Plant People, An Anthology of Environmental Artists Vol. 5
Plant People, An Anthology of Environmental Artists Vol. 5 is a tender gathering of poetry, prose, art, and non-fiction honoring our plant relatives. Featuring writers, poets, and artists from around the world, this fifth volume continues the journey we began in 2020—remembering and reconnecting with the wisdom of plants, the ones who hold us through distance, change, and return. Rooted in memory, kinship, and deep listening, Plant People is both an offering and an invitation…to lean in, to remember, to be held.
Poetry | Prose | Photography | Art
Artist, media producer & lover of nature. Helen Fisher is the creator of 'We Are Carbon', an initiative that weaves together science, art & community in pursuit of reconnecting society with the extraordinary value of nature and our ability to regenerate.
Helen is on a mission to bring global regenerative knowledge into resources which connect local communities to one another, and support them in getting curious & creative as they unearth healing steps that they can take together in their place.
Madeline Male writes in a variety of poetic forms and prose genres. Her works can be found in print and online publications, including Writing from the Center, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and Poetry Soup’s anthology. Madeline also enjoys reading and photography. Much of the inspiration for her work comes from observing the natural world.
Shaquille Mendes, 33yrs old & a Father of 3. Starting writing as a teenager, picked up the pen due to my Grandmother. Majority of writings were for the one that I spent about half of my life with [14-32]. At the young age of 15, her and I became parents. High school graduate is highest level of education at the moment. Two oldest are both in High school: Senior & Sophomore along w/ a Kindergartener. Life’s been different the past few years. Not too many ups but a lot of downs. Currently going through the worst of it I hope. Pound it _ Twist it _ Lock it .
Hugh Findlay’s photography and writing have been published worldwide. Nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology in 2024 in photography, a Pushcart Prize in 2020 for poetry, and the Best Microfiction Anthology in 2024 for prose, he is in the third trimester of life and hopes y’all like his stuff.
IG: @hughmanfindlay
Fiona Hartmann is a writer living in Toronto, Canada. She is interested in creating thought-provoking fiction that creates emotional connections that transcend through the digital landscape of modernity. Find her published and forthcoming work in Kelp Journal, Shot Glass Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.
Christian Derek Aguilar is a fine artist that focuses on paper, embroidery, and mixed media. He has a bachelor’s in chemistry and studio art from the University of South Carolina. After college, he worked in the environmental industry quantitating volatile organic compounds in soil and water. Currently, he works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in preventive art conservation science with projects in environmental monitoring (light, temperature, humidity, particulates and vibration), materials testing, integrated pest management, and display case testing. Christian was born in the Philippines, raised in South Carolina, and currently resides in Manhattan, New York. Outside of work, his interests are in cooking, running and poetry. He seeks to bring all of these sensory experiences to his art practice.
Eli Germaine is an aspiring writer native to southern Florida. Her creative works have been published in Plants & Poetry Journal and Floating Acorn Review. She partakes in confessional and nature writing in both poetry and creative nonfiction genres, delving into these personal styles to help awaken the tenderness of our natural world while also providing a voice for herself and others who have experienced trauma and live a life of disability. Despite her limitations of chronic illness, she enjoys nature trails, sketching, scrapbooking, and writing on memorable encounters.
Jennifer Weigel is a multi-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist. Weigel utilizes a wide range of media to convey her ideas, including assemblage, drawing, fibers, installation, jewelry, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video and writing. Much of her work touches on themes of beauty, identity (especially gender identity), memory & forgetting, socio-political discourse, and institutional critique. Weigel’s art has been exhibited nationally in all 50 states and has won numerous awards. Visit https://jenniferweigelart.com/
Elizabeth Agre ran far away from city life and into the north woods of Minnesota. She brought along the husband and dog. She has never looked back. Now her days are spent writing, painting, and taking pictures of nature. She is truly living the life!
Lauren Suchenski has a difficult relationship with punctuation. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and four times for The Best of the Net. Her full-length collection “All You Can Measure” (2022) as well as a chapbook “Full of Ears and Eyes Am I” (2017) is available from Finishing Line Press. Another chapbook “All Atmosphere” is also available from Selcouth Station (2022).
More of her writing can be found on Instagram @lauren_suchenski or on Twitter @laurensuchenski.
