Rita Bullwinkel is the author of two books: Headshot (2024) and Belly Up (2018).  Headshot was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize. It was also longlisted for the Booker Prize and the Dublin Literary Award. In 2025 Bullwinkel was awarded the Addison M. Metcalf Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which biennially honors a young American writer of great promise. She is also a 2022 recipient of a Whiting Award, the Editor of McSweeney's Quarterly, a Contributing Editor at NOON, the creator of Oral Florist, the former Deputy Editor of The Believer, and the former Assistant Fiction Editor of The Brooklyn Rail. A selection of each McSweeney’s Quarterly issue she edits is produced for audio by The New York Times. In addition to editing McSweeney’s Quarterly (the house’s magazine of art and literature) she also edits one book-length work a year for McSweeney’s Book Division. Books for which she has served as editor have been longlisted for National Book Award and named a best book of the year by The Chicago Review of Books.

rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024) and the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). mclennan is both the Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival and the publisher of Canada’s most prolific small press, above/ground press – which he has edited for over 30 years.

Guggenheim fellow Joyelle McSweeney is the author of ten books, including the poetry volumes Death Styles and Toxicon and Arachne (both Nightboat Books); the eco-decadent poetics book The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults (University of Michigan Poets on Poetry Series); and the verse-play Dead Youth, or, the Leaks, which was selected to inaugurate the Leslie Scalapino Prize for Women Performance Writers. In 2022, McSweeney received the Shelley Memorial Award for "poetic genius" from the Poetry Society of America. With Johannes Göransson, she is the co-founder of the international press Action Books which has help build global audiences for poets and translators like Kim Hyesoon, Raúl Zurita, Don Mee Choi and others. She lives in the Great Lakes region of the US and is Chair of the English Department at the University of Notre Dame

Dr.Tyler Mills is the author of the memoir The Bomb Cloud (Unbound Edition Press 2024), which received a Literature Grant from the Café Royal Foundation NYC. Her poetry guidebook, Poetry Studio: Prompts for Poets, a pedagogical book for new and experienced poets, appeared in June 2024 from the University of Akron Press. A poet and essayist, Tyler’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New Republic, the Kenyon Review, The Believer, and Poetry, Lit Hub, River Teeth, The Rumpus, and more. She is the author of the poetry books City Scattered (2022), Hawk Parable (2019), Tongue Lyre (2013), and co-author with Kendra DeColo of Low Budget Movie (2021). She has a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois-Chicago, teaches for Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute, and lives in New York City.

Dr. Vik Shirley is a poet, writer, editor and educator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her publications include Some Deer, (Broken Sleep, 2024), Corpses (Sublunary Editions, 2020), Disrupted Blue and Other Poems on Polaroid (Hesterglock, 2021) and Strangers Wave (zimZalla, 2023). In the UK, Vik’s work has appeared in such places as Poetry London, PN Review, The Rialto, Magma; in the US: Gone Lawn, Rejection Letters, The Indianapolis Review and Tiny Molecules. Vik co-edits Surreal-Absurd for Mercurius and Firmament online for Sublunary Editions. She is a Poetry School Tutor and has a PhD in ‘Dark Humour and the Surreal in Poetry’ from the University of Birmingham. Vik also founded Disrupted Blue Indie Press Publicity and works with small presses all over the world. In May 2025, Vik’s third photo poetry collection Persona Digitalia was selected for the inaugural P5—PhotoWorks series.

