Semifinalists
Rachel Abramowitz of Santa Monica, California, The Birthday of the Dead
Rachel Abramowitz’s poems and reviews have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House Online, The Threepenny Review, Seneca Review, The Kenyon Review Online, Crazyhorse, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Oxford, and has taught English Literature at Barnard College in New York. She lives in California.
Amanda Auerbach of Silver Spring, Maryland, Ducks are for
Amanda Auerbach is a poet and literary critic, mostly of 18th and 19th-century British novels, an Assistant Professor of English at Catholic University in Washington D.C., poetry book reviewer, and Editorial Assistant for Tupelo Quarterly. Constantly toggling between things academic and creative, past and present, fiction and poetry.
Sean Cho A. of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Sonnet Studies
Sean Cho A. is the Associate and Social Media Editor for THRUSH Poetry Journal and an MFA candidate at the University of California Irvine. His work can be ignored or future-found in Salt Hill, The Portland Review, The Journal and elsewhere. Sean’s manuscript Not Bilingual was a finalist for the Write Bloody Publishing Poetry Prize.
https://www.thewillowherbreview.com/about-the-soul-sean-cho-a
Abigail Cloud of Bowling Green, Ohio, The Oracles’s Stenographer
Abigail Cloud’s collection Sylph was a winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize and published by Pleiades Press in 2014. Her work has appeared in journals such as The Gettysburg Review, American Poetry Review, and The Cincinnati Review. Cloud is editor-in-chief of Mid-American Review and teaches at Bowling Green State University.
Raphael Dagold of Morristown, New Jersey, Relief Effort
Raphael Dagold’s first book, Bastard Heart, was published in 2014 by Silverfish Review Press, and was a finalist for the Utah Book Award in Poetry. His poems and essays have won numerous awards, and have appeared in journals such as The Asheville Poetry Review, The American Literary Review, The Antioch Review and The North American Review. From 2016-2018, he was an Assistant Professor of Humanities and Creative Writing at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; he is now a member of the English faculty at the Morristown-Beard School in Morristown, New Jersey. In addition to his career writing and teaching, from 1995-2010 he was a self-employed maker of fine cabinets and furniture.
Fay Dillof of Berkeley, California, Crows & Swallows
Fay Dillof’s work has appeared in Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, New Ohio Review, Green Mountain Review, FIELD, Rattle, Barrow Street, Verse Daily, and in many other journals. She is a recipient of the Dogwood Literary Prize in Poetry, The Milton Kessler Memorial Prize for Poetry, and scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Fay keeps above her desk, a Marguerite Duras quote: “No matter what I say, I will never discover why I write, nor how others do not write.”
Ryler Dustin of Lansing, Michigan, Another Sky
Ryler Dustin is the author of the poetry collection Heavy Lead Birdsong from Write Bloody Publishing. A two-time member of the Seattle Slam Team, he has placed eighth in the Individual World Poetry Slam and headlined at spoken word venues across the U.S. His poems appear in outlets such as American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, Gulf Coast, and The Best of Iron Horse.
A native of Bellingham, Washington, he has received residencies from the Jack Kerouac Project of Orlando and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. He currently teaches English at Albion College in Michigan.
Patrick Errington of Edinburgh, Scotland, the swailing
Dr Patrick James Errington is a poet, translator, critic, and academic from the prairies of Alberta, Canada. His poems feature in magazines, journals, and anthologies around the world – including Poetry Review, Poetry International, The Cincinnati Review, Boston Review, The Iowa Review, Harvard Review, Best New Poets, Poets.org, Oxford Poetry, Copper Nickel, West Branch, CV2, Passages North, Diagram, Cider Press Review, and Horsethief – and have received numerous international prizes, including The National Poetry Competition, the Wigtown Poetry Competition, The London Magazine Poetry Competition, the Flambard International Prize, the McLellan Poetry Prize, the Plough Prize, and the 2020 Callan Gordon/Scottish New Writers Award. Patrick is the author of two chapbooks of poems, Glean (ignitionpress, 2018) and Field Studies (Clutag Press, 2019), and his French translation (with Laure Gall) of PJ Harvey and Seamus Murphey’s The Hollow of the Hand, entitled Au creux de la main, was released by Éditions l’Âge d’Homme in 2017.
A graduate of the University of Alberta (Bachelor of Arts, 2011) where he studied under the late Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, Patrick also holds an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in writing and literary translation from Columbia University (2015) and a PhD for his research in poetic theory and enactive hermeneutics from the University of St Andrews (2018).
Patrick is currently an Early Career Research and Teaching Fellow in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh. He also lectures on literature, literary theory, and creative writing at several other universities in Scotland, including Edinburgh Napier, the University of Dundee, and the University of St Andrews. He, along with Rosa Campbell, is editor-in-chief of the St Andrews-based, online literary magazine, The Scores.
Sara Fetherolf of Long Beach, California, Via Combusta
Sara Fetherolf (she/they) is a poet, essayist, storyteller, and librettist, whose work has recently appeared in Muzzle, Iron Horse, Indiana Review, The California Journal of Poetics and Plath Profiles, among others. She is the winner of an Academy of American Poets University Prize, and she was recently a finalist for prizes from Able Muse, Gulf Coast, Crab Creek and Radar Poetry. She holds an MFA degree from Hunter College, and is currently a PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at University of Southern California, where she is the poetry editor for Gold Line Press. She lives in Long Beach.
