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Clarissa Adkins
Richmond, VA
Graduated June 2018
CLARISSA ADKINS was a finalist for the 17th Annual Erskine J. Poetry Prize. She’s published in Poems2Go; The Pinch; WhurkMagazine; Lily Poetry Review; Parentheses Journal; Smartish Pace; River City Poets’ anthology, Lingering in the Margins; and others. She enjoys reading for Sugar House Review.
Rex Carey Arrasmith
Lāna’i City, HI (NOV-MAR) Sedona, AZ (APR-OCT)
Graduated June 2020
REX CAREY ARRASMITH was born in a tiny California desert town, Blythe, CA, often credited with having the hottest summer temperatures. The resulting softening of his brain made writing poetry inevitable. After earning his MFA in fiction, he became enamored with Lesley’s poetry faculty and started over. His poetry often serves as a memorial to his friends and lovers lost to the AIDS pandemic. He is a co-founder of Cambridge Common Writers, a Lesley MFA alumni group. His poems have been published on the ugly writers and Spillwords Press, Lily Poetry Review, and Passengers Journal, among others. He is always happy to talk to aspiring poets at WreckWrites@gmail.com.
Rex can also be found in our Fiction section!
KB Ballentine
Chattanooga, TN
Graduated June 2007
KB BALLENTINE’s seventh collection, Edge of the Echo, is scheduled to launch in May of 2021 with Iris Press. Her earlier books can be found with Blue Light Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Published in Crab Orchard Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, among others, her work also appears in anthologies including In Plein Air (2017) and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017).
Andrea Ballou
Somerville, MA & Brooks, ME
Graduated June 2015
ANDREA BALLOU’s poems and book reviews have appeared in Barrow Street, Copper Nickel, FIELD, The Ilanot Review, Plume, Plume Anthology, The Missouri Review, Tupelo Quarterly and elsewhere. Andrea received her PhD in Romance Languages & Literatures from the University of Chicago and her MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she is also the recipient of a National Resource Fellowship, a Tinker Foundation Grant, Artist’s Fellowships and Project Grants from the Somerville Arts Council, and a residency at Joya/AIR in Spain. She has been teaching weekly poetry workshops for elders at the VNA since 2018 and serves on the board of the Somerville Arts Council. Andrea divides her time between Massachusetts and mid-coast Maine, where she tends 500 acres of forest.
Michelle Boland
Los Angeles, CA
Graduated January 2019
MICHELLE BOLAND is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Cold Mountain Review, The Chaffey Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, among others. She holds an MFA from Lesley University and has been a reader for Harvard Review. She’s currently at work on her first full collection of poems.
Shari Caplan
Boston, MA
Graduated June 2014
SHARI CAPLAN (she/her) is the siren behind ‘Advice from a Siren’ (Dancing Girl Press). Her poems have swum into Gulf Coast, Painted Bride Quarterly, Angime, Drunk Monkeys, and elsewhere. Shari’s work has earned her a scholarship to The Home School, a fellowship to The Vermont Studio Center, nominations for a Bettering American Poetry Award, and a Pushcart Prize. She proudly serves as Madam Betty BOOM for The Poetry Brothel in Boston.
Dan Carey
Boston, MA/San Francisco, CA
Graduated June 2021
DAN CAREY is a poet from the north shore of Massachusetts, whose poetry has appeared in DropOut Literary Journal and Anti-Heroin Chic. He is currently at work on his first book of poems.
Mollie Chandler
Boston, MA
Graduated June 2017
MOLLIE CHANDLER is a Boston-based poet, editor, and teacher. Her works, including her chapbook The Ghost Poems, explore the cracks where fantasy and imagination leak into lived experience. Her poems and short stories can be found in The Fairy Tale Review, The Charles River Journal, Poems2Go, Paradise in Limbo, Foliate Oak, Hollow, Light: A Journal of Poetry and Photography, The Merrimack Review, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Sediments Literary, Empty Sink Publishing, The Voices Project, Willard and Maple, Best Emerging Poets of Massachusetts 2019, and forthcoming in the Lily Poetry Review.
Eileen Cleary
Whitman, MA
Graduated June 2016
EILEEN CLEARY is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Lily Poetry Review and Lily Poetry Review Books. She holds two MFA’s in poetry. Recent work is published in The Sugar House Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Fusion, JAMA, West Texas Literary Review, and Solstice: A Magazine for Diverse Voices, among others. Her work is included in a Rainworks poetry installation in Newton, Massachusetts. She co-founded and curates the Lily Poetry Salon. Cleary’s debut full-length collection Child Ward of the Commonwealth was published by Main Street Rag Press in June 2019. Her second, 2 A.M. With Keats is slated for Fall 2020 by Nixes Mate.
