A.H. Reaume is a Vancouver-based fiction writer who reads too much and is currently in too many book clubs (four in total). Reaume has a background in feminist activism and an M.A. in Canadian Literature from UBC. She's been published in the Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, USAToday.com, and Time.com and is currently trying to finish her first novel.

 

Alisha Vasquez is a 5th generation Tucsonense. A trained historian and the first in her family to attend college, she's filled with historical tidbits that represent decolonial uncoverings about her hometown. She has been active in many struggles for justice, from abolition to stopping border militarization, was the co-director of the Pima Community College Border Culture Program, and taught at the Earlham College Border Studies Program. Currently, she works for the Southwest Folklife Alliance and is taking time off teaching to care for her 2-year-old, Athena, while unlearning superkrip, neoliberal expectations and incorporating disability justice in her day to day.

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Anissa Lynne Johnson is a disabled writer and speaker from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in The Daily Drunk, Press Pause, Wig-Wag, and elsewhere. More often than not, Anissa can be found walking in the woods or watching the sort of movies that *sigh* never win awards. Say hello on Twitter @anissaljohnson.

 

Annick Yerem lives and works in Berlin. She tweets @missyerem and has, to her utmost delight, been published by Pendemic, Detritus, @publicpoetry, RiverMouthReview, #PoetRhy, Anti-Heroin-Chic, Rejection Letters, Dreich, 192, Eat The Storms podcast, The Failure Baler, Rainbow Poems, Wombwell Rainbow and Open Collab. https://missyerem.wordpress.com. https://linktr.ee/annickyerem Annick is currently working on her first chapbook with Hedgehog Press.

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Brian Koukol, raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, now makes his home among the salt breezes and open spaces of California's Central Coast. A lifelong battle with muscular dystrophy has informed the majority of his work, which is written with the aid of voice recognition software out of necessity. His words have appeared in such varied places as Wordgathering, Speculative North, and The Baltimore Review, and can also be found in his recently published collection, Handicapsules: Short Stories of Speculative Crip Lit. Author website: www.briankoukol.com, Twitter: @BrianKoukol

 

Cali Linfor (she/her/hers) is a lecturer, activist, poet and essayist living in the land of the Kumeyaay. A mother and a widow. A queer all-purpose nerd. She has published work in Wordgathering, The Beloit Poetry Review, Breath and Shadow, Molly House, Ekphrasis, and others. Cali’'s triple-threat disabilities of Duane’s Radial Ray Syndrome, complex PTSD and dyslexia influence her writing. Her first book, A Book of Ugly Things, appears in Lantern Tree: Four Books of Poems. Currently, Cali is completing a second book of poetry entitled I, Animal. She has an MFA from San Diego State University in Poetry.

 

Carol Dorf's poetry appears in "Shofar," "Bodega," "E-ratio," "Great Weather For Media," "About Place," "Glint," "Slipstream," "The Mom Egg," "Sin Fronteras," "Surreal Poetics," "The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics," "Scientific American," and "Maintenant." She is founding poetry editor of Talking Writing and teaches math in Berkeley. She is interested in the intersections between poetry, disability, science and parenting.

 

Charlie D’Aniello (he/they) is a Latinx, trans/queer, neurodivergent author, who often writes about the experience of being ‘other’. They are published or forthcoming in Sledgehammer Lit, HOLYFLEA!, Querencia, Tealight Press, Poetically Magazine, journal of erato, and others. They are EIC at warning lines mag. Their novel, “The One and the Other” is out now. Twitter: @beelzebadger / @warninglines.

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Daniel Simpson's School for the Blind came out in 2014. In 2017, he and his wife, Ona Gritz, co-authored Border Songs: A Conversation in Poems and co-edited More Challenges for the Delusional, an anthology of prose, poetry, and writing prompts. His work has been anthologized in Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest, About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times, and Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, and has appeared in numerous journals. The recipient of a Fellowship in Literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, he tends a blog, Inside the Invisible, which can be found at https://insidetheinvisible.wordpress.com.

 

Diane R. Wiener is the author of the poetry collection, The Golem Verses, and the poetry chapbook, Flashes & Specks. Her poems also appear in Nine Mile, Wordgathering, Tammy, Queerly, The South Carolina Review, Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest, and elsewhere. Diane’s creative nonfiction appears in Stone Canoe, Mollyhouse, and The Abstract Elephant Magazine. Her flash fiction appears in Ordinary Madness; short fiction is forthcoming in A Coup of Owls. Diane is Editor-in-Chief of Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature and Assistant Editor of Nine Mile Literary Magazine. Website: https://dianerwiener.com/. Twitter: @DianeWorms. IG: @fuzztux. Diane’s poems in this Kalonopia anthology honor and celebrate Marvin Bell’s Dead Man poems.

 

Erin Lynn Marsh is a poet living and working in Bemidji, MN. She is the author of Disability Isn’t Sexy (Jules Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2019), which was nominated for a 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. Her work has appeared in Post Road Magazine, Sugar House Review, Paper Darts, Emrys Journal, wordgathering.com, and the anthology Hers: Poets Speak (while we still can), Vol. 2 (Beatlick Press and Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2017), edited by Jules Nyquist. She was a 2019/2020 Region 2 Arts Council Artist Fellow and was previously awarded two Individual Artist Grants. You can find her online at erinlynnmarsh.com.

 

Gayle J. Greenlea is an American-Australian poet and counselor for survivors of sexual and gender-related violence. Her poem, “Wonderland”, received the Australian Poetry Prod Award in 2011. She was shortlisted and longlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize in 2013, and debuted her first novel, Zero Gravity, at the KGB Literary Bar in Manhattan in 2016. Her work has been published in Fevers of the Mind, Headline Poetry and Press, Rebelle Society, The Wombwell Rainbow, St. Julian Press, A Time to Speak, and The Australian Health Review.

