By Shannon Bushee and Judith Rosenbaum | “She didn’t need to be rescued from her own tower.”

By Nicole Morse and Bradley Wall | “tender tongues of flame search for artful promise…”

By Lily Barrett and Chiara Pieri | “The place is full of monsters… a well-groomed man encourages a younger, scared-looking woman as a blue flame shoots up from her palm.”

By Tuggelin Yourgrau and David Winkler | “He was not a playful father, often spending six or seven days a week on his research…”

By Deidre Beck and Anne Macdonald | “Like winged angels they form a circle, heads in, bodies out, a side-by-side dance…”

By Jennifer Blesso and Christina Wiseman | “We come inside from the cold, ladle hot soup into bowls, cradle them in our thawing pink hands…”

By Alissa Onigman and Elizabeth Christopher | “August flames have their own rhythm… like a temple spearing the night sky—
seeking winter’s constellations.”

By Greg F. DeLaurier | “When I was an academic, I published a lot of nonfiction…. Upon retirement, I turned to my first love, fiction writing…”

By John Howard | “you have to believe/ in the life that can emerge/ before you feel/ Spring rains…”

By Joanna Dellaripa Rosenberg | “Josie looked past Uncle Enzo’s smug face to get a glimpse of Uncle Sebastiano in his casket. A perfectly pressed pinstripe suit with a red rose in his front pocket…”

By Laura Speare and Charlie Kelly | “Its cool waters cradle me/ as far above a cloud morphs/ from dragon to pooch”

By Brad Wall and Rebecca Flores | “A nectarean blunderer/I am; a true chain-armored thunderer/Upon this hollowed isle/In which the remains of revered ships now lay as an exalted pyle. “