The 30/30 Project: Volunteer Poets

David Burrows began writing poetry during college in the classes of poet Susan Ludvigson in South Carolina. He’s written several musical plays for children which were presented in Unitarian Churches in Colorado and around the country. He was recognized for lyrics and music in Silliman Anthem Competitions in 2014 and 2018. He wrote the lyrics and melodies for the “Ruach Song Cycle,” for choir and chamber orchestra, performed in Colorado in 2021. He was the Artistic Director of the Smithtonians Handbell Ensemble in Littleton, CO from 2019 to 2024. Several of his poems were set to music by composer Wally Kleuker in “Journeys,” a Cantata for choir and handbells. He has degrees in Music, Religion/Philosophy, and a license in Massage Therapy. He played flute, harp and sang at the bedside of the sick for two decades up until the pandemic. He resides in Washington D.C.

Miriam Calleja is an award-winning Maltese bilingual freelance poet, nonfiction/fiction writer, workshop leader, and translator. She is the author of three poetry collections, two chapbooks, and several collaborative works. Her poetry has been published in anthologies and in translation worldwide. She has recently been Highly Commended for a translated poem by the Stephen Spender Trust. Her latest chapbook is titled Come Closer, I Don’t Mind the Silence (BottleCap Press, 2023). Her essays and poems have appeared in platform review, Odyssey, Taos Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Modern Poetry in Translation, humana obscura, and elsewhere. Miriam lives in Birmingham, Alabama. This will be her third Tupelo 30/30 challenge. Read more on miriamcalleja.com.

Cathy Socarras Ferrell is a poet, writer, and educator of Cuban-French-Irish heritage. The granddaughter of immigrants, she finds inspiration in family story-telling, walking (anywhere), and the Sandhill cranes in her yard. Cathy enjoys playing with form, space, and the sounds of language. Her work can be found at Making Waves, Santa Clara Review, Novus Literary Arts Journal, Compulsive Reader, and other literary journals, as well as the scholarly collection, Shakespeare and Latinidad, edited by Trevor Boffone and Carla Della Gotta. She is an alumna of Tupelo Press’ 30/30 Project, October 2022 and 2023 cohorts.

Dralandra Larkins is an award-winning spoken word poet, teaching artist, editor and recipient of the MN State Arts Boards grant. She has performed for the NAACP, Button Poetry, Black Authors Expo, MN State Capitol, and the Mill City Museum. Her performances weave together words, rhythm, and intimacy to create a haven for healing, advocacy, and self-discovery. She is the co-editor of Cracked Walnut’s anthology Rewilding Hope, and Cabello-Hansel’s The Nations Underground: Writing With Our Ancestors. She has taught youth and adult poetry classes at The Loft, Hennepin County, and the U of MN Urban Research and Outreach Center. She’s a MN Book Award judge for poetry and a Program Assistant for the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library where she coordinates author readings for Club Book, Moving Words, and Fireside Reading series. Her poetic audiobook will be published in 2025. To follow the release of her book, visit www.dralandrawrites.com

Clyde Long is a prior participant in five past 30/30 months. He has been writing poetry since 2015. Now writing in Napa Valley’s Calistoga, infused with fresh beauty and inspiration.

Taylor Mallay is a proud Michigander who enjoys tinkering away with poems here and there. Her work has previously appeared in Chestnut Review, ONE ART, and West Trade Review, among other publications.

Cecille Marcato is a poet and cartoonist in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared or is upcoming in Leon Literary Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, counterclaim, Solstice, Slipstream, Free State Review, Husk, and Sweet: A Literary Confection. She holds degrees in literature and design and graduated from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

Lizzy Ke Polishan’s recent poems appear in Gulf Coast, The Greensboro Review, The Notre Dame Review, Gigantic Sequins, The Shore, RHINO, and The Penn Review, among many others. She is the author of the poetry collection A Little Book of Blooms (2020), a poetry reader for Psaltery & Lyre, and a Guest Editor at Palette. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband.

