Naomi Ayala’s most recent book, Peces que se escapan/Escaping Fish, is forthcoming from Cherry Castle Publishing in 2026. She is the author of three other poetry collections—Wild Animals on the Moon (Curbstone Press); This Side of Early (Curbstone/Northwestern University Press); and Calling Home: Praise Songs and Incantations (Bilingual Press, University of Arizona). Naomi is also the translator of La sombra de la muerte/Death’s Shadow, a novel by His Excellency José Tomás Pérez, and of Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s poetry collection La arqueología del viento/The Wind’s Archeology. Naomi’s essays have appeared in The Massachusetts Review and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. She is co-editor of The Skinny Poetry Journal.
Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a Pushcart-nominated poet from the land of the Piscataway (Baltimore, MD) where she teaches middle school. She is the author of A Family Thing, her debut full length collection, and four chapbooks, the most recent being red line and CHARM(ed), which chronicle life as an educator and life in Baltimore, respectively. She can be found at aetheblkpoet.com
Sylvia Jones’s first poetry collection, Television Fathers, was released in 2024 from Meekling Press. She is currently an editor at Black Lawrence Press and a reader for Ploughshares. She also teaches creative writing at George Washington University and with the Goucher Prison Education Partnership. She earned her MFA from American University in Washington, DC, and lives and writes in Baltimore, Maryland. Her second book, Dope Calisthenics is forthcoming in 2026 from Relegation Books.