Sofia Ali-Khan
Sofia Ali-Khan (sofiaalikhan.com) is the author of A Good Country: My Life in Twelve Towns and the Devastating Battle for a White America (Random House, July 2022).
Sarah Ambruse
Sarah Ambrus is the owner of Great Oaks Farm in Leander, Texas, where she gardens and raises bees and poultry. She strives for self-sufficiency in all things.
Alma Barkman
Born and raised on a small farm on the Canadian prairie, Alma was not interested in writing until a high school teacher looked with favor upon her creative nonfiction and also upon the possibility of her becoming his potential wife. They were married a year after she graduated, and she was teacher’s pet for 58 years until his passing. Together they raised four children.
Although homemaking was always her priority, Alma has had a freelance writing career on the sideline for fifty years and is the author of ten books containing a mix of humor and Christian inspiration. She wrote for Daily Guideposts for sixteen years. Still living in the home she and her husband built fifty years ago in Winnipg, Manitoba, Canada, Alma continues her hobby of gardening, and each fall preserves, pickles and freezes the produce of her garden. She is also an avid scrap quilter during the severe prairie winters.
Wren Bellevance-Grace
Wren Bellavance-Grace is a writer, religious professional, and amateur backyard gardener living in western Massachusetts where she has raised children (who she cannot believe are adults already), a rotating cast of cats, dogs, and pigs, and – this season – 39 varieties of fruits and vegetables. She is currently busy jellying this year’s Concord grapes, canning her five-tomato-and-hot-pepper salsa, and pickling everything else in sight. Her work has been anthologized in Lesbians Raising Sons, and has appeared in such places as Multiplicity magazine, and The Forge Literary Magazine, which nominated the essay If for a Pushcart Prize.
Bonnie Lee Black
In addition to having been a caterer in New York City for ten years and a small farmer in New Mexico for seven years, Bonnie Lee Black is the author of three memoirs, one novel, and a new book on the way, titled Sweet Tarts for My Sweethearts, plus numerous essays published in anthologies and literary journals. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s writing program and holds an MFA from Antioch University. She currently writes a weekly blog from her new home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, called “The WOW Factor,” about the expat retirement life. Visit her website at http://www.bonnieleeblack.com .
Alison Blokland
Allison Blokland is a budding writer, wanna-be farmer, and long-time animal lover living in central Maine with her fiancé Robert. Among her current menagerie are ducks, chickens, guineas, sheep, cats, dogs, horses, parakeets, and a single turtle named Mullet.
Laken Brooks
Laken Brooks is an Appalachian writer who loves apple peelings and digital storytelling. As a graduate student of English at the University of Florida, Laken specializes in digital humanities, public outreach, gender, and wellness. When she’s not teaching or researching, Laken contributes freelance writing pieces to outlets like Refinery29, CNN, Inside Higher Ed, Good Housekeeping, and more.
Amy Bowers
Amy Bowers is a Florida native currently living in Connecticut with her family. Her writing explores domestic culture, the insect and natural worlds, and manufactured places and spaces. She is currently working on an essay collection about growing up in central Florida among amusement parks, alligators, and hurricanes. She holds an MFA in CNF from Bennington and has work published or forthcoming in [PANK], Washington Square Review, West Trade Review, and LA Review of Books. Her essay “Manual” is forthcoming (Fall 2021) in A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays, edited by Randon Billings Noble and published by the University of Nebraska Press.
Amy Boyd
Amy Boyd is a professor of botany, ecology, and evolutionary biology at Warren Wilson College. Her writing has been published in literary journals such as Mutha Magazine, Whole Terrain, Dark Mountain, and various scientific journals. Scientist by training, educator by profession, and artist by nature, she lives in Swannanoa, North Carolina, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Erica Breen
Erica M. Breen is a homestead farmer, home educator and poet living on a mountainside in rural Vermont. She mulches, jams, ferments, revises, and splits kindling relentlessly while effortlessly educating two children and a flock of chickens, gathering maple sap from buckets with the help of a draft horse and a batch of neighbors, and still finds time for stargazing. She writes from an evolving connection with the Earth in this place, and is fascinated by the cycles humans share with our fellow creatures. Her work has been published in The Connecticut River Review and Stone Poetry Journal.
Jessica Clark
Jessica lives and writes in her hometown in Northern Arizona. She loves working with her husband to continually develop their property into a small farm filled with gardens, chickens, goats, dogs, and barn cats. Jessica’s writing is inspired by nature and its scientific processes as well as fulfillment achieved through the routines of domesticity.
Loree Griffin Burns
Loree Griffin Burns is a scientist by training and a writer by inclination, crafting articles, essays, and books that celebrate the natural world and people who are passionate about it. This work has led to far-flung adventures, from beachcombing on the western coast of the United States, to surveying birds in Central Park, to scaling Mexican mountains in search of monarch butterflies, to trapping insects on an uninhabited volcanic island in Iceland. It has also allowed her to stay home quite a lot, raising three children and getting to know the mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and (especially!) arthropods that are her nearest neighbors. She has recently joined the faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts and Montserrat College of Art, where she teaches writing and the joys of close observation. She and her husband Gerry keep bees, raise chickens, tend vegetables and spoil Max, the family springer, in suburban central Massachusetts. Catch highlights from these exploits on Instagram (@LoreeGriffinBurns) or visit Loree’s website to read more of her writing (www.loreeburns.com).
Jeff Burt
Jeff Burt began aging while sloughing through dairy fields for fun and exploration in spring in Wisconsin, leaning to slip sideways to go forward. He learned the importance of storytelling from farmers and hands at the grist mill he inhabited in summers as a method to tell a moral, a joke, or a deserving slice of life. He has contributed to many journals, including Heartwood, Kestrel, Williwaw Journal, and Red Wolf Journal. You can read more about him at https://www.jeff-burt.com.
