Erica Abbott (she/her) is a poet and editor whose work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Booth, Ecotone, The Cortland Review, Epiphany, Shō Poetry Journal, and others. She is the poetry editor for Variant Literature and web editor for River Heron Review. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Randolph College and lives in Philadelphia. Her work, which engages with the environment, apocalypses, surrealism, and desire, has received support from the McCormack Writing Center and Juniper Writing Institute. She released a chapbook in 2020 and is working on her first full-length poetry manuscript. Visit her website at erica-abbott.com.

Juwanna Black is a horror enthusiast and floral design hobbyist. She is a Philadelphia native who enjoys discussing politics with her husband and bookish musings with her four children.

Siobhan Carroll is a Philadelphia-area science fiction writer and a research professor of English at the University of Delaware. Her research and writing interests include the history of empire, infrastructure, and climate change.

Susannah Duncan is a speculative fiction writer and an educator. She studied literature and creative writing at Bryn Mawr College, where her fiction was awarded the Alexandra Peschka Literary Prize. Her work has appeared in Menagerie Magazine, the Moonstone Press anthology S/He Speaks II, and the inaugural issue of Lemonspouting, and is forthcoming in Cast of Wonders. She lives in West Philly.

Alanna Faelan is a speculative fiction writer raised in South Philadelphia at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. Their work has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, and been supported by the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writing Workshop, McCormack Writing Center, and the Banff Centre. They were a finalist for the Speculative Literature Foundation’s Working Class Writers Grant, and are at work on their first novel. 

Amirio Freeman (any pronouns) an essayist, interviewer, and editor who writes about Blackness, queerness, and plants. Amirio is from coastal Virginia and currently resides in Philadelphia, PA. You can find more of their work at amiriofreeman.com.

Roy Graham is a Philly-based graduate of the Rutgers-Camden MFA program and the Viable Paradise Class of 2022. His fiction has been featured in Weird Horror and several anthologies. He is currently a Story Lead at Wizards of the Coast. He is represented by Arley Sorg, at KT Literary.

A.T. Greenblatt is a Nebula Award winning writer and mechanical engineer. She has published over 40 short stories, and her work has been a finalist for a Hugo, Locus, World Fantasy, and Sturgeon Award. Her stories have been translated into 12 different languages, taught in universities around the world, and included in multiple Year’s Best anthologies. Her fiction and essays can be found in Reactor, Uncanny, Slate, and Clarkesworld as well as many other publications. She currently lives in Philadelphia and can often be found in a neighborhood park with her frisbee-loving dog. 

Olivia Hamilton (she/her) is a documentary archival producer and researcher for film projects streaming on HBO, Netflix, Disney, and more. She has a deep interest in climate change and progressive social movements, and is particularly interested in media that helps us imagine a climate-positive future. She’s eager to learn more about the Pennsylvania ecosystem and how she can weave this knowledge into both her personal writing projects and professional work. https://olivia-hamilton.com

Simon Herz is a speculative fiction writer and educator. Two of his short stories were finalists for the Must Read Books Award, and he has contributed nonfiction articles, reviews, and poetry to publications including Locus Magazine and Small Craft Warnings. Simon spent the past two years as a resident teaching artist for creative writing in the School District of Philadelphia. He can often be found constructing cryptic crossword puzzles or playing folk music.

Jeff Joseph Katz is a white queer writer and artist based in Philadelphia, PA. He makes work across disciplines, from comics to poetry to animation to performance, always seeking to discover the secret passages between thinking and feeling. His work has been published or is forthcoming in The Offing, The Barley Field, and The Seventh Wave, where he is now an assistant editor of hybrid work. He is the writer and performer of Capability Pink Designs a Pleasure Garden with You, a drag performance-lecture about Philly garden design, climate action, and gay BDSM. He has been a storytelling resident at the West Harlem Art Fund, and is currently a Studio Resident at the Da Vinci Art Alliance. He wants to be closer with you. jeffjosephkatz.com, @callistrogue.

Eleanor Linafelt is a writer and musician living in Philadelphia. Her band Queen Rat released their album “Until It’s Not” in 2022, and she is now working on a novel set in Philly. She has professional experience in arts education and journalism, and currently works as an administrative coordinator at a legal aid nonprofit. 

Dawn Manning resides in the former tollhouse of a covered bridge along the Manatawny Creek where she writes, consults, and metalsmiths. She is the author of Postcards from the Dead Letter Office (Burlesque Press). Honors for her poetry include the Hugh J. Luke Award, the Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, the San Miguel Writers’ Poetry Prize, and the Edith Garlow Poetry Prize, among others. Her poems have appeared through 32 Poems, Ecotone, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, Verse Daily and other literary journals. As a metalsmith, Dawn creates wearable art and sculptural pieces that favor the juxtaposition of ancient and organic forms with the industrial. Find her at dawnmanning.com.

