2026 Poets

  • Henry is a haikuist, with two chapbooks, editor of Volume 1 of the Nick Virgilio Writers House Poetry Anthology. He is an ember and past president of the board of the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association. He has performed his poetry in venues across the U.S., including Haiku North America, Haiku Society of America, City Lights Books, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and Fergies. He has participated with Poetry Tent activities since its inception.

  • James Hoch’s most recent books, Last Pawn Shop in New Jersey from LSU (finalist for The Paterson Prize) and Radio Static from Green Linden Press, appeared in Spring 2022. His previous books include Miscreants (Norton) and A Parade of Hands (Silverfish Review Press). His poems have appeared in POETRY, The New Republic, Washington Post, Slate, Chronicle Review of Higher Education, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review and many other magazines, and has been selected for inclusion in Best American Poetry 2019. He has received fellowships from the NEA, Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers conferences, St Albans School for Boys, The Frost Place and Summer Literary Seminars. Currently, he is Professor of Creative Writing at Ramapo College of NJ and Guest Faculty at Sarah Lawrence.

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  • Anna M. Evans’ poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and 32 Poems. She gained her MFA from Bennington College. Recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists' Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and winner of the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers' Choice Award, she currently teaches poetry at West Windsor Art Center and English at Rowan College at Burlington County. Her latest book is States of Grace (Able Muse Press, 2026) and her other books include chapbooks, The Quarantina Chronicles (Barefoot Muse Press, 2020) and The Unacknowledged Legislator (Empty Chair Press, 2019), along with Under Dark Waters: Surviving the Titanic (Able Muse Press, 2018), and her sonnet collection, Sisters & Courtesans (White Violet Press, 2014). She is the Board President of the Poetry by the Sea Conference, an annual 4-day conference which takes place in Madison, CT, and the editor of the online poetry journal for women formalists, Mezzo Cammin.

  • Mihaela Moscaliuc is the author of the poetry collections Heartmoor (AJB, forthcoming), Cemetery Ink, Immigrant Model, and Father Dirt, translator of Carmelia Leonte’s The Hiss of the Viper and Liliana Ursu’s Clay and Star, editor of Insane Devotion: On the Writing of Gerald Stern, and co-editor of Fruits of the Earth: Harvest Poems and Border Lines: Poems of Migration. She is a 2025 Guggenheim fellow and recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, a fellowship from the Hawthornden Foundation, two Glenna Luschei Awards from Prairie Schooner, two Individual Artist Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and a Fulbright. Moscaliuc directs the MA program in English at Monmouth University. mmoscaliuc.com

  • Alison Lubar is a queer, biracial Nikkei poet and educator who teaches literature to teenagers, writing to adults, and yoga to all ages. They’re the author of two full-length poetry books, The Other Tree, winner of Harbor Editions’ 2023 Laureate Prize, and METAMOURPHOSIS (fifth wheel press, 2024), as well as four chapbooks: Philosophers Know Nothing About Love (Thirty West, 2022), queer feast (Bottlecap Press, 2022), sweet euphemism (Mouthfeel Press, 2023), It Skips a Generation (Stanchion, 2023), and a microchap, American Kintsugi (Bull City Press, 2026). Alison is also a board member for Philadelphia’s Blue Stoop. Find out more at http://www.alisonlubar.com/.

  • Noel Quiñones is an Emmy award-winning writer of all genres. Noel is the author of Orange (CavanKerry Press, 2026) and has been published in Poetry, Boston Review, Poem-a-day, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT anthology, as well as the Michigan Quarterly Review, for which they won the 2025 Jesmyn Ward Fiction Prize. Noel’s short story "This Time and the Next" will be included in The Best Short Stories 2026: The O. Henry Prize Winners. Noel has also written for, narrated, and acted in several films, including the Emmy nominated documentary Takeover, recounting the Young Lords’ 1970 takeover of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx to fight for better healthcare. A graduate of the University of Mississippi's MFA program, Noel is a lifelong highschool teacher and currently working on their first TV show as a JFMS Screenwriting Lab Fellow.

  • Robin Palley, haiku poet and President of the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association, spent decades as a reporter and editor with the Philadelphia Inquirer & Daily News, Philly.com, KYW-TV & NewsRadio, and Philadelphia Magazine, focusing on healthcare, health equity and social justice. Robin also served on the executive leadership team of the youth mentoring organization Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. As a founder of WebMD Consumer and someone passionate about the arts, she has served on theater and music organization boards and focuses on the role of the arts in health and healing. Her poetry has been published in numerous anthologies.