Kasey Butcher Santana
Kasey Butcher Santana is co-owner/operator of Sol Homestead, a backyard alpaca farm where she and her husband also raise chickens, bees, pumpkins, and their daughter. When not beekeeping or gardening, she loves to read mystery novels and hike. Kasey earned a Ph.D. in American literature from Miami University and has worked as an English teacher and a jail librarian. She chronicles life at the homestead on Instagram @solhomestead. You can find her at kaseybutchersantana.wordpress.com.
Nicole de Cárdenas
Nicole de Cárdenas is a biology teacher and wildlife helper. She lives with her 10-year-old daughter, her partner, Phillipe, and his 12-year-old son outside of Boston. They share their home with a pup and two extremely naughty naked cats. Nicole is the founder of the Facebook group The Hygge Witch.
Susan Cheatham
Susie Cheatham is a pediatrician, teacher, and inadvertent backyard farmer. In addition to attracting butterflies, her Florida yard yields blackberries, herbs, five kinds of citrus, tiny apples, and abundant avocados. Susie recently earned her MFA in writing for children and young adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She enjoys writing stories for children of all ages, often inspired by adventures with her husband and four daughters and their shared love of nature.
Vanessa Chiasson
Vanessa Chiasson is a Nova Scotia-raised, Ottawa-based freelance writer specializing in travel, human interest narratives, and digital marketing, with bylines in Buzzfeed, USA Today, Travel Awaits, the Globe and Mail, and more. Her blog, TurnipseedTravel.com, focuses on cozy, affordable travel experiences and was named one of the world’s 100 most influential travel blogs by the Obama White House in 2014. A keen home gardener, she loves heritage seeds and is currently working on plans for an Anne of Green Gables-inspired garden.
Trista Cornelius
Trista Cornelius is a writer and illustrator in Portland, Oregon where she aims to cultivate cheer with whimsical drawings and snail-mail letters. Food—growing it, cooking it, and eating it—is one of her favorite subjects to write and draw. Previously, as an English Instructor, Trista helped writers build confidence and find their voice. Her creative work can be found at www.etsy.com/shop/CarrotCondo .
DK Crawford
DK Crawford is a food writer and photographer who lives in Ojai, California. Her farming “roots” were established in Cajun Louisiana, and her love for growing things and tending animals comes from her father Howard, who fulfilled his dream by purchasing a farm when she was 3 years old. She spent her life sneaking out to the farm with him (they called it church), as often as she could. Their home was the only one in the neighborhood with gardens, ducks, geese, and DK always had a slew of wild orphaned animals she nursed like possums and wild rabbits. She still lives her passions by constantly pushing seeds into the ground to grow as may plants as possible and cohabiting with her creature familiars.
Jesse Curran
Jesse Curran, PhD, is a poet, essayist, gardener, and educator who lives in Northport, New York and teaches at SUNY Old Westbury. Her creative work has appeared in a number of literary journals including Ruminate, About Place, Spillway, Leaping Clear, Green Humanities, Blueline, and Still Point Arts Quarterly; her chapbook of poetry, Elegy & April, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019. Jesse is also certified in hatha yoga and permaculture design, two practices that inform her commitment to contemplative service and community building. Her family owns a small business, Home Organic Gardening Service, which builds, plans, plants, and maintains organic vegetable gardens and other sustainable systems on Long Island. She is the mother of two bright stars, Leona and Valentine. www.jesseleecurran.com
Piyali Nath Dalal
Daughter of East Indian immigrants, she grew up in Wayne, Nebraska. Both her B.A. in English literature and her Masters in Public Policy are from the University of Minnesota. Her work experience includes facilitation, teaching, and coordination of student programs. She founded 10,000 Scripts, a screenwriting collective in the Twin Cities. She writes for children, in Minneapolis, where she lives with her family.
James Fajarito
James M. Fajarito. PhD grew up in Gloria town of Mindoro Island, Philippines. He is a faculty member of the Communication and Languages Department of Holy Angel University (Angeles City, Pampanga). He earned his PhD in Literature from the Philippine Normal University. A bilingual writer, his poems, essays, and stories have been featured in national publications in the Philippines and abroad. He resides in Angeles City with his wife and one daughter.
Jennifer Fischer
Jen Fischer is a writer, film producer and teaching artist whose work has been featured by NBCLatino, ABC, Univision, Fusion, NBCBLK, Vice News, and others. Her film “THE wHOLE” premiered at Amnesty International’s 50th Anniversary Human Rights Conference. Fischer recently penned “What My Octopus Teacher Says About Parental Paid Leave, Child Care in America and More” for Ms. Magazine and has an essay appearing in What is a Criminal? an anthology forthcoming from Routledge press in 2022. She holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.A. from Harvard University. She enjoys playing the piano and creating unique educational experiences for her two children. You can find her on Twitter @IndieJenFischer.