Avril Shakira Villar is a writer and youth leader from the Philippines, presently taking up B.S. Physics. She is an alum of the international organization WriteGirl LA. Her poem was selected for the Editor's Pick Award for Summer 2025 by Words With Weight. She won first place in the Poetry Competition by Beloved Summer Zine. Her poems are featured in printed books of RCC Muse, Arcana Poetry Press, and Viridine Literary, alongside 21 poems, a song, and an essay published online in various international literary magazines.
Roger Camp is the author of three photography books including the award-winning Butterflies in Flight, Thames & Hudson, 2002. His documentary photography has been awarded the prestigious Leica Medal of Excellence and published in The New England Review, North American Review, Pank, and Orion Magazine. He is represented by the Robin Rice Gallery, New York.
Juanita Cox is am emerging writer who writes in all things short: micro memoir, poetry, and flash fiction. Her identity as a Black mom and her struggles with mental health frequently show up in her writing. She has been published by Tendrils, Sheila Na Gig, Better Than Starbucks, and others.
basil payne (they/them) is a queer poet-artist that can be found in Logan, Utah's trees. Their work can be found in Sugar House Review, Oyster River Pages, Sheepshead Review, Progenitor, and occasionally Utah State University's Projects Gallery.
Sally Mills graduated as an artist and followed a career devoted to nature conservation, she has has written/illustrated three publications: her debut memoir, Island to Island, and accompanying Photograph Collection, together with the production of illustrations for a children’s book, Boomy the Bittern. With drive and motivation to inspire people about nature, she has recently become captivated by the world of poetry. She has had children's poems published by the Dirigible Balloon and has recently had poems selected by The Toy and Little Thought Press magazines. Her poetry for adults is due to appear in four anthologies.
Visit somersetmacaw.com
Instagram: @somersetmacaw
Tara Menon is an Indian-American writer based in Lexington, Massachusetts. She is a two-time finalist for the Willow Run Poetry Book Award. Her latest poems have appeared in One ART: a journal of poetry, Blue Heron Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, ArLiJo, and Masque &Spectacle. Her most recent fiction is forthcoming in Fairy Tale Review.
Nicole Rain Sellers is a naturopath, pagan, and writer living on Awabakal country in NSW, Australia. Her work appears in Australian anthologies and journals including Plumwood Mountain, TEXT, and Cordite, and in international magazines including Heroic Fantasy Quarterly (USA), Spiral Nature (Canada), and Three Drops from a Cauldron (UK). Her poems have been awarded or listed in the Robyn Mathison, Alice Sinclair, Heroines Women’s Writing, and Newcastle Poetry Prizes. Nicole coauthored Fossilised Lightning (Girls on Key, 2021) and Cycles in Light (Ginninderra, 2023). This poem is from her forthcoming collection, Moon Island Spells, written alongside an MPhil thesis on contemporary Australian ecospiritual poetry.
Cryptid Parke is a writer, editor, and layout designer. Growing up in the Midwest instilled Cryptid with a fierce love of the strange and lonely, and they can now be found leaving ghosts of themself in every place that they visit. Their work has been featured or is forthcoming in Morning Star Literary, ScratchThat Magazine, and more; they can be found at cryptidparke.carrd.co.
Melba Morel is a Dominican-American poet and creator of Poetic Nectar Collective, where art and healing meet. Her debut book Unplanted Yet Flourishing explores infertility, grief, and nature as a mirror to the soul. Her poems have appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, Chimosa Zine, and Orange Blossom Review. Melba's work is rooted in tenderness, ancestry, and spiritual ecology.
Instagram: @poeticnectarcollective
Mernine Tevna Ameris is not a banded-hare wallaby. She is a 27 year old girl in Washington D.C who is also a teaching artist, speech and debate coach, writer, poet, author, nationally ranked public speaker, political digital strategist, and dedicated cat aunt. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been featured in Poets Reading the News, Vermillion, PCC Inscape, Hysterial Rag, Harpy Hybrid Review, Third Iris Zine, Brain Mill Press, and more! She hails from the great state of New Jersey, where her parents, sister, and two year old nephew live.
