Nishat Ahmed is a Bangladeshi-American residing in the Midwest. He’s an Illinois native with a deep love for Fall Out Boy, The Notebook, and Chipotle. He received his MFA in poetry from Old Dominion University in 2019. His work has been published by Sobotka, Words Dance, The Mochila Review, Into the Void, The Academy of American Poets, The Tampa Review, and has been performed at TEDxUIUC and AWP. His first chapbook, Field Guide for End Days debuted in 2020 from Finishing Line Press, and his second, Brown Boy, is forthcoming in late 2020 from Porkbelly Press.

Joanna Eleftheriou is the author of the essay collection This Way Back (West Virginia University Press), and her work has appeared in journals such as Apalachee Review, Chautauqua, CutBank, Arts and Letters, and The Common. She is assistant professor of English at Christopher Newport University, a contributing editor of Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and a faculty member at the Writing Workshops in Greece. She is a graduate of ODU’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program (2008).

This festival is made possible in part through sponsorship by the City of Norfolk Commission on the Arts and Humanities.