Daphne Fossler
Daphne currently finds herself barista-ing in Omaha, Nebraska. In between shots of espresso, she finds herself biking, hiking, running, and reading, and is the mother to a spectacle of houseplants all with her two roommates. All this being said, she is most often found drawing on whatever she may– be it paper, tablet, skin, or fruit. You may find her at @ladybug.mansion
Sarah Fraser
Sarah Fraser is a medical doctor and author from Canada. She works in both Nova Scotia and the northern Canadian territory of Yellowknife. She is also a blogger and a poet. Her book, Humanity Emergency: Poetry of a Medical Student, is a collection of poetry about her experience as a medical student in the emergency department. You can find more of her writing at www.sarahfrasermd.com
Nina Gaby
Nina Gaby is a writer, visual artist, and psychiatric nurse practitioner who lives a bit north of Moonlighting Farm with her husband, two cats, and a Golden Retriever across from the longest floating bridge this side of the Mississippi. Gaby is working on a book about her life as a transplant to a small Vermont village. Her artwork has been exhibited widely over the years and she has pieces in the National Collection at the Renwick, Arizona State University, and Rochester Institute of Technology. Most recently her essays have been featured on the NPR blog, “The New Normal,” in McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, The Intima, Psychiatric Times, and she contributes to numerous anthologies. Hew anthology, “Dumped: Stories of Women Unfriending Women,” was published in 2015 by She Writes Press. Gaby maintains a clinical practice in central Vermont.You can read more interviews, articles and essays on her website, www.ninagaby.com, as well as view her portfolio of current mixed-media artwork.
Sarah Kilch Gaffney
Sarah Kilch Gaffney is a writer, brain injury advocate, and homemade-caramel aficionado living in Maine. You can find her work at www.sarahkilchgaffney.com.
Jessica Gillman
Jessica Gillman was born in Upstate New York but was transplanted to Central Maine at the age of 8. She moved to Portland when she was 19 and has spent the subsequent 31 years there; nearly all that time was spent cooking in a professional capacity. Finding that the physical demands of working in restaurant kitchens was creating permanent damage to her body, she decided, in 2014, to pursue a BA in English Language and Literature. In 2018, she was surprised when she opted to continue her formal education by attending graduate school, where she earned an MA in English. She finished school in January of 2020 with the intention of changing careers; the pandemic has slowed progress on that front. She is not a wife, mother, or animal caretaker, but she enjoys her role as an aunt and admires all the animals she sees. She spends her free time gardening, writing, reading, spending time with family (socially distancing, of course), sitting on her porch, camping, and creating art. She continues to make her living in the cooking industry but has spent the last year pushing further with the sales of her creations. She has been selling her paintings for the last 14 years, wood miniatures just recently, and will soon have an online storefront to expand on that success. While she has spent much of her life writing, this is the first time she has been published. She is working on multiple written pieces for future projects.
Michelle Goering
Michelle Goering is in her happy place when she’s writing or singing and playing guitar. A chatterbox with a background in publishing, she’s married and the mother of twin college-age sons. A San Diego resident from a Kansas farm, she’s published in Her View from Home, Sasee, and Christian Science Monitor.
Randy Graham
Randy Graham lives on a Minnesota acreage with just one dog, just one cat, just one wife, and just one flock of chickens. He has retired from a career as a microbiologist and has turned instead to writing about hipster hens, wonder eggs, and the meaning of life at Randy’s Chicken Blog.
Stephanie Stringer Gross
Stephanie Stringer Gross, PhD is a (semi)retired professor of English who has decided to try writing poetry and non-fiction again after many decades of teaching and academic writing. She and her husband have spent every summer in Maine (where he grew up) in a cabin on a small lake or thirty plus years, on the land his family left. All summer, they eat what the garden there produces (that the groundhogs don’t get). After sixteen years in semi-rural Maine full-time in an 1829 cape, the Grosses recently left winter mostly behind and moved to the Hill Country of Texas, where they’ve now bought a near half-acre and a fixer-upper in town near the Guadalupe River on what was an old pecan farm. The soil is wonderful, the compost turns over incredibly quickly, and all herbs and salads, even in December, still come from the garden.
After raising five kids and various herds of cats, it’s now just two humans and three cats at home, lots of renovation work, a commitment to live more simply, lots more time out of doors year round, and new friends on similar paths with similar values found in the oasis here that is the Unitarian Universalist haven, Church of the Hill Country, where Stephanie is co-chair of the Social Justice committee.
Kimi Hardesty
Kimi Hardesty is originally from Dallas, TX, where she grew up on a cattle ranch about thirty miles out of the city. While on the ranch, at various times, she had sheep, pigs, chickens, cows and horses. Kimi has been a pediatric RN for 35 years and having lived a while in Seattle, Washington, now calls Lexington, Kentucky her home, where she tends vegetable and flower gardens and has a small flock of chickens. Next year, she hopes to have bees. Kimi was awarded an MFA in Creative Writing in 2018 and, besides writing essays, is currently working on a memoir about living in India and the dissolution of her marriage there. She has been published in The Pitkin Review, Ritualwell and Speak Magazine.
Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee
Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee is a writer, an artist, a photographer and a producer. She started her academic life studying Biochemistry as a pre-medical student, but finished her degree in conceptual and installation art. She started her writing life as a poet, but is known for her personal essays, food and travel writing. A James Beard Award nominee, she was a restaurant critic and food writer for the LA Times for nearly two decades. Her publication history includes Food + Wine, Eating Well, Serious Eats, Eater, Vice, and the Washington Post. She has authored several travel guides, including all editions of Frommer’s South Korea and Frommer’s Day by Day Seoul. Her cookbooks include Quick & Easy Mexican Cooking, Quick & Easy Korean Cooking, and Eating Korean: From Barbecue to Kimchi, Recipes from My Home. Her books have been chosen as the Best of the Best by Food + Wine, the cookbook of the month by Gourmet magazine, and nominated for the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. When she’s not climbing a mountain somewhere, she writes, paints, cooks and gardens in the city of angels. She is currently working on her first novel.
Ed Higgins
Ed Higgins’ poems and short fiction have appeared in various print and online journals including recently: Ekphrastic Review, CarpeArte Journal, Triggerfish Critical Review,Wales Haiku Journal, and Sun Journal, among others. Ed is Professor Emeritus, English Dept. and Writer-in-Residence at George Fox University. He is also Asst. Fiction Editor for Brilliant Flash Fiction. He lives on a small organic farm in Yamhill, Oregon where he raises a menagerie of animals, including a male whippet, Mr. Toffee, an Indian Runner duck named Duck, and a rooster named StarTrek. For a free download of his recent chapbook, click here.
