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

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

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: 2

Darren Chase
Darren teaches English at New Design High, a public school in his Lower East Side neighborhood. His essays and fiction have been published in Sisyphus, Humans of the World, Pangyrus and On the Run. Also an accomplished opera singer, he has released several albums of classical songs. His translation of Wilhelm Müller’s Die Winterreise is used for performances of Schubert’s song cycle all over the world.

Posts in this issue: 1

C.D. White
CD White began dancing with words early in life. She was first published in a local newspaper at age nine and has been exploring the power of well choreographed language ever since. Among a plethora of other jobs she eventually made a living in the broadcast and print media industries over the years but never stopped writing for her own pleasure. Now retired, she hopes to complete a novel that has been in the works for nearly a decade.

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). 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.

Posts in this issue: 2

Megan Kirk
Megan Kirk has operated Eureka Market, the local natural food store in Eureka Springs, for 20 years. In addition to guiding 3 daughters toward adulthood, (two down, one to go) she nurtures a 30-year relationship with photography by wandering the hills of Eureka nearly every day. She is currently working on several photo collections documenting local street art, yard art, Eureka cats, the Beaver Bridge, and people from the knees-down. Megan’s work has appeared locally and regionally in shows. Prints can be ordered by contacting via Instagram @megan_bogle_kirk

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: 1

John L. Swainston
Currently residing in Gardner, Kansas. Retired Finance Executive, College Adjunct Professor, and Army Veteran. A Writer Colony Alumni and member of the Kansas City Mystic Poet Society. An award-winning poet. His poetry has been published in a variety of magazines and in a recent book about the pandemic.

Posts in this issue: 1

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: 1

Bill McCloud
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.

Posts in this issue: 2

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. She is also a co-principal investigator for the Viral Imaginations: COVID-19 project (viralimaginations.psu.edu).

Posts in this issue: 2

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

Sandra Korey
Sandra Korey holds awards in local poetry contests, has some work published in small town papers. She's read much, traveled some, and retired. She also writes children's stories published in Caterpillar, and creative short stories for her own amusement.

Posts in this issue: 2

Dani Kuntz
Dani K. is a recent graduate of Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, where she studied English-Creative Writing. Currently, she works in analytics at a marketing agency in Little Rock. During her free time, she enjoys hiking, playing PC games, listening to true crime podcasts, and writing about the human condition. Using her poetry, Dani hopes to achieve a sense of empathy with readers.

Posts in this issue: 2

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: 2

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: 2

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: 2

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

John Walch
John Walch's plays have been produced and commissioned at theaters such as Center Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Public Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Alabama Shakespeare, Edinburgh Fringe, and off-Broadway at Urban Stages. A two-time Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and a former James Michener Fellow, other awards include: Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays and the American Theatre Critics Association’s Osborn Award. John heads the MFA Playwriting Program @ University of Arkansas.

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: 3

Emmanuel Akintoye
Emmanuel Akintoye is a Nigerian. He is a student of the Department of Medicine and Surgery, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria. He is a passionate writer and a poet. He is also a budding freelance writer. His pen name is Smarnuel and he is in his late teens.

Posts in this issue: 1

Anna Robertson
Anna dwells in the forests and hills of Northwest Arkansas, accompanied by her cat, Pippin. She received her BA in Professional-Technical Writing from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock – but her true passion is creative writing. Throughout her journey as a storyteller, Anna has published both memoirs and poetry. When she is not writing, she is often found reading, drawing, or playing video games. Anna is currently working on a dark-fantasy book series, which involves dragons, Druids, and a world woven by fate.

Posts in this issue: 1

Sheri Bancroft
A recipient of the Tennessee Arts Commission Literary Fellowship, Sheri Bancroft lives and works in Memphis, TN with her musician husband and tubby ticked tabby cat.

Posts in this issue: 1

Pedro Henrique da Silva Lino
Pedro Lino is one of those "nefelibata" kids: that person who lives introverted within their own imagination. Mostly, a polyglot who doesn't speak all that often. In the end, he's nothing but a writer. Still, he occasionally tries to stop writing, but just can't. You may find him daydreaming all along.

Posts in this issue: 1

Syakina Nour
Syakina Nour is an engineering graduate that has finally found her real passion in writing. While she is an emotional person at heart, she enjoys the intellectual quality and straightforwardness of modern poetry written by some of the excellent poets from that era such as W.H Auden, T.S Eliot and W.B Yeats. Now, she lives in Malaysia with her family and spends most of her time trying to make her dream of becoming a writer into reality, a cup of tea at a time.

Posts in this issue: 1

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

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

Sonya Vann DeLoach
Sonya Vann DeLoach joined Detroit’s Circle writing group in 2020, where she wrote a poem, “Garden of Delight,” which was chosen over thousands to appear in Chicken Soup for the Soul: I’m Speaking Now: Black Women Share Their Truth in 101 Stories of Love, Courage and Hope (June 2021). Her poetry appears in Circle's Cypher (2021) book. Sonya has written for The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Detroit Free Press, where she was a copy editor. She lives with her husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Posts in this issue: 1

Former Contributors