Lake Whelm or The World: A Rail Reading curated by Lewis Freedman

The author of A Feeling Called Heaven (Nightboat Books), Utopia, and the multi-volume The Lazarus Project, among others. With Holly Melgard, he has co-authored a trilogy of books Holly Melgard’s Friends and Family, White Trash, and Liquidation. He is a founding member of the publishing collective, Troll Thread. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Bryon Cherry is a poet and musician. His work has been featured in Return to the Gathering Place of the Waters Anthology (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press) as well as in South Florida Poetry Journal. In 2021 he was named an emerging poet in Milwaukee, WI by Saint John’s on the Lake. His new chapbook, death moan, is currently out on Willow Books. In music he has released 8 albums and in 2021 he was named Best R&B/Soul Artist in Wisconsin by the Wisconsin Area Music Industry awards. Born and raised in Milwaukee, WI, he is of and shaped by his evolving home city. He is guided by what he considers to be magical forces— listening and love.

Naima Lowe is Black queer disabled writer and artist  who creates performances, texts and videos using transgressive and radical traditions of Black utterance. Her work is imbued with ritual and music; steeped in the liberatory ethos of improvisation. Naima was a 2021-2022 Mid America Arts Alliance Interchange Artist Fellow, recipient of the 2022-23 Mid America Arts Alliance Artistic Innovation Award, and a recipient of a 2022 Jazz Road Creative Residency.Naima sells prints and drawings through Trial and Error and since 2021 has been the Community Coordinator for the online writing community at Louis Place. Naima resides in Tulsa, within the Muscogee Creek Nation Reservation, where she spends her time being free and talking to animals.

poupeh missaghi is a writer, translator, and editor. Her debut book trans(re)lating house one came out from Coffee House Press in 2020. Her second novel, Sound Museum is forthcoming from Coffee House Press next year. She also has two translation books forthcoming in 2023 and 2024. An assistant professor of literary arts and studies at the University of Denver and a faculty mentor at Pacific Northwest College of Art low-res MFA, she is currently based in Denver, Colorado.

Lewis Freedman is a poet typing this bio on his laptop at a desk in a room in a home in Tulsa, Oklahoma at 11:32 no 33am on Wednesday, July 26th. This morning, after taking the dog for a walk and having some breakfast, he dropped the car off at the mechanic’s and then walked 40 minutes home. The high today in Tulsa is said to be 104 degrees fahrenheit. Books of poems published under his name include Residual Synonyms for the Name of God and I Want Something Other Than Time.