Tarik Dobbs is a writer and artist. He runs poetry.onl and is assistant professor of English in creative writing (poetry) at Southwest Minnesota State University. Dobbs’s poems has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poem-a-Day, and Poetry Magazine. He is the author of Nazar Boy, winner of the 2026 GLCA New Writers Award in Poetry, and Dearbornistan (forthcoming), both from Haymarket Books.

Born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Saara Myrene Raappana served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in southern China before moving to Southwest Minnesota. Her book Chamber After Chamber won the 2023 Juniper Prize (UMass Press). She also wrote the chapbooks A Story of America Goes Walking (in collaboration with artist Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton, Shechem Press) and Milk Tooth, Levee, Fever (Dancing Girl Press). She received grants and scholarships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and was a 2016 Best of the Net poetry winner. A gym owner and personal trainer with an emphasis on trauma-informed weightlifting, she loved snow, Lake Superior, swearing, coffee, and animals.

Louise K. Waakaa’igan is an enrolled member at Odaawaa-Zaaga’iganiing in northern Wisconsin. Her first chapbook, This Is Where, Aquarius Press, was published in 2020. She is also the first-place winner of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop’s Broadside Competition (2016). Louise was an Art For Justice Fund Grantee. Her work has been previously published in PEN America, The Sentences That Create Us, 21 Mythologies, The Moon Magazine, Night Colors, 27^th Letter, Words in Gray Scale, Doors Adjacent, and most recently with Another Chicago Magazine.

A. E. Wynter is an award-winning poet, editor, and community organizer based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her poems have appeared in audio trails and multimedia art exhibits throughout the state, as well as literary magazines like The Florida Review, Black Warrior Review, and Torch Literary Arts. She has been supported by VONA, Cave Canem, and the McCormack Writing Center (formerly Tin House), among other workshops and residencies. Wynter is a 2025-28 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow.

Elizabeth Tannen parents, works, and occasionally writes in South Minneapolis. She’s a Brooklyn, New York native and Macalester grad with an MFA from the University of New Mexico, and has published essays and poems in places including Salon, The Rumpus, Copper Nickel, Southern Humanities Review, Willow Springs and elsewhere. She’s worked as an educator in prisons and schools, as a facilitator, an organizer, and currently as a fundraiser. 

Sara Dovre Wudali grew up on a farm in southwest Minnesota, where the wind blows through the cottonwoods and box elder bugs rule. She was a 2023–2024 Poetry Fellow in the Loft Mentor Series and has received support from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Her poems and essays have been published in literary journals and anthologies such as under the gum tree, Barrelhouse, North Dakota Quarterly, and Sweet. She is the co-editor of the chapbook, All You Need is One Avocado and a mentor with the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop. Dovre Wudali lives in Saint Paul with her family. You can learn more and read her work at saradovrewudali.com.