Leah Hoenen
Leah Hoenen is a full-time mother and homesteader raising free-range children in Maine’s midcoast. Armed with a master’s degree in European history, she began her career as a journalist in the mid-Atlantic, covering environmental issues ranging from coal-fired electricity generation and offshore wind power development to water quality, along with local public education, before following her now-husband’s career to Maine. There, she wrote for trade newspapers and worked in communications for an ecological research non-profit before realizing shepherding with her babies was what she really wanted to do. Now that her children are moving into school, Leah is carving out minutes to write about the things she loves most—her children, her family’s journey to rehabilitate their second run-down farm, and all the magic of Maine. When they aren’t over- and under-planting their garden, she and her family can be found caring for their sheep and horse, wandering the Maine coastline, and building boats.
Carrie Honaker
Carrie Honaker is an educator and freelance writer who lives in Panama City Beach, Florida. Most days you can find her plowing through a good book, writing, dabbling with a new recipe, or chasing after her three foster kittens. You can find her on Twitter: @writeonhonaker, Instagram: @writeonhonaker, and on her blog Strawbabies and Chocolate Beer.
Anne Ingalls
Ann Ingalls passes the day exaggerating (writing fiction) or telling the truth (writing nonfiction). She has written over 60 books for young readers. Her books have won several awards: Bank Street Books, Best Books of 2020, the 2015 Annual American Graphic Design Award, and the Ella Fitzgerald Foundation’s “A Book Just for Me!” and a handful of awards from the Highlights Foundation for her poetry and short stories.
When given the choice between educating children or entertaining them with her writing, Ann chooses to do both. Before she was a children’s writer, Ann taught elementary and special education.
Rahana K. Ismail
Rahana K Ismail is a poet and doctor from Kozhikode, Kerala. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Penn Review, POSIT, Io Literary Journal (Refractions), Alchemy Spoon, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, nether Quarterly, Contemporary Haibun Online, Usawa Literary Review, Chakkar, Alipore Post, Aainanagar, Hakara, Verse of Silence, EKL Review, Pine Cone Review and elsewhere.
Matthew Johnson
Matthew, a northern transplant by way of New Rochelle, NY and Stratford, CT, lives in NC and is a MA graduate of UNC-Greensboro. A former sports journalist and editor who wrote for the USA Today College and The Daily Star (Oneonta, NY), his poetry has appeared in Maudlin House, Roanoke Review, Maryland Literary Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Northern New England Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and elsewhere. He’s a three-time Best of the Net Nominee and his debut collection, ‘Shadow Folks and Soul Songs’ (Kelsay Books), was released in 2019. His second poetry collection is forthcoming by New York Quarterly Press. He is the poetry editor of The Twin Bill and the managing editor of Portrait of New England. Website: https://www.matthewjohnsonpoetry.com
Brian Kane
Brian Kane is a landscape architect, environmental educator, and sustainability expert. In his professional and volunteer work, he has planted hundreds of trees and is excited to recognize and honor more Old-Growth Forests in the mid-Atlantic region for the health and well-being of future generations.
He has designed numerous culturally significant landscapes throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed and is a registered landscape architect in Virginia and Maryland. He has also been a faculty member at Virginia Tech, the University of Maryland, and a sustainability director for a school.
In his spare time he loves kayaking along quiet creeks with his family, spending as much time outside, gardening, and painting watercolors of the remarkable, subtle landscapes in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. With family roots throughout the mid-Atlantic, he enjoys all that the region holds, from its mountain ranges to its tidal wetlands.
Lauren Kessler
Lauren Kessler is an award-winning author and (semi) fearless immersion reporter who combines lively narrative with deep research to explore everything from the gritty world of a maximum security prison to the grueling world of professional ballet, from the hidden world of Alzheimer’s sufferers to the stormy seas of the mother-daughter relationship. She is the author of eleven works of narrative nonfiction. Her journalism and essays have appeared in O, Salon, New York Times magazine, Los Angeles Times magazine, and elsewhere. A proud Oregonian, she is a hiker, biker, chicken-wrangler, cat-lover, and aspirational goat herder. With the able assistance of almost none of her three children and the protection of a 10-foot high deer fence, she tends an outsized vegetable plot, a raspberry patch, a blueberry patch, and an apple and pear orchard. For unknown reasons, she loves pulling weeds.
Katie Kulla
Katie Kulla is a writer and illustrator who lives and farms with her family on a river island in Oregon’s Willamette River. You can find Katie at katiekulla.com and on instagram: @katiekulla.
Anita Langley Leadbetter
Anita Langley Leadbetter is a lifelong hobby farm enthusiast sharing daily entertaining and educational content on her Instagram and Facebook feeds @blueberryfieldsfarm. She lives with her family in southern Maine, on their farm with chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, horses, ponies, a very sweet Labradoodle, and a few too many cats. Anita loves sharing her farm experiences and helping others plan for their own hobby farming and homesteading adventures.
Judith Laxer
Rev. Judith Laxer is a modern-day mystic who believes that beauty, humor, and the wonders of nature make life worth living. The founding Priestess of Gaia’s Temple and MoonWise Mystery School, Judith is a keynote speaker, teacher of the magickal arts, and author of Along the Wheel of Time: Sacred Stories for Nature Lovers [Ravenswood Publishing]. The only thing she loves more than her garden, is coming inside to write about it. You can read more about her and her work at www.judithlaxer.com.