  • J. C. Todd’s poetry collections include Beyond Repair (Able Muse Press, 2021) and the bilingual (English/Lithuanian) What Kept Me Awake?/Kas neilido užmigti? (PDR, 2024). She is co-editor of the anthology Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2026). A former fellow of the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, and poet with the Dodge Poetry Program and NJ Arts Council, her poems have appeared in One Art, The Paris Review, Pedestal, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Program at Rosemont College. www.jc-todd.com

  • Blake Kilgore is from a long line of educators and is married to an elementary school principal. He does his best to live up to the family tradition, teaching middle school history now going on twenty-eight years. He also sponsors the writing club and coaches the basketball team at his school. He’s been known to break out his guitar and sing for his students, usually to their great delight, though it continues to surprise him that so few of his youngsters know the name Dylan.

    When he is not occupied in the schoolhouse or gymnasium, he often wrangles his four sons out onto lakes and rivers or among the quiet woods of South Jersey. He can almost always be seen reading and takes great pleasure in combining his great love for the written word and the serenity of the outdoors.

    He has been working at writing for most of his life and is grateful to have been published in numerous fine journals over the last 12 years. Links to most of those pieces can be found at blakekilgore.com.

    Blake's grandfather and father were ministers and once upon a time, so was he. His roles as a son of faith and teacher of history, with its litany of suffering and war, often create angst and perplexity in his soul. Some of this can be observed in his writing, which seeks to hold fast to belief without closing eyes and ears. In particular, he is the author of Leviathan (Hapless Hip Books, 2021), a collection of poems that wrestle with faith and doubt.

  • Ophelia Eryn Hostetter (she/her; hēo/hīe/hire) teaches at Rutgers University-Camden & specializes in Old and Middle English literature & translation studies. She is the hostess and translateuse of the Old English Poetry Project (2007–present), as well several scholarly articles. She frequently contributes to journals of literary translation & is anticipating the publication of The Queer Life of Riddles (punctum books), a creative-critical (re)translation of the Exeter Book Riddles, a group of witty & challenging short Old English poems, about one thousand years old.

  • Kathleen Volk Miller is the author of “Teaching Writing Through Journaling: Journaling as a Tool for Learning and Well Being” (Bloomsbury, 2025). She has written for LitHub, NYT Modern Love, O, the Oprah magazine, Salon, the NYTimes, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Family Circle, Philadelphia Magazine and other venues. She is co-editor of the anthology, Humor: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press, 2014). She is co-editor of The Painted Bride Quarterly and co-host of PBQ’s podcast, Slush Pile. She has also published in literary magazines, such as Drunken Boat, Opium, and other venues. She holds “Healing through Writing” workshops, and other memoir classes. She consults on literary magazine start up, working with college students, and getting published in literary magazines. She is a professor at Drexel University.

  • Danny Shot is a New Generation Beat Poet Laureate (2024-Lifetime). Last year saw the publication of a collection of poems, The Jersey Slide by CavanKerry Press and prose, collected in Night Bird Flying by Roadside Press. WORKS was published in 2018 by CavanKerry Press. He has a new manuscript Like Falling Rain ready for publication. He is Poet in Residence at the Hoboken Museum. Danny was the longtime publisher and editor of Long Shot arts and literary magazine, which he founded along with Eliot Katz in 1982. Danny lives in Hoboken, home of Frank Sinatra and baseball.

  • 'Interstellar Storyteller' Reet Starwind is an author, activist, and educator who works in the Camden community. He is the creator and host of the city's longest-running late-night poetry workshop, 'the midnight notes,' organized in partnership with Nick Virgilio Haiku Association and Rutgers University-Camden. An alumnus of the University, Starwind is a frequent partner and guest speaker - lending his voice to a variety of events from graduations to flag-raising ceremonies. He sees creativity as the world's greatest hope and celebrates every opportunity to lift up one another with a word.

  • John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery and still lives in the backwoods of South Jersey. He’s been featured on Rowan University's Writer's Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM and Painted Bride Quarterly's Slush Pile Podcast. Publications include: Rattle, New Ohio Review, Waxing & Waning, Gigantic Sequins, and Driftwood. He has been nominated 4x for the Pushcart Prize. His chapbook, No Lightsabers in the Kitchen, was selected as a winner of the 2025 Poetry Box Chapbook contest. When not writing poetry, he enjoys monitoring bluebird boxes, flipping horseshoe crabs, and rolling around in the yard. Find out more at: www.johnwojtowicz.com

  • Sherrie Yvette is an author, poet, educator, teaching artist, and community storyteller whose work explores love, faith, family, identity, healing, and the beauty found in everyday life. A former public school educator and Burlington County Teacher of the Year, Sherrie brings nearly two decades of experience working with children, families, and communities into her creative work.

    She is the author of "It’s Love: Poems and Prose from the Heart" and "Selah: Stop and Think." Her writing invites readers to pause, reflect, feel deeply, and see themselves with greater compassion. Her creative practice extends beyond the page through teaching, youth programming, workshops, and community arts initiatives.

    Sherrie Yvette also facilitates writers’ groups and creative writing experiences in partnership with mental health facilities, using writing as a tool for reflection, self-expression and recovery. Through these spaces, she encourages participants to explore their experiences and find meaning and voice through the written word.