John Fritzell lives in Appleton with his wife and two very part-time hunting dogs. A graduate of Grinnell College and employed in the financial services industry, John’s chapbook Thuribles by Kelsay Books was also short-listed in Tiny Seed Literary Journal’s Annual Chapbook Contest and a finalist for the North Dakota State University Press’ Poets of the Plains & Prairies (POPP) Chapbook Awards. John is a member of The Mill—a place for writers and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP).

Peggy Trojan has published two full collections and five chapbooks. River, a collection about her husband’s battle with Lewy body, placed second in the WFOP 2021 contest. Her new release, PA, is a collection of poems about her father, who lived ninety-eight and a half years. She lives in the woods in Brule. Her books are available on Amazon.

Example Poem

Life After Death

R.B. Simon is a queer, black writer who has been published in multiple journals, among them The Stoneboat Literary Journal, Minnow Literary Magazine, The Hyacinth Review, Sky Island Journal, and Literary Mama. Her chapbook, The Good Truth, was released in July 2021 from Finishing Line Press. She is currently living in Madison, WI with her spouse, young adult daughter, and four unruly little dogs.

Example Poem

At 48

And now
I become myself;
a hardened
bulb of dahlia
buried under
winter’s compacted earth.

Swelling with sun,
I break apart into tentacles
seeking the living air.

Bare and hot,
I raise my petaled head
and bow to the wind,
my only master.

Emily Bowles received a PhD in English and Certificate in Women’s Studies from Emory University in 2004. In her first chapbook, His Journal, My Stella (Finishing Line Press, 2018), she explores or experiences of gendered and sexual silencing in graduate school through the story of the subject of her thesis, Jonathan Swift. In The Satisfactory Nothing of Girls, Bowles by Finishing Line Press revisits Virginia Woolf. She has received the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Triad Award, a Pushcart Prize nomination and an artist residency with the Appleton Public Library.