Khamil Riley is a 24 year old Jamaican-American poet, storyteller, performer, and visual artist. As an experimental and fervent writer of poetry, fiction, and prose, as well as an avid dreamer from the ripe age of birth, Riley’s work aims to communicate all that can be honest and true about the human experience. Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, California, she prides herself on her connection to and activism for her community. Author of two independent chapbooks and currently working on her debut self-published poetry collection, Riley can be found anywhere spilling into the pages of her journal or plotting her next adventure. Sometimes both at the same time!

Gordon Taylor (he/him) is a queer emerging poet who walks an ever-swaying wire of technology and health care. A 2022 Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Narrative, Rattle Poet’s Respond, Nimrod, Arc, and CV2. Gordon was the winner of the 2022 Toronto Arts & Letters Club Foundation Poetry Award. He writes to invite people into a world they may not have seen.

Meca’Ayo (Tameca L Coleman) is a queer poetry-centric multi-genre writer, singer and photography-centric artist who currently lives in Denver Colorado. Their writing and photography have been featured in literary magazines, art exhibits, journals, anthologies, and other venues and publications.

Meca’Ayo received their MFA in poetry and fiction from the Mile-High MFA at Regis University in 2018. Their work focuses on being in-between things (in queerness, race, neurodivergence, and even astrological cusp!), finding beauty, documentation of self and surrounding landscapes, healing, and ever moving towards positive change.

Their first book, an identity polyptych, a multi-part, multi-genre work that explores familial estrangement, identity as a mixed-race Black person, and movement towards reconciliation, debuted from The Elephants on the Salish Sea Fall 2021.

Many of Meca’Ayo’s projects are collaborative works which combine community words and images in various settings. They are also a zine-maker who combines their own words, community words, and images. In many of their works, whether they be musical, image, or words, they use improvisation and experimentation, utilizing what is on hand to create something new (like rehashed poems and images for poetry postcards and zines, or shuffled questions and photographs for a

community collaborative poetry exhibit).

Meca’Ayo started snapping images with their cellphone many years ago as a way to keep track of themselves, and to create their own collection of images that felt better to use in publications and projects than anything else that was available through stock photos. They are often found snapping photos of plant matter, light reflections, and interesting lines/shapes from the sidewalk. This practice has become a series of poetry postcards and prints that have been sent around the world and have been exhibited publicly.

Christina Daub is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet whose work can be found in several literary journals including The Connecticut Review, The Cortland Review, Kenyon Review, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, PoetryXHunger and others. She also translates poetry from Spanish and German into English. Her own work has been translated into Russian, Italian and German.
She has taught poetry and creative writing at various schools in the DC area, including George Washington University and in several schools belonging to the Maryland and Virginia poets-in-the-schools programs. She led poetry workshops for many years at The Writer’s Center, and was Editor in Chief of The Plum Review which she co-founded along with its reading series and annual retreats. You can find her at christinadaub.com and on X @flix2fly.

Clint Frakes is a poet, writer, teacher, and naturalist living in Sedona, AZ. His poems, prose and non-fiction have appeared in over 150 journals, magazines and anthologies in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and Argentina since 1988. He was named one of the 50 Best New Poets of 2008 (Meridian Press) and received the Josephine Darner Distinguished Poet Prize (2008). Other awards include the James Vaughan Poetry Prize (2006), The Pudding House Chapbook Prize (2008) and the Peggy Ferris Memorial Prize for Poetry (2006). He is the former Chief Editor of Hawaii Review and Big Rain. Frakes is a graduate of the Naropa Institute writing program (1989) and received his MA with emphasis in creative writing from Northern Arizona University (1994). Clint received his Ph.D. with emphasis in creative writing from the University of Hawaii (2005). His most recent book of poetry, The Aching Unrest of Spheres, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2024

Francis Judilla is a writer, poet, and composer based in Idaho. In 2019, he received his Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies from Boise State University. He is currently working on his first fiction novel.

Deborah Kelly  was raised in Minneapolis, a fourth generation on Positively 4th St.. She lived many years in Chicago and is home in Colorado. Her poems are found in journals based in the US, Canada, and Europe. A graduate of Northwestern University, Deborah has worked, lead, and written widely on behalf of non-profit organizations in the US and Mexico.

Rachel Cualedare lives in the Philadelphia area, where she works in college student support. She has a Ph.D. in Japanese Literature from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.F.A in Poetry from Washington University. She has been a Poet in Residence at the Pajama Factory.

