Poetry Journal, NeverEnding Story and Quill & Parchment. Karen edited an international online journal called Whispers http://whispersinthewind333.blogspot.com/ for 5 ½ years. She enjoys sharing the gift of words.

 

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