Author Bios

Jeffrey Alfier’s most recent book, The Shadow Field, was published by Louisiana Literature Press (2020). Journal credits include Carolina Quarterly, Copper Nickel, The Emerson Review, Faultline, Hotel Amerika, New York Quarterly, Penn Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Vassar Review. He is founder and co-editor of Blue Horse Press.

Zachary Bartles was raised in the Shenandoah Valley of West Virginia. His work appears or is forthcoming in Appalachian Review, Ekstasis Magazine, and Ribbons, among others. He lives in East Texas with his wife, where he is a stay-at-home father to their daughter.

Ann Calandro is a writer, artist, and classical piano student. Her short stories have been accepted by The Vincent Brothers Review, Gargoyle, Lit Camp, The Fabulist, The Plentitudes, and other literary journals. Duck Lake Books published her poetry chapbook in 2020, and two of her poems appeared in anthologies. Calandro’s artwork appeared in juried exhibits and in Mayday, Nunum, Bracken, Zoetic Press, Mud Season Review, Stoneboat, and other journals. Shanti Arts published three children's books that she wrote and illustrated. She has a master's degree in English, creative thesis option, from Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied with poet Donald Finkel. See more at www.anncalandro.webs.com.

Jeff Gundy, Distinguished Poet in Residence at Bluffton University, has published thirteen books, including Wind Farm: Landscape with Stories and Towers (creative nonfiction), Without a Plea, and Abandoned Homeland (both poems). A former Fulbright lecturer in Austria, his recent work is in Georgia Review, The Sun, Kenyon Review, Forklift, Ohio, Christian Century, Image, Cincinnati Review, and Terrain. org. He has won the Midwest Poetry Award, the Nancy Dasher Award, and several fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, and was named Ohio Poet of the Year for Somewhere Near Defiance.

Laura Reece Hogan is the author of Butterfly Nebula (Backwaters, University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming 2023), winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry, Litany of Flights (Paraclete Press, 2020), winner of the Paraclete Poetry Prize, the chapbook O Garden-Dweller (Finishing Line Press), and the spiritual theology book I Live, No Longer I (Wipf & Stock). Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Scientific American, The Christian Century, Sugar House Review, Sojourners, RHINO, America, Connecticut River Review, Spiritus, and other publications.

Teresa H. Janssen’s essays and short fiction have appeared in Zyzzyva, Tiferet, Chautauqua, Parabola and elsewhere. Her debut historical novel, The Ways of Water, is forthcoming November of 2023. She lives with her husband in Washington state where she tends a small orchard and writes about family, place, and social and spiritual issues. She can be found online at www.teresahjanssen.com.

Candice M. Kelsey [she/her] is a poet, educator, activist, and essayist from Ohio and living bicoastally in L.A. and Georgia. Her work appears in Passengers Journal, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, and The Laurel Review among others. A finalist for a Best Microfiction 2023, she is the author of six books. Candice also serves as a poetry reader for The Los Angeles Review. Find her @candice-kelsey-7 @candicekelsey1 and www.candicemkelseypoet.com.

Adam Lalley is a physician and writer currently living in Fairfield County, Connecticut. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Plough, Sonora Review, The McNeese Review, The Healing Muse, STAT, and Intima, among others. www.adamlalley.com.

V. P. Loggins is the author of The Wild Severance (2021), winner of the Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Competition, The Green Cup (2017), winner of the Cider Press Review Editors’ Book Prize, The Fourth Paradise (Main Street Rag 2010), Heaven Changes (Pudding House 2007), and two books on Shakespeare. His poems are in The Baltimore Review, Poet Lore, Poetry East, Poetry Ireland Review, The Southern Review, Tampa Review and others. See www.vploggins.com.

Linda McCullough Moore is the author of two story collections, a novel, an essay collection and hundreds of shorter published works. She is the winner of the Pushcart Prize, as well as winner and finalist for numerous national awards. Her first story collection was endorsed by Alice Munro, and equally as joyous, she frequently hears from readers who write to say her work makes a difference in their lives. For many years she has mentored award-winning writers of fiction, poetry, and memoir. She is currently completing a novel, Time Out of Mind, and a collection of her poetry, each in search of a good home. www.lindamcculloughmoore.com

James Owens's newest book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in The Christian Century, Dappled Things and Vita Poetica. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in a small town in northern Ontario.

