Become an Emerge Author

Writers and artists work in the loneliest of all professions, inside our heads. Those daring enough to create and reveal something of their inner natures, are to be lauded. The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow salutes your courage and thanks you for your submissions.

Submission period is open from August 1st until October 1st.

Submissions will be considered for inclusion in next year's issues of eMerge and submitters will be notified prior to publication.

Submission Form

Currently Featured Authors

Bruce Robinson
Recent work by Bruce Robinson appears or is forthcoming in Pangyrus, Evening Street Review, Rattle, Spoon River Poetry Review, Seventh Quarry, and Maintenant. He lives in Brooklyn and Albany, NY along with two cats, both of whom are trying to get published.

Posts in this issue: 4

Elizabeth Marrero
Elizabeth Marrero is a short story and children’s book writer. Her writing has been published in school literary journals. Her photographs have been published in many magazines and in an anatomy textbook. She has been an editor for the Rockvale Review and a fellowship reader for the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow. She currently focuses on short story and children’s book writing, acrylic pour art, and photography.

Posts in this issue: 3

Joanie Roberts
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.

Posts in this issue: 2

Catherine Buercklin
Catherine Buercklin is a contemporary poet who enjoys collaborating with other writers and artists. She’s a sucker for anything covered in chocolate and refuses to choose sides in the coffee vs. tea debate, as she loves them both equally. She feels most at home sitting outside watching birds and imagining what it’s like to live under a mushroom.  She lives in Conway with her banjo-lovin’ husband, Aaron, and her feisty, but loveable cat, Winnifred.

Posts in this issue: 2

Ken Waldman
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). 19 books consist of 16 full-length poetry volumes, a memoir, a creative writing manual, a kids' book. Nine CDs include two for children. In 2022, Cyberwit Press of India will publish his novel, Now Entering Alaska Time.

Posts in this issue: 2

Jamie Lynn Heller
Poetry is my caffeine. My many roles in life (so far) have included teacher, school counselor, bookmobile driver, furniture factory worker, volunteer coordinator, daughter, aunt, wife, mother, reader and writer. My book Buried in the Suburbs was published in 2018 by Woodley Press (2019 Kansas Notable Book Award. My chapbook Domesticated: Poetry from Around the House was published in 2015 (Finishing Line Press). For a complete list of publications see jamielynnheller.blogspot.com

Posts in this issue: 2

Francis Hicks
Francis Hicks moved to the Oregon coast a while back, which to him is heaven. He walks on the beach most days, gathering inspiration and seashells. His writing has appeared in Emerge Magazine, Ariel Chart Magazine, and several anthologies including Dairy Hollow Echo, The Way The Light Slants, and Life Is A Journey.

Posts in this issue: 2

Ruth Weinstein
Since 1976, my husband and I have lived on a hardscrabble, 40-acre piece of Ozark land as back-to-the-landers, a group of very determined people. We still garden organically and largely rely on ourselves and our community for entertainment and inspiration. I am also a textile artist working in a wide variety of disciplines. My memoir, BACK TO THE LAND: ALLIANCE COLONY TO THE OZARKS was published by Stockton University Press in February 2020, and my poetry appears in print and online.

Posts in this issue: 1

simone j. banks
​simóne j banks is a writer and English instructor at Louisiana State University where she earned her MFA in creative writing in poetry. She is researching and writing her first collection of stories. 

Posts in this issue: 1

Violet Treadwell Hull
Violet Treadwell Hull is a multimedia artist studying studio art at UCLA. They most predominantly work with themes of bodily autonomy and the power structures that lie within physical interaction. Their writing is a synonymous practice with their visual art-making as they inform and propel one another.

Posts in this issue: 1

Suzanne McConnell
Suzanne McConnell began writing at the University of Arkansas and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her book Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style by Kurt Vonnegut and Suzanne McConnell was published in 2019 by Seven Stories Press. Her fiction won First Prize at New Ohio Review and Prime Number Magazine, and Second Prize in So To Speak. She taught writing at Hunter College for thirty years and is the Fiction Editor for the Bellevue Literary Review.

Posts in this issue: 1

Greg Zeck
A native Minnesotan, Greg Zeck taught college English and did freelance business writing in the Midwest. He’s published fiction and poetry in such magazines as Ambit, Bogg, Moon Magazine, and the Spoon River Quarterly. Ten years ago, he retired with his wife Jennifer to Fayetteville, Arkansas. Last year he published a first book of poetry, Transitions, and is coming out this fall with a second book, Lost & Found: Poems Found All Around.

Posts in this issue: 1

Zhenya Yevtushenko
Zhenya Yevtushenko is one of the sons of the late poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. He is a published translator, a former substitute teacher and funeral home consultant. Currently, Zhenya has resumed pursuing his undergraduate degrees in Political Science, History and English. Zhenya aspires to become a Foreign Service Officer and a literary translator. He resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma and owes his inspiration to his brothers, his mother, and to the love of his life, Olivia.

Posts in this issue: 1

Kate Kaiser
Published in Mr. Beller's Neighborhood 2010, Thin Thread Stories: Mother & Grandmothers (Kiwi Publishing) 2011, Fiction Fix Issue 9 - 2011 and The St. Petersburg Review 2011-12. Memoirs include, Letters to my Mother (but really for my father) and Love Sex Death Betrayal. Kate won Fiction Fix's Issue 9 Editor's Choice Award. She was also nominated for the 2011 Pushcart Prize / 2011 Sundress Publication's Best of the Net Award for Dessert & Sudden Death by Fiction Fix.

