Jacqueline Nicole Harris is a writer, performance poet, and Shimer College graduate from North Chicago, Illinois.  She is also a member of the Deerfield Library Poetry Group in Deerfield, Illinois.  Jacqueline is the author of five chapbooks Random Acts of Verse, My Revolution, A Brown Girl’s Story, 7 Random Things, & ON LIFE.  Jacqueline is currently working on her first novel.  She lives and works from home while trying to get out and give back to her community whenever possible.  Her fifth book of Poetry ON LIFE is the winner of the Black Caucus of the American Library Associations Ebook Award for 2017.  In 2018, her short story, Blood and Poetry, was published in the Curating Alexandria Halloween Anthology “Exhuming Alexandria” which lead to her guest editing their anthology, Poetry by Alexandria.  Her latest chapbook, Periods, Pauses and other Poems, is available on Barnes and Noble’s website and amazon.com.

Lois Baer Barr lives in Riverwoods, Illinois.  A finalist for the 2019 Rita Dove Poetry Award, Barr was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction and poetry.  Her chapbook Biopoesis won Poetica’s 2013 chapbook award, and her chapbook of fiction, Lope de Vega’s Daughter, is available from Red Bird Press. Her chapbook Tracks: Poems on the El is won fourth place in  Finishing LIne Press's 2021 contest. Barr is a literacy tutor for Forging Opportunities for Refugees in America and a reading buddy for Open Books in Chicago. She gives writing workshops in poetry for all ages. Barr studied in Madrid for two years and returns to Spain whenever she can to hike, bike or dance. She and her husband Lew have cycled in Cantabria and Catalunya and hiked in La Rioja. When Lew turned seventy, they rode their bicycles from home in Riverwoods to New York City; now they're planning their ride through the Florida Keys. If she’s not writing in the Writers Workspace in Chicago, she’ll be practicing flamenco.