Jacob Reecher earned his MFA from the University of New Orleans in 2018. He lives with his wife in New York City

Tania Runyan is an NEA fellow and author of the poetry collections What Will Soon Take Place, Second Sky, A Thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, and Delicious Air, which was awarded Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature. Her first book-length creative nonfiction title, Making Peace With Paradise: An Autobiography of a California Girl, was released in 2022. Tania’s instructional guides, How to Read a Poem, How to Write a Poem, and How to Write a Form Poem, are used in classrooms across the country, and her poems have appeared in publications such as Poetry, Image, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Christian Century, and the Paraclete anthology Christian Poetry in America Since 1940. She lives with her family in Illinois, where she works in educational publishing.

Deborah J. Shore has won poetry competitions at the Anglican Theological Review and the Alsop Review and has published in Christianity & Literature, Crab Orchard Review, Christian Century, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Thimble Literary Magazine, and Ekstasis, among others.

Kerri Vinson Snell is a professor of English at McPherson College, McPherson, KS. Her poems have been previously published in Mikrokosmos, Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith, Ruminate, Oklahoma Review, Broad River Review, and Foothill: a Journal of Poetry where she received a Pushcart nomination. She was named a finalist for Ruminate's Janet McCabe Poetry Prize in 2017. She is a citizen of Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma and holds an MFA degree in poetry from Ashland University.

Alexis Stratton is originally from Illinois but has spent their life in many homes, from New Orleans to South Korea. They received their MFA in Creative Writing from the University of South Carolina, and they currently work as a freelance writer and editor in Richmond, Virginia. Their fiction and nonfiction have appeared in storySouth, Hayden's Ferry Review, Matador Review, Oyez Review, and Blue Mesa Review, among other publications, and in 2022, their chapbook Anywhere Else but Here was published by Fjords Review. www.alexisstratton.com

Rhett Watts has poems included in Sojourners Magazine, Spoon River Review, San Pedro River Review, The Worcester Review, The Christian Century, First Things, Ekphrasis, The Lyric, The Windhover, Canary, among others. Her work is anthologized in the books: The Best Spiritual Writing 2000 and in Knitting into the Mystery: A Guide to the Shawl-Knitting Ministry and The Mud Chronicles: A New England Anthology. She won the Connecticut Poetry Award in 2013. Her chapbook, No Innocent Eye was co-winner of the Rane Arroyo Chapbook Series Award. Rhett’s books are: Willing Suspension and The Braiding. She facilitates writing workshops in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Desmond Francis Xavier Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé (b. 1971) is the author of an epistolary novel, a quasi-memoir, two lyric essay monographs, four hybrid works, nine poetry collections, and a creative guided journal. The former journalist has edited over twenty-five books and co-produced three audio books, several pro bono for non-profit organizations. Among other accolades, he is the recipient of the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award, National Indie Excellence Book Award, Poetry World Cup, Singapore Literature Prize, two Illumination Christian Book Awards, two Independent Publisher Book Awards, and four Living Now Book Awards. Desmond is Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing and Publishing at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Jonathan Allston grew up in the West African nation of Togo and holds a MA in Biblical Exegesis from Wheaton College. He writes professionally for a variety of commercial, creative, and ecclesial endeavors, including Ember Letter, his monthly newsletter. Jonathan lives in Greenville, SC, with his wife and four young children.

Relief’s 2023 cover artist is Tracy Bull of Concord, MA. You can find her work at happyowl.etsy.com and @happyowl on Instagram.

Maryann Corbett is the author of five books of poems, most recently In Code (Able Muse, 2020). Her poems have won or been shortlisted for the Able Muse Book Prize, the Hollis Summers Prize, the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, the Morton Marr Prize, the Richard Wilbur Award, and the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize. Her work has appeared in journals like 32 Poems, the Christian Century, the Dark Horse, Ecotone, the Los Angeles Review of Books, PN Review, and Rattle, as well as an assortment of anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2018 and Christian Poetry in America since 1940 (Paraclete Press, 2022). Her poems have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, American Life in Poetry, the Writer's Almanac, and on the Poetry Foundation website. A sixth book, The O in the Air, is forthcoming from Colosseum Books.

Kathleen Hirsch, M.A., is the author of three works of nonfiction, Songs from the Alley, A Home in the Heart of the City, and A Sabbath Life: One Woman’s Search for Wholeness. She co-edited Mothers, a collection of contemporary fiction. Currently, she directs the Contemplative Writing Group at Bethany House of Prayer in Arlington, MA, where she leads workshops on poetry and spiritual journaling, and teaches part-time at Boston College. Her website is: www.kathleenhirsch.com.

Brianne Holmes lives in Upstate South Carolina where she works in marketing and communications. In 2016, she earned a Master of Arts in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from East Carolina University. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications, including the North Carolina Literary Review, The Twisted Vine, Monkeybicycle, and the Journal of Microliterature.

