Director of Programs
Joseph Earl Thomas is a writer from Frankford whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in VQR, N+1, Gulf Coast, The Offing, and The Kenyon Review. He has an MFA in prose from The University of Notre Dame and is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania. An excerpt of his memoir, Sink, won the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize and he has received fellowships from Fulbright, VONA, Tin House, Kimbilio, & Breadloaf, though he is now the Anisfield-Wolf Fellow at the CSU Poetry Center. He’s writing the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, and a collection of stories: Leviathan Beach, among other oddities. He is also an associate faculty member at The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.
Operations & Social Media Coordinator
Taylor Townes is a Philadelphia based poet, mixed media artist, and designer. She shares her poetry on custom clothing with her brand Poetry for the Streets (formerly known as stuffnotherthings.com) and is currently working on self-publishing her first chapbook. She is a Philly Typewriter sponsored poet and recipient of the 2022 Judith Stark Writing Award. She has performed spoken word poetry on stages in Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York City.
Marketing & Development Coordinator
Julian Shendelman is a prose writer with Southern California roots. After earning two degrees in queer/trans theory, he moved to the Philadelphia region in 2017. His work has been published by Nomadic Press, Bat City Review, Philadelphia Stories, Cleaver Magazine, and Thirty West. He’s been a fellow at the Lambda Lit Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ+ Writers (2012) and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2022). Julian is passionate about building strong communities; his organizing background includes the Bay Area Trans Writers Workshop, The People’s Fridge, and Collective Lit. Learn more at www.shendelman.com
Advisory Board
Arielle Brousse is a veteran of the Philadelphia nonprofit scene, focusing on marketing, development, and donor communications. She currently works as the Marketing Manager of National Philanthropic Trust; previously, she has been the Assistant Director for Development at Kelly Writers House, and Grantwriter and Development Communications Coordinator of The Franklin Institute. Additionally, she serves on the board of the Abortion Liberation Fund, and co-leads a progressive Girl Scout troop. She holds a Master's degree in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania. In her spare time, she enjoys gardens, fiber arts, horror movies, taking photos in and around South Philadelphia, and especially telling and hearing stories.
Emma Copley Eisenberg is a queer writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Granta, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House, Esquire, Guernica, The Washington Post Magazine, and others. She has received fellowships, grants and residencies from Bread Loaf, the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Millay Colony, Jentel Foundation, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. Her first book of nonfiction is The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia which was named a New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice of 2020 as well as nominated for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Bouchercon Award among other honors. With Joshua Demaree, she co-founded Blue Stoop in 2018 and served as its director until 2022. Her debut novel, Housemates will be published by Hogarth on May 28, 2024.
Linda Gallant is the project director of The Head & The Hand (H&H), an independent nonprofit publisher and bookstore based in Philadelphia. In addition to ushering H&H's books, anthologies, and chapbooks from conception to print, she has spearheaded publishing partnerships with city stakeholders ranging from the Free Library of Philadelphia to Drexel University's Writers Room and orchestrated the literary arts programming at H&H Books since 2019. She has over fifteen years of professional writing and editing experience and welcomes every opportunity to shape and sustain creative communities.
Elizabeth Greenspan writes about cities, politics, and design. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, Architect, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, and Places Journal, among others. She is the author of Battle for Ground Zero, about the politics of commerce and commemoration at the World Trade Center site, published in 2013 by St. Martin’s Press. She lives in Philadelphia, where she teaches urban studies and creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania. Liz has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including NPR’s Here and Now, All Things Considered, and On Point; PRI’s The World; WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show; and CSPAN’s BookTV. She speaks regularly about cities to a range of audiences and holds a PhD in anthropology and urban studies from the University of Pennsylvania.
Mia Kang is an art historian, poet, and cultural worker based in Philadelphia, PA. She currently serves as Interim Director of the Museo del Westside, a new community participatory museum focused on San Antonio’s historic Westside. Mia is also a PhD candidate in the history of art at Yale University, and she teaches as a lecturer at the Cooper Union and Hunter College, her alma mater. Her pamphlet City Poems was published by ignitionpress in 2020, and her poetry has appeared in journals including POETRY, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, and PEN America. Recent academic publications include contributions to Roxy Paine: The Dioramas (Skira, 2021), The Life and Times of Alvin Baltrop (Skira, 2019), Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch (Yale University Press, 2020), Published by Lugemik: Printed Matter from 2010-2019 (Lugemik, 2019), and Plot magazine. In 2022-2023, Mia is an inaugural iLAB artist-in-residence at University of the Arts, Philadelphia.
Jared Michael Lowe is a writer, journalist, and nonprofit leader based in Philadelphia, PA. An outstanding voice on the arts, culture, communities of color, sexuality, gender, and race, his work has appeared in NBC News, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, the Huffington Post, EBONY Magazine, the Broad Street Review, among other publications. He’s a contributing editor for Root Quarterly, an arts and ideas quarterly journal rooted in Philadelphia but celebrates content from Pennsylvania and beyond, and a contributing editor and essayist for How We Stay Free: Notes on a Black Uprising, an anthology-in-action of the culture and politics of Black liberation from the Paul Robeson House and Museum and published by Common Notions. Jared holds a Master of Science in Organizational Dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies from Kutztown University. He lives with his partner, Elliot, and their Boston terrier, Zora.
Kirwyn Sutherland is a Ciinical Research Professional and poet who makes poems centering the black experience in America. He is a Watering Hole fellow and has attended workshops/residencies at Cave Canem, Winter Tangerine, Poets House, Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, and Pearlstein Art Gallery at Drexel University. Kirwyn’s work has been published in American Poetry Review, Cosmonauts Ave., Blueshift Journal, APIARY Magazine, FOLDER, The Wanderer and elsewhere. Kirwyn has served as Editor of Lists/Book Reviewer for WusGood magazine and poetry editor for APIARY Magazine. Kirwyn has a chapbook, Jump Ship, on Thread Makes Blanket Press.
Warren Longmire is a poet, a software engineer, and an educator from the bad part of North Philadelphia. He is the co-founder of the Excelano Project Spoken Word Collective and former editor for Apiary magazine. He's been published in journals including American Poetry Review, Eleven Eleven, Prolit and The Painted Bride Quarterly. Warren is featured in the Best American Poetry 2021 anthology. His first full length publication was released in 2021 through Radiator Press.