The Word's Faire . 4/30/25 The Word's Faire . 4/30/25

‘Nothinginsomuch’ & ‘Like Chicken Pox or Poison Oak’

Justin M. Bushey is a poet who settled in the DC Metro area after enjoying the adventures and misfortunes from one coast to the other.

The Word's Faire . 4/27/25 The Word's Faire . 4/27/25

‘The White Pony’ Contest Winner

Kelsey Stewart’s work often engages with fractured systems and the emotional cost of survival within them. She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Creative Writing at Harvard. Originally trained as an opera singer, she performs with the Houston Grand Opera and hold a BA in music from Loyola Marymount University. Her fiction blends dark humor, social critique, and elements of absurdism, drawing inspiration from writers like George Saunders and Nikolai Gogol.

The Word's Faire . 4/26/25 The Word's Faire . 4/26/25

‘A Eulogy for Rincon’ Contest Finalist

Jill Bronfman was one of 12 Aspiring Novelists Selected for the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2025, was the Barnes & Noble, National Essay Contest Grand Prize Winner, placed second in the Joan Ramseyer Memorial Poetry Contest, was named a semi-finalist for both the James Applewhite Poetry Prize and The Waking’s Flash Prose Prize, and received an honorable mention in the Storm Cellar Force Majeure Flash Contest. Her work has been accepted for publication in five collections and over thirty literary journals. She has performed in The Bay Area Book Festival, Poets in the Parks, The Basement Series, Page Street, Washington Square Annual Livestream, and LitQuake, and had her story about a middle-aged robot produced as a podcast by Ripples in Space. She has been accepted to residencies and conferences including Looking Glass, WonderMountain, and LitCamp.

The Word's Faire . 4/25/25 The Word's Faire . 4/25/25

‘Climate Change’ Contest Finalist

Arria Deepwater (she/they) identifies as white, invisibly disabled, queer and faithfully middle-aged. Her work appears in In Between Spaces: A Disabled Writers Anthology, and she runs a newsletter, “Together, Between Worlds,” offering notes on a bad breakup with modern society. Arria shares a home by a lake with her mother near Perth, Ontario, Canada on unceded Algonquin Omàmìwininì Territory, where they regularly remind each other that they can, in fact, live without a dog. www.arriadeepwater.com

The Word's Faire . 4/24/25 The Word's Faire . 4/24/25

‘A Game of Chess at Midnight’, ‘Poem’ & ‘Blind Date’

Chase Harker is a poet from New Bern, North Carolina. He is currently a student in the MFA program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His work has previously appeared in Flying South, BarBar, In Parentheses, and elsewhere.

The Word's Faire . 4/23/25 The Word's Faire . 4/23/25

‘Leaving Crawford’

Max Talley was born in New York City and lives in Southern California. His writing has appeared in Vol.1 Brooklyn, Atticus Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Litro, and The Saturday Evening Post. Talley's collection, My Secret Place, was published in 2022 and When The Night Breathes Electric, debuted from Borda Books in 2023.

The Word's Faire . 4/20/25 The Word's Faire . 4/20/25

‘July’, ‘August’, ‘Extended Summer’ & ‘Lovers’

Sara Matson’s poetry can be found in Impossible Task, The Chicago Reader, Kicking Your Ass, Bone Bouquet, and elsewhere. Sara’s recent chapbook, (Women) In STEM is available from Bottlecap Press and her pop-culture inspired chapbook Special Features: DVD Poems is available from Alien Buddha Press. Sara hosts the seasonal online reading series Words // Friends + can be found on Instagram @skeletorsmom and Bluesky @saramatson.bsky.social. More of Sara’s poetry can be found at https://linktr.ee/saramatson

The Word's Faire . 4/19/25 The Word's Faire . 4/19/25

‘Marble Girl’

V.J. Hamilton calls Toronto home. Her work has been published in The Antigonish Review, Amsterdam Quarterly, and The Penmen Review, among others. She won the EVENT Speculative Fiction contest.

The Word's Faire . 4/18/25 The Word's Faire . 4/18/25

‘A Friendship Distilled’

Robert Eugene Rubino fantasizes about rewriting the screenplay of "2001: A Space Odyssey" so that HAL is the sole survivor.

The Word's Faire . 4/17/25 The Word's Faire . 4/17/25

‘Mirage’, ‘On the Curb’, ‘A Letter to the State Regarding the Statewide Pothole Repairs Sign’ & ‘My Friend'

Matthew Bailey is a musician breaking into the world of poetry. He graduated with an albatross of a Bachelors of Science from York College of Pennsylvania in Music Industry and Recording Technology. He lives with his soon-to-be wife Dylann and a poorly-behaved akita named Ursa in New Jersey. You can keep up with Matthew on his Instagram or Bluesky @mymattisname.