Jane Shlensky, a veteran teacher and musician, holds an MFA from UNC-Greensboro. She is the recipient of the 2023 Poet Laureate Award from NCPS, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart four times. Her recent poetry and fiction has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Pinesong, Kakalak, moonShine review, Nostos, and others. Her chapbook is Barefoot on Gravel.
Michael Gaspeny’s most recent books are Flight Manual: New and Selected Poems (Unicorn Press) and the novel A Postcard from the Delta. He has also publisheda novella in verse, The Tyranny of Questions, and two chapbooks. He has gained several Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. He won the Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize and the O. Henry Festival Short Story Competition. For hospice service in Greensboro, he received The Governor’s Award for Volunteer Excellence. A former reporter, he taught journalism and literature for nearly forty years, primarily at Bennett College and High Point University.
A faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Joseph Mills has published eight volumes of poetry with Press 53, most recently Bodies in Motion: Poems about Dance. His collection This Miraculous Turning was awarded the North Carolina Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry for its exploration of race and family. In 2019, he published his debut collection of fiction, Bleachers, which consists of fifty-four linked pieces that take place during a youth soccer game. More information about his work can be found at: www.josephrobertmills.com.