New Orleans Poetry Festival Board

NOPF co-founder Bill Lavender is a poet, novelist, musician, carpenter and publisher living in New Orleans. My ID, his eleventh book of poetry, was published by BlazeVOX in October, 2019. His novel trilogy, Three Letters, (comprised of Q, Little A, and The Private I) was released in 2021 by Spuyten Duyvil. His verse memoir, Memory Wing, called by Rodger Kamentetz "a contemporary autobiographical masterpiece," was published by Black Widow in 2011. A chapbook, surrealism, was published in 2016 and translated into Spanish by Enrique Solinas and Peter Thompson; the bilingual edition was released by Yauguru in Uruguay as surrealismo in 2017. Essays, fiction, poem-like objects and other ephemera appear regularly in Xavier Review, Fell Swoop, Southern Review, Jacket2 and other such print and online journals. 

He founded Lavender Ink, a small press devoted mainly to poetry, in 1995, and he founded Diálogos, an imprint devoted to cross-cultural literatures (mostly in translation) in 2011. Lavender Ink/Diálogos now has more than 200 books in print.

Read an interview with Bill about his poetics and about the press at Jacket2, or visit his Amazon author page.

He is the co-founder, with Megan Burns of Trembling Pillow Press, of the New Orleans Poetry Festival (i.e. this).

NOPF co-founder Megan Burns is the publisher at Trembling Pillow Press. She co-hosted the 17 Poets! Literary Series from 2002-2012 and hosted the Blood Jet Poetry Reading Series from 2013-2019 in New Orleans as well as founded The Dragonfly performance space in 2018. She is the co-founder of the New Orleans Poetry Festival. She has been most recently published in Jacket Magazine, Callaloo, New Laurel Review, Trickhouse, and the Big Bridge New Orleans Anthology. Her poetry and prose reviews have been published in Tarpaulin Sky, Gently Read Lit, Big Bridge, and Rain Taxi. She has four books Memorial + Sight Lines (2008), Sound and Basin (2013), Commitment (2015) and BASIC PROGRAMMING (2018) published by Lavender Ink. She has two recent chapbooks: Dollbaby (Horseless Press, 2013) and i always wanted to start over (Nous-Zot Press, 2014). Horse Less Press released her Twin Peaks chap, Sleepwalk With Me, in 2016. Her fifth book PLURALITY is forthcoming in 2023. 

NOPF Technical Director Jonathan Penton founded UnlikelyStories.org in 1998. Since then, he has lent editorial and management assistance to a number of literary and artistic ventures, such as MadHat, Inc. and Big Bridge. He has organized literary performances, and performed himself, in places like Arkansas, California, Chihuahua, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Washington, state and DC. His poetry books are Last Chap (Vergin’ Press, 2004), Blood and Salsa and Painting Rust (Unlikely Books, 2006), Prosthetic Gods (New Sins Press/Winged City Chapbooks, 2008), Standards of Sadiddy (Lit Fest Press, 2016), and the free e-chap BACKSTORIES (Argotist Ebooks, 2017). He serves as Webmaster for this site, NOLAPoetry.com. Photo by David Carlisle.

Tom Andes has published fiction in Witness, Natural Bridge, the Akashic Books Mondays Are Murder Flash Fiction Blog, Best American Mystery Stories 2012, and elsewhere. He frequently writes reviews for publications including the Los Angeles Review of Books and The Rumpus. A graduate of Loyola University New Orleans and San Francisco State University, he has been a resident at the Vermont Studio Center and Ragdale. He lives in New Orleans, where he works as a freelance editor and teaches community writing classes at the Loyola Writing Institute.

Henry Goldkamp lives in New Orleans. Recent poems appear in Triquarterly, minnesota review, Afternoon Visitor, Idaho Review, Bat City Review, Narrative, Indiana Review, DIAGRAM, Denver Quarterly, and Best New Poets. His public art projects have been covered by NPR and Time, and he co-runs The Splice Poetry Series. More at henrygoldkamp.com.