Richard Hauken is a writer shaped by resilience and reflection, living with schizoaffective disorder. His journey began in the quiet of hospitalization, where words became both anchor and expression. Over the past year, he has cultivated his voice, weaving together poetry and prose that explore spirit, memory, and imagination. Writing is no longer just a beginning for him, it is a practice of transformation and a path toward meaning. His debut collection, Petals of Haiku, was published through Archway Publishing.
Available for purchase here: https://www.archwaypublishing.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/868638-petals-of-haiku
Jerrice J Baptiste is a poet born in Haiti, and an author of nine books. Her most recent book Coral in the Diaspora is published by Abode Press (August 2024). Jerrice is well published in magazines and journals: Plants & Poetry Journal, Urthona: Buddhism & Art, Lolwe, Kosmos Journal, Artemis Journal, The Yale Review, Poetica Review, Mantis, Minetta Review, The Caribbean Writer, So Spoke The Earth: Anthology of Women Writers of Haitian Descent and numerous others. Her collaborative songwriting and poems are on the Grammy award nominated album: Many Hands Family Music for Haiti.
Contact ellaninabillie@gmail.com, visit www.guanabanabooks.com
Instagram: authenticpoetryjerrice.
Traben Pleasant is an anthropologist and Veteran from Southern California who now works at the Portland, Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs. He conducts research on aging, dementia, cannabis use, posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. He enjoys art, film, music, poetry, oceans, rivers, forests, jungles, and their inhabitants.
K.B. Silver uses the art of writing to support a healing journey, regain memories of a painful past, and move on to a healthier and happier future. They are a disabled member of the California LGBTQ+ community and are striving to write from a place of acceptance and love.
Dana Sonnenschein is the author of two prose poem collections, Corvus and No Angels but These, and two books of poetry Natural Forms, and Bear Country. Recent work has appeared in Earth’s Daughters, Feminist Studies, Naugatuck River Review, OPEN: JAL, Pirene’s Fountain, Split Rock Review, and Terrain.org’s Dear America anthology. You can find her as imagewitchery on Bluesky and Instagram, by name on Facebook, or occasionally in her office at Southern Connecticut State University, where she is a professor emerita.
Naomi Fonseka is a student of Environmental Studies and the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University—and the mother of 8 plants.
Rob Briwa (he/him) is a geographer, park ranger, and sometimes writer living alongside the patches of tallgrass prairie remaining in the eastern Great Plains. As a literary geographer, he is perennially interested in the intersections of creative literature and western places. He explores these relationships through practice, education, and immersion into place. Rob’s research appears in Literary Geographies, The Geography Teacher, and The Geographical Review, and his flash fiction and poetry appears in Montana Mouthful, New Mexico Review, and Dipity.
Susan Chertkow is a fine artist, wrtier, and poet who has been published in Funny Times and The Chicago Tribune, Defenestration, and Asinine Poetry. Two of her pieces have won first prize in The Review literary magazine. Her 5-starred novel, The Gnome and Mrs. Meyers, is available on Amazon.
Erik Peters is a father and avid mediaevalist from Vancouver, Canada. His writing is influenced by late antiquity, his family, and his students. Erik has been featured in Coffin Bell, Zoetic, Takahe, Beyond Literary Words, and Thirty West.
You can check out all Erik's work at erikpeters.ca.
Elisabeth Frischauf is a dedicated grandmother who lives with her husband, a playwright, on a small plot of land in Putnam County, New York. She writes and lovingly creates art, as well as bountiful gardens inspired by the strength and courage of the stalwart souls who came before her. A neuro-psychiatrist and poet, she grew up on the Upper West side of Manhattan. Two volumes of memoir poems, They Clasp My Hand, and The Lost Notebook are published in April, 2022 and 2025, bilingual, English/German book, Theodor Kramer Verlag, Vienna, Austria. She continually publishes in online journals and recently received a Poetry and Writing reading grant.
Darrell Spearman is a multidisciplinary artist from Brooklyn, NY, currently practicing writing and dance in New York City. In its own form, Darrell uses poetry as a way to comb through the experiences that simmer within the body, as a deep feeler, and to document the simpler aspects of life, the small things sometimes too small to see. He uses flora as a way to metaphorically confront and comfort difficult feelings, and as a way to honor the process of unraveling as a writer who also identifies as both Black and queer. He writes for joy and resilience, and would describe himself as an anthopile. Darrell also uses media to provide space for other artists to tell their own stories with his web series “A Little for The World,” where he tenderly expresses himself with other bipoc artists, as a way to shed, open their hearts like peonies in the sun, to breathe together, and to create freely.
