Veronica Golos is the author of GIRL, awarded the Naji Naaman Honor Prize for Poetry, (Beirut, Lebanon); Rootwork; Vocabulary of Silence winner of the New Mexico Book Award, poems from which are translated into Arabic, Spanish and Persian; and A Bell Buried Deep winner of the Nicholas Roerich
Poetry Prize, adapted for stage and performed at Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, CA.  She is the former editor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Golos writes book reviews for Tupelo Quarterly. She teaches for Gemini Ink, Hugo House, and SOMOS and privately. She lives in Taos with her husband, David Pérez.

is the author of three poetry collections: Insectum Gravitis (Main Street Rag, November, 2019); The Mistress, New Mexico/AZ Book Award for Poetry 2017 (3: A Taos Press, 2016); Thousand-Cricket Song (Plain View Press 2010, 2nd printing, 2016), and manuscript-in-progress Aikaterína. She is co-founder/co-editor/consulting editor of Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art www.taosjournalofpoetry.com. Her poetry has been nominated for
a Pushcart Prize and has been awarded much including grants, honors and residencies from The Puffin Foundation, The Vermont Studio Center, Lakkos/Crete Artist Residency, Truchas Peaks Place, and most recently from Parkinson’s Life Magazine in London. Numerous publications
include Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Drunken Boat, Puerto del Sol, Watershed, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Tusculum Review, and Poet Lore. Strisik, for over 35 years has taught group and private poetry workshops to children and adults in Taos.
www.cathystrisik.com

Jamie Figueroa is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer (Catapult 2021), which was short-listed for the Reading the West Book Award and long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, was an Indie Next pick, a Good Morning America must-read book of the month, and was named a most anticipated debut of the year by Bustle, Electric Literature, The Millions, and Rumpus. A member of the faculty in the MFA Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Figueroa has published writing in American Short Fiction, Emergence Magazine, Elle, McSweeney’s, Agni, The New York Times, and the Boston Review, among other publications. A Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) alum, she received a Truman Capote Award and was a Bread Loaf Rona Jaffe Scholar. Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio, Figueroa is a longtime resident of northern New Mexico.

Sharon Oard Warner is Professor Emerita of English/Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of two novels, a short story collection, and an edited anthology of stories on AIDS. Her craft book, Writing the Novella, was published in 2021 and is one of Poets & Writers Best Books for Writers. Warner’s essays and articles have appeared in The AWP Chronicle, The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Studies in Short Fiction, Studies in the Novel and elsewhere.  A guest blogger for janefriedman.com, she is currently working on a historical novella set at New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch.

Leticia Gomez is the Editorial Director for Dafina Books, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp., which focuses on high-quality fiction and non fiction that centers on race, identity, and its impact on our experiences. Dafina’s carefully curated list is a home for dynamic stories that innovate and amplify voices too long ignored through books that entertain, challenge, and inspire. Launched in 2000 as the first BIPOC imprint, Dafina has led the market for more than twenty years in highlighting voices of color.

Prior to joining the Kensington family, Leticia was a prominent literary/film/television agent who specialized in bringing culturally diverse voices to the forefront. She has helped her clients secure deals with the largest publishers in the world and has seen several of her projects successfully optioned for TV and film rights. As a literary agent, she placed more than 200 books with independent and mainstream traditional publishers.

Julia Goldberg is an award-winning journalist, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Huffington Post, Salon.com and numerous other publications. She is a senior correspondent for the Santa Fe Reporter, where she primarily writes about science, politics, and opera. She is the author of Inside Story: Everyone’s Guide to Reporting and Writing Creative Nonfiction, and periodically teaches creative writing at Santa Fe Community College.

Mark Lipman, founder of the press Vagabond, the Culver City Book Festival, the Elba Poetry Festival; winner of the 2015 Joe Hill Labor Poetry Award; the 2016 International Latino Book Award and the 2023 L’Alloro di Dante (Dante’s Laurel – Italy), a writer, poet, multi-media artist, activist and author of fourteen books, began his career as the writer-in residence at the world famous Shakespeare and Company in Paris, France (2002-2003). Since then he has worked closely with such legendary poets as Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Jack Hirschman on many projects and for the last twenty years has established a strong international following as a leading voice of his generation. He’s the host and foreign correspondent for the radio program, Poetry from Around the World for Poets Café on KPFK 90.7FM Los Angeles. As Mark continues to travel the world, he uses poetry to connect communities to the greater social justice issues, while building consciousness through the spoken word.

Allegra Huston is the co-author of the book Write What You Don’t Know, based on the Imaginative Storm method which she developed in collaboration with poet and creativity coach James Navé. She has published four other books: Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found, the novel A Stolen Summer, How to Edit and Be Edited, and How to Read for an Audience (with James Navé). She has taught memoir, screenwriting, and creative writing workshops around the world, including for the University of Oklahoma, the National University of Ireland, Galway, and the UK’s prestigious Arvon Foundation.

She recently completed a Teachable course also titled Write What You Don’t Know, and is currently working on a book and course on how to write a memoir.

Interview with Allegra Huston: “Memoir: Write What You Don’t Know”

Susan Mihalic is the author of Dark Horses (Scout Press/Simon & Schuster, 2021), a critically acclaimed novel about an equestrian prodigy who is blackmailed into maintaining an incestuous relationship with her father—and how she struggles to find her freedom without losing everything. Before its release, Dark Horses received starred reviews from Booklist, Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly, which also boxed its review. The book made numerous must-read lists (O Magazine, Country Living Magazine, Parade Magazine, Library Journal, Goop, the Bustle, and other print and digital publications) and was described by author Sara Gruen (#1 New York Times bestselling author, Water for Elephants) as a “pulse-pounding, unflinching tale of one teenage girl’s iron-willed determination.”

Interview with Susan Mihalic: “From the Mind to the Page: A Generative Writing Workshop”

Sawnie Morris is winner of the 2015 New Issues Poetry Prize for her collection of poems titled, Her, Infinite,  (judge: Major Jackson). Her new manuscript has been a finalist for two national awards: the 2022 Marsh Hawk Press Prize (judge: John Yau) and (1st runner-up) for the 2022 Trio House Press Louise Bogan Award for “Artistic Merit and Excellence for a book of poems contributing in an innovative and distinct way to American poetry.”  She has been honored with the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award and been a co-winner of the New Mexico Book Award for her chapbook in The Sound A Raven Makes (Tres Chicas Books, 2006). Her poems have appeared in Best American Experimental Writing, (Wesleyan University Press online edition), and in Tupelo Quarterly, Poetry, Lana Turner: Journal of Poetry & Opinion, Plume, Puerto del Sol, Pool, Denver Quarterly, The Journal, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, www.drunkenboat.com,  the Harvard Review anthology, Renga for Obama, El Palacio, and other magazines. Her writing about poetry has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and Boston Review. Other prose works, regarding civil rights, won a Texas Pen Literary Award and an ACLU Award. Sawnie is former co-editor of The Taos Review and was a guest Book Review and Essay Editor and frequent contributor to Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art. She has taught extensively at the undergraduate and graduate levels through the University of New Mexico and Southern Methodist University, and currently offers poetry writing workshops, as well as individual mentorship programs, online and in-person, in Ranchos de Taos. Sawnie is a co-founder of Amigos Bravos: Because Water Matters, a 35 year old non-profit advocacy organization for New Mexico’s waters. She served as the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Taos in 2018-2019.