November 2024 Dante’s Old South Jenna Schroeder is a writer, mother of four, and the director of communications for Dolphin Hat Games. Additionally, she is the founder of Little Bird Press, and her creative projects include the inspiring children’s book “Are Enchanted Forests Real?” and “Tacoo Cat Goat Cheese Pizza and the Case of the Missing Hat.” Schroeder also contributed to the 2021 book “Peace in the Presence of God: Devotionals for Women with Anxiety” published by Michael Lacey. She...

October 2024 Dante’s Old South Major Jackson is the author of six books of poetry, including Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (2023) and The Absurd Man (2020). He is also the author of A Beat Beyond: The Selected Prose of Major Jackson . A recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Major Jackson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and has been honored by the Pew...

September 2024 Dante’s Old South Holly Haworth's essays appear in The New York Times Magazine, Orion, Oxford American, Sierra, Lapham's Quarterly, Terrain.org, Creative Nonfiction, The Bitter Southerner, and at the On Being radio program blog. They have been listed as notable in The Best American Travel Writing and included in The Best American Science and Nature Writing. Her forthcoming book This Resounding World: A Field Guide to Listening is a recipient of a Robert B. Silvers Foundation...

August 2024 Dante’s Old South Serene Hakim: Serene Hakim is an agent at Ayesha Pande Literary where she has been since 2015. She represents authors in a variety of genres, from MG fantasy to adult literary fiction to contemporary YA. Serene is interested in both YA and adult fiction that has international themes, highlights a variety of cultures, and focuses on underrepresented voices. Specifically, she's looking for writing that explores identity, home, and family and is currently...

July 2024 Dante’s Old South Steven Dunn (a.k.a Pothole, cuz he’s deep in these streets) is a Whiting Award winner who was shortlisted for Granta Magazine’s Best of Young American Novelists. He’s the author of three novels: Potted Meat (Tarpaulin Sky, 2016), water & power (Tarpaulin Sky, 2018), and Tannery Bay (FC2/University of Alabama Press, 2024), which is co-authored with his homie Katie Jean Shinkle. Mathieu Cailler is the author of seven books: one novel, two short story...

June 2024 Dante’s Old South Marcella Prokop is a Colombian American writer and educator living in the northern Great Plains region of the US. Her work has appeared online or in print in the Brooklyn Review, Ploughshares, The Christian Science Monitor, PANK, and other publications.  Blog: marcellaprokop.com TedX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn63z6p30TQ facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marcella.prokop LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/marcella-prokop X: @MarcellaProkop Nick Kelsh is an...

May 2024 Dante’s  Kristen Arnett is the queer author of With Teeth: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2021) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and the New York Times bestselling debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019). Her next novel, STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE, will be published by Riverhead Books (March 2025). www.kristenarnettwriter.com Lane Marie is an indie pop artist born, raised, and based out of Athens, Georgia. Her music combines her roots as a...

April 2024 Dante’s Old South January Gill O’Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University, and the author of Glitter Road (2024), Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. From 2019-2020, she served as the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi, Oxford. She lives in Beverly, Massachusetts. And, my social media so you can tag me: TwitterX: @januaryoneil | Instagram: @januarygilloneil |...

March 2024 Dante’s Old South Chelsey Clammer is the award-winning author of the essay collections Human Heartbeat Detected (Red Hen Press, 2022), Circadian (Red Hen Press, 2017), and BodyHome (Hopewell Publications, 2015). Her work has appeared in Salon, The Rumpus, Brevity, and McSweeney’s, among many others. She teaches online writing classes with WOW! Women On Writing and is a freelance editor.  www.chelseyclammer.com Dan Veach is the founding editor of Atlanta Review. A poet and...

February 2024 Dante’s Old South Autumn Nicholas: (she/he/they/them) Autumn Nicholas is a gifted songwriter and performer who has amazed audiences around the country. Autumn is one of Music Forward Foundation's Emerging LGBTQ+ Artists for 2023 and one of Nashville Scene’s Country Music Almanac 2024 Artists to Watch. www.autumnnicholas.com Emily Strasser’s first book, Half-Life of a Secret, is a deeply researched memoir that traces her journey to reckon with the toxic legacies of secrecy...

January 2024 Dante’s Old South Stuart Dischell is the author of Good Hope Road (Viking), a National Poetry Series Selection, Evenings & Avenues (Penguin), Dig Safe (Penguin), Backwards Days (Penguin), Standing on Z (Unicorn), Children with Enemies (Chicago), and The Lookout Man (Chicago). His newest work is Andalusian Visions (Unicorn), a book of poetry, photography, and music with international collaborators Cyril Caine and Laurent Estoppey. His poems have appeared in The...

December 2023 Dante’s Old South The Boxmasters (JD Andrew and Billy Bob Thornton): As a touring band, The Boxmasters have cultivated a rabid cult fanbase across the United States and Canada. Opening for the likes of ZZ Top, Steve Miller, George Thorogood and Kid Rock, The Boxmasters have proven to win over large audiences. As a headliner, frequent stops in Kansas City at “Knuckleheads”, Springfield, Illinois at “Boondocks” and “Merrimack Hall” in Huntsville, Alabama have shown dedicated yet...