He shares lots of his personal creative writing on his website: Darrellspearman.art, on Instagram: @written.withlove, and his podcast Underneath the Sunbeams—a podcast about creative dreams, identity, and other fun things.
Dr. Daniel W. Ross hails from Baltimore, Maryland, where he developed a love for poetry and creative writing at Gilman School and Goucher College. His poetry has been published by Washington Writers' Publishing House, Mouthful of Salt, and As You Were: The Military Review. He currently lives in North Carolina with his wife and daughters.
Mary Alice Dixon, multiple Pushcart nominee and award-winning poet, grew up in Carolina red dirt and Appalachian coal dust. She won the NC Writers Network Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize and is a past NC Poetry Society Poet Laureate Award finalist. Her writing is in Main Street Rag, Pinesong, storySouth and elsewhere. Mary Alice lives in Charlotte, NC where she has long been involved with hospice. She teaches grief writing workshops that focus on the healing power of poetry, nature rituals, and, always, homemade gingerbread cookies. Mary Alice grows sunflowers in cow manure. Find her at maryalicedixon.com.
Caridad Cole is a writer, filmmaker, and the editor of the speculative literary magazine, Moonday Mag. Along with Pushcart Prize and Best of BarBar nominations, her work has appeared in An Anthology of Rural Stories by Writers of Color 2024 (EastOver Press), The Garden-Variety Grimoire (The Word's Faire Press), and elsewhere online and in print. She can be found at caridadcole.com or @astrocari on Instagram.
Sara Schraufnagel is a poet living in Fort Collins, Colorado. Her work has appeared in Forum Magazine, Sonora Review, The Fourth River, Literary Mama, New Plains Review, Slipstream, among others.
Andrea Ferrari Kristeller is an Argentinean teacher, bilingual writer and naturalist. Her poems and short stories have been published by several different American, Canadian and British magazines. Her nouvelle “The Land Without You” in its Spanish version was published by the University of Misiones Press, and self-published as “The Land without You and Other Stories” on Amazon in 2023. She has recently won twice the Horacio Quiroga International short story contest, and her book was chosen to represent the province of Misiones in the Buenos Aires Book Fair 2024.
Gigi Marks is a poet in the unceded lands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫɁ people, in what is commonly known as Ithaca, New York. Her work includes four books of poetry with a focus on the care and attention of relationship to place and its inhabitants. She lives on a small farm with her family.
Amy Gordon's poems have appeared in Antiques Magazine, The Amsterdam Review, Ekphrastic Review, The Massachusetts Review, Pomegranate London, Slant; One Page Poetry (Honorable Mention finalist). She has published two chapbooks: Deep Fahrenheit (Prolific Press), The Yellow Room (Finishing Line Press), and Leaf Town is forthcoming with Slate Roof Press, winner of the 2023 Elyse Wolf Chapbook Prize. Amy Gordon lives in Western Massachusetts and directs kids in plays. www.amyagordon.com
Zixiang Zhang (he/him/his) has poems published or forthcoming in Hanging Loose, Cathexis Northwest, Consilience, Pedestal, The Nature of Our Times, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality, Magpie Zine, Sonora Review, and others. He holds an undergraduate degree in geology from Stanford University and masters degrees from UC Berkeley and the American Museum of Natural History. Once, he published research on brachiopod evolution in the journal Paleobiology. Now, he teaches Earth science at a small high school in NYC and enjoys dry gardening, erging, sunbathing, and sundry. He may be active @zzverse.
Sydney Kale is a Ph.D. student of Wisdom Studies at Ubiquity University, focusing on plant intelligence and phenomenology. Her plant-relationship practice culminates in an exploration of co-authorship with plants in both academic and creative works. These inquiries provide a lens to explore plantness, humanness, and aliveness through deep listening, attunement, and embodied knowing. She is the author of The Love Language of Plants, a collection of essays written with plants at her home in Asheville, North Carolina. She also publishes a blog sharing her curiosities about the felt experience of being a human and a plant in a creative forum.
