Marsha de la O’s latest book, Every Ravening Thing, (Pitt Poetry Series) came out in Spring 2019.  Her previous book, Antidote for Night, won the 2015 Isabella Gardner Award (BOA Editions).  Her first book, Black Hope, won the New Issues Press Poetry Prize.  De La O has published extensively in journals, including two recent poems in The New Yorker, as well as poems in the Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Barrow Street, Third Coast, and the North American Review. Together with Phil Taggart, she produces poetry events and has edited the literary journals Spillway and Askew.

Nancy-Jean Pément is from the Outaouais region in Québec. Elle écrit en anglais et en français. Her poems have appeared in ARC Poetry Magazine where her piece, PHL>YOW, was the Editor’s Choice for Poem of the Year, in Morning Glory, the Moorpark Review, Compass, and Askew among others. She has read as part of the Jackson Wheeler Poetry Series, at Poetry by the Sea in Malibu and elsewhere. More recently, her poem (in response to art by Kevin Sloan) Snowperson Wonders at What is Left of the World was exhibited at the California Museum of Art, Thousand Oaks. 

Conrad (Tim) Rummel is a life-time educator who began his teaching career as a high school English teacher in Chicago. Following five years teaching in the Upper Mid-west, he began graduate studies. After graduate school his career turned to school administration as a principal, assistant superintendent and superintendent in school districts in the Minneapolis/St. Paul suburban school districts. Professional development was a major focus of his leadership program. In 2002 he retired from school administration and turned his interest to teaching prospective teachers and administrators at CSU Channel Islands. Building relationships within and between communities is an integral part of his service. Music, visual art, and the literary arts are central to his life.

Mary Kay Rummel was Poet Laureate of Ventura County, CA from 2014-2016. Her ninth book of poetry, Nocturnes: Between Flesh and Stone, is being published by Blue Light Press in 2020. The Lifeline Trembles won the Blue Light Award. This Body She’s Entered won the New Rivers Press book award, Love in the End won a book award from Bright Hill Press. She also co-edited Psalms of Cinder & Silt, a community anthology of poems in response to Southern CA fires and mudslides, published by Solo Press. She moved to Ventura when she began teaching at CSU Channel Islands.

Phil Taggart has three collections of poetry.  His latest is Rick Sings. His other two are Opium Wars and an art book with artist Ann Harithas, Cowboy Collages. He has been a poetry editor for over twenty years. He worked on  Art Life limited edition, and with Marsha de la O, the Askew Poetry Journal and Spillway. Phil has run and supported poetry readings in Ventura County and Santa Barbara since 1991. He presently hosts a weekly poetry reading at the EP Foster Library in Ventura.