Subcommittees

Helene Achanzar is a poet and editor whose writing has been published in The Georgia Review, Sixth Finch, Oxford American, and elsewhere. She’s the winner of the 2022 New England Review Award for Emerging Writers, and her work has been supported by the Mastheads, the T. S. Eliot Foundation, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial. She is a senior editor for Poetry Northwest, a regional chair for Kundiman, and the director of programs at the Chicago Poetry Center.

Photo Credit: Joshua Tatro

Krys Malcolm Belc is the author of two memoirs, The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood (Counterpoint, 2021) and What I Made for Dinner (Catapult, 2026). He has published essays about queer and trans family life in Electric Literature, Harper’s Bazaar, Granta, and elsewhere. Belc has been the memoir editor of Split Lip Magazine since 2020. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with his wife and their four children.

Photo Credit: K Ho

Tara Betts is the author of Refuse to Disappear, Break the Habit, and Arc & Hue. She is a professor in the peace, justice, and conflict studies program at DePaul University and part of the faculty at the Solstice MFA program at Lasell University. Her poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies.

Katharine Beutner is associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and the author of Alcestis and Killingly. Previously, she taught at the College of Wooster and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Her writing has won awards, including the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award, and an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and has appeared in Tinfish, TriQuarterly, the Toast, and other publications; she edits fiction for the online ecowriting literary journal The Dodge. Her next novel is forthcoming from Soho Press in 2027.

Allison Blevins (she/her) is the queer disabled author of the forthcoming collections Black Hole Experiments for Ladies: Micro Essays and Shoot | Creature | Room: Conversations. She is also the author of Where Will We Live If the House Burns Down?, Cataloguing Pain, Handbook for the Newly Disabled: A Lyric Memoir, Slowly/Suddenly, and six chapbooks. Winner of the 2024 Barthelme Prize, the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award, and the 2022 Laux/Millar Poetry Prize, Blevins serves as the publisher of Small Harbor Publishing. Learn more at AllisonBlevins.com.

Photo Credit: Taylor Blevins

Andrea Change is the executive director for the Guild Literary Complex and lives in Chicago. Born and raised in Chicago. A graduate of Northwestern University and a master’s degree from Roosevelt University. Her work has been published in various journals and the noted poetry anthologies Powerlines and Stray Bullets. Named to Newcity’s Lit 50 in 2025 and 2022. Poet, writer, curator, and active member of Chicago’s literary community for over twenty-five years. Her poetry was also included in the Steppenwolf Theatre production Words on Fire. She is currently working on a book of memoir poetry and prose inspired by her family’s migration stories and experiences growing up on the city’s west side.

Carey Cranston has been president of the American Writers Museum since 2016. He was previously president of Fox College, a private career college in Chicago, and held leadership positions at the PR firms Hill & Knowlton and Kemper Lesnik. Cranston has taught writing at the University of Illinois Chicago and DePaul University. He serves on the board of Fox College. Cranston holds a BA in English from DePaul University, an MA in English from the University of Illinois Chicago, and an MS in library and information sciences from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Jenny Yang Cropp is the author of the poetry collection String Theory, a 2016 Oklahoma Book Award finalist, and the chapbooks Hanging the Moon and Not a Bird or a Flower. She earned an MFA in creative writing from Minnesota State University, Mankato, and a PhD in English from the University of South Dakota. She is an associate professor of English at Southeast Missouri State University, where she teaches writing and publishing.

Amy Danzer is director of programming for Printers Row Lit Fest, the largest gathering of book lovers between the coasts and one of the longest running book festivals in the country. She is also editor in chief of Confluence: The Journal of the AGLSP and editorial project manager for Newcity. For over a dozen years, Danzer managed several master’s programs at Northwestern University, including the MFA and MA in creative writing programs, and she directed the Northwestern University Summer Writers’ Conference. Danzer has taught literature and writing classes around Chicago and has interviewed authors at bookstores and literary festivals, for Los Angeles Review of Books, Newcity, and The Rumpus.