Justin Evans was born and raised in Utah. He served in the army and then graduated from Southern Utah University and later the University of Nevada, Reno. He lives in rural Nevada with his wife and sons, where he teaches local high school. Justin’s seventh full-length book of poetry, Cenotaph, was released in March 2024 from Kelsay Books. His poems have recently appeared in weber: The Contemporary West, The Meadow, Wild Roof, and Collateral. Justin has received two Artist Fellowship Grants from the State of Nevada.
Editor and Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee Daril Bentley is the author of several honored books of poetry as well as the reference The Bentley Guide to Poets and Poetry in English. he has published poems widely in noted poetry journals in the U.S., Canada, UK, Ireland, and India and has been a Yale Series of Younger Poets Award semifinalist, a New Mexico Book Award for Poetry runner-up, and honorable mention recipient in the Writer’s Digest International Book Award for Self published poetry. He is founder of a poetry editorial service, a poetry reading series, and a poetry outreach program locally. He makes his home in Elmira, along the Chemung River in southern-central New York State.
Lindsey Beatrice is a writer, advocate, garden coach, and so much more. She's been writing poetry in her own style for nearly 5 years, and also freelances writing articles about sustainability and agriculture. Her goal in life is to help us heal our relationship to the Earth through art, inspiration, collective action, and creating gardens that give back to the land in reciprocity. Follow her on Substack (Lindsey Beatrice) or learn about her garden offerings on MeantToBea.com.
Allen Schaidle creates work that is deeply rooted in the landscapes and rhythms of rural America. Hailing from the Illinois countryside of Worth Township, Allen holds the banks of Blue Creek and the forests of Illinois close to his heart. Today, he finds a new sense of belonging in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas.
Aaron Lelito is a writer and editor from Buffalo, New York. His poetry chapbook, The Half Turn, was published in 2023, and he released a collaborative notebook/art collection titled If We: Connections Through Creative Process in 2024. His work has also appeared in Stonecoast Review, Barzakh, Eavesdrop Magazine, Thimble Lit Mag, Peach Mag, and Santa Fe Review. He is the Editor in Chief of Wild Roof Journal.
Instagram: @aaronlelito
Kathy Kuhns has had her poetry published in the Orchards Poetry Journal and the Friends of Silver Springs State Park newsletter. She is a native of Ocala, Florida and has been writing stories and poems influenced by the people and places she has grown up with since she was a child. She has an Associates Degree in Business from College of Central Florida. She helped to build the Cornerstone School in Ocala and worked for 21 years as the office manager of Robert Boissoneault Oncology Institute. Her experiences with both places have also influenced her writings. Spoken word has renewed her writing spirit and she feels connected to her fellow writers on their journeys together.
Christine Kouwenhoven lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where she works as the Grants Manager at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. She writes poetry and essays, and makes collages. Over the years, she's had pieces appear in a variety of shows and publications. She has an M.A. from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
Inge Snip is a journalist-turned fiction writer whose work centers around power, truth, and resistance. For over a decade, she investigated the dark undercurrents of politics, technology, and gender-based oppression by bringing to light the forces that shape our world but often remain unseen. From exposing how U.S.-based conservative groups funnel millions into anti-rights campaigns abroad to tracking transnational repression against women journalists, her reporting has always centered on the silenced, the targeted, and those pushing back. Amid rising disinformation, climate collapse, and the erosion of international law, she felt the limits of nonfiction. Facts alone were no longer enough to hold the weight of what she witnessed. Her shift to fiction isn’t a departure but a continuation. In a world where facts are manipulated, and truth feels fragmented, storytelling offers another way through. She is currently working on her debut novel, The Shadow Tribunal, which imagines a post-collapse world where a feminist underground delivers justice beyond the reach of failed systems.
Allisonn Church, author of Sunlight Leaking (Bottlecap Press, 2023), was born in a small rural community to a mother who pinned butterflies in glass cases and hid scarab beetles in her jewelry box. She earned her BA from Brandeis University, where she studied British Romance and Russian Futurism. Her work has been featured in The Hopper, Tiny Seed Journal, and Reverie Magazine, and other publications. She spends her free time reading, meditating, caring for animal companions, and finding stray poems hidden in tussocks of moss. Allisonn resides in Massachusetts with her husband and son.