Skye Jackson is a poet & editor from New Orleans, Louisiana. She wrote the prize-winning chapbook, A Faster Grave, received an AWP Intro Journals Award and won the KGB Open Mic Competition. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, RHINO, The London Magazine, Green Mountains Review, the Library of Congress Poetry 180 Project & RATTLE, where she was a finalist for the poetry prize. In 2022, she served as the Writer-In-Residence of the Key West Literary Seminar and attended the Cave Canem Regional Workshop in New York City.Find her at www.skyejackson.com or on Instagram at @skyeinthecity.

​Jessica Kinnison's work has appeared in Columbia Journal, Phoebe, Entropy, Juked, and The Southern Humanities Review, among other publications. A 2018 Kenyon Review Peter Taylor Fellow, her work has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In April 2020, she was listed among eight New Orleans poets to watch in POETS & WRITERS. A Mississippi native, she is co-founder of the New Orleans Writers Workshop and host of the Dogfish Reading Series in New Orleans. She holds an MFA from Chatham University in Pittsburgh where she taught at the Allegheny County Jail.

A native of Mississippi, Benjamin Morris is the author of Coronary (Fitzgerald Letterpress, 2011), Hattiesburg, Mississippi: A History of the Hub City (Arcadia/The History Press, 2014), and Ecotone (Antenna/Press Street, 2017). His work appears in such places as The Oxford American, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Lithub, and The Southern Review, and has received fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission, Tulane University, and A Studio in the Woods. Recently he won the 2021 Words & Music Writing Competition for Poetry, judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Formerly a resident of the United Kingdom, he now lives in New Orleans. http://benjaminalanmorris.com.

Sean F. Munro is an Associate Professor of English at Delgado Community College in New Orleans. He has recent poems in Indiana Review, Split Lip Magazine, & Under a Warm Green Linden. He hosts a weekly poetry radio show, Lunch Poems, helps organize the New Orleans Poetry Festival, co-curates The Splice Poetry Series, and manages LitWire, the literary event calendar of New Orleans.

Lisa Pasold is originally from Montreal. Her 2012 book, Any Bright Horse, was nominated for Canada’s Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Her fifth book, The Riparian, is about a ghost, a river, and a dive bar. Her poetry has appeared in magazines such as Fence, Exile, and New American Writing. Lisa has taught Creative Writing at the American University in Paris and has led writing workshops across North America and France. She has worked as a journalist for diverse publications including The Chicago Tribune and Billboard Magazine; she is the host & co-writer of Discovery World’s TV travel show, “Paris Next Stop”. www.lisapasold.com

Amanda Emily Smith is a Mom, a Black feminist, a sex-positive activist, healer, writer and poet. She is a contributing writer to "Luminiscent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler," 2018 Hugo Award finalist for best related work and 2018 Locus Award winner for best non-fiction. She has performed poetry on New Orleans, black womanhood, motherhood & sacred sexuality on many stages around the city and lately for Mayhem, a fundraiser for SouthEast Leather Fest. She is currently working on a project of poetry and prose on sacred sexuality.

Rodrigo Toscano is a poet and essayist based in New Orleans. He is the author of eleven books of poetry. His latest two books are The Cut Point (Counterpath, 2023), The Charm & The Dread (Fence Books, 2022). His previous books include In Range, Explosion Rocks Springfield, Deck of Deeds, Collapsible Poetics Theater (a National Poetry Series selection), To Leveling Swerve, Platform, Partisans, andThe Disparities. His poetry has appeared in over 20 anthologies, including Best American Poetry and Best American Experimental Poetry (BAX).  Toscano has received a New York State Fellowship in Poetry. He won the Edwin Markham 2019 prize for poetry. He works for the Labor Institute in conjunction with the United Steelworkers, the National Institute for Environmental Health Science, National Day Laborers Organizing Network educational / training projects that involve environmental and labor justice culture transformation. rodrigotoscano.com

Born & raised in New Orleans, Bernardo Wade tries at poems, catches elbows on the court, & rides his bike around Bloomington, IN, because IU funds his present period of studying with others. He currently serves as Editor & CNF Editor of Indiana Review. Though he’s published in a bunch of literary journals no one in his family has ever heard of, they remain proud of him, especially when they are featured in the poems. He's infatuated with Ed Roberson's question, "Can you O.D. on life?" Check out his website: bernardowade.com