Julie Cyr
Sharon, NH
Graduated January 2017
JULIE CYR has been published by Slipstream, Blood and Thunder Journal, Broad River Review, Smoky Quartz, Surreal Poetics, and Lost Horse Press in the Nasty Women Poets Anthology, among others. She was awarded 2014 Best of Poetry by Blood and Thunder Journal, a finalist in the 2016 Rash Awards for Poetry, awarded a scholarship from Murphy Writing of Stockton University in 2018, and nominated for a 2019 Pushcart Prize. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and two sons.
Lisa DeSiro
Cambridge, MA
June 2010
LISA DESIRO is both a writer and a pianist. In addition to her MFA from Lesley, she has degrees from Binghamton University, Boston Conservatory, and Longy School of Music. She has worked for both academic and non-profit organizations as an accompanist, teacher, administrator, production assistant, and editor. Lisa is founder/host of the Solidarity Salon, a performance series featuring multi-genre artists who are women, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ, and/or differently-abled. Her work has been published in Ovunque Siamo, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Indolent Books, Lily Poetry Review, and Mezzo Cammin, among others.
Frances Donovan
Boston, MA
Graduated June 2019
FRANCES DONOVAN’s chapbook Mad Quick Hand of the Seashore was named a finalist in the 31st Lambda Literary Awards. Publication credits include The Rumpus, Snapdragon, and SWWIM. She holds an MFA in poetry from Lesley University, is a certified Poet Educator with Mass Poetry, and has appeared as a featured reader at numerous venues. She once drove a bulldozer in an LGBTQ+ Pride parade while wearing a bustier. You can find her climbing hills in Boston and online at www.gardenofwords.com.
Suzanne E. Edison
Seattle, WA
Graduated July 2016
SUZANNE EDISON writes most often about the intersection of illness, healing, medicine and art. Her most recent chapbook, The Body Lives Its Undoing, was published in 2018. Poetry can be found in: JAMA; Canadian Medical Association Journal; Michigan Quarterly Review; Whale Road Review; HEAL; Persimmon Tree; SWWIM; Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine; Naugatuck River Review; What Rough Beast; The Ekphrastic Review, and in several anthologies. She is a recent Hedgebrook alum and teaches at Richard Hugo House.
Jen Fitzgerald
Staten Island, NY
Graduated January 2014
JEN FITZGERALD is a poet, essayist, and photographer, whose family has been in NYC and Staten Island for over 150 years. Her first full-length collection, “The Art of Work” was published by Noemi Press in 2016. Her work has appeared in such venues as PBS Newshour, Boston Review, NER, and The Nation, among others. She teaches poetry to incarcerated youth on Rikers Island and other New York City juvenile jails.
Robbie Gamble
Brookline, MA
Graduated January 2017
ROBBIE GAMBLE grew up in Brookline, MA, moved far away to places like New York City, Ontario, El Salvador, and Jamaica Plain, before returning to the town of his formative years. His poems have been published in The American Journal of Poetry, the Atlanta Review, Carve Magazine, Construction, Indolent Books, the Lily Poetry Review, Naugatuck River Review, Nixes Mate, Pangyrus, Poet Lore, Slipstream, Solstice, RHINO, and Rust + Moth, among others. He was the winner of the 2017 Carve Poetry Prize, and has had poems nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. He is the assistant poetry editor for Solstice: a Magazine of Diverse Voices.
Robbie can also be found in our Nonfiction section!
Boston Gordon
Philadelphia, PA
Graduated January 2015
BOSTON GORDON (they/he) is a poet from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They run the You Can’t Kill A Poet reading series – which highlights queer and trans identified writers in Philadelphia (x , x). Boston earned their MFA in Poetry through Lesley University. They received a Leeway Foundation At & Change grant in 2017. They have previously been published in such places as PRISM International, Guernica, and the American Poetry Review.
