CO-DIRECTOR

Taylor Townes is a poet, mixed media artist, and storyteller born and raised in Philadelphia. She is the Program Coordinator for The Philadelphia Cultural Fund and can often be found seeking community and art wherever it may blossom.

CO-DIRECTOR

Julian Shendelman has been published by Philadelphia Stories, Cleaver Magazine, Thirty West and others. He is passionate about building strong communities, having organized with the Bay Area Trans Writers Workshop, The People’s Fridge, and Collective Lit.

Alison Lubar (they/themme) is a poet and educator who teaches literature to high schoolers, writing to adults, and yoga to all ages. They’re the author of two full-length poetry books, The Other Tree, winner of Harbor Editions’ 2024 Laureate Prize, and METAMOURPHOSIS (fifth wheel press, 2024), as well as four chapbooks: Philosophers Know Nothing About Love (Thirty West, 2022), queer feast (Bottlecap Press, 2022), sweet euphemism (Mouthfeel Press, 2023), and It Skips a Generation (Stanchion, 2023). Alison writes about biracial identity, queer love, transgenerational healing, and common moths. Find out more at www.alisonlubar.com/.

Amy Beth Sisson lives near the skunk cabbages in a town outside of Philly. Her poetry has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, The Night Heron Barks, Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, Philadelphia Stories, Hot Pink Magazine, and others. She received her MFA in poetry from Rutgers University Camden in 2023; was a 2024 Peter Taylor Fellow with the Kenyon Review Writing Workshops; and is a 2025 winner of the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia’s Joyful Abundance: Emerging Artist Commissioning Program.

Carla is a strategic communications and marketing leader with a passion for storytelling that drives connection and impact. Currently serving as the digital strategist at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, she amplifies the voices of innovative educators and changemakers nationwide who are working to transform the future of high school and postsecondary pathways. Her career spans roles across the nonprofit, cultural, and literary sectors, including launching the new home for the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn. Now based in Philadelphia, Carla brings her deep commitment to creativity and community-building to the board at Blue Stoop. She believes stories both reflect who we are and shape who we become—and that every voice deserves a seat at the table.

Elizabeth Greenspan is a nonfiction writer, focusing on cities, design, and politics. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker, and The New Republic, among other outlets, and she is currently writing a creative nonfiction book about the wife-husband, Philadelphia-based architecture pair Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, to be published by WW Norton.

Emma Copley Eisenberg is the author of the novel Housemates, the narrative nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl, and a forthcoming book of fiction, Fat Swim. Housemates was a National Bestseller, named a best book of the year by The Boston Globe, Kirkus Reviews, People, NBC, Electric Literature, Them.Us, and Autostraddle, and was longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist award as well as the winner of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia’s literary award for fiction. With Joshua Demaree, she co-founded Blue Stoop in 2018 and served as its director until 2022. 

Originally born and raised on the Northside of Wilmington, DE, Enoch is a poet, manga writer for series Immortal Dark, and trauma-informed teaching artist living an anime lifestyle in Philadelphia. As a mental health advocate and human living with bipolar disorder and autism, Enoch’s work investigates the emotional and spiritual nuances of the Black human experience. Enoch is the 2017 Philadelphia Fuze Grand Slam Champion and the author of three poetry collections, “The Guide to Drowning” published in 2017, “Burned at the Roots” published in 2020 and “I Was Close” published in 2024. Enoch operates as the Program Director for ArtWell, a multi-disciplinary arts programming non-profit.

Eshani Surya is a writer interested in how we share love while navigating the complications, trauma, and radical self-acceptance inherent in marginalization, especially in terms of disability and race. Her novel, RAVISHING, will be published by Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic. She is a 2022 Asian Women Writer’s Workshop mentee, a 2022 Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop scholarship recipient, a 2021 Mae Fellowship recipient and a 2021 Semi-Finalist for Key West Literary Seminar’s Marianne Russo Award for Novel In-Progress. Her fiction and essays can be read in The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, Catapult, Joyland, the anthology, Tiny Nightmares, and elsewhere.

John Vercher is the author of Three-Fifths (2019), After the Lights Go Out (2022), and most recently, Devil Is Fine (2024), longlisted for the Aspen Literary Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. His non-fiction has appeared at Cognoscenti (WBUR Boston), and in Entropy Magazine, LitHub, Booklist, and Men’s Health. He currently serves as Assistant Professor of English (Creative Writing) at Monmouth University and as core faculty at the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA Program.

Linda Gallant is the project director of The Head & The Hand (H&H), an independent nonprofit publisher and bookstore based in Philadelphia. In addition to ushering H&H's books, anthologies, and chapbooks from conception to print, she has spearheaded publishing partnerships with city stakeholders ranging from the Free Library of Philadelphia to Drexel University's Writers Room and orchestrated the literary arts programming at H&H Books since 2019. She has over fifteen years of professional writing and editing experience and welcomes every opportunity to shape and sustain creative communities.

Warren R. Basla holds a MS in Global & International Education and BA in Cultural Anthropology from Drexel University. He works as a Director of Development at an education non-profit in Philadelphia where he also resides with his wife and their rescue greyhound. Warren is writing historical fiction novels and flash fiction. He is a member of the Philly Writers Group and can be found online at www.warrenrbasla.com.