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Kristine Nilsen Oma has worked professionally as a dancer, choreographer and teacher for over 23 years in Norway and internationally in several productions. Oma’s dance education is from the Ballet academy in Gothenburg, the Laban Centre in England and a postgraduate degree in choreography from Victorian College of the Arts in Australia. Since 2010, Oma has been severely ill with ME/CFS and focuses on developing art by doing a writers course and finished a 3 year net-based writers course at The Writers Studio.

 

Lana Phillips is a new poet who has been having fun studying with POETS during the pandemic. She lives with spina bifida and hydrocephalus. Her dog Callie and cat Wilson are her faithful companions.

 

Lucy Whitehead writes haiku and free verse. Her work has been published in Amethyst Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Barren Magazine, Black Bough Poetry, Broken Spine Artist Collective, Burning House Press, Clover and White Literary Magazine, Collective Unrest, Cypress Press, Electric Moon Magazine, Ghost City Review, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Mookychick Magazine, 3 Moon Magazine, Neon Mariposa Magazine, Parentheses Journal, Pink Plastic House, Pussy Magic, Re-side, and Twist in Time Literary Magazine and in numerous international haiku journals and anthologies. You can find her on Twitter @blueirispoetry.

 

Michelle Steiner has a Learning Disability but has not let that stop her from being successful. She has had disability articles published on The Mighty, The Reluctant Spoonie, Dyscalculia Blog, The Non Verbal Learning Project and Imagine the World as One magazine. She has had photographs published in Word Gathering and Independent and Work Ready. She works as a paraeducator for students with disabilities in a school. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two cats.

 

Nancy Scott is the author of 14 volumes of fiction and poetry. She had been managing editor of U.S. 1 Worksheets for more than 16 years. As a caseworker for the State of New Jersey for 18 years she assisted many disabled people to find housing in the community. She now is disabled herself. More information at www.nancyscott.net

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Ona Gritz's books include the poetry collections, Geode, a finalist for the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, and Border Songs: A Conversation in Poems, written with her husband Daniel Simpson. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Catamaran Literary Reader, The Bellevue Literary Review, Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, and elsewhere. She and Daniel served as poetry editors for Referential Magazine and co-edited More Challenges For the Delusional, a writing guide and anthology featuring prompts by Peter Murphy. Ona is also a children's author and essayist. Her nonfiction is listed among Notables in Best American Essays and Best Life Stories in Salon.

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Paula Knight is an author, former illustrator and comics creator. An extract of her graphic memoir, The Facts of Life (Myriad 2017), was shortlisted in Myriad’s inaugural First Graphic Novel Competition. She has worked extensively as a children’s illustrator and has written three children's picture books. Her poetry has been published at Wordgathering, and a poem took third place in the World Curlew Day Poetry Competition. No longer able to draw due to severe energy impairment disability, she sought new creative mediums. Her work explores chronic illness, the natural world and her exile from it. Website: http://www.paulaknight.co.uk Twitter: @Paula_JKnight IG: @paulajkstudio

 

Rebecca Cavanagh is a wheelchair user and has recently graduated from university with a degree in Creative Writing. When she isn’t writing for her own website or teaching sports to students at her old secondary school, she can be found drawing or rolling around her house listening to music.

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Rob Colgate is a Filipino-American poet from Evanston, IL. He holds a degree in psychology from Yale University and is currently pursuing his MFA in poetry with the New Writers Project at UT Austin, where he is also working towards a certificate in critical disability studies. In Austin, he teaches workshops in both creative writing and emotional intelligence. His work is featured in Best New Poets 2020; his first chapbook, So Dark the Gap, was published by Tammy in March 2020 and won the ReadsRainbow Prize for poetry. You can find him at robcolgate.com.

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Shrubaboti Bose is an Indian writer, associated with The Mark Literary Review as a Reader. Her recently published book, Unvanquished is currently available for purchase on Amazon. She shares her own poetry, prose pieces or memoirs on her blog, Lemongrass. Her work has been previously featured in several magazines such as Ruminate Magazine (Issue 56), Radiate Literary Journal, Spillword Press, etc. During her spare time, she loves to review children's books on Reedsy.

 

Sean Mahoney lives in Santa Ana, California with Dianne, her mother, 4 dogs, and 4 renters. He believes that Judas was a way better singer than Jesus and that dark chocolate is extraordinarily good for people. Sean helps run the Disability Literature Consortium booth at the annual AWP bookfair...lit by crips. Except 2020, and this year cuz well...Covid. His chapbook Politics or Disease, please…is forthcoming (5.22) from Finishing Line Press.

 

Thee Sim Ling (she/her) is a young Southeast Asian writer. She has placings in numerous writing competitions, including being a winner for the 2021 Inklings Book Contest, and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Stone Soup, Shameless Magazine and Skipping Stones. She is also the Chief Content Officer for I-CREATE YOUTH, as well as a staff member for multiple writing organisations. Outside of writing, she’s a technology enthusiast and a proud INTJ. https://lucindathee.com

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Travis Chi Wing Lau (he/him/his) is Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. His research and teaching focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture, health humanities, and disability studies. Alongside his scholarship, Lau frequently writes for venues of public scholarship like Synapsis: A Journal of Health Humanities, Public Books, Lapham’s Quarterly, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. His poetry has appeared in Barren Magazine, Wordgathering, Glass, South Carolina Review, Foglifter, and The New Engagement, as well as in two chapbooks, The Bone Setter (Damaged Goods Press, 2019) and Paring (Finishing Line Press, 2020). [travisclau.com]