Melanie Henderson
Washington, DC
Graduated January 2010
MELANIE HENDERSON, poet, editor, photographer and publisher, was born, raised and lives in Washington, DC. Prior to earning an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, she studied poetry at Howard University and the Voices Summer Writing Workshops (VONA) in San Francisco, CA. Her debut collection of poems, Elegies for New York Avenue, won the 2011 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Drumvoices Revue, jubilat, Reverie, Torch, Tuesday; An Art Project, and The Washington Informer among numerous others. She participated in Huong’s Peace Mural Exhibition in Washington, DC (2008-2009), was selected as a feature reader for the 2009 Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry Series and as a recipient of the 2009 Larry Neal Writers Award (DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities). She has received nominations for both the Orison Award and Pushcart Prize. She is the Managing Editor of Tidal Basin Review and Poetry Editor for Cherry Castle Publishing.
Check Melanie out at our Bookstore!
Photo Credit: Kayla Harvey-Ali
Mary Ann Honaker
Beaver, WV
Graduated June 2016
MARY ANN HONAKER is the author of It Will Happen Like This (YesNo Press, 2015) and Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in Calamus Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Euphony, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Off the Coast, Rattle.com, Topology Magazine, Van Gogh’s Ear, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. Mary Ann holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She currently lives in Beaver, West Virginia.
Heather Hughes
Somerville, MA (Hometown: Miami, FL)
Graduated June 2015
HEATHER HUGHES is a poet, letterpress printer, and associate acquisitions editor at Harvard University Press. Her most recent poems have been published in Action, Spectacle, Pleiades, Boxcar Poetry Review, Barrow Street, and Painted Bride Quarterly, among others. She has also contributed to several anthologies, and published book reviews and articles online. An interview with her is featured on Mass Poetry.
Fred Joiner
Carrboro, NC
Graduated June 2015
FRED JOINER is a poet and curator living in Carrboro, NC. Joiner is the Poet Laureate of Carrboro, NC. He has published and presented his poetry nationally and internationally. As curator of visual art and public programming, Joiner has worked with the Smithsonian, The Phillips Collection, Medina Galerie (Bamako), Belfast Exposed (Belfast) and others. Joiner’s writing is published or is forthcoming in publications by the National Endowment of the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the Phillips Collection. Joiner is a 2019 Academy of American Poets Poets Laureate Fellow, the Board Chair of the Orange Country Arts Commission Artists Advisory Board and a Board member of the American Poetry Museum and Arch Development Corporation.
Christine Jones
Orleans, MA
Graduated January 2014
CHRISTINE JONES is founder/editor-in-chief of Poems2go, an international public poetry project and also a contributing editor to Lily Poetry Review. Her debut poetry book, Girl Without a Shirt, was recently published by Finishing Line Press, 2020. She’s enjoying the satisfaction of holding a tangible product of many years working on craft. A wish come true.
Daniel Kakitis
Richmond, VA
Graduated June 2019
DAN KAKITIS is a Western Mass native with an affection for words, sound, and art in all its forms. He recently earned his MFA from Lesley University. His work has appeared in Beetroot Literary Journal, Passengers Journal, and the NYSACRA Trade Journal. Dan’s dog, Truman, moonlights as a Komodo dragon in Richmond, Virginia, where both currently reside.
Kate Kearns
Scarborough, ME
Graduated June 2008
KATE KEARNS is a poet and freelance editor based in Maine. She has published a chapbook called How to Love an Introvert (Finishing Line Press), and while she looks for a home for her first full-length manuscript, poems have appeared in many print and online journals. Kate provides manuscript editing services to authors and poets through her agency, Black Squirrel Workshop.
Caitlin Krause
San Francisco, CA
Graduated June 2007
CAITLIN KRAUSE is a virtual reality experience designer teaching about digital well-being at Stanford. She is the author of two nonfiction books, Mindful by Design (2019) and Designing Wonder (2021). Her latest book of poems is Digital Satori (2023). She founded the consultancy MindWise in 2016, and she develops experiences and events in extended reality. She holds a BA from Duke University and an MFA in poetry from Lesley University.
Jennifer LeBlanc
Belmont, MA
Graduated June 2012
JENNIFER LEBLANC earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Her first full-length book, Descent, was published by Finishing Line Press (2020), and individual poems have been published in journals such as The Adirondack Review, CAIRN, The Main Street Rag, and Melusine. Jennifer was nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize and works in the English Department at Tufts University.