Tarik Dobbs (هو/هم)is a writer and artist. Dobbs runs Poetry.onl and is assistant professor of English in creative writing (poetry) at Southwest Minnesota State University. Dobbs’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poem-a-Day, and Poetry magazine, among others. Dobbs is the author of Nazar Boy (2024), winner of the 2026 GLCA New Writers Award in Poetry, and Dearbornistan (forthcoming), both from Haymarket Books.

Photo Credit: Annie Lemberg

Donald G. Evans is the author of a novel and story collection, as well as the editor of two anthologies of Chicago literature, most recently Wherever I’m At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry. He is the founding executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

Sisel Gelman is from Mexico City and has lived in eight cities across four countries. She has been published over sixty times in various magazines, attended the 2019 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, won Best Column at the 2024/2025/2026 ICPA Awards, and won the 2025 SAIC MFAW Fellowship. Gelman was a finalist in the upcoming TV show America’s Next Great Author, presented at the 34th International Publishers Congress, and has 34K TikTok followers. She holds a writing BFA from Emerson College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is seeking representation. Learn more at SiselGelman.com.

Photo Credit: Mark Hawk

Parneshia Jones is an award-winning poet and publisher. She is the author of Vessel: Poems (Milkweed Editions), winner of the Midwest Book Award. Jones serves as director for Northwestern University Press and acquires poetry and general interest titles for the TriQuarterly Books and Seminary Offsets imprints. Her acquisitions have garnered some of the highest literary honors, including the National Book Award, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, Pulitzer Prize finalists, Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, NAACP Image Awards, and the LA Times Book Prize.

Bronson Lemer is the author of The Last Deployment: How a Gay, Hammer-Swinging Twentysomething Survived a Year in Iraq and The Lonely Veteran’s Guide to Companionship. His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Guernica, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. In 2019, he was named a McKnight Writing Fellow. He lives in St. Paul and teaches writing at the University of Minnesota Rochester.

Faisal Mohyuddin is a writer, educator, and visual artist. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Elsewhere: An Elegy (Next Page Press, 2024). He teaches high school English in the Chicago area and creative writing at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies. Learn more at FaisalMohyuddin.com.

Photo Credit: Wendy Alas

Gloria Muñoz is a writer, translator, and advocate for multilingual literacy. She is the author of They Called Us Wicked, This Is the Year, Your Biome Has Found You, and Danzirly, which won the Ambroggio Prize. Her other honors include an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellowship, a Hedgebrook Fellowship, an Esperimento Sul Respiro Fellowship, Highlights Foundation’s Diverse Verse Fellowship, and Lumina’s Multilingual Writing Award, as well as being a Macondista and a part of Las Musas.

Kenyatta Rogers is a Cave Canem fellow and has been awarded scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He has also been nominated multiple times for both Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. His work has been previously published in Jubilat, Vinyl, Bat City Review, The Volta, PANK, and MAKE Magazine, among others. Rogers is a lead teacher for the Poetry Foundations Teacher Institute and Chautauqua Institution’s Young Writer Institute. He is a cohost of the Sunday Reading Series with Simone Muench and serves on the creative writing faculty at the Chicago High School for the Arts.

Courtney Miller Santo is the author of two novels: The Roots of the Olive Tree and Three Story House, both published by HarperCollins. Her work is included in The Best American Essays 2024 and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, Swing, The Missouri Review, New Letters, Third Coast, and elsewhere. Additionally, her work has been an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist. In 2018 the University of Memphis awarded her the Alumni Association Distinguished Teaching Award. She is the editor in chief of the Pinch. Find her on Instagram at @courtneysanto.

Jackie K. White, Professor Emerita at Lewis University, earned her PhD in creative writing (poetry) from the University of Illinois Chicago. She has served as an editor for RHINO and is currently a consultant for Jet Fuel Review. She is the author of three chapbooks—Bestiary Charming, Petal Tearing & Variations, and Come Clearing—and her poems and translations can be found in ACM, BlazeVOX, Ezra, Los Angeles Review, New Plains, Spoon River, and Tupelo. Her collaborative poems, written with Simone Muench, Hex & Howl and The Under Hum, appear from Black Lawrence Press.