Posts in this issue: 1

Scarlett Savoy
A California transplant, Scarlett Savoy now lives in the Arkansas Ozarks. She has been published in Scholastic Review, Crazy Quilt, Off the Wall, Renegade, eMerge anthology “Dairy Hollow Echo” and anthologies B and Poised in Flight by Kind of A Hurricane Press, among other venues.

Posts in this issue: 1

Sallie Crotty
Sallie Crotty has published work in numerous places, including The Dairy Hollow Echo; The Drabble; eMerge; and Resources to Recover. The Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference selected her writing for workshop three times, and 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. She is pursuing her MFA at Queens University of Charlotte and working on a poetry collection. Her memoir Out of the Ashes: A Story of Recovery and Hope comes out June 2022.

Posts in this issue: 1

Liza Wolff-Francis
Liza Wolff-Francis is a poet and writer with an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College who served two terms as a member of the Albuquerque Poet Laureate Program's Selection Committee and continues on the organizing committee. Her writing has most recently appeared in the magazine El Palacio: Art, History, and Culture of the Southwest, Steam Ticket, We’Moon, among others. She has a chapbook out called Language of Crossing.

Posts in this issue: 1

George Plautz
George Plautz has been writing, acting and directing for the theatre for more than forty years most recently with Wasatch Theatre Company where he directed, wrote and/or produced over twenty productions. Three of his full-length plays and numerous of his one-act and ten-minute plays have been produced. After retiring, he has been pursuing playwriting and cooking full-time including a month-long residency at Dairy Hollow in 2021.

Posts in this issue: 1

Jacqueline Woven
Jacqueline Wolven, a community organizer, speaker, writer, and artist has a 365-day haiku project as part of her zen practice. These are selections from that project. She was recently included in the Haiku Society of America’s annual anthology, the Writers Colony's Emerge anthology, and has won the Wally Towle prize for her haiku. She makes her home in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Find her online everywhere at @jackiewolven and at (https://jacquelinewolven.com/)

Posts in this issue: 1

Laura Matson Hahn
Laura Matson Hahn is a novelist and former communications professional who retired to Beaver Lake in Arkansas with her husband. They dove into country life on three acres, especially focusing on learning how to raise and retain guinea fowl in a wild area of the country.

Posts in this issue: 1

Michelle Jones
Michelle Jones, is a 38 year old Arkansas native. She was born at Saline Hospital and lived in the Benton Community of Ralph Bunche. After 49 years from when the first Nobel Peace Prize was given, Ralph J. Bunche the first African American Nobel Prize winner in 1950. Just like Bunche, Michelle is a community advocate for diversity, inclusivity, and equity. Ms. Jones is a poet, author, and believes in a revival of soapbox speeches.

Posts in this issue: 1

Fred Yu
Fred Yu writes fiction in the Asian Historical Fantasy genre. He is a filmmaker, chef, Feng Shui practitioner, martial artist, and for over a decade was a risk manager in Citigroup. He graduated from New York University majoring in film and television, and has directed a number of documentaries and short films while working in the financial services industry. Yu is currently a full-time writer and lives in New York City.

Posts in this issue: 1

George Freek
George Freek's poetry has recently appeared in "Acumen"; "Miller's Pond"; "The Gentian Journal"; "Ink, Sweat and Tears"; and "The Whimsical Poet."

Posts in this issue: 1

Anna Gall
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.

Posts in this issue: 1

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
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.

Posts in this issue: 1

Danielle Kuntz
Dani K. is a recent graduate of Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, where she studied English-Creative Writing. She enjoys hiking, playing video games, listening to true crime podcasts, and writing about the human condition. Using her poetry, she hopes to achieve a sense of empathy with readers.

Posts in this issue: 1

Michele Mekel
Living in Happy Valley, Michele Mekel wears many hats of her choosing: writer and editor; educator and bioethicist; poetess and creatrix; cat herder and chief can opener; witch and woman; and, above all, human. Her work has appeared in various academic and creative publications, including being featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. She is also a co-principal investigator for the Viral Imaginations: COVID-19 project (viralimaginations.psu.edu).

Posts in this issue: 1

Jessica Cloud
Jessica Neno Cloud was born and raised in Mobile, AL and now resides in Hattiesburg, MS with her husband Daniel and her two children. She earned her M.A. in English literature at The University of Southern Mississippi. Her poetry can be found online in the TEJASCOVIDO project and the online journal Former People. In print her poem “After the Bath” appeared in Constellations magazine in 2019 and the poem “Stockpile the Sun” was published in the Langdon Review: TEJASCOVIDO in 2020.

Posts in this issue: 1

Steve Nelson
Steve Nelson earned his PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and have had work published in The Rambler, Storyglossia, eye-rhyme, The Absinthe Literary Review, and elsewhere. Four of his stories were included in the anthology "Our Plan to Save the World." His book "Teaching The Way: Using the Principles of 'The Art of War' to Teach Composition" will be published in 2021 by Ten16 Press. 

Posts in this issue: 1

Joy Clark
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.

Posts in this issue: 1

Former Contributors