KAREN GEORGE is author of five chapbooks, most recently an ekphrastic collaborative chapbook, Frame and Mount the Sky (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and three poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), and Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021). Her work has appeared in Adirondack Review, Naugatuck River Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Indianapolis Review, Sheila-na-gig, Tipton Journal, and Poet Lore. She’s received grants from Kentucky Foundation for Women and Kentucky Arts Council, and holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University. After 25 years as a computer programmer/analyst, she retired to write full-time. She enjoys photography and visiting museums, cemeteries, historic towns, gardens, and bodies of water. Visit her website at: https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/.

JASON BALDINGER is a poet from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A former Writer in Residence at Osage Arts Community, he is co-founder and co-director of The Bridge Series. He has multiple books available including The Better Angels of our Nature (Kung Fu Treachery) and Everyone’s Alone Tonight (with James Benger, Kung Fu Treachery Press) as well as the chapbook Blind Into Leaving (Analog Submission Press). His work has been published widely in print journals and online. You can listen to him read his work on Bandcamp and on LPs by the bands Theremonster and The Gotobeds.

GILBERT NDAHAYO migrated to New York City in 2008 from Rwanda. His debut short film SCARS OF MY DAYS premiered on the French channel TV5 Monde and at the Tribeca Film Festival. Ndahayo was compelled to foray into the documentary filmmaking realm, after meeting his parents’ murderers. With the outbreak of the Rwandan genocide in his youth, his parents and fifty-three members of his immediate family were massacred. Ndahayo channeled his experiences into developing and producing several documentaries about the genocide he survived and is he is the first Rwandan to be nominated for the African Movie Academy Awards, fondly referred to as the “African Oscars.”

DAMON SMITH’s explorations into the sonic palette of the double bass have resulted in a personal, flexible improvisational language based in the American jazz avant-garde movement and European non-idiomatic free improvisation. He has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including: Cecil Taylor, Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra’s Arkestra), Henry Kaiser, Keith Rowe, Jaap Blonk, Roscoe Mitchell, Michael Pisaro, Wadada Leo Smith, Weasel Walter, Marco Eneidi, Wolfgang Fuchs, Peter Brötzmann, and Peter Kowald. Damon has run the record label Balance Point Acoustics since 2001, releasing music focusing on transatlantic collaborations between US and European musicians.