The Unquiet Mind

Cynthia Atkins is the author of Psyche’s Weathers and In The Event of Full Disclosure, and the forthcoming collection “Still-Life With God.” Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including, Alaska Quarterly Review, Apogee, BOMB, Cleaver Magazine, Denver Quarterly, Diode, Florida Review, Green Mountains Review, Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Rust + Moth, SWWIM, Tampa Review, and Verse Daily. Formerly, Atkins worked as the assistant director of the Poetry Society of America. She has received fellowships from Bread Loaf and the VCCA,  Atkins is an Interviews Editor at American Microreviews and Interviews, and teaches Creative Writing at Blue Ridge Community College.Atkins lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County VA with her family.

Ciara Dall graduated from Augsburg University with an MFA in Creative Writing and an emphasis in Translation and Publishing. Her work is lyrical and explores themes of mental illness, sex, abuse, and loss while utilizing images of the world surrounding her both beautiful and grotesque. She has a poem published with Panoplyzine’s Issue 12 coming out in May 2019.

Carrie McGath is the author of Small Murders (2006, New Issues) and is the author of several handmade, limited-edition chapbooks. She is currently at work on her second full-length collection, The Luck of Anhedonia as well as a chapbook titled, Dahlia’s Chest Pain. Carrie has studied with many distinguished poets including Mary Ruefle, and is currently studying poetry with Christina Pugh and nonfiction with Luis Alberto Urrea as a doctoral student in the Program for Writers at UIC. Her work has appeared in journals such as The Chariton Review, Barrow Street, Hiram Poetry Review, Grimoire, and others. Carrie is listed on VIDA’s “Anti-List of Underacknowledged Women Writers” where novelist, Monica Drake writes of her work, “… McGath reimagines  world that opens to grand possibility while simultaneously remaining painfully claustrophobic, and therefore married to a new kind of truth.”

Rose M. Smith’s work has appeared in The Examined Life, pluck!, Naugatuck River Review, Snapdragon, Minola Review, Dying Dahlia Review, Main Street Rag and other journals and anthologies. She is author of four chapbooks, most recentlyHoles in My Teeth (Kattywompus Press, 2016). Rose was winner of the 2018 Lyrebird Prize from Glass Lyre Press. She is a Senior Editor with Pudding Magazine, an IT requirements analyst by day and a graduate Cave Canem fellow.

Keli Stewart’s work has appeared in Quiddity, Meridians, Warpland, Hip Mama, and Calyx, among other noted journals and publications. She received artist fellowships from Hedgebrook, and the Augusta Savage Gallery Arts International Residency. An alum of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation and Callaloo Summer Writing Workshops, Keli’s work was selected for first place in the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award from the Illinois Center of the Book, Emerging Writers Competition. She received her BA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College and her MFA in Poetry from Chicago State University. Her manuscript “After Birth” was recently named semi-finalist for the Claudia Emerson Chapbook Award.

Nina Corwin — WMG Literary Events Curator.
Nina Corwin is a published poet, Founding Editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal and psychotherapist/advocate for victims of sexual assault. She is the author of two books of poetry, The Uncertainty of Maps and Conversations With Friendly Demons and Tainted Saints. Her work has appeared in ACM, Forklift OH, Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review, Southern Poetry Review, Verse and has been nominated for the Pushcart prize. Corwin is an Advisory Editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal and co-edited Inhabiting the Body: A Collection of Poetry and Art By Women. She has read and performed her work across the country, at times set with musical or choreographic compositions.

Jennifer Steele – WMG Literary Events Outreach Coordinator.
Jennifer Steele is a published poet and educator and serves as Partnerships Coordinator for Teen Services at Chicago Public Library.  She served as co-founder and co-curator of the Revolving Door Reading Series. Her work has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Callaloo Journal, Columbia Poetry Review, Warpland Journal, So To Speak, and others, and is a Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop fellow. She has taught creative writing and digital media arts across Chicago since 2008 and has collaborated with numerous youth organizations and cultural institutions, designing innovative arts programming.

Kurt Heintz – WMG Literary Events Audio Recordist.
Kurt Heinz once taught computer graphics programming at Columbia College, and worked as an independent web developer. He’s since become the lead video director at Britannica. Heintz is known for his poetry videos, begun in the early 1990s. He also videoconferenced his colleagues’ poetry in the late 1990s — years before Skype and the iPhone. He was a technical advisor to the Electronic Literature Organization in its earliest years, and is the video content editor for Another Chicago Magazine.

Thank you Angela Narciso Torres, for your wonderful work and support for WMG and our Literary Program!