Aidan Lee
Aidan Lee, a pseudonym, was a 2019 MacDowell fellow. Her poetry collection “If You Had Known Me” was a Semi-Finalist in Persea Books’ 2019 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize; and a Semi-Finalist in Crab Orchard Review’s 2019, 2018 and 2017 First Book Award Competition. Her poems have been published by Salamander, Bayou, Memoir, Aunt Chloe, J Journal, Tiferet Journal, Santa Ana Review, Snapdragon, Rise Up Review, Paper Nautilus and The Fourth River, Cultural Daily and Slush Pile Review. She had Notable Essays in the Best American Essays 2021, 2017, 2016 and 2015. Aidan has an MFA from Hunter College.
JoAnne Lehman
JoAnne Lehman is a writer and editor living in Madison, Wisconsin. Her MFA is from Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing. Her creative nonfiction has been published in The Cresset (Valparaiso University), and she reviews books for Good River Review (Spalding University).
Christina Lundberg
Christina Lundberg is a poet, an educator, and a writing coach who lives in the Chicagoland suburbs in Illinois. Her poems have appeared in the Naropa Summer Writing Program journal Guilty as Charged and the Naperville Writers Group publication Rivulets. She works as a writing instructor and coordinator for the Walden University Writing Center and teaches composition and creative writing courses at College of DuPage. Upon being awarded an M.F.A. in Creative Writing in 2007, Christina embarked on a writing and teaching career, which has served as her guiding light. Recently, she launched her own business, My Page Break, where she provides writing services to uplift and inspire creative writers. When she is not working, she indulges in good coffee, appreciates nature and the simple things, and practices the art of meaningful connection. You will often find her spending quality time with her husband and son kayaking down a river or baking something delicious.
Jennifer Lunden
Jennifer Lunden is the author of American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life (Harper Wave, May 2023). A chapter from the book was a Maine Literary Award finalist, and her essay “Fugitive Justice,” published in Longreads, won the Maine Literary Award for Short Works, Nonfiction, in 2021. Lunden’s nonfiction has been published in Creative Nonfiction, Orion, River Teeth, Diagram, and other journals, and her poetry has seen print in journals like SWEET, PEACOCK REVIEW, and THE CAFÉ REVIEW. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, including True Stories, Well Told: From the First 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction Magazine, and she is the winner of a Pushcart Prize. Her nonfiction has also been listed as Notable in BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS.
She and her husband, the artist Frank Turek, live in a little house in Portland, Maine, where they keep several backyard chickens, two cats, and some gloriously untamed gardens.
Pete Mackey
Pete Mackey’s poetry has been published in numerous venues, including Bangalore Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Eclectica, The Dewdrop, The Drabble, New Verse News, Global Poemic, Panoplyzine, and Third Wednesday. Pete has been honored with a Pushcart Prize nomination and several contest honors. He founded and runs a communications company that serves colleges, universities, and other non-profits across the U.S. He lives with his wife and their three children in Amherst.
Andrea J. Mahoney
Andrea J. Mahoney is a mom, teacher, and maker. While she is not originally from Maine, she loves everything about the state. Three years ago, she moved with her family from the a busy city in the desert across the country to beautiful Maine. Andrea has always been a creative, and has been sewing since her mom taught her when she was 6. She loves sewing clothes, memory bears, crafts, and is the go-to for friends when they would like hemming or clothes adjusted. Andrea teaches online art classes for Outschool. This is her first publication.
Catherine Marenghi
Catherine Marenghi is the author of Breaking Bread: Poems. Born and raised in Massachusetts, transplanted to Mexico, she is the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, and themes of migration, family, love, loss and the eternal quest for home pervade her work. An award-winning poet, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her poem “First Day of Kindergarten.” She received first-place honors in separate contests judged by acclaimed poets Richard Blanco and Jennifer Clement. Her poems also twice received first-place honors from the Academy of American Poets University and College Poetry Prize program. Her work has appeared in Sisyphus, Bangalore Review, Ekphrastic Review, Ruminate, Cider Press Review, Peregrine Journal, Crossroads, Solamente en San Miguel, Italian Americana, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Phi Kappa Phi Forum, and Conclave. She also authored Glad Farm: A Memoir, which President Jimmy Carter called “inspiring.” She holds an M.A., B.A. summa cum laude in English from Tufts University.
Sara May
A veteran of many Philadelphia restaurants, Sara May is a professional cook, baker and recipe developer now based in the Finger Lakes region of New York state. In her spare time she enjoys discovering new wine, making friends with dogs and hanging out with her awesome husband.
Brett Mertins
Brett Mertins lives with his wife, Becky, and their two sons, Joe and Will, in Omaha, Nebraska. He teaches English at Metropolitan Community College. Luckily for him, Becky’s Aunt Diane and Uncle Bob live on a farm in Norfolk, Nebraska where Brett gets to callous his hands and muddy his city shoes. His poetry has appeared in Think: A Journal of Poetry, Criticism, and Reviews; The American Aesthetic; and The Literary Nest.
Hope Miller
Hope Miller is a writer who stays up late at night to watch Permaculture documentaries and brainstorm ways to convert her property from a honeysuckle hillside into a functioning native ecosystem and food forest. She is also working on a novel about a young woman in corporate America who is facing a spiritual crisis, so, naturally, she retreats to the desert to bury to roadkill.
Her day job is facilitating leadership programs and helping white collar folks with their emotional intelligence and communication skills. She has a passion for DEI, and, honestly, Hope’s ideal gig would be writing, stewarding the land, and teaching DEI and regenerative agriculture.
She holds a B.A. in Literature from Yale, a M.A. in English from the University of Utah, and a M.A.T. in English from Agnes Scott College in her native Atlanta. In 2020, she earned her Permaculture Design Certificate from the Cincinnati Permaculture Institute.
