Eileen Cleary (she/her) (left) is the author of Wild Pack of the Living (Nixes Mate, 2024), 2 a.m. with Keats (Nixes Mate, 2021) and Child Ward of the Commonwealth (Main Street Rag Press, 2019), which received an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. She co-edited the anthology ‘ Voices Amidst the Virus’ which was the featured text at the 2021 MSU Filmetry Festival. Cleary founded and edits the Lily Poetry Review and Lily Poetry Review Books, and curates the Lily Poetry Salon. A multi-Pushcart nominee, her work is published widely in journals and anthologies.

Maureen McElroy (right) grew up in Boston as one of seven children. She attended Boston University and holds an MFA from Emerson College.  She is the author of For Crying Out Loud (Kelsay Books 2024). Her chapbook Car Poems (Finishing Line Press) came out in March of 2020. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Nixes Mate, Mothers Always Write, Trampset, Fickle Muses, Literary Hatchet, and Io. She is a committee member of the reading series Rozzie Reads Poetry sponsored by the Roslindale Public Library. She taught English and Latin for a number of years before entering a career in real estate. She owns Jamaica Hill Realty in Jamaica Plain. She lives in Milton, MA with her husband and son.

Kazim Ali’s (left) new book “Sukun: New and Selected Poems” was published in the fall by Wesleyan Press. Ali’s work encompasses multiple genres, including poetry and cross-genre texts. His novels include The Secret Room: A String Quartet and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir, Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies, and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice, and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light. After a career in public policy and organizing, he is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Leila Chatti (right) is a Tunisian-American poet and author of Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), winner of the 2021 Levis Reading Prize, the 2021 Luschei Prize for African Poetry, and longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, and four chapbooks. Her honors include multiple Pushcart Prizes, grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and Cleveland State University, where she was the inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Publishing and Writing. Her poems appear in The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Atlantic, POETRY, and elsewhere. She is a Provost Fellow at the University of Cincinnati and teaches in Pacific University’s M.F.A. program.