Alicia Askenase is a poet and educator who has taught in Puerto Rico, Spain and the US, is the author of the chapbooks Cover, Suspect, The Luxury of Pathos and Shirley Shirley.  Her poems have appeared in literary journals and anthologies including Review Revista Americana, 5trope, sonaweb, texture, Chain, Black and New Works by Philadelphia Poets.  She was a founding co-editor of the poetry journal 6ix and Literary Program Director at the Walt Whitman Center.

Julia Blumenreich is a poet,  recipient of a PCA grant and a finalist for the 2016 Brittany Noakes Poetry Award.  She has read her work in various venues including the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, and Muse House in Philadelphia. Her recent work has been published in “The Whirlwind Review, and “An Anthology of Philadelphia Poets,” and has published two chapbooks:Meeting Tessie and Artificial Memory. 

Nina Schafer  is a poet based in Philadelphia and a member of Leonard Gontarek’s Workshop and the 34th Street Poets. She created the Unexpected Poetry Project through which she distributes 12,000 poems a year, one-by-one, to unsuspecting people waiting in grocery store lines, at the gas station, in the elevator, or browsing IKEA on Delaware Avenue. The responses have been unexpected.  Open Reading Follows, Jennifer Hook & Alina Macneal Hosts