A mediocre gardener and committed yogini, Hope lives in an old house in the woods in Cincinnati’s Northside neighborhood with her wife, daughter, two dogs, one cat, two goats, and, at present count, 11 hens. This is her first publication in over a decade. Previously, her work has appeared in The Public Sphere: A Provocative Space of Critical Conversation. Follow her on her blog that she doesn’t do a good of updating (but will if you start reading it!): https://hopemcallistermiller.com/
Jasmine Moore
Humble beginnings to a humble career, Jasmine Moore has always had a passion for the kitchen, leading to a profession on the line and a happy household when she tries something new in the oven. Her love of cooking started when she was young, growing up with part of her family being Korean and very into food. Jasmine was introduced to Korean cooking and all the incredible ingredients that come with it, which sparked her curiosity for international cuisine.
Debra Moffitt
Debra Moffitt is a former newspaper journalist and the author of The Pink Locker Society (St. Martin’s Press-Macmillan), a middle grade series. Her essays have been published in Slate and the Washington Post.
Jenny Neal
Jenny Neal, a writer, journalist and small business consultant, is a former city girl: a Londoner, then a New Yorker, who is now living on a 100-acre farm in the middle of the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York, tapping maple trees, planting vegetables and driving tractors. She is founding editor of www.upstatedispatch.com. This is the publication of her first memoir piece based on the last few, turbulent years: a divorce, a long stint alone in quarantine on a mountain top, and then falling wildly in love with a local farmer. Her work has appeared in Edible Hudson Valley, The Watershed Post, The Catskill Mountain Guide, Green Door, Dissent, The Brooklyn Greenline, and ID Magazine.
Amy Nicholson
Amy Nicholson lives by a waterfall and state forest in northwest Connecticut with her husband and three children. Through the years, they have tried our hand at various homesteading ventures. Amy works as a substitute teacher and writes freelance essays, articles, and poems. She has been published in a number of publications in the past twelve years. Among them are Country Woman, The Old Schoolhouse, Green Mountain Trading Post. amynicholson14.wordpress.com
Darrell Petska
Darrell Petska grew up on a central Nebraska family farm, surrounded by expansive corn and alfalfa fields, rolling hills populated by Hereford cattle, and a menagerie of pigs, chickens, geese, dogs and cats. Family and place have remained deeply imprinted in his mind, even as he moved on to a 30-year editing career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Forty years a father (eight years a grandfather), and longer still as a husband, he publishes fiction, poetry and non-fiction in journals such as Buddhist Poetry Review, Nixes Mate Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Verse-Virtual, Perspectives Magazine, Woods Reader, and elsewhere. (conservancies.wordpress.com)
Katharyn Privett-Duren
Katharyn Privett-Duren, PhD, is an English professor, writer, and farmer in rural Alabama. Her grandmother was integral in her upraising, and therefore had an impact on her understanding of working with plants and the earth. As an organic, biointensive micro-farmer focused on sustainability, Katharyn continues to reach out to her neighbors in an effort to teach them to grow their own food with minimal impact to their financial resources or the environment. From seed to harvest, she also works to echo her Cherokee roots in an ethical and holistic communion with the land. Katharyn is a Master Gardener in her local county district, as well, volunteering in the occasional outreach project in the Auburn/Opelika area. After tending chickens for almost ten years, she has now branched out into breeding bantams such as Silkies, Frizzled Cochins, and Seramas. Her small plot of land, Little Halawakee Farm, sports rare varieties of turmeric, galangal, ginger and herbs of all kinds. Katharyn and her husband, Todd, have worked to obtain a grant for a high tunnel, which has provided space and shelter to sustain a small CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture). Lined with fig, mulberry and pear trees, Little Halawakee Farm has become a haven in a section of the country heavily laden with pesticide and herbicide residues. From snakes to chipmunks, lizards to tree frogs, butterflies to native bees: the farm buzzes with life. The old well on the property provides all of the water needs for her family, livestock, dogs and plants. It is, indeed, a magical place. It is her dream to transform Little Halawakee Farm into a teaching garden. As an impending grandmother, she hopes to pass down the wonders of reading, writing, and eating a dinner that grew in peaceful communion with all that reside in a sacred, natural space. Check LHF out at: littlehalawakeefarm.org.
Barbara Quick
Barbara Quick is best known as author of the 12-times-translated novel Vivaldi’s Virgins. Her fourth novel, What Disappears, will be published by Regal House in May 2022. She was awarded the 2020 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize for her debut chapbook, The Light on Sifnos. Barbara’s poems have been included in three new anthologies in 2021 and diverse periodicals, including Canary: A Literary Journal of the Environmental Crisis and (five times this year) The Writer’s Almanac. Two of her poems from 2021 were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Based on a small farm and vineyard in the California Wine Country, Barbara finds many of her poems in the garden. Read more at www.BarbaraQuick.com
Tyler Robinson
Tyler Robinson is a high school English and Photojournalism teacher in King George, Virginia. Along with his wife and four children, he maintains a small hobby farm. While being new to Farmer-ish, you can find his writing in past issues of the King George High School yearbook.
Lana M. Rochel
Lana M. Rochel is the pen name for a writer, poet, lyricist, and podcaster from Ukraine whose work has appeared in BFS Horizons, the Haiku Pea Journal of haiku and senryu, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Redemption: The Best Rejected Manuscripts of 2020 anthology, LitStream Literary Magazine, the 2021 Dwarf Stars anthology, Academy of the Heart and Mind, and pending in The Journal of Undiscovered Poets and Hedgerow.