Jennifer Nulsen is best known for her work as a Grammy nominated audio engineer, having worked across North America as either recording engineer, editing engineer, mastering engineer, or assistant engineer, with such artists as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops Orchestra, Renee Fleming, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, SO Percussion, Yo-Yo Ma, Cleveland Orchestra, Hilary Hahn, Conspirare, Bela Fleck, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, among others. She has produced concert recordings for the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, McGill Symphony Orchestra, and the Yale School of Music (producing several live multi-camera orchestra web streams). She also produced studio recordings for theatrical chamber orchestras at the Hartt School in West Hartford, CT, for nationally recognized theatre productions. An active freelance engineer, Jennifer has worked as a recording and editing engineer on many album releases, as well as editing and mixing engineer on national television broadcasts, and regularly records and mixes classical, rock, jazz, and pop artists for single and EP releases. Jennifer is a three-time Grammy nominee and a three-time finalist in the international Audio Engineering Society Student Recording Competition, having received the Traditional Acoustic Gold Award in Los Angeles in 2016. She was also the winner of the 2018 Eleanor Stubley Sound Recording competition, and a recipient of the 2016-2017 John R.E. Bradley Award for Excellence in Sound Recording. She received two Bachelor of Music degrees in music production and technology and piano performance from the Hartt School at the University of Hartford in 2016. She has also completed a master's degree at McGill University in the Sound Recording program, for which she received several fellowships, including the Audio Engineering Society Educational Foundation grant and the Bruce Swedien honorarium. She completed one season at the Banff Centre in Banff, AB, four seasons at the Tanglewood Music Center (two of these as Ozawa Hall Senior Engineer), and one season at the Aspen Music Festival and School as the Head Media Engineer, mastering and distributing concert broadcasts to American Public Media, the European Broadcasting Union, and local media outlets.

During the year, Jennifer is the recording engineer for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, an editing engineer for the San Diego Symphony, a mix and editing engineer for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and a guest recording engineer and stereo mastering engineer for the Cleveland Orchestra. She was a podcasting engineer for Condé Nast Entertainment, where she mixed programs for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Conde Nast Traveler, and Bon Appetit, and is currently a mix engineer for Symphony Space's long-running program, Selected Shorts, and a broadcast engineer for the Metropolitan Opera's Sirius XM and Live

in HD broadcasts. She recently received her first three Telly Awards for work with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra as mix engineer, and three Mid-Atlantic Emmys for television programs she recorded with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Jennifer is also part time faculty at the New School's College of Performing Arts in 2024.

Composer, trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and bandleader Amir ElSaffar has been described in the New York Times as “the celebrated trumpeter and composer who explores vital connections between jazz and Arabic music.” A recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and US Artist Fellowship, and Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, ElSaffar has earned an international reputation for his work combining jazz and western classical music with the microtonal Maqam music of Iraq and the Middle East.

Photo by Maria Baranova

Jessica has been working as a film and television editor for over a decade, on projects ranging from documentary to narrative to experimental.

Jessica recently edited the feature documentary In The Room, directed by Brishkay Ahmed, produced by the National Film Board (NFB), which had its world premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) 2025, and won the VIFF audience award in the Showcase category. Prior to that, Jessica edited the feature documentary WaaPaKe, directed by Dr. Jules Arita Koostachin (produced by the NFB), and received a Leo nomination in the “Best Picture Editing - Feature Length Documentary” category; WaaPaKe also won the award for Best BC Film at VIFF in 2023, where it premiered.

Other recent editing work includes the documentary, The Salmon's Call, directed by Joy Haskell and the narrative short The Scribe of Samhain directed by Angie Nolan. Jessica also edited Ahnahktsipiitaa (Colin Van Loon)'s cinematic VR piece, This Is Not A Ceremony, (produced by the NFB) which premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival; Jessica was also one of the editors for Baljit Sangra's feature documentary Because We Are Girls, (produced by the NFB) which premiered at Hot Docs in 2019 and was selected as the opening film for the 2019 DOXA film festival.

Jessica holds a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Media from Toronto Metropolitan University's School of Image Arts, as well as a Graduate Diploma in Communications from Concordia University, and a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University. After graduate school, she completed a video editing practicum at The Banff Centre.

Photo credit: Jesse Winter Heading

Since late 2017, Herrod has been touring with Pink Martini across the US, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and Europe. Outside of performing arts centers and jazz clubs, Herrod is regularly featured with major orchestras across the US, and has shared the stage with artists such as Lalah Hathaway, Brian Blade, Vince Mendoza, Renee Fleming, and many more. 

With “a voice like a beacon of hope” (Seattle Times), vocalist Jimmie Herrod brings singular power and expressivity to his globe-trotting career as a singer, songwriter, and entertainer on stage and screen. Herrod first came to worldwide prominence as a finalist on the NBC nationally broadcast television show, “America’s Got Talent,” earning the rare “Golden Buzzer” recognition from actress Sofia Vargara and returning the following year on the AGT All-Stars series.

Image credit: Jimmie Herrod, photo by Paisley Lee.