Jenny Grassl of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Deer Woman in the Dining Room
Jenny Grassl was raised in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various journals, including Radar Poetry, Clarion, LIT, Ocean State Review,and Rogue Agent.
K.D. Harryman of Los Angeles, California, Girls’ Book of Knots
K. D. Harryman’s work has appeared in Narrative, The Greensboro Review, Carolina Quarterly, Dogwood, Raleigh Review, Forklift, Alaska Quarterly, Verse Daily, North American Review and The Cortland Review among others. She is the recipient of the 2019 Rumi Prize sponsored by Arts & Letters and the2018 James Hearst Poetry Prize sponsored by North American Review. Her first book, Auto Mechanic’s Daughter, was selected by Chris Abani in 2007 for the Black Goat Poetry Series Imprint at Akashic Books in Brooklyn. She lives with her family in Los Angeles. Learn more at karenharryman.com. Follow her on Instagram @poetrybite.
Jasmine Khaliq of Brentwood, California, Somewhere Horses
Jasmine Khaliq is a Pakistani Mexican poet born and raised in Northern California. Her work is found or forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Black Warrior Review, The Pinch, Poet Lore, phoebe, The Boiler, Raleigh Review, and elsewhere. She holds a BA from San Francisco State University and an MFA from University of Washington, Seattle. A finalist for Diagram’s 2021 Chapbook Contest as well as both Tupelo Press’ 2021 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize and Snowbound Chapbook Award, she currently is a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, serves as Assistant Editor of Quarterly West, and reads for Split Lip Magazine.
Ae Hee Lee of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Asterism
Ae Hee Lee was born in the Republic of Korea, raised in Peru, and now resides in Wisconsin. She earned an MFA at the University of Notre Dame and is a PhD candidate in poetry at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she serves as associate editor for Cream City Review.
Saara Myrene Raappana of Marshall, Minnesota, Chamber After Chamber
Saara Myrene Raappana is author of the chapbooks Milk Tooth, Levee, Fever (Dancing Girl Press) and A Story of America Goes Walking (Shechem Press). Her poems have appeared in such publications as 32 Poems, Blackbird, cream city review, Harvard Review, Subtropics, The Gettysburg Review, and Verse Daily. She is a founding editor for Cellpoems, a poetry journal distributed via text message. Born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in southern China and as communications director for Motionpoems, a poetry film production organization. She currently teaches composition and kettlebells (separately) in southwestern Minnesota.
Reyes Ramirez of Houston, Texas, Answers Without Questions
Reyes Ramirez (he/him) is a Houstonian, writer, educator, curator, and organizer of Mexican and Salvadoran descent. Reyes won the 2019 YES Contemporary Art Writer’s Grant, 2017 Blue Mesa Review Nonfiction Contest, 2014 riverSedge Poetry Prize and has poems, stories, essays, and reviews in: Indiana Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, The Latinx Archive, december magazine, Arteinformado, Texas Review, TRACK//FOUR, Houston Noir, Gulf Coast Journal, The Acentos Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. He is a 2020 CantoMundo Fellow, 2021 Crosstown Arts Writer in Residence, and has been awarded grants from the Houston Arts Alliance, Poets & Writers, and The Warhol Foundation’s Idea Fund.
Martin Rock of Encinitas, California, Every Cloud is Power
Martin Rock is the author of Residuum (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2015) and the chapbook Dear Mark (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2013). With Kevin Prufer and Martha Collins, he co-edited an Unsung Masters volume on the work of the poet Catherine Breese Davis. His work appears in Colorado Review, Copper Nickel, AGNI, Best New Poets, Best American Experimental Writing, Black Warrior Review, Conduit, DIAGRAM, and other journals. A fellowship recipient from Starworks, the Port Townsend Writers Conference, and InPrint Houston, and the winner of the Donald Barthelme prize in Poetry, he holds an MFA from New York University and a PhD from the University of Houston. He serves on the board of the Unsung Masters book series and is a member of the Poetry Society of America’s Bay Area Advisory Board
Jeff Whitney of Portland, Oregon, Unconditional Endorsement of the Future
Jeff Whitney is the author of five chapbooks, two of which were co-written with Philip Schaefer. Recent poems can be found in Adroit, Passages North, Pleiades, Sycamore Review, and Tin House Online. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Nicholas Yingling of Martinez, California, The Fire Road
Nicholas Yingling’s work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in The Missouri Review, 32 Poems, Pleiades, Colorado Review, Nimrod, and others. He was a finalist for the Sunken Garden Chapbook Contest, longlisted for the Frontier Chapbook Contest and an honorable mention in the Chad Walsh Chapbook Series.
Charity Yoro of Hillsboro, Oregon, ten cent flower & other territories
Charity E. Yoro was born and raised on the east side of Oʻahu in Hawaiʻi, she now lives on the traditional territory of the Atfalati, Clatskanie, and Kalapuya (Hillsboro, Oregon) with her partner, daughter, and feisty feline guide named Rumi. Her poetry has received Pushcart Prize and Orison Anthology nominations and can be found in Frontier Poetry, PRISM international, Ruminate Magazine, Fourteen Hills, West Trestle Review, New York Times’ Modern Love, and others.