Joanna Beth Tweedy, PhD, Quiddity Founder & Radio Host

Traci is the author of four collections of poetry: Saudade (Copper Canyon Press); Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award.  Her next collection—a hybrid of essays and poems, Come the Slumberless from the Land of Nod—is forthcoming from Copper Canyon in 2020. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Believer, The New Republic, Orion, and Best American Poetry 2013 & 2014.  She’s received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the National Endowment for the Arts.  She is the Director of Creative Writing at Kansas State University and lives in Manhattan, Kansas.

Joe is a Brigadier General in the United States Army Reserve and is a decorated veteran who has served nearly three decades in uniform. Professionally, he has extensive experience in supply chain management, sales and analytics. He is a serial entrepreneur that spent several years owning and managing restaurants in the Chicagoland area. In addition to his PhD in Values Driven Leadership from Benedictine University, Joe holds a BS in economics from the United States Military Academy, West Point; an MBA from Purdue University; and a master degree in Strategic Studies from the United States Army War College.

With decades of experience in coaching and leadership, Kevin is an interpersonal love coach for executive groups, couples, and individuals.  

He is a manager of Learning & Organizational Quality at WGU's Academy.  Previously, he taught Professional Leadership and Communication in the College of Health Professions at WGU. 

He has helped adult learners experience spaces of self-discovery and mindfulness as they reflect on their own journey. 

The founder of the GoodSpace Collective, Kevin helps individuals develop greater awareness and intentionality around connection. 

He is pursuing an EdD in Organizational Leadership and is passionate about encouraging and inspiring others to make the necessary and meaningful changes that will allow them to flourish.

Lee is the founder and CEO of Inspera Health, a transformative company that focuses on improving the health of those living with multiple chronic condition

Amy is an author and recipient of numerous awards for her poetry and fiction, which have appeared in The Best Small Fictions, Ninth Letter, The Butter, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among others.  

Her collection, Primitivity, is a Black River Competition Winner (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). A SAFTA fellow, a CantoMundo Poetry fellow, and a fiction scholarship recipient to the Disquiet Literary Festival in Lisbon, Portugal, Amy has performed her work at various venues including The Poetry Foundation in Chicago and the St Louis BookFest. 

She is also a performer with Kale Soup for the Soul, a Portuguese-American artist’s collective, a contributing editor at Quiddity, and a co-founder of Plates & Poetry, a community arts program focused on food and writing.  

She holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has taught at Benedictine University as well as in a variety of outreach venues, and currently teaches Humanities at WGU.s.  Having spent over three decades innovating in the health improvement and employee benefits industries, for the past 20 years, Lee has focused on building businesses that improves the health of those living with multiple chronic conditions.  Lee believes in the human capacity for change, in the innate desire for better health, and the power of engaged participation.  A long-time triathlete and marathon runner, he holds a PhD in Values Driven Leadership from Benedictine University. 

 Kimberly is a Manager of Graduate Studies Program Faculty at Western Governors University. Kimberly is certified in Emotional Intelligence through Multi-Health Systems and has a Graduate Certification in Executive and Professional Coaching from University of Texas at Dallas. Kimberly has dedicated her career to engaging and helping to elevate others to create best-in-class consistent experiences. Kimberly’s passion and mission in life is to help others reach beyond their comfort zone to achieve their full potential.

Robert Campbell is a queer poet living and writing in rural Kentucky. He is the author of In the Herald of Improbable Misfortunes (Etchings Press, 2018), and his poetry and criticism have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Los Angeles Review, The  Adroit Journal, Ninth Letter, River Styx, Tupelo Quarterly, Asheville  Poetry Review, River Styx, Barrow Street, Slice Magazine, Zone 3,  Nashville Review, and many other journals. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he holds  an MFA in creative writing from Murray State University and an MS in library science from the University of Kentucky. He lives with his  husband and animals on a winding country road with  a great wealth of goats, trees, and old barns.

Shannon is an Assistant Professor at University of St. Francis in the College of Business and Health Administration.  She is the former vice president of client services at Exemplify and previously served as practice head of North American Legal Solutions for Tata Consultancy Services.   

