Kathleen Hellen is the recipient of the James Still Award, the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred, and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. Her debut collection Umberto’s Night won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Hellen is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, Meet Me at the Bottom, and two chapbooks.
D.M. Black is a Scottish writer and retired Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society. His translation and commentary on Dante’s Paradiso is due out in the NYRB Classics series in August 2025. A collection of psychoanalytic papers, Psychoanalysis and Ethics: The Necessity of Perspective, was published in 2024.
Mary Buchinger, whose recent books include Navigating the Reach (Salmon Poetry, Honors, 2024 Massachusetts Book Award), and The Book of Shores (2024) and Virology (2022), both from Lily Poetry Review Books, is the winner of the 2024 Elyse Wolf/Slate Roof Chapbook Prize. She volunteered for Peace Corps in Ecuador, served on the New England Poetry Club board for many years, and teaches at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston. Her poetry appears in AGNI, Plume, Salamander, Salt Hill, Seneca Review, and elsewhere.
Ann Shenfield works across a number of media. Her animated films have received various international honors including selection in the Berlin Film Festival. Her poetry has also received numerous awards including the Judith Wright Poetry Prize. Her poetry book A Treatment (Upswell Publishing) was listed in The Age Best Books of 2023. Last year, she completed a four-year program of clinical and theoretical studies at the Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis, where she is currently a member.
