Robert Gipe won the 2015 Weatherford Award for outstanding Appalachian novel for his first novel Trampoline. His second novel, Weedeater, was published in 2018. His third novel, Pop, ​was published in 2021. All three novels are published by Ohio University Press. In 2021, the trilogy won the Judy Gaines Young Book Award. From 1997 to 2018, Gipe directed the Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College Appalachian Program in Harlan. Gipe is founding producer of the Higher Ground community performance series, and has served as a script consultant for the Hulu series Dopesick and a producer on the feature film The Evening Hour. Gipe resides in Harlan County, Kentucky. He grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee.​

Website: https://www.robertgipe.com/

Maurice Manning has published eight books of poetry, most recently, Snakedoctor. His first book, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions was selected by W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. His fourth book, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize. Manning is also the co-creator with Steve Cody of “The Grinnin' Possum Podcast”, which features poetry, music, and history. He teaches at Transylvania University and lives with his family on a farm in Washington County.

Website: https://www.transy.edu/academics/faculty/mamanning/

Marta Miranda-Straub is an Afro-Caribbean Queer Woman who has spent her life working towards equity, inclusion and creating systems change. Her writing, scholarship, and activism have focused on advancing social and economic justice.

Marta is a poet and storyteller and was inducted into Affrilachian Poets by Kentucky Poet Laureate Frank X Walker in 2009. She has performed at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in NYC and numerous conferences and marches. She performs regularly as a member of The Naked Poets in Louisville KY.

Miranda-Straub was named one of 15 national writers to watch in 2023 by the LA Weekly. Her bilingual memoir, Cradled by Skeletons A Life in Poems and Essays was published in 2019 and her children’s book Lullaby for Maddie was published in 2022 by Shadelandhouse Modern Press. Her poem The Reckoning was chosen for the Louisville Poets Anthology Once a City Said by Sarabande Books.

Website: https://www.martamirandastraub.com/

​​Melissa Helton was born in Toledo, Ohio and has lived in southeast Kentucky since 2010. She was a first-generation college student, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in environmental studies from the University of Toledo, and a Master of Fine Arts with a focus on poetry from Bowling Green State University. She later earned her Doctor of Education in educational leadership and policy studies from Eastern Kentucky University. Melissa taught English, writing, literature, and other humanities classes for colleges and universities for 17 years.

Her poetry, essays, and photography have been published in Still: The Journal, Shenandoah, Cutleaf, and more. Her chapbooks include Inertia: A Study and Hewn. Her editing work includes Troublesome Rising: A Thousand-Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky, the anthology that documents the devastating flood that hit campus in July 2022. A lover of books, she usually reads at least 100 books per year.

Multidisciplinary artist and educator, Frank X Walker, is the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate. He is the author of the children’s book, A is for Affrilachia, and thirteen collections of poetry, including Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the forthcoming, Load In Nine Times. Voted one of the most creative professors in the south, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. He serves as Professor of Creative Writing and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky

Website: https://www.frankxwalker.com/

Cecilia Woloch has published six collections of poems, most recently an expanded and updated edition of Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem, a book-length poem that has been the basis for multilingual, multi-media performances in Los Angeles, Paris, Warsaw, Athens and elsewhere. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and CEC/ArtsLink International. She spent 2021 – 22 as a Fulbright fellow in Rzeszów, in southeastern Poland near the Ukrainian border.

Website: https://ceciliawoloch.squarespace.com/

Greg Pape is the author of several poetry books, most recently A Field of First Things, published in 2023 by Accents Publishing. His work has received numerous awards, such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Richard Hugo Memorial Poetry Award, the Pushcart Prize, and others. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Poetry, and many others. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Montana and former Montana Poet Laureate. He currently serves on the faculty in Spalding University’s Naslund–Mann School of Writing. Greg Pape lives in Frankfort, Kentucky.