Veronica Golos is the author of four poetry books, 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  New Mexico Book Award, translated into Arabic, Spanish and Persian; and A Bell Buried Deep, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, She was the former editor of The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, former co- editor of the Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art; She is an instructor  and on the faculty of Tupelo Press’ Writers Conferences, and teaches for SOMOS (Taos, NM) , Hugo House (Seattle, WA) and Gemini Ink (San Antonio, Tx). She lives in Ranchos, New Mexico, with her husband, David Pérez.

Interview with Veronica Golos: “Walking the Wild; Writing the Wild II”

Aaron A. Abeyta is a Colorado native and the author of four collections of poetry and one novel. For his book, Colcha, Abeyta received an American Book Award and the Colorado Book Award.

 In addition, his novel, Rise, Do Not be Afraid, was a finalist for the 2007 Colorado Book Award and El Premio Aztlan. Abeyta was awarded a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship for poetry, and he is the former Poet Laureate of Colorado’s Western Slope and was a finalist for the 2019 Colorado Poet Laureate. Abeyta is also a recipient of a Governor’s Creative Leadership Award for 2017. aaron has over 100 publications.

Interview with Aaron Abeyta: “The Wound is the Well. The Ghost is the Bucket.”

Jamie Figueroa is the author of the critically acclaimed novel BROTHER, SISTER, MOTHER, EXPLORER, which “brims with spellbinding prose, magical elements, and wounded, full-hearted characters that nearly jump off the page” (Publishers Weekly). Figueroa is Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio and is a longtime resident of northern New Mexico. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Emergence Magazine, Elle, McSweeney’s, and Agni, among others. She received a Truman Capote Award and was a Bread Loaf Rona Jaffe Scholar. A VONA alum, she received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Natalie/Nat Kimber (she/her) has been an agent with The Rights Factory since 2014, and is based in Weehawken, NJ. She represents adult fiction, nonfiction, young adult books, and poetry. She is an editor for Monologging.org, organizer of the NYC Writers Circle, and founder of the Weehawken Writers and Artists Studio. She takes pride in guiding authors through the strategy and practical process of publishing, and yet she acknowledges that a wondrous magic is at work when books come into form.

As an aesthete and theologian at heart, she aspires to a “post-mystic modern” philosophy, which attempts to reintegrate our mystic roots and intuition with contemporary thought. Nat hails from the West—CO and NM—and cherishes art and books that capture this region. Her wish-list categories can be found on her agent page here. Follow her on Twitter: @Nat_TRF and Instagram: @Zsunita

Interview with Nat Kimber: “Writing a Creative Manifesto / Querying Agents: DOs and DON’Ts”

Sharon Oard Warner 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 March of 2021 by the University of New Mexico Press.

Her essays and articles have appeared in The AWP Chronicle, The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Studies in Short Fiction, Studies in the Novel and others. Many of those articles went on to be republished in The Year’s Best Writing on Writing, The Writer’s Handbook, Writer’s Digest Yearbook, The Writer’s Guide to Fiction: How to Write, Polish, and Publish Short Stories and Novels, Short Story Criticism and others.

From 1999–2016, she founded and directed the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference, one of the largest such gatherings in the country.

She continues to serve as co-chair for the D. H. Lawrence Ranch Initiatives. Warner is an Emerita Professor of English Language & Literature at the University of New Mexico. She lives in Austin, Texas where she is currently revising a screenplay.

Interview with Sharon Oard Warner: “Why Make a Scene”

Sean Murphy lives in Taos, New Mexico, with his wife Tania Casselle, a freelance journalist, travel author and fiction writer. Sean is the recipient of a 2018 National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing, and is a fully sanctioned Zen teacher in the American White Plum lineage. He is the author of 3 novels and one book of nonfiction. His debut novel, The Hope Valley Hubcap King, won the Hemingway Award for a First Novel and was an American Booksellers Association BookSense 76 recommended book. Sean has taught creative writing, meditation, and literature for the University of New Mexico-Taos for 20 years, as well as for Southern Methodist University’s Taos campus, the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, Naropa University in Boulder, and a variety of conferences and organizations, including a number of Masters Classes in the Novel 

Amy Beeder is the author of three books of poetry: Burn the Field, Now Make an Altar(Carnegie Mellon University Press), and most recently And So Wax Was Made & Also Honey(Tupelo), described by Dana Levin as “a verbal treasure house wizarding through time.” Her poems have appear in American Poetry Reviw, Poetry, AGNI, The Nation, Kenyon Review, The Nation, Guesthouse, and many other journals.  The recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, a Merrill Fellowship and a “Discovery’The Nation Award, she teaches poetry in Albuquerque.

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”

Linda Michel-Cassidy writes across genres. She is senior reviews editor at Tupelo Quarterly, and was a contributing editor at Entropy. She is the editor of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology, and has edited various other anthologies. She has worked for AGNI, Post Road, Hunger Mountain, and Drafthorse; the Journal of Work and No Work, and the Bennington Review. Her writing has appeared in Rattle, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Catamaran, and others. Her short story collection, When We Were Hardcore, will be released by Eastover Press later this year, and her flash nonfiction/poetry hybrid is slated for 2024. She has an MFA in fiction/nonfiction from Bennington, and is a candidate in poetry (summer 2023) at VCFA. Find her at: lmichelcassidy.com

Interview with Linda Michel-Cassidy: “Developing Fully-formed Characters”

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”