Photo credit: Karma Chávez and Harvey of Rainbow Books (Madison, WI)
Lo Kwa Mei-en is a poet from Singapore and Ohio. Her first book, Yearling, won the 2013 Kundiman Poetry Prize and is available from Alice James Books. The Bees Make Money in the Lion, a new book of poems, won the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Competition. She is also the author of two chapbooks, The Romances (The Lettered Streets Press) and Two Tales (Bloom Books). She lives and works in Cincinnati.
Cynthia Arrieu-King teaches creative writing at Stockton University and is a former Kundiman fellow. Her published poetry books include People are Tiny in Paintings of China (Octopus 2010) and Manifest, selected by Harryette Mullen for the Gatewood Prize (Switchback Books 2013). In 2016, a book of collaborative poems written with the late Hillary Gravendyk, Unlikely Conditions, will be published by 1913 Press.
Michelle Y. Burke is the author of Animal Purpose, winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize from Ohio University Press and Horse Loquela, winner of the Red Mountain Review Chapbook Series Award. She lives in New York City with her husband, the writer Douglas Watson, and their daughter.
Ellen Hagan is a writer, performer, and educator. Her latest collection of poetry Hemisphere, was published by Northwestern University Press, Spring 2015. Ellen's poems and essays can be found in the pages of Creative Nonfiction, Underwired Magazine, She Walks in Beauty (edited by Caroline Kennedy), Huizache, Small Batch, and Southern Sin. Her first collection of poetry, Crowned was published by Sawyer House Press in 2010. Ellen's performance work has been showcased at The New York International Fringe and Los Angeles Women's Theater Festival. She is the recipient of the 2013 NoMAA Creative Arts Grant and received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts. National arts residencies include The Hopscotch House and Louisiana Arts Works. Ellen recently joined the poetry faculty at West Virginia Wesleyan in their low-residency MFA program. She teaches Memoir, Poetry & Nature, and co-leads the Alice Hoffman Young Writer's Retreat at Adelphi University. She is Poetry Chair of the DreamYard Project and a regular guest artist at the Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts and Cold Spring Harbor Schools. A proud Kentucky writer, Ellen is a member of the Affrilachian Poets, Conjure Women, and is co-founder of the girlstory collective. She lives with her husband and daughters in New York City.