Marcia L. Hurlow recently retired from Asbury University, where she directed the creative writing program. Her first full-length book of poetry, Anomie, won the Edges Prize (WordTech). She also has five chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Chicago Review, Poetry East, Nimrod, River Styx, The Louisville Review, Baltimore Review, Mantis and Cold Mountain, among others. She is co-editor of Kansas City Voices.

Debra Kaufman is the author of the poetry collections God Shattered, Delicate Thefts, The Next Moment, and A Certain Light, as well as three chapbooks, many monologues and short plays, and five full-length plays. Recent poems appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry East, North Carolina Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, and Poetry South. Debrakaufman.info.

Justin Lacour lives in New Orleans and edits Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry. He is the author of four chapbooks of poems, including Hulk Church forthcoming from Belle Point Press.

Michael Lauchlan has contributed to many publications, including New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Sugar House Review, Louisville Review, Poet Lore, and Southern Poetry Review. His most recent collection is Trumbull Ave., from WSU Press (2015).

Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 14 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation.

Marda Messick is a poet-theologian living in Tallahassee, Florida on land that is the traditional territory of the Apalachee Nation. She has been a caregiver, nurse and Lutheran pastor. Her poetry, which explores themes of embodiment, struggle, and reverence, has appeared or is forthcoming in The Christian Century, Vita Poetica, Delmarva Review, Radix, and other print and electronic publications. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Vicki Nyman studied writing in Hamline University’s MFA program. Her poems have been accepted by journals including Pacifica Literary Review, PressPause, and Caveat Lector. Originally from Chicago, Vicki now happily lives in Minneapolis after two interminably-long decades in rural Minnesota. She loves Chopin, Chapo Trap House and her near-omnipotent Irish Wolfhound.

Danielle Porter is a poet and writer from Massachusetts, currently living in New York. She received her Bachelors in English with a writing concentration from the University of Vermont in 2021. Much of her work is inspired by transcendentalism and the cycle of death and rebirth she witnessed growing up through the distinct seasons of New England.

Jenna Rindo worked for years as a pediatric RN at hospitals in Virginia, Florida and Wisconsin. She writes to better understand the complications of the human body, mind and spirit. A former ESL teacher she now tutors and mentors refugee students. She believes that all forms of art involve finding the balance between what to include and what to leave out. John Ruskin said it more eloquently: “Nothing is ever seen perfectly, but only by fragments and under various conditions of obscurity.” Her poems and essays have been published in AJN, Calyx, Tampa Review, One, Verse Virtual and others.

MICHAEL SALCMAN: poet, physician and art historian, was chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland and president of the Contemporary Museum. He is a child of the Holocaust and a survivor of polio as well as Covid seventy years apart! Poems appear in Arts & Letters, Barrow Street, The Café Review, Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, New Letters, and Poet Lore. Books include The Clock Made of Confetti, The Enemy of Good is Better, Poetry in Medicine, his popular anthology of classic and contemporary poems on doctors, patients, illness & healing, A Prague Spring, Before & After, winner of the 2015 Sinclair Poetry Prize, and Shades & Graces, inaugural winner of The Daniel Hoffman Legacy Book Prize (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020). Necessary Speech: New & Selected Poems was published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2022.

Meghan Sterling (she, her, hers) lives in Maine. A multi-Pushcart nominee, her work is out or forthcoming in The Colorado Review, The Los Angeles Review, Meridian, Rhino Poetry, Hunger Mountain, Nelle, Radar, The Idaho Review, Solstice, and many others. These Few Seeds (Terrapin Books, 2021) was a Eric Hoffer Grand Prize Finalist. Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions), Comfort the Mourners (Everybody Press) and View from a Borrowed Field (Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Book Prize) are all out in 2023. She is the Program Director at Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Read her work at meghansterling.com.

Daniel Tobin is the author of nine books of poems, including From Nothing, winner of the Julia Ward Howe Award, The Stone in the Air, his suite of versions from the German of Paul Celan, and Blood Labors, named one of the Best Poetry Books of the Year for 2018 by the New York Times. His poetry has won many awards, among them the Massachusetts Book Award and fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. His latest book, The Mansions, is a trilogy of long poems that form a single design. He teaches at Emerson College in Boston.

Lauren D. Woods lives in Washington, DC. Her fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in The Antioch Review, The Normal School, Hippocampus Magazine, Fiction Southeast, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Her work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net. She is a flash fiction editor for JMWW. You can find her on Twitter @Ladiwoods1 and on Bluesky @laurenwoods. bsky.social.

Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, America, and Ploughshares, as well as other journals and magazines.