November 2023 Dante’s Old South Richard Blanco Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in that role. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami in a working-class family, Blanco’s personal negotiation of cultural identity...

October 2023 Dante’s Old South Lizzie Thomas "Thomas is a storyteller. Her interpretations cut to the heart of the lyric."  Marilyn Lester, NYC Jazz Record "She brings an interpretive depth to everything." Nic Jones, Jazz Journal UK Lizzie Thomas is an inventive jazz vocalist known for her sultry vocal stylings and deep interpretations of the lyric. Thomas’ latest release, Duo Encounters on Dot Time Records cements her stature as one of New York’s top jazz singers.  Alongside the “who’s...

September 2023 Dante’s Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA for 2023-2025. He is the author and editor of seven books: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. His newest work, The Diaspora Sonnets, is published by Liveright Press (2023) and is longlisted for the National Book Award. With Stacey Lynn Brown he co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An...

August 2023 Dante’s Old South 
Jeffrey Dale Lofton hails from Warm Springs, Georgia, best known as the home of Roosevelt’s Little White House but calls the nation’s capital home now. He is a senior advisor at the Library of Congress, surrounded by books and people who love books—in short, paradise. Red Clay Suzie is his first novel, a fictionalized memoir written through his personal lens growing up a queer, physically-misshapen outsider in a conservative family and community in the Deep...

N.A. Windsor is the Program Manager of the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and the Co-Regional Advisor of the Los Angeles Region of SCBWI (Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators). In both posts, she organizes and produces writing events and conferences. In 2010 she founded the Children’s Book Writers of Los Angeles (CBW-LA.org). Through her work with CBW-LA Publications, N.A. has co-created, co-produced, and co-written Story Sprouts and Story Sprouts: Voice. You can learn more...

June 2023 Dante’s Old South Felix Charin was born in Neustrelitz as the son of a German mother and a Russian father. As a child and teenager, he performed at the Landestheater Neustrelitz and in a theater group in Bützow. During his school years, he lived temporarily in Russia and the United States. In 2012, he completed his degree at the HFF (University of Television and Film) in Munich. His diploma film at the HFF Munich was "Leben Lassen" which he produced in collaboration with Arte and...

Edgar Kunz is the author of the poetry collections Fixer (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2023) and Tap Out (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2019), a New York Times New & Noteworthy pick. He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, a Teaching Fellow at Vanderbilt University, and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. New poems appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, POETRY, American Poetry Review, and Oxford American. He lives in Baltimore and teaches at Goucher...

Eric Akoto, FRSA, is a British-Ghanaian-American entrepreneur and the founder of Litro Media Inc, publishing platforms such as Litro Magazine and Crayon Magazine to spotlight emerging and established global talents. Akoto is also the founder of Gemini Productions, a production company committed to bringing inspiring narratives to life. Akoto's initiatives reflect his commitment to international literature, arts, and digital innovation. Raised with roots in Britain, Ghana, and the U.S.,...

March 2023 Dante’s Old South Alicia Blue It's difficult to pin down exact musical influences on Alicia Blue's Inner Child Work—and that's exactly how the California singer-songwriter likes it. Although her folk roots are never far from the surface, the album encompasses dreamy indie-rock ("Dog Days in L.A."), delicate pop meditations ("Saline Waters"), '90s alternative rock ("Dirty Hippie"), and even Tori Amos-esque introspection ("Fine"). Growing up in Los Angeles, Blue admired authors...

Kendel Hippolyte was born in Castries, St. Lucia, in 1952. In the 1970s he studied and lived in Jamaica, receiving a BA from the University of the West Indies in 1976. Hippolyte is the author of several books of poetry, including Fault Lines (Peepal Tree Press, 2012), Night Vision (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2005), and Birthright (Peepal Tree Press, 1997). Of his work, Kwame Dawes writes, “One gets the sense of a writer working in a laboratory patiently, waiting for...

 Kendel Hippolyte was born in Castries, St. Lucia, in 1952. In the 1970s he studied and lived in Jamaica, receiving a BA from the University of the West Indies in 1976. Hippolyte is the author of several books of poetry, including Fault Lines (Peepal Tree Press, 2012), Night Vision (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2005), and Birthright (Peepal Tree Press, 1997). Of his work, Kwame Dawes writes, “One gets the sense of a writer working in a laboratory patiently, waiting for...

December 2022’s Dante’s Old South Jay Clifford, frontman of Jump Little Children: Jump, Little Children is an American indie rock band that was formed in 1991 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States. Known for its unique sound, energetic live performances, and willingness to interact with fans, the band has a devoted following and is a fixture in the Charleston, South Carolina music scene. Follow them here: https://www.jumplittlechildren.com/ The Writer’s Hotel: Shanna...