Jon D. Lee
Boston, MA
Graduated January 2017
JON D. LEE is an award-winning educator, folklorist, poet, and writer. He has served as the poetry editor for Petroglyph, as a national reviewer for poetry and fiction for the National YoungArts Foundation, and as a contributor to NPR’s Cognoscenti and CommonHealth blogs. In 2015 he was a Visiting Professor at Utah State University, and is currently an Instructor at Suffolk University. He is the author of three books and has published poems in The Inflectionist Review (which garnered his first Pushcart nomination), What Rough Beast (x , x), Lyrical Somerville, The Sunday Poet, Lily Poetry Review, One, The Writer’s Chronicle, and more.
Check Jon out at our Bookstore!
Photo Credit: Jaq Chen
Michelle Lynch
Roswell, GA
Graduated June 2014
MICHELLE LYNCH is a storyteller at heart whose favorite ways to tell stories are through poems, photographs, on the stage and in the kitchen. During the day she tends to her soul career of teaching learning-diverse, elementary-aged children. She’s yet to live in a tiny cabin at the banks of a river at the foot of the mountains filled with Renaissance light, but she’s working on it. Her works have been published in Fried Chicken and Coffee, Heartwood Literary Journal, In Layman’s Terms, Iron Horse Literary Review, Lunch Ticket, Memoryhouse Magazine, NonBinary Review, Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine, and San Pedro River Review.
Michael W. Mercurio
Northampton, MA
Graduated January 2017
MICHAEL W MERCURIO lives and writes in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, where he serves on the steering committee for the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival (formerly Amherst Poetry Festival) and is the associate editor of the Naugatuck River Review. Michael is also on the Board of Directors for Faraday Publishing, a nonprofit press with the mission of amplifying marginalized voices. His poetry has been published in Rust + Moth, Crab Creek Review, The Indianapolis Review, and Palette Poetry, and is forthcoming in Sugar House Review.
Naomi Mulvihill
Jamaica Plain, MA
Graduated 2011
NAOMI MULVIHILL was a Margaret Murphy endowed fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. Her chapbook, We All Might Be (Factory Hollow Press), won the 2022 Tomaž Šalamun Prize Editor’s Choice Selection. Her first full length volume of poems, The Knife Thrower’s Girl, was awarded the 2022 Washington Prize (The Word Works). Her poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, Salamander, Cimarron, West Branch and others, and featured in Verse Daily. Naomi’s essays on language and learning have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle and Harvard Educational Review. She is a veteran bilingual teacher in the Boston Public Schools.
Kent Neal
Lyon, France
Graduated January 2023
KENT NEAL writes about dating, identity, homophobia, and immigrant experiences. Originally from Oregon, he has been living in France since 2003. His poems have appeared in Broadkill Review, Modern Haiku, Painted Bride Quarterly, and elsewhere.
Aimee Noel
Dayton, OH
Graduated January 2014
AIMEE NOEL’s poems, infused with the lake water and steel of a childhood near Buffalo, have been published in works such as Michigan Quarterly Review, Witness, Slippery Elm Literary Journal, Provincetown Arts, Forklift, Ohio and elsewhere. She earned Ohio Arts Council’s Individual Excellence Award for poetry in 2020 and 2016 and was OAC’s Summer Fellow at Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center. She can also eat her weight in pierogi.
Lindsey O’Neill
Boston, MA
Graduated June 2019
LINDSEY O’NEILL is a poet, teacher, and performance artist. She is founder of Lindsey O’Neill Yoga & Writing, teaches creative writing at Boston’s GrubStreet, and has been part of the Lizard Lounge poetry slam and spoken word scene since 2016. Lindsey infuses her writing classes with contemplative practices to foster compassionate awareness, distill an authentic voice, and enhance sustainable creativity. Lindsey holds a 200HR Teacher Training Certification from The New England School of Integrative Yoga Therapeutics, a City of Boston Artist Certification, and an MFA in Poetry from Lesley University. Lindsey has had poems published in FUSION magazine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, and Mass Poetry’s “Poem of the Moment.” She is currently at work on her first (and second) poetry collections.
Lisa Pegram
Washington, DC native, currently living in Curacao
Graduated June 2012
LISA PEGRAM is a writer, educator, literary publicist and author of Cracked Calabash. She has over 20 years of experience in program design for such organizations as the Smithsonian, Corcoran Gallery of Art and National Geographic, and served as DC WritersCorps program director for a decade. Lisa completed an Executive Certification in Arts & Culture Strategies at UPenn in 2018. She writes poetry and creative nonfiction, has eyes for WSS and created the Lesley MFA Posse on Facebook. Her works have been published in Beltway Quarterly Magazine, Carry On Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, The Independent Magazine, L’Officiel Magazine India, and Poets.org.
