Amanda Johnston
Amanda Johnston was born in East St. Louis, IL, and raised in Austin, TX. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter. Her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them, Callaloo, Poetry Magazine, Puerto del Sol, Muzzle, and the anthologies, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Tasajillo, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Watermill Center, and the Austin International Poetry Festival. She is a former Board President of the Cave Canem Foundation, a member of the Affrilachian Poets, cofounder of Black Poets Speak Out, and founder of Torch Literary Arts.
(Photo by Cindy Elizabeth)
Roger Reeves
Roger Reeves is the author of King Me, Best Barbarian, and the forthcoming Dark Days: Fugitive Essays, his first book of nonfiction. He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard University, and a 2015 Whiting Award. Best Barbarian was a finalist in poetry for 2022 the National Book Award. His poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, the Paris Review, Granta, the New York Times, Yale Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Jennifer Chang
Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity and Some Say the Lark, which received the William Carlos Williams Award. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry 2012 and 2022, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Poetry, and the Yale Review. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Elizabeth Murray Artists Residency and The MacDowell Colony. She co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, serves as poetry editor of New England Review, and teaches at the University of Texas in Austin.
Martha Hartzog
Martha Ann Hartzog has an MA from The University of Texas at Austin in English, with a Specialization in Rare Books. Before retirement she worked as a technical writer/editor and producer of videos on the history of Texas and Scotland. She authored Courage, Charm & Character: The Story of the First Ladies of Texas (The Texas Society, DAR, 2018). She is currently working on a novel set in 19th century Texas, titled Lorena: A Laurel of Texas. She has had extensive experience as a judge for the Katherine Hart History Preservation Award of the Austin History Center Association; and as National Chair for Historic Preservation and American History for NSDAR. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries Scotland.
Wendy Barker
Wendy Barker’s newest book is Weave: New and Selected Poems (2022, from BkMk Press). Her seventh full-length collection of poems is Gloss (St. Julian Press, 2020). Her sixth collection, One Blackbird at a Time (BkMk Press, 2015), received the John Ciardi Prize. Her fifth chapbook is Shimmer (Glass Lyre Press, 2019). Other books include Far Out: Poems of the ’60s, (co-edited with Dave Parsons, Wings Press, 2016), Poems’ Progress (Absey & Co., 2002), and a selection of co-translations, Rabindranath Tagore: Final Poems (Braziller, 2001). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2013. Recipient of NEA and Rockefeller fellowships, she is the Pearl LeWinn Endowed Chair and Poet in Residence at UT San Antonio, where she has taught since 1982.
WHAT JUNETEENTH MEANS (TO ME) 