Ann Kathryn Kelly writes from New Hampshire’s Seacoast region. She’s an editor with Barren Magazine, a columnist with WOW! Women on Writing, and she works in the technology sector. Ann leads writing workshops for a nonprofit that offers therapeutic arts programming to people living with brain injury. Her writing has appeared in a number of literary journals.

Sheryl Loeffler is a Canadian writer and musician. Her poetry has been published in literary magazines in Canada, the USA, the UK, Austria, and Japan. In 2005, she moved to the Mediterranean island of Malta, returning to Canada in 2006. In May 2014, A Land in the Storytelling Sea, her book of poems, prose poems, and photographs born in and about Malta, was published by FARAXA Publishing, Rabat, Malta. She was elected to membership in the League of Canadian Poets in 2015.She was resident at the colony for two months in 2017. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019.

Sallie Crotty has published many places, including The Dairy Hollow Echo; The Drabble; eMerge; and Resources to Recover. The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow awarded her a residency in 2018. Sallie holds a B.A. in English from Sewanee: The University of the South and an Ed.M. from Harvard. Currently, she is pursuing her MFA at Queens University of Charlotte. She is working on a poetry collection. Her memoir Out of the Ashes: A Story of Recovery and Hope released in June 2022.

Sometimes Ken Weene writes to exorcise demons. Sometimes characters in his head demand to be heard. Sometimes he writes hoping what he has to say might amuse or inform. Mostly, however, he writes because it is a cheaper addiction than drugs, an easier than going to the gym, and a more sociable outlet than sitting at McDonald's drinking coffee with other old farts: in brief it keeps him a bit younger and more alive. The result has been a lot of words.

A native of Chicago’s South Side, Mary Lewis’s career began in 1977 as editorial assistant of Ebony Jr!, Johnson Publishing’s magazine for children. Six months later she became managing editor and in 1980 became a fulltime freelancer. Articles for children and adults followed, as did editing and proofreading projects. She’s been published in American Visions and Black Enterprise magazines. She’s the author of Herstory, about Black teenage girls. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Sleeping with One Eye Open, a Chicago Tribune critic’s choice; In Praise of Our Teachers; and Under Her Skin.

When Annie Newcomer lost her brother, John Klier, Jewish Scholar and Russian Historian who lived and taught in London to misdiagnosed cancer in 2007, she was bereft. Writing saved her. Now she teaches Poetry and Play Writing at Turning Point, a center for the chronically ill associated with the University of Kansas. She endeavors to share this joy of the written word with others.

Bill McCloud is a poetry editor for the Right Hand Pointing literary journal and is the poetry reviewer for Vietnam Veterans of America. His poetry book, The Smell of the Light, reached #1 on The Oklahoman’s “Oklahoma Bestsellers List." His poems have appeared in Oklahoma Today and the Oklahoma English Journal. He is a faculty member of William Bernhardt’s annual WriterCon, presenting sessions on writing and publishing poetry.

Todd Sukany , a Pushcart nominee, lives in Pleasant Hope, Missouri, with his wife of over 40 years. His work has appeared in Cave Region Review, The Christian Century, Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal, and The Ekphrastic Review. A native of Michigan and recently retired, Sukany stays busy running, playing music, loving family, caring for three rescue dogs and two feral cats.

Zeek Taylor is a recipient of the Arkansas Governor's Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement. Best known for his stylized watercolors, he is also a storyteller, and author of two books. He has appeared twice on the NPR Tales from the South show and his stories, interview, and Q&A session were heard by 130 million listeners worldwide. A segment from a StoryCorps interview with Taylor aired on NPR’s Morning Edition show. He is the author of two memoirs, Out of the Delta and Out of the Delta II, and the art book, Chimps Having Fun. Taylor lives and works in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Anna Gall with her husband, Dean live in historic St. Charles, Missouri. Anna travels, gardens, cooks, teaches culinary classes at the local community college, antiques, reads, and writes two blogs on topics she is most passionate about, organic gardening, kitchen creations, home life, and wholeness as a woman. During her summer 2021 residency at the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow, Anna started her first book, a series of short stories with a culinary theme. Its publication should be in 2022.

Thadeus Emmanuel is a writer, poet, and a critic. He is a student of Economics at the Taraba State University, Jalingo, Taraba State. His articles and poems has over the years gathered reader's sensation, and have appeared—or are forthcoming—in Journal of Expressive Writing and Synchronized Chaos.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 24 books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam's Well, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a non-fiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body. Founder of Transformative Language Arts, she leads writing workshops widely, coaches people on writing and right livelihood, and consults on creativity.

Ken Waldman combines original poetry, old-time string-band music, and smart storytelling for a performance uniquely his. Touring since 1995, he's appeared from the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage to the Dodge Poetry Festival to the Woodford Folk Festival (Queensland, Australia). 20 books consist of 16 full-length poetry volumes, a memoir, a creative writing manual, a kids' book, and his 2022 novel, Now Entering Alaska Time. Twelve CDs include two for children.

Christine Irving describes her poems as snapshots - sharply focused moments that tell a tale in a few essential words. Her favorite métier is poetry, but she also writes novels, plays and travel pieces. Christine is the author of: Be a Teller of Tales,The Naked Man, You Can Tell a Crone by Her Cackle, and Sitting on the Hag Site: A Celtic Knot of Poems. Her newest work Return to Inanna is undergoing its final proof.

Carra Leah Hood is currently Associate Provost at Stockton University and a faculty member in the Writing program. She has published academic articles, personal essays, flash fiction, and poetry. The creative work included in this issue of eMerge were either begun or revised while she resided at the Writers’ Colony.

I am a retired teacher and live in the beautiful Ozarks on Lake Ann in Bella Vista, Arkansas. I think of myself as a beginning author, writer, and poet exploring the worlds of poetry, nature, and photography. I love to capture ordinary moments and reflect upon our natural world and its intersections with our daily life.

Vicki Mayk is a writer, teacher and editor whose work has appeared in Ms Magazine, Hippocampus, Literary Mama, The Manifest-Station, and the anthology Air, published by Hippocampus Magazine and Books. Her book, Growing Up on the Gridiron: Football, Friendship and the Tragic Life of Owen Thomas, was published by Beacon Press. She teaches adult nonfiction workshops. She earned an MFA in nonfiction from the Maslow Graduate Creative Writing Program at Wilkes University.

Joy Clark received her MFA from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, AR in 2020. She works for the local nonprofits Art Ventures and The Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, and is the new 2022 editor for eMerge. Her work can be read in places such as The Kenyon Review Online, Pleiades Magazine, and Bayou Magazine.