Michael is an Associate Professor in the Department of Leadership Studies & HR Development in the College of Professional  Sciences at Xavier University.  He is a member of the International Leadership Association's Board of Directors and currently teaches doctoral courses in leadership development, organizational behavior, and organizational change.   

An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, Angie Macri is the author of Underwater Panther (Southeast  Missouri State University Press, 2015), winner of the Cowles Poetry  Book Prize. Her work has been widely published in journals from Poetry to American Literary Review.  The intersection of her Ozark roots, which run more than two centuries deep, and her second-generation American experience yields such clarity  in her writing, it is “impossible to encounter her work and come away without its imprint, both tender and fierce, having changed forever the way your spirit approaches the incarnate beauty of the human  experience.” She has taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Arkansas, Pulaski Technical College, and National Park College and is currently an adjunct instructor at Hendrix College.

Red is a fiction writer raised near the US-Mexico border. They were a Hattie F Walker Scholar at the Fine Arts Work Center, the 2019 Sandra Cisneros Fellow at Under the Volcano, and a Finalist for the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards in 2020. They are currently a Teaching Fellow in Fiction at Washington University in St. Louis and are at work on a novel. 

Jonathan served in the military as a firefighter and currently works as a full-time firefighter for the city of Murphysboro, Illinois, and as  poetry co-editor for Cobalt Review. Having earned an MFA from  Southern Illinois University, he also turns a lathe, crafting pens under  the name Scorched Ink Penturning. Collections of his work include How  We Bury Our Dead and Conflict Tours (Cobalt Press, 2015 and 2017,  respectively).  Another collection is forthcoming.

Millicent is a Portuguese-American writer and the author of three books, including the poetry collection, Only More So (Salmon Poetry, 2016). Her  awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts  (NEA), Fulbright, CantoMundo, Creative Capacity, the California Arts  Council, The Corporation of Yaddo, Fundação Luso-Americana, and the Barbara Deming Foundation. She’s led writing workshops at Nimrod Writers Conference, The Muse in  Norfolk, Virginia, MA Poetry Festival, Rhode Island College, and  University of Texas, Austin. Her non-fiction and poetry have been published in numerous journals and she has been featured at several reading series, including at Brown University, the University of Texas, Austin, Rutgers, UMass Dartmouth, and the Carr Reading Series at the University of Illinois.

Meagan Cass is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois and author of Range of Motion (Magic Helicopter Press). She curates the Shelterbelt Reading Series and edits Shelterbelt books with Adam Clay.  She also serves as fiction editor for the Best of the Net Anthology and as assistant fiction editor for Sundress Publications.  She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College and a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. She loves teaching because she gets to learn new things about writing, publishing, and literature from her students.

Denise earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Missouri St. Louis and a BS in journalism and history from Indiana University. Her first novel, The Middle Step, was released in 2015. Her most recent novel, After Elise, was named a finalist in the 2017 Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Contest. Denise is the founder and former director of the St. Louis Writers Workshop. Most recently, she coordinated the writing program at Lift for Life Academy.

Angela is director emeritus of the St. Louis Writers Workshop. Her stories have appeared in numerous journals and received honors from the Colorado Review and The Pushcart Prize XXXV. Her work has been included in The Best Small Fiction 2018 and she was honored as a MasterMind recipient by the Riverfront Times for her work in the literary arts. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Missouri St. Louis as well as an MEd in higher education from the University of Arkansas. Her short story collection, Unnatural Habitats & Other Stories (2018) was published by WTAW Press.

Analeah Rosen earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Fiction at Washington University in St Louis. She is currently working on a collection of writing that explores irradiated soils, transnational environmental justice movements, swarm intelligence, and living collaboratively in the trouble. 

Kim teaches creative writing workshops and has served as senior contributing editor at River Styx. She has been nominated for a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and is a winner of the Kentucky Women Writers Conference Betty Gabehart Prize for fiction. Her poetry, essays, and short fiction have been published widely.

After completing a Bachelor of Arts in gender studies from the University of Chicago, Tina earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Missouri St. Louis. Formerly the managing editor of River Styx, she currently teaches writing at Washington University in St. Louis.