FROM TOP LEFT TO RIGHT:

M.L. Krishnan, Fiction, Ann Arbor, MI

Originally from the coastal shores of Tamil Nadu in South India, ML is a 2019 graduate of the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop and a 2022-2023 MacDowell Fellow. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Best Microfiction 2022 Anthology, Death in the Mouth: The Best of Contemporary Horror, The Offing, Sonora Review, Quarterly West, Paper Darts, Zócalo Public Square and elsewhere.

Her stories have been nominated and shortlisted for Best of the Net, the Best Microfiction Anthology, the Stabby Awards, the Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Coppice Prize and more. Her work has also been translated into Spanish by the Ignotus award-winning podcast Las Escritoras de Urras for international audiences in South America and Europe. Her chapbook, The End, as Seen from the Tip of the Indian Peninsula is the winner of the OutWrite 2022 Chapbook Competition (fiction), and is forthcoming from Neon Hemlock Press.

Michael Covello, Screenwriting; Virginville, PA

An Assistant Professor of Art at Kutztown University and 2022-2023 Clements Research Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michael studied at the School of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University and the University of South Florida, receiving his MFA in 2013.

Michael’s work has been twice nominated by the American Academy of Arts and Letters; he is the recipient of an Individual Artist Grant (Arts Council of Hillsborough County), Merit Award (Vermont Studio Center) and a Work & Families Fellowship (Wassaic Project). Recent exhibitions include Drawing Discourse: Exhibition of Contemporary Drawing at University of North Carolina-Asheville and Audio Visual Frontiers at University of California-Riverside. Past exhibitions include the New Art Center, Boston (Curatorial Opportunity Winner), the Florida Biennial (Boca Raton Museum of Art) and the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art (Orlando Museum of Art).

Michael’s animations have been screened at international venues, such as: the London Independent Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Buffalo International Film Festival, the Sydney Underground Film Festival, the New York Independent Cinema Awards (awarded Best Animation in 2021), the Amsterdam International Short Film Festival (awarded Best Animation in 2021), and the Los Angeles International Film Festival’s IndieShortFest, (nominated for Best Audio Mixing in 2019).

Heather Corbally Bryant, Non-Fiction, Andover, MA

A Lecturer in the Writing Program at Wellesley College, Heather received her AB from Harvard and her PhD from the University of Michigan. Her first book, How Will the Heart Endure: Elizabeth Bowen and the Landscape of War (University of Michigan Press) won the Donald Murphy prize from the ACIS. Heather’s poems have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Sixteen, The Paddock Review, Old Frog Pond Chapbooks and In Another Voice, Open-Eyed, Full-Throated: An Anthology of American/Irish Poets (Dublin: Arlen House, 2019).

Cheap Grace, her first chapbook was published by the Finishing Line Press. Her second collection of poems, Lottery Ticket (2013) was published by the Parallel Press Series of the University of Wisconsin Libraries-Madison. Subsequent collections also published by Finishing Line Press include: Compass Rose (2015), My Wedding Dress (2016), Thunderstorm (2017, nominated for a Mass Book award), Eve’s Lament (2018), James Joyce’s Water Closet (2018, awarded Honorable Mention in the Open Chapbook Competition of Finishing Line Press), Leaving Santorini (2018) and Practicing Yoga in a Former Shoe Factory (2020). Two of her poems were nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018.

Daniela Puliti, Visual Arts; Garfield, NJ

Daniela studied painting at Montclair State University (BFA, 2011) and Savannah College of Art and Design (MFA, 2015); she manipulates craft-based materials with an intuitive painter’s sensibility. She has participated in residencies at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Wassaic Project and ChaNorth; she also participated in the A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship in Brooklyn (2017-2018) that included a solo exhibition in NYC in February 2018. More recently, Daniela’s solo exhibition There were no casseroles… at Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT, focused on the grieving process after the death of her partner.

Daniela’s largest public commission: Welcome Quilt (sidewalk mural spanning 100 feet in length) premiered in 2019 in downtown Newark, NJ. Utilizing the rainbow colors of the LGBTQ flag and trans blue, pink and white, a range of skin tones and hand-painted squares interspersed, Welcome Quilt signals the inclusion and diversity within the community. As an activist, Daniela has has engaged in a number of performance protests garnering the attention of Hyperallergic and Artnet News; she is an advocate for destigmatizing mental health, fat acceptance, and proudly proclaims herself a strident feminist.

Leslie McIntosh, Poetry; Jersey City, NJ

Leslie is black, mostly cis, mostly male, male attracted, autistic, an older millennial, a poet, and a psychologist. He has received support, in the form of residencies and fellowships, from Breadloaf, Callaloo, The Watering Hole, Zoeglossia, and more. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Foglifter, Obsidian, Split This Rock, Southern Humanities Review, Witness, and elsewhere. A nominee for the Pushcart, he is an Assistant Poetry Editor at Newfound and lives in a part of the stolen land of the indigenous Munsee Lenape people, currently known as Jersey City, NJ.

Jennifer Paige Cohen, Visual Arts; Brooklyn, NY

Jennifer has an MFA from Yale University and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her solo exhibitions include Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, NY; The Pit, LA; Salon 94, NY; and White Columns, NY. Group exhibitions include the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, CT; Marinaro Gallery, NY; Rachel Uffner, NY; Regina Rex, NY; September Gallery, Hudson, NY; the Elizabeth Foundation, NY and Kate MacGarry, London, among others.

Jennifer is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, the Marie Walsh Sharpe/Walentas Space Program, Civitella Ranieri; in addition, she was an Artist in Residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX in 2015. She has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Saint-Gaudens Memorial Fellowship, that included a solo exhibition in Cornish, NH in Fall 2021.

Oliver Caplan, Composing; Medford, MA

Oliver is the Artistic Director of the American Prize-winning Juventas New Music Ensemble, the only professional ensemble of its kind devoted specifically to the music of emerging composers, serves on Ragdale Foundation’s Curatorial Board and is also a voting member of the Recording Academy. Oliver attended Dartmouth College and the Boston Conservatory. Oliver’s compositions have been performed in over 200 performances nationwide, and he has been commissioned by the Atlanta Chamber Players, Bella Piano Trio, Bronx Arts Ensemble, Brookline Symphony Orchestra, Columbia University Wind Ensemble and New Hampshire Master Chorale, among others.

Oliver is the recipient of a Special Citation for the American Prize in Orchestral Composition and has also won two Veridian Symphony Competitions, the Fifth House Ensemble Competition Grand Prize, eight ASCAP Awards. He has participated in residencies at Ragdale, Lake Forest, IL; the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Amherst, VA; and the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, Sheridan, WY.

His recordings include the 2017 release You Are Not Alone (featured on Apple Music’s Classical A-list and streamed over 200,000 times); 2021 album Watershed; tracks on Trio Siciliano’s Exploring Music (2018, U07 Records) and the Sinfonietta of Riverdale’s New World Serenade (2016, Albany Records).