Megan Cohen

she/her/hers

Megan Cohen is an award-winning millennial author who writes a million words a year. As an opera librettist, she’s told stories of female rodeo champions, time-bending ghosts, and hungover werewolves. Past artistic partners include Houston Grand Opera, Opera Theater Unlimited, and Washington National Opera. Primarily a playwright, she’s had 100+ theatrical works onstage in her beloved San Francisco Bay Area where critics have called her “wildly imaginative” and “a ruthless innovator.” She’s grateful to composer Nell Shaw Cohen for the collaborative invitations that led her to opera and art song in the first place, and to 40@40 now.

Instagram: @howtowritesomething

Hedy Habra

she/her/hers

Hedy Habra’s fourth poetry collection, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023), won the 2024 International Poetry Book Awards and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award; The Taste of the Earth won the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Award; Tea in Heliopolis won the USA Best Poetry Book Award, and Under Brushstrokes was a finalist for the International Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honorable Mention. She is a twenty-two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Jeffrey Harrison

he/him

Jeffrey Harrison is the author of seven books of poetry, including BETWEEN LAKES (2020), and INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE (2006), in which “Saint” was published. His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and four appearances in BEST AMERICAN POETRY. His poems have been published widely in magazines and anthologies, and been translated into Bulgarian, Italian, Norwegian, and Portuguese. “Saint” is one of several of his poems that Scott Wheeler has set to music. He lives in Massachusetts.

C. L. O’Dell

he/him

C. L. O’Dell was born in the Hudson Valley. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry and the New Statesman. He is founder and editor of The Paris-American.

Karen Poppy

she/her (non-binary)

Karen Poppy’s debut full-length collection, Diving at the Lip of the Water, is published by Beltway Editions (2023), and is lauded by the legendary Judy Grahn for its demonstration of “paradox and power.” She has three chapbooks published: Crack Open/Emergency, our own beautiful brutality, and Every Possible Thing. Karen Poppy lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to “Prometheus’s Monster,” and other poems set to music for art song, Karen Poppy has written a full-length opera libretto about a merman and Handel, on which she would love composer collaboration.

Madhu Raghavendra

he/him

Madhu Raghavendra is a poet, curator, cultural educator, and performance artist living in India. He has published four books of poetry. He is an alumnus of the International Writing Fellowship, The University of Iowa and a Charles Wallace Writing Fellowship, University of Stirling, Scotland. He uses performance poetry as a tool to advocate cultural diversity and heritage of India. He collaborates with global artists to create cross disciplinary poetry experiences. His poems have been set to music and contemporary dance. He has participated in the 2022 PEN Emergency World Voices Congress of Writers at the United Nations Headquarters, New York.

Instagram: @poetmadhu

Pamela Rahn Sanchez

she/her

Born in 1994 in Caracas, Venezuela. She is the author of Brief Poems to Understand Absence (2019, Ediciones Torremozas, Spain), winner of the Gloria Fuertes Young Poetry Award, among other collections of poems such as The Battery-Powered Radio and Other Poems (2020, Fundarte, Venezuela). In 2022 she was a resident at IWP at the University of Iowa.

Instagram: @pamelarahns

Christina Ramirez

she/they

Christina is a poet and photographer from Chicago, IL currently operating out of Cleveland, OH. After 13 years of working in educational and medical settings as a speech-language pathologist she returned to writing and photography while navigating burnout and disability. Her poetry has heretofore been a largely personal endeavor; she hopes it can now be of service to anyone in the process of reclaiming and rebuilding their sense of self.

Instagram: @the.rage.project
Instagram: @christina_sophia_shoots

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Katie Vagnino

she/her

Katie Vagnino is a writer and educator who holds degrees from Yale University and Emerson College. She has taught creative writing all over the country, most recently at UW-Eau Claire. Her first book of poetry, Imitation Crab, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. Katie is also a singer who performs with Prairie Fire Choir and the blues/rock cover band Flaming Doublewides. She lives in South Minneapolis with her husband and daughter.

Caitlin Vincent

she/her/hers

Caitlin Vincent is an award-winning opera librettist and lyricist whose writing has been praised as “nuanced and honest” (DC Theatre Scene), “intriguing” (The Baltimore Sun), and “luminous” (The Huffington Post). Vincent’s works have been performed by Washington National Opera, the University of Connecticut, the Schubert Club of Minnesota, On Site Opera, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Semperoper Dresden, Melbourne Fringe Festival, SUNY Potsdam, Oxford Lieder Festival, and Wigmore Hall, among others. Particularly acclaimed for her work in song repertoire, Vincent is known for her intimate character portraits and deft use of both language and comedy.