The 30/30 Project: Volunteer Poets

Marcia Black is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, practicing in Amherst, Massachusetts for the past 35-plus years. She works with trauma survivors and their loved ones, those who live in alternate realities, people whose lives have been shaped by medical illness, and whoever else finds their way to her door. 

Prior to her work as a psychologist, she was a journalist and theatre director.  She focused on how to help people tell, self-script and perform their own stories – how to render trauma into symbolic gesture and metaphor while remaining honestly tethered to lived experience. Her poems and essays have appeared in diverse journals including Sinister Wisdom, Common Lives/ Lesbian Lives, Future Cycle, Presence, Room.

Marcia wrote her first poem at age 10, when her teacher (shout out to Frank Lyman!) at Estabrook Elementary School in Lexington MA asked her class to write a poem called ‘Freedom,’ with the use of Onomatopoeia. Writing this poem – trying to find words to express how water flowing over a waterfall evoked freedom – was one of her first religious experiences. It was that moment when she decided to write poetry for the rest of her life. 

Suzzette Dawes has been living in South Florida now for over 10 years, spent some time in New Jersey and before that lived in South Florida. My childhood experience before South Florida was in Jamaica where I was born. The words began to become poems when I was fifteen and since then, I have a couple books that are available on Amazon.

​Janel Galnares is a poet, teacher, and editor from Tucson, Arizona. She graduated from San Diego State University in 2017 with her MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry and has since taught writing and poetry at the K-12 and college levels. She was awarded the Federico Moramarco Poetry International Prize for Teaching in 2017 and served as poetry judge for Sandscript in 2019. Her work and translations have appeared in Poetry International, ​Portable Gray, The Rumpus, Red Ogre Review, riverbabble, and others.​ She was a Poet-in-Residence for the Chicago Poetry Center (2023) and is Editor-in-Chief for Harpy Hybrid Review.

Ellen Ferguson has been a 30/30 poet three times. From the project, she has generated 2 chapbooks with Finishing Line Press, the second, Raccoon Latrine, due out in January 2025. Photo credit Adrianne Mathiowetz

Nik Chang Hoon 임창훈 is a transracial adoptee, nonfiction writer and poet. He is the winner of the 2024 Annie Dillard Prize for Creative Nonfiction, Runner-up to the 2024 Minnesota BIPOC Emerging Writer in Poetry award, and an alum of the Bread Loaf, Tin House & Kenyon Review writers workshops. Through all his artistic work, Nik aims to center the experiences of adoptees and their first (biological) families, normalize discussion of adoption as a form of personal and intergenerational trauma and advocate for equitable access to adoption-informed mental health care. In his past lives Nik has worked as a DEI practitioner, executive speechwriter, political communications director, writing center instructor and Korean high school English teacher. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife Hyein and their spoiled golden doodle, Penny. You can learn more at nikchanghoon.com or find him on Instagram (@nikchanghoon) and Blusky  (@nikchanghoon.bsky.social).

In late November 2024, Mattie Quesenberry Smith defended her dissertation and earned a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Winter, 2024). She also holds an M.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing and a double major in Biology and English Literature from Hollins University. She teaches first-year writing and rhetoric at Virginia Military Institute (VMI). There, she integrates STEM topics into her writing and rhetoric courses and researches the impacts of critical reflective writing within integrative technology and engineering design-based teaching and learning. She also writes screenplays, articles, reviews, poems, and short stories; organizes communities for writers across educational and professional levels; and possesses a creative, energetic vision for academic research, community service, and creative writing held in balance. In late November, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin selected Smith as the Poet Laureate of Virginia, and she will serve in this role through June 2026. Smith is excited to kick off her appointment writing a poem a day throughout December 2024 to raise funds as a participant in Tupelo Press’s 30/30 Project.

Rebecca Brenner’s work has been featured in Time, the LA Times, Mutha Magazine, Tin House, The Rumpus, and Variant Literature. She is the co-founder of the non-profit Mindful. Summit County, which moves mindfulness beyond self-care into community care. I am an elected member of the Leadership Team of the Park City LGBTQ+ Taskforce, working closely with city, county, and state leaders to ensure equality and safety for the Queer Community. I live in Park City, with my daughter, nonbinary kiddo, and wild cattle pup. We love exploring the trails and surrounding lakes together, and I write essays, poetry, and fiction while they sleep.

Arlene Demaris is a freelance writer, poet, gardener and sometimes musician (fiddle, accordion) living in Avon, Connecticut with her husband, Michael, and elderly cat, Pearl. She grew up in North Plainfield, New Jersey, and attended Nasson College in Springvale, Maine, where she started writing poetry in earnest. After graduating with my B.A. in English, life took other turns and I set poetry aside for marriage and career. In the last few years I have returned to poetry, and in January 2024, at the age of 70, I graduated from the Bennington Writing Seminars at Bennington College, with an MFA in Writing and Literature.

My poems have been published in Naugatuck River Review, Rust & Moth, Tupelo Quarterly, Connecticut River Review and Door Is A Jar. I have received two awards – a 2023 Nutmeg Award in Poetry (third place) and a 2024 Connecticut Poetry Award (first place) – both from the Connecticut Poetry Society. I’ve spent the months following graduation putting my first book together, writing new work, and sending poems out for publication – when I’m not (still) hitting deadlines for my freelance clients.

TaShira Iverson is a multifaceted artist from Richmond, Virginia whose poems span from topics of in

tergenerational trauma, slam poetry like styles, and meditations on life’s journey. She works with children and adults in community mental health and works her own poetry night, Poetry Pregame every Friday on Instagram Live.

Phaye Poliakoff-Chen directs a community arts and writing partnership at Earl’s Place, a transitional housing facility for homeless men in downtown Baltimore. Her collection of short fiction, The Art of Work, was published by Booktrope, an independent press in Seattle. For the last 16 years, Phaye taught professional and creative writing at Goucher College in Baltimore, where she introduced and directed the Major in Professional and Creative Writing. While at Goucher College, she also directed the Individualized Interdisciplinary Major, encouraging students to explore concepts across disciplines and thereby gain agency over their own educations.

Mark Simpson farms a few acres on Whidbey Island, Washington, raising what the climate and land allow. He has a Ph.D. but has never used it for the thing a Ph.D. is typically used for, although he feels it has informed his life in a way he can’t quite put his finger on. Recent work has appeared in Sleet (Pushcart Prize nominee), Broad River Review (Rash Award Finalist), Backchannels Review, Third Wednesday, Tusculum Review, Flyway, and Cold Mountain Review. He is the author of “The Quieting” (2023, Pine Row Press) and the chapbook “Fat Chance” (2013, Finishing Line Press).

Margaret Thiele is older, queer and understands what Audre Lorde meant when she said “two women sleeping together have more than their sleep to defend” As a mother, social worker, partner and friend they have called on this courage to advocate for civil rights, and to create images, and experiences of justice and compassion. Her dog loves to walk her in the Pacific Northwest.