Jon McGoran is the author of eleven novels for adults and young adults, including his science fiction thriller, The Price of Everything, which was one of 12 books longlisted for the 2026 Climate Fiction Prize. His other books include the YA science fiction thrillers Spliced, Splintered, and Spiked and the science thrillers Drift, Deadout, and Dust Up. He has also written numerous short stories. Spliced was named to the American Library Association’s inaugural LITA Excellence in Children’s and Young Adult Science Fiction Notable List and shortlisted for the 2019/2020 South Carolina Young Adult Book Award. Both Spliced and Splintered were named Best Books for Young Readers by the American Bookseller’s Association. McGoran is a developmental editor, screenwriter, and ghostwriter, and he teaches in Drexel University’s Creative Writing MFA program. He lives outside Philadelphia with his wife Elizabeth, a librarian. For more, visit www.jonmcgoran.com or @JonMcGoran on social media.

Melanie Moyer is a queer writer of science fiction and horror. Her short work has appeared in Philadelphia Stories, Ghost Parachute, DarkLit Press, and been shortlisted for the LeVar Burton Reads Origins & Encounters Contest as well as the Masters Review 2019 Flash Fiction Contest. Her award-winning science fiction novel, The Original Glitch, was published by Lanternfish Press in 2021. Her nonfiction work, largely on horror pop culture, has appeared in Certified Forgotten, Movie Jawn, Hear Us Scream, The Order of the Good Death, and Popsugar. She co-hosts the horror podcast Splatter Chatter. When not writing she paints watercolors and miniatures, plays DnD, hikes, birds, and loves to cook. 

Ben Nadler is an Assistant Teaching Professor of English & Creative Writing at Widener University in Chester. He is the author, most recently, of the novel Prairie Ashes (American Buffalo Books/Kansas State University). His previous works include The Sea Beach Line: A Novel and the monograph Punk in NYC’s LES, 1981-1991. He can be found at bennadler.com.

Marissa L. Piña Rodríguez is a Mexican-born creative writer, grassroots organizer, and mother. She is a member of the Blue Stoop literary community in Philadelphia and holds a degree in English Literature. She is currently working on her debut novel.

Lorraine Rice is a writer whose work explores identity and the natural world at the intersections of history and hauntings. She is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and recipient of support from Hedgebrook and Kimbilio Fiction. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Copper Nickel, Beloit Poetry Journal, and the anthology Permanent Record: Poetics Towards the Archive (Nightboat Books, 2025). Her fiction has been published in swamp pink, Witness, midnight & indigo: Eighteen Speculative Stories by Black Women Writers, Vol III, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Lorraine Rice holds an MFA from The Brooklyn Writers Foundry. Originally from South Carolina, she currently lives with her family in Philadelphia, where she delights in the Wissahickon whenever possible. More: lorrainerice.net.

Ravneet Kaur Sandhu currently lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband. Her work has been published in The Offing, Gordon Square Review, and Tiny Spoon Magazine. She currently works at Abode Press as a Programs Manager and reads for Exposition Review. You can find her on Instagram at ravneet_recommends and on Chill Subs.

Sara Mae is a genderqueer writer raised on the Chesapeake Bay. They are a 2026 fiction alum and 2022 poetry alum of the McCormack Writing Center Workshops (FKA Tin House), and a 2025 SAFTA Artist-in-Residence. Their work has been published in the Georgia Review, Fairytale Review, POETRY, The Offing, and elsewhere. Their second chapbook, Phantasmagossip, won the Vinyl45 chapbook competition and was released from YesYes Books in 2025. They write and release music as The Noisy. Sara Mae received their MFA from UT Knoxville. They run a native plant nursery in Philly. 

Born and based out of Philadelphia, PA, Christopher Supplee is a writer and poet. He received his bachelor’s from Fordham University and is currently pursuing a master’s in English at Villanova University. His interests include playing RPG video games, finding new cafes and bakeries to dine in, reading all forms of fiction from classical epics to manga, and enjoying quiet hours in nature. Through his first novel, The Sovereign Guise, he hopes to inspire advocacy about environmental exploitation through a fantastic lens.

Meagan Regina Thomas is a Philadelphia author of primarily speculative fiction. You can find their stories published by Tales to Terrify and Gavagai, as well as upcoming in Fantasy & Science Fiction. They grew up in the woods, and their favorite piece of punctuation is the em dash.

MP Vare (they/them) is a community-trained writer, intuitive artist, and disabled transgender parent. MP is in Kelly Sundberg’s 2026 Memoir in a Year cohort with support from The Loft. They’ve studied poetry and creative nonfiction at Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, were a nonfiction fellow with Abode Press, and a resident in The Seventh Wave’s Narrative Shifts. MP’s writing and art can be found in The Wildness We Tend Vol. III, The Audacity, Foglifter, Peatsmoke Journal, and elsewhere. Their chapbook Daddio: An Iterative Erasure is available from Bottlecap Press. More at MPVare.com.

Holly Ian Winter is a feral chaos angel from Philadelphia. She writes about punk music, bicycle adventures and the resilient queerness of nature through a zine series called Holly, Baby.