Juan J. Morales is the son of an Ecuadorian mother and Puerto Rican father and the author of four poetry collections, including Dream of the Bird Tattoo and The Handyman’s Guide to End Times. Morales has received fellowships from CantoMundo, Macondo, Longleaf Writers Conference, and he has served as the editor/publisher of Pilgrimage Press. He lives in Pueblo, Colorado, occasionally teaches for Lighthouse Writers in Denver, and is an Assistant Professor of English at Colorado College.

Jamie Figueroa writes toward memory and inherited silence from the thresholds—between languages, identities, and homelands. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer (Catapult, 2021) and Mother Island: A Daughter Claims Puerto Rico (Pantheon, 2024), a memoir-in-essays praised for its lyricism, boldness, and decolonial gaze. Her work appears in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Elle, and American Short Fiction, among others. A recipient of the Truman Capote Award and a Bread Loaf Rona Jaffe Scholar, she teaches in the MFA Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio, she lives in northern New Mexico, where land and language are in constant conversation.

Susan Mihalic is the author of Dark Horses (Scout Press, 2021), a critically acclaimed novel about an equestrian prodigy who is trapped in an abusive relationship with her Olympian father. The book received starred reviews from Booklist, Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly, which also boxed its review, and made numerous must-read lists (O Magazine, Country Living, Parade, Library Journal, Goop, Bustle, and other publications). A long-time resident of Taos, Susan holds a B.A. in journalism and straight out of college was hired by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, where she was quickly promoted to associate editor. She has volunteered at SOMOS in the youth mentorship program and facilitator of National Novel Writing Month write-ins. She is the current curator for the Young Writers Program.

Veronica Golos is the author of GIRL awarded the Naji Naaman Honor Prize, 2019 (Beirut, Lebanon); Rootwork, Winner of the Southwest Book Design Award in Poetry, 2016; Vocabulary of Silence winner of the 2011 New Mexico Book Award, translated into Arabic, Spanish and Persian; and A Bell Buried Deep, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. She is a senior editor for Tupelo Quarterly. She teaches poetry for Tupelo Press Poetry Conferences, Gemini Ink (San Antonio, Tx) SOMOS (Taos, NM), and previously at Diné Technical Institute (Arizona). She will be teaching for the Tucson Poetry Festival, and at the Wyoming Poetry Society Festival. She lives in Taos, New Mexico, with her husband, David Pérez.

Valerie Martínez is the author of six books of poetry in addition to a chapbook of poetry and prose (A Hundred Little Mouths) and a book of translations (of Uruguay’s Delmira Agustini). Her acclaimed book-length poem, COUNT (University of Arizona Press, 2021), reckons with the heartbreaking reality of climate change. Forty-three sections of myth-gathering, depictions of flora and fauna, accounts of climate devastation, personal narratives, references to works of eco-art, and evocations of children create a deeply nuanced image of the current climate crisis. Valerie’s forthcoming collection, IN A THUNDER OF FUR AND WINTER, will be published by Tupelo Press in 2027. Valerie taught poetry and literature at the undergraduate and graduate level for over 22 years. She was the Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, NM, from 2008-2010. Learn more at www.valeriemartinez.net

Allegra Huston presented a TEDx Talk on imaginative intelligence in March 2026, which will be available on YouTube in May. She is the co-author of the books Creative Writing: The Imaginative Storm Method and Write What You Don’t Know in collaboration with poet and creativity coach James Navé, as well as the accompanying workbook 50 Imaginative Storm Writing Prompts.

Write What You Don’t Know is also available as an audio and a video course.

Allegra has written 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, and was for many years Editorial Director of the prestigious London publishing house Weidenfeld & Nicolson. She is currently working on two books: Write What You Don’t Know for Memoir and Imaginative Intelligence.