Madiha Shawwal is an Ontario based poet, yoga teacher and photographer whose work is rooted in nature, creativity and connection. Through her work she explores themes of love, longing, and the sacredness of everyday life. She seeks to hold space for both personal truth and collective experience, offering her creative expression as a way of healing and remembering.
Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus and Editor Emeritus of the Southern Quarterly at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published seventeen collections of poems plus scholarly books on Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and contemporary dramatists. Many of his poetry books focus on the environment, civil rights, and theology. Delta Tears contains poems on the history, culture, and ecology of the Mississippi Delta; Departures includes poems on symbolic landscapes in America; and Americorona focuses on how COVID changed lifestyles, medicine, and the economy. He has also coedited three anthologies on eco poetry looking at the history, culture, and environmental impact of the Mississippi River; the influence of the moon on writers, painters, and medicine; and the ways Katrina and Rita left their mark on the American psyche.
Mernine Tevna Ameris is not a banded-hare wallaby. She is a 27 year old girl in Washington D.C who is also a teaching artist, speech and debate coach, writer, poet, author, nationally ranked public speaker, political digital strategist, and dedicated cat aunt. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been featured in Poets Reading the News, Vermillion, PCC Inscape, Hysterial Rag, Harpy Hybrid Review, Third Iris Zine, Brain Mill Press, and more! She hails from the great state of New Jersey, where her parents, sister, and two year old nephew live.
Kelsey Jones-Casey (she/her) lives in Duluth, Minnesota, a city on the shores of gichigami (Lake Superior). She spends most of her time mothering, collaboratively re-searching Indigenous dispossession and resurgence as a PhD candidate at Lakehead University, and delighting in the generosity of the Land and waters of northern Minnesota.
Lisa Morano is a Professor of Biology and Microbiology with a Ph.D. in Plant Ecology. She researches questions of how we can continue to feed the current and future people of the world without causing undue harm to the climate, soil or the ecosystems on which we all depend. She is a novice poet who loves reading and writing poetry in her free time. Nature and plants specifically play prominent roles in her poetry.
Dabu is an entrepreneur and emerging American poet with a great view of the Wasatch Mountains of Salt Lake City, Utah. He is currently an MFA candidate in the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University and a multi-year participant of the Poet Studio at the Portland, Oregon-based Attic Institute. His poetry is a view through brokenness, loss, and grief into the beauty of living. Among ruins and remains is the recognition of starting over. Dabu speaks to the core human dilemma, that to be fully human is to live inside the knowledge of impermanence, of the inevitable death of the body, a goodbye to all that we love and to that which we attach, while longing for what is eternal.
Torrey Francis Malek is an American poet from Greenville, Delaware of Persian descent. In 2023, he was a featured poet on the Shortlist for the Letter Review Prize for Poetry. His work has appeared in the Broadkill Review and Plants & Poetry Journal.
A lifelong lover of the written word, Julia Greenshaw alchemizes engaging fantasy worlds, world mythology and folklore, and complex characters into spellbinding stories and poems. She hails from the Green Mountains of Vermont and loves the magical, the macabre, and the anything-but-mundane. She has been previously published in The Tongue Is Sharp, an anthology of feminine rage, Canary Collective, and Flesh and Parchment. Her debut epic fantasy novel, Knave of Sands, releases September 30th, 2025.
Sarah Croscutt has spent much of her career working in the field of science and outdoor education. She is the owner and facilitator of From the Outside, a series of nature-based workshops designed to connect participants to the natural world with purpose and intent, deepening their relationship with nature and themselves. With a BS degree in Biology and a MS degree in Environmental Science, as well as a deep love for the outdoors, she has cultivated a rich, sacred relationship with the natural world that nurtures her inspiration and creativity. Through her unique perspective, she has created a series of essays, Lessons from Nature. Her work has been published in Plants and Poetry Journal, and Wild Roof Journal. She is also the creator and host of the podcast, From the Outside with Sarah C. You can connect with Sarah through her website, From the Outside, on Substack (@sarahcroscutt), and Instagram, @sarahc_outside.
Indee Watson is a 26-year-old writer from West Yorkshire with a deep passion for crafting poetry, short stories, and novels. Her poetry tends to be metaphorical, introspective, and environmentally themed, while her fiction often delves into darker, gothic territory. Her work has been featured in a range of publications, including Over Yonder (Greenteeth Press), York Literary Review, and Ergi Press, among others.