Bonita Lee Penn
Pittsburgh, PA
Graduated January 2015
BONITA LEE PENN says “I am a Black woman poet and I sound like one (Lucille Clifton).” She lives, breathes, and believes it is important that her poems celebrate the voices of Black and Brown women. Her interests include exploration of connections: to the ocean; Africans in America history of religion and its connection to practices of their African ancestors. She is Managing Editor of Soul Pitt Quarterly Magazine and a community creative writing instructor. Her poetry has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, JOINT.Literary Magazine, Hot Metal Bridge Journal, Women Studies Quarterly, Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices and forthcoming in the poetry anthology Our Names Mean Home, from Cherry Castle Publishing. Her poem, “Nina’s Fire: Frantic’s Go-Go,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Enzo Silon Surin
Lynn, MA
Graduated 2012
ENZO SILON SURIN, Haitian-born poet, educator, speaker, publisher and social advocate, is the author of When My Body Was A Clinched Fist (Black Lawrence Press, July 2020) and two chapbooks, A Letter of Resignation: An American Libretto (2017) and Higher Ground. He is a PEN New England Celebrated New Voice in Poetry, the recipient of a Brother Thomas Fellowship from The Boston Foundation and a 2020 Denis Diderot [A-i-R] Grant as an Artist-in-Residence at Chateau d’Orquevaux in Orquevaux, France. Surin’s work gives voice to experiences that take place in what he calls “broken spaces” and his poems have been featured in numerous publications and exhibits. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, teaches creative writing and literature at Bunker Hill Community College and is President and Director of Faraday Publishing.
Check Enzo out at our Bookstore!
Photo Credit: Richard Howard
Olivia Thomes
Boston, MA
Graduated June 2019
OLIVIA THOMES is a poet from Boston, MA who currently serves as the Managing Editor of Solstice Literary Magazine and works as a Farm & Equine Animal Welfare Specialist at the MSPCA, as well as the Farm Education Program Coordinator with Natick Community Organic Farm. Olivia has taught writing at the college and grade school level, is an avid equestrian with 10+ years in the field, and has experience leading service learning trips exploring the literary community of New Orleans where she also volunteered with the St. Bernard Project rebuilding homes affected by Hurricane Katrina. Her publications include The American Journal of Poetry and Solstice Literary Magazine. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing with a focus in Poetry from Lesley University and a BA in Literature with minors in Writing, Communication, and Music History from Wheelock College.
Carol Traynor-Mayer
Graduated June 2021
Poet CAROL TRAYNOR-MAYER is founder of Words That Burn, a creative writing project which leads free poetry workshops for teens. She believes firmly that teens need to read and write poetry as a way to better understand themselves and the world in which they live. To date, workshops have been held at public high schools in Boston and Hartford as well as community centers and libraries on Cape Cod. Carol holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University.
Aaron Wallace
Jacksonville, FL
Graduated June 2019
AARON WALLACE’s work has been published in The American Journal of Poetry,The Wrath-Bearing Tree, The Deadly Writers Patrol, Typehouse Literary Magazine, North DakotaQuarterly, and Solstice Literary Magazine. His poem “The Blue Angels at Naval Air Station Jacksonville” was named as a Honorable Mention in the 2019 edition of Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors. He has recently launched Passengers Journal, an online publication that seeks to feature artists whose work challenges and perhaps offends prevailing sentiment, whether it be artistic or societal.
July Westhale
Oakland, CA
Graduated June 2013
JULY WESTHALE is an essayist, translator, and the award-winning author of five collections of poetry, including Trailer Trash,Occasionally Accurate Science, The Cavalcade, Quantifiable Data, and Via Negativa. Her most recent work can be found in McSweeney’s, The National Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, CALYX, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and The Huffington Post, among others. When she’s not teaching, she works as a co-founding editor of PULP Magazine.
Natalie Young
Cedar City, UT
Graduated January 2009
NATALIE YOUNG is a founding and managing editor for the poetry magazine Sugar House Review. By day, she works as an art director for an ad agency based out of Salt Lake City. Her poems have been published in Green Mountains Review, Los Angeles Times, Rattle, South Dakota Review, Tampa Review, Terrain.org, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere. Natalie is half Puerto Rican and half Brigham Young.