A qualified English teacher, Lana writes creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, song lyrics, and children’s literature. Read “Lana M. Rochel Author” on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/LanaMRochelAuthor. Listen to “Lana M. Rochel Author” (Podcast). Hang out with @lanam.rochel on Instagram
Alyson Rockhold
Alyson Rockhold is a ghostwriter and book coach. She loves helping authors bring their passion to the page and share their message with the world. Many people start writing a book but stop when they get stuck, overwhelmed, or busy. Alyson guides them through her highly-collaborative, three-step process so that they can create a powerful and authentic book that they’re proud to put their name on. You can learn more at www.alysonrockhold.com
Marianne Rogoff
Marianne Rogoff lived for twelve years in that coastal California town, working for food while completing her Masters degree in English: Creative Writing and then working for Shelter Publications, whose mission is self-sufficiency. She is the author of the Pushcart-nominated story collection Love Is Blind in One Eye, the memoir Silvie’s Life, and many award-winning travel stories, short fiction, essays, and book reviews. She teaches Writing & Literature at California College of the Arts and Dominican University of California. Read more at mariannerogoff.com.
Crystal Rowe
Born and raised in Georgia, Crystal now calls Massachusetts home. After a brief career as a real estate attorney, she spent several years in youth ministry before answering the call to motherhood. Married to her perfect match, she is a homeschooling mother of two daughters who spends her (limited) free time cooking wholesome food for her family and friends, working on her writing craft, and reading lots of books. When not at home, you can find her hiking in the woods behind our house or hanging out at the beach. Yes, even in the snow.
Kathryn Sadakierski
Kathryn Sadakierski is a 22-year-old writer from western Massachusetts whose poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in anthologies, magazines, and literary journals around the world, including Critical Read, Halfway Down the Stairs, Literature Today, New Jersey English Journal, NewPages Blog, Northern New England Review, Origami Poems Project, Silkworm, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing, Songs of Eretz, Spillwords, The Abstract Elephant Magazine, Toyon Literary Magazine,Yellow Arrow Journal, and elsewhere. In 2020, she was awarded the C. Warren Hollister Non-Fiction Prize. Inspired by nature, Kathryn loves exploring the beautiful landscape of New England, growing flowers (especially zinnias), and writing in the sunshine (much like the flowers, she is powered by the sun!). She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. and M.S. from Bay Path University.
James Sands
James Sands is a poet, farmer, and gardener. He practices sustainable farming and has spent the last eleven years building the quality of the soil on the plot of land he works in rural Maine. He has published several poems and a book of children’s poetry, Why the Moon Tumbled Out of the Sky. He is also co-producer of Farmer-ish and delivers content to his wife when he is not busy planting, watering, harvesting, or caring for their son or their flocks of chickens and ducks.
Kayann Short
Writer, farmer, and teacher Kayann Short, Ph.D., is the author of A Bushel’s Worth: An Ecobiography (Torrey House Press), a Nautilus Green Living & Sustainability winner. Her work appears in Mud Season Review, Hawk & Handsaw, The Hopper, Midwest Review, The Write Launch, New Flash Fiction Review, Dash, and Burningword, among others, and the anthologies, Dirt: A Love Story and Rooted: The Best New Arboreal Non-Fiction. A 2022 recipient of the Downing Excellence in Journalism award, Dr. Short runs a CSA and organizes community writing events at Stonebridge Farm on Colorado’s Front Range.
Ilana Silver
Ilana Silver is a graduate student with a deep love for horses and the natural world. She was born in Scotland and moved to Maine as a child, young enough to have lost the Glaswegian accent. After completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Maine, Ilana spent four years traveling and working abroad and in the western portion of the United States. She held a variety of positions, from hostel receptionist in New Zealand to horseback trail guide in Yellowstone National Park, before returning to Maine. She is currently completing a Master’s in Social Work at Smith College and simultaneously working on a certificate in equine-assisted mental health through the University of Denver’s Institute for Human-Animal Connection. After graduating, she hopes to integrate horses into a mental health practice and dreams of stewarding a small plot of land where her rascally horse can also live.
Max Silver (cover artist)
Max Silver is an artist and animal lover who enjoys coming home to the company of their pet rats. Born in Scotland, Max’s family moved to Maine when Max was 3 years old. Max completed their undergraduate degree at the University of Maine in May 2020. They graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art with a concentration in Printmaking, as well as a minor in Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies. They have a strong interest in environmentalism, human rights issues, and mental health awareness. Art is a form of communication they use to explore and combine these subjects.
Max went into college with a background consisting of primarily drawing. Through their experiences in undergraduate school, they developed a strong interest in printmaking, as well as digital art and graphic design. With no current access to a printmaking studio, they have had to improvise and create their own home-studio and are currently working on expanding their portfolio for digital art.
Some of Max’s work can be found on their Instagram @max.silver96.
Sally Simon
Sally Simon is a retired teacher living in the Catskills of New York State, where there are plenty of cows. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in After the Pause, Prime Number Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, Truffles Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. When not writing, she’s either traveling the world or stabbing people with her epee. Read more at www.sallysimonwriter.com.
Julia Skinner
Dr. Julia Skinner is Founder and Director of Root, Atlanta’s food history and fermentation company. She was recently awarded one of Georgia Trend’s 40 Under 40 (to be announced October 1, 2020), and is the first fermentation and food history professional to win a 40 Under 40 award for that work. Other recognition includes participation in the James Beard Foundation’s Owning It! program, attending Sandor Katz’ fermentation residency, regular features in the press, and appointment as a Cookbook Awards judge for the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ 2020 awards. She is an accomplished food writer, represented by literary agency The Lisa Ekus Group.
