CO-DIRECTOR

Taylor Townes is a Philadelphia based poet, mixed media artist, and designer. She shares her poetry on custom clothing with her brand Poetry for the Streets (formerly known as stuffnotherthings.com) and is currently working on self-publishing her first chapbook. She is a Philly Typewriter sponsored poet and recipient of the 2022 Judith Stark Writing Award. She has performed spoken word poetry on stages in Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York City.

CO-DIRECTOR

Julian Shendelman is a prose writer with Southern California roots. After earning two degrees in queer/trans theory, he moved to the Philadelphia region in 2017. His work has been published by Nomadic Press, Bat City Review, Philadelphia Stories, Cleaver Magazine, and Thirty West. Julian is passionate about building strong communities; his organizing background includes the Bay Area Trans Writers Workshop, The People’s Fridge, and Collective Lit. Learn more at www.shendelman.com

Emma Copley Eisenberg is a queer writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Granta, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House, Esquire, Guernica, The Washington Post Magazine, and others. She has received fellowships, grants and residencies from Bread Loaf, the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Millay Colony, Jentel Foundation, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. Her first book of nonfiction is The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia which was named a New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice of 2020 as well as nominated for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Bouchercon Award among other honors. With Joshua Demaree, she co-founded Blue Stoop in 2018 and served as its director until 2022. Her debut novel, Housemates will be published by Hogarth on May 28, 2024.

Warren Longmire is a poet, a software engineer, and an educator from the bad part of North Philadelphia. He is the co-founder of the Excelano Project Spoken Word Collective and former editor for Apiary magazine. He's been published in journals including American Poetry Review, Eleven Eleven, Prolit and The Painted Bride Quarterly. Warren is featured in the Best American Poetry 2021 anthology. His first full length publication was released in 2021 through Radiator Press.

Arielle Brousse is a veteran of the Philadelphia nonprofit scene, focusing on marketing, development, and donor communications. She currently works as the Marketing Manager of National Philanthropic Trust; previously, she has been the Assistant Director for Development at Kelly Writers House, and Grantwriter and Development Communications Coordinator of The Franklin Institute. Additionally, she serves on the board of the Abortion Liberation Fund, and co-leads a progressive Girl Scout troop. She holds a Master's degree in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania. In her spare time, she enjoys gardens, fiber arts, horror movies, taking photos in and around South Philadelphia, and especially telling and hearing stories.

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.

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.

Elizabeth Greenspan writes about cities, politics, and design. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, Architect, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, and Places Journal, among others. She is the author of Battle for Ground Zero, about the politics of commerce and commemoration at the World Trade Center site, published in 2013 by St. Martin’s Press. She lives in Philadelphia, where she teaches urban studies and creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania. Liz has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including NPR’s Here and Now, All Things Considered, and On Point; PRI’s The World; WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show; and CSPAN’s BookTV. She speaks regularly about cities to a range of audiences and holds a PhD in anthropology and urban studies from the University of Pennsylvania.