Devon Balwit walks in all weather. For more of her work, please visit: https://pelapdx.wixsite.com/devonbalwitpoet
Paul E Nelson founded of the Cascadia Poetics LAB in 1993 and the Cascadia Poetry Festival in 2012. A professional broadcaster from 1980 to 2006, he’s conducted over 700 interviews since 1993 and has published 5 books of poetry. He has also co-edited six anthologies, and two books of his transcribed interviews have been published. His first book, A Time Before Slaughter (2009), was shortlisted for the Stranger Genius Award in 2010, and he was given the Robin Blaser Award in 2014. He writes an American Sentence every day and lives with his wife Bhakti Watts in Seattle’s Rainier Beach neighborhood in the dəxʷwuqʷeb Creek/Cedar River watershed in the Cascadia bioregion. He serves as the Literary Executor for Sam Hamill.
Wendy Blaxland has published poetry in Australia, England, the United States and Norway in journals such as Meniscus, Griffel and Canary. She has also published over 110 books, mainly for children, both fiction and non-fiction, with publishers including Cambridge University Press, Penguin and Walker Books. She is also a playwright with over 25 plays produced. Wendy founded a family theatre company with her daughter to produce some of her historical plays. Wendy lives surrounded by bush near Sydney. Much of her poetry is inspired by the environment in which she lives. But she is a citizen of the world and is passionate about how poetry can vibrate the heartstrings of its people. Find out more at https://wendyblaxlandwriter.com/ or on Facebook at Wendy Blaxland writer.
Nana T. Baffour-Awuah is a Ghanaian writer currently based in New York. His writings have been published by Arcana Poetry Press, African Writer Magazine, HuffPost, The Good Men Project, New African, and others. He is currently working on his first novel.
Instagram: @whatnanawrote
Mernine Tevna Ameris is not a banded-hare wallaby. She is a 27 year old girl in Washington D.C who is also a teaching artist, speech and debate coach, writer, poet, author, nationally ranked public speaker, political digital strategist, and dedicated cat aunt. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been featured in Poets Reading the News, Vermillion, PCC Inscape, Hysterial Rag, Harpy Hybrid Review, Third Iris Zine, Brain Mill Press, and more! She hails from the great state of New Jersey, where her parents, sister, and two year old nephew live.
Isaiah Alexander is a twenty five year old Black, gay poet weaving memory, myth, and madness into verse. From his sanctuary in Houston, Texas, he writes from the in-between: where grief softens, love haunts, and poetry heals. His work explores the spaces between faith and doubt, masculinity and vulnerability, ruin and resurrection. Much of Isaiah’s writing is autobiographical, blending lived experience with lyrical imagination. His poems often deal with mental illness, generational trauma, addiction, and queer love. He believes poetry can be a vessel for confession, a ritual for catharsis, and a mirror for collective memory.
Instagram: @theebadwriter
Arshi Mortuza is a Bangladeshi poet and prose writer whose work is rooted in English. Raised across seven countries in three continents, her multicultural upbringing deeply shapes both her personal lens and the voices she channels in her writing. Her work often delves into themes of alienation, mental health, gender, and womanhood. She is the author of One Minute Past Midnight and is currently working on her second poetry collection, Pressed Flower, where confinement emerges as a central motif. She currently calls Toronto home.
Meghan Perry (She/her) is a full-time writer, editor, and published poet. She is a firm believer in the healing power of art and a hot cup of coffee. With a TBR pile that could rival a small mountain, there’s always a book tucked away in her tote bag. Her LinkedIn DMs are open for book recommendations, project requests, and Harry Potter trivia.
Tammy Higgins (She/her), is 59 years old, and her name of Tammy Higgins, born and raised in Northern New York and living in Southern Peterborough New Hampshire. She has MS, Diabetes2, and fibro, loves the outdoors, wildlife, writing, photography dining out, nature and gardening, gaming online, slow cookers, and learning to play my Washburn electric guitar listen to heavy metal and love cats and weed.
Traben Pleasant is an anthropologist and Veteran from Southern California who now works at the Portland, Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs. He conducts research on aging, dementia, cannabis use, posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. He enjoys art, film, music, poetry, oceans, rivers, forests, jungles, and their inhabitants.
