Poetry

Shaolin Poe is the pen name for a husband and wife writing duo. Shaolin is a combination of their first names, and Poe is an homage to Edgar Allen Poe. They met in the military while flying on the same spy plane. They visited Colorado, fell in love with the area, and moved to the Pikes Peak region in 2008. They love to transport readers to unexpected places and showcase the humor of situations. When they aren’t writing, they enjoy music, traveling, board games, and stand-up comedy.

Jasmine Dillavou is a Boricua poet, curator, artist, and instructor living in Colorado Springs. Dillavou received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Visual and Performing Arts from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. She has shown work at numerous exhibition spaces including Understudy, GOCA 121, and A.I.R Gallery NYC and shares poetry all across Colorado. She co-directs a program called Non Book Club Book Club in Southern Colorado and runs a curation program from Ephemera Dinners. Her passions lie in documenting the personal and complex Latinx Experience through writing and visuals.

Susan Miura is an author, editor, and speaker as well as a former Chicago-area journalist and public relations professional. She believes book characters should reflect the world in which we live, and therefore includes characters of various ethnicities, abilities, and cultures in her novels. Her award-winning young adult books are clean fiction with suspense, danger, and touches of romance and humor. Susan also writes inspirational women’s fiction and has one children’s poetry book that features several of her wildlife photos. Hobbies include nature photography, hiking, baking, and reading. Susan recently moved to Colorado Springs from a Chicago suburb and loves the sunshine, mountains, and hiking opportunities.

Amber Herbert is a published author/poet living in Colorado Springs with her husband and two sons. She has a BA in English Literature and has worked as a freelance editor since 2018. She writes high fantasy, horror, science fiction, and YA and New Adult fiction. Lipstick Covered Magnet is her first novel.

Taylor Stanecek has spent most of his life in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He's currently a commercial property manager with a drive to write in his spare time. His passion for writing sparked in grade school with the help of a motivational teacher and has pushed him to continue to strive for creativity through short stories and poetry over the years, finally moving into fictional novels. Identifying as gay, Taylor has focused his first coming of age trilogy on LGBT culture.

Having reaped the benefits of pedagogical academia, Eric J. Rodwell is an alumnus of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS). He has lived in the Pikes Peak Region since 1996. He is a retired military veteran with over twenty-one years of honorable and distinguished service. Ten of those years, being a paratrooper in the elite 82nd Airborne Division; and, he was ordained as a minister of the Gospel in 1983. He has been married to his beautiful wife, Tina, for over thirty-nine years and the proud father of two sons, one daughter, one son-in-law, six grandkids, and one on the way in January 2021.

Brook Bhagat is the author of Only Flying, a Pushcart-nominated collection of surreal poetry and flash fiction on paradox, rebellion, transformation, and enlightenment from Unsolicited Press. Her work has won contests at Loud Coffee Press and A Story in 100 Words, and her poem, “The Homes of Birds,” first published in the anthology, A Walk with Nature, was a first-round winner in the 2022 Colorado Hearts and Minds Poetry Contest.

Brook’s poetry, prose, humor, and creative nonfiction have been published in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror, Soundings East, The Alien Buddha Goes Pop, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies. She and her husband Gaurav created Blue Planet Journal, which she edits and writes for. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University and is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Pikes Peak State College. Read her work and learn more about Only Flying here, check out the Nearby Universe here, and follow her on Twitter and Instagram @BrookBhagat.

Amie Sharp lives in Colorado Springs and is an assistant professor at Pikes Peak Community College. Her chapbook The Sabine Women won the Emergence Poetry Prize and was published by Red Dragonfly Press. Her writing has appeared in many literary journals including Atticus Review, Badlands, Bellevue Literary Review, BlazeVOX, New Plains Review, Tar River Poetry, and Valparaiso Poetry Journal. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, was a finalist for the Lascaux Prize in Poetry, and has been performed at Bridgewater International Poetry Festival and Houston Poetry Fest. She spent the summer of 2018 as artist-in-residence at the Sabina Cultural Association in Casaprota, Italy.

Joseph Murphy is a retired public relations executive who has lived in the Pikes Peak region for a number of years. During his 28-year career in public relations, he focused on media relations, special event management and editing and writing. His poetry has appeared in a wide range of online and print journals. He has also published six collection of poems. Murphy is a member of the Colorado Authors’ League and for eight years (2010-2018) was poetry editor for an online literary publication, Halfway Down the Stairs. He also a retired Commander, U.S. Navy, where he first started in public relations.

Jean knew when her eyes locked with those of a smooshy-faced little dog who sat inside a kennel at the Humane Society, that it was love at first sight. To capture their many adventures, she self-publishes short story poems starring her often mischievous and always adorable rescue pug named Zuggy. She enjoys visiting schools around the country and local community events, sharing Zuggy the Rescue Pug, a collection of light-hearted and beautifully illustrated books. Follow the fun online: FB, YouTube, Pinterest, and Insta @ZuggythePug