Her next book, Culture Begins Here: Fermentation and the History of How we Eat, will be published by Storey in 2021. Julia feels that food, one of our most central lived experiences, should be treated with the sacredness deserving of something that gives us life and health and strengthens human connections. One of the best ways to cultivate an appreciation of food is to make nourishing food simply, drawing upon the traditions that have passed through human communities for millennia. Through her work, she helps people access the magic of food by making food education and food writing accessible and creative: Truly nourishing ourselves means playing with our food! Through her writing, teaching, and her own creative practice, Julia helps people connect more deeply with food. Community work is baked in to every aspect of her business and her personal creative practice, and she regularly donates fermented food to Umi Feeds, offers fermentation class scholarships for BIPOC and Queer/Trans community members, and more. When COVID started, she quickly provided free and low cost food preservation education through virtual classes and festivals, helping community members worldwide stretch their food stores and nourish their bodies.
Jj Starwalker
Jj Starwalker was born into a remarkably magical mid-western family that appeared most conventional to the average eye, as they blended their talents smoothly with their mundane occupations as farmers, housewives, nurses, teachers. Even as a young woman, Jj walked her own path, immersing herself in scientific disciplines yet still studying hex work and regularly relying on telepathy for communication (before cell phones.) Her life path has been at times rocky and convoluted, which strengthened her capabilities on many levels. She has never let adversity stop her, assessing any problem with an inborn sense of balance that mixes magic and the mundane to find a solution that manifests on multiple levels.
Her friends know her as “stubborn and determined, in a good way.” Her stick-to-itiveness doesn’t stop until the idea finds expression in the tangible world. She is most comfortable being the Crone in the cottage just out of sight, tending the plant and animal beings within her domain and enjoying their many blessings. If you find that witchy cottage, you will likely find her as well, somewhere amidst the chaos of plants and produce, paint and projects, probably involving the fiber arts.
In addition to her workings as a solitary crone witch and subsistence farmer/homesteader, Jj paints hex signs, following a family tradition. A friend, for whom she did such work, commented, “Your hexes just plain work. I know the one you created for us for land working has carried a charge that is practically visible and certainly has brought visible results.”
Sandra Keifer Szalinski
Sandra Keifer Szalinski is a former engineer, who has turned to writing about her youth growing up on a small family farm in northwestern Pennsylvania. Prior to retiring she earned an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. This is her second publication.
Wanda Taylor
Wanda Taylor is a sixth-generation descendant of Black Refugees who migrated from the U.S, to Canada following the War of 1812. She is an author, educator, and freelance journalist. Wanda has published six books of fiction and non-fiction. Her magazine features have appeared in various publications, including Understory Magazine, DaCosta, and Black2Businees Magazine. As college instructor, Wanda teaches courses in Journalism, Communications, and Story Writing. She also serves as Mentor in the MFA Creative Non-Fiction Program at Kings and has won awards for her work, including the Women of Excellence Award for Arts and Culture. Wanda lives in Toronto, Canada, but her heart is in the east coast, rural community where extended family still reside on that plot granted back in 1812 where the community still farms and lives off the land. Wanda is working on her next book: Eyes Without a Face, on marginalized women and mental health.
Sylvia Telfer
International award-winning Scottish poet, a qualified English teacher, a campaigner to halt climate change, a feminist, and an equal rights activist. She lives in an old miners’ row in historic mining centre Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire where she is surrounded by more history—Rutherglen being the oldest royal burgh in Scotland and once a centre for Druid worship.
John Van Pelt
John Van Pelt grew up in Latin America, England, and the United States, and has been privileged to enjoy a creative livelihood working for newspaper, digital media, and software companies. He now lives in central Maine, where he writes, edits, and designs for the indie publishing house that he and his partner operate alongside their sheep farm and fiber empire. His previous published work includes a flash piece at Daily Science Fiction. He is tremendously pleased to see his first published poetry in Farmer-ish journal.
Raven Venturelli
Raven Venturelli is a farmer-ish-artist. She is a musician, writer, photographer and painter. Raven currently resides in Western Montana and works on a certified organic seed farm. You may also catch a glimpse of her on the bluffs of coastal California or in the desert ecosystems of the Southwest.
As a 12 year student of permaculture design, Raven’s reverence for the natural world continues to evolve along with her own understanding of the patterns, principles and relationships observable in the natural world. She writes essays based on those observations and her experiences that come from those interactions. Raven wishes to live in a world where the air and water become more clean with each subsequent year; where the top soil is measured in growth not loss. A world with more bison, bees and songbirds and she is interested in meeting at the intersection between the needs of people and the broader ecosystem that we call Earth.
Melody Wren
Melody Wren is a Canadian travel, food, and lifestyle writer. Recently she has had articles published in Fodor’s, World Nomads, NBC News, CAA, Family Fun Canada, Canadian Traveller Magazine, Caribbean Beat Magazine, Canadian Yachting Magazine, Active Over 50, and Inspired Seniors to name a few.
She did not begin full of courage but enormous curiosity – experiential travel has helped her consider and conquer fears by making a conscious effort to face each one checking them off a list. She considers her age (over 60) a gift in her travels. She brings wisdom and experience and a major ‘if not now, when’ attitude with heavy lashings of humor, which is required in any kind of travel.
Her life is punctuated by her love of food, reading cookbooks like novels, experimenting with new recipes and cooking favorites for family and friends. Instead of staying in hotels on holiday, she and her family rent houses to soak in the local culture by exploring markets and taking cooking classes internationally. She has written two books on tea and is currently working on two children’s books. Visit her website for clips of recently published articles: www.melodywren.com or follow her on Instagram @melodywrentravels
Judith Zelis
Judith Zelis is a teacher, maker, gardener, who tends to her small parcel of land and young people’s wellbeing. Writing helps to make sense of it all. Judith has had poetry published in Passager Pandemic Diaries, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and Lake Erie Ink Anthologies.
Farmer-ish 