Corinne Walsh is a poet in progress. She earned a Pushcart Prize nomination for short fiction in 2006, then stopped writing to raise her family. Covid-19 brought writing back into her life. Her first chapbook, THE BOOK OF LU (March 2022), was a collaborative effort with photographer Luanne Underhill. Her poetic dialogue about love and loss, and the irrepressible connections to the natural world has continued with BUILT TO FLY (a flipbook of poetry 2023) and BLUE AT SUNRISE (folio 2024). Walsh also collected The Tomahawk Creek Review’s 2023 summer poetry prize, as well as placing 2nd in the Westmoreland Arts and Heritage Festival’s summer 2023 poetry competition. Her poems have also appeared in “Acropolis Journal,” Creosote,” and “eunoia review.” She is most at home near the ocean, and enjoys rowing and exploring lighthouses. Slainte, all.

Scott Williamson is a tenor, conductor, director, educator, and performing artist. The Times of London called his Shakespeare’s Globe debut “brilliant.” As Artistic Director of Opera Roanoke he created the company’s Young Artist Program. Guest Curator in Music at the Taubman Museum of Art since 2011, Scott founded the interdisciplinary ensemble, Collective Euphonia in 2019. He was a Fulbright Teaching Scholar at West University in Romania, and lives in Roanoke, VA. A past participant in Tupelo’s “30/30 Project,” Scott’s work has also been published by Atlanta Review, and among others, the Cera Anthology.

Ayelet Amittay is a poet and psychiatric nurse practitioner in Eugene, Oregon. her first book, The Eating Knife, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 2025. Her poems appear in Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Rattle, and others.

Patricia Clark is the author of six volumes of poetry, including Sunday Rising, The Canopy and most recently Self Portrait with a Million Dollars. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Gettysburg Review, Poetry, and Slate, among others. Patricia’s awards include a Creative Artist Grant in Michigan, the Mississippi Review Prize, the Gwendolyn Brooks Prize, and co-winner of the Lucille Medwick Prize from the Poetry Society of America. She also received the 2018 Book of the Year Award from Poetry Society of Virginia for The Canopy. Patricia was Professor in the Department of Writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan where she was also the university’s poet-in-residence. In addition, she was poet laureate of Grand Rapids from 2005-2007.

When not teaching at the Community College of Denver, Brian Dickson avoids driving to connect with the quotidian around him, hang and shoot hoops. He is also an associate editor of New Feathers Anthology. Past publications include two chapbooks, In a Heart’s Rut (HighFive press), Maybe This is How Tides Work (Finishing Line Press), and one book, All Points Radiant (WordTech, Cherry Grove Editions) and various journals, most recently Progenitor. His forthcoming chapbook, A Child’s Sketch of the Afterlife, is expected to arrive in 2025 from Finishing Line Press.

Sara Dudo is an adjunct professor of writing and a recent MFA graduate from University of Nevada Las Vegas. Sara is a Pushcart Prize nominee, “Best of the Net” nominee, and recent nominatee for the Best New Poets anthology. She is an alumni of the 30/30 Project, having participated in August 2023. Her work has recently been published in The Atlanta Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Idaho Review, The Portland Review, The Oakland Review, Southwest Review, and Red Rock Review, and she has poems forthcoming in the Minnesota Review and the Iowa Review.

Molly Donahue is a musician (moniker Metal Alvin), artist and recently resurrected poet from the Northwestern shores of Michigan.

Logan Garner is a Hoosier poet living on Oregon’s north coast. A writer of nature and place, his poetry is often informed by the land and its more-than-human citizens. Winner of the 2023 Neahkahnie Mountain Poetry Prize, Logan’s work can be found in the Elevation Review, Flying Island, the Salal Review, Orca Literary Journal and others. His first collection “Here, in the Floodplain” was published by Plan B Press in 2023. You can find him online at www.logangarnerpoetry.com or under his Instagram handle @logangarnerpoetry

Amelia K. lives in Georgia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dirt, Lyrics as Poetry, Skylight 47, and others. She has been shortlisted by The IHRAF and won Best of the Net (Nonfiction, 2024). Her website is bio.site/ameliak.