Saturday, September 6 at 10 a.m. at Salem Lit Fest, Ames Hall at 208 Essex Street! Register (FREE!) at salemlitfest.org.
Patricia Callan is a writer, artist and educator living in Beverly, Massachusetts with her husband, daughter, and a teeny tiny beagle. Her work can be found in the anthology 9x5, published by Only Human Press, and other places such as Mom Egg Review, Changeling, Adanna, and Molecule.
Micro Marvels emcee Jim DeFilippi is a prolific, eccentric American author with 44 books and over 2 1/2 million words in print. www.JimDeFilippi.com
Catherine Fahey is a poet and librarian from Salem, Massachusetts. When she’s not reading and writing, she’s knitting or dancing. Her chapbook The Roses that Bloom at the End of the World is available from Boston Accent Lit. You can read more of her work at www.magpiepoems.com.
Five Minutes contributor Rebecca Ingalls is a former English professor, now midwife and nurse practitioner. She lives in New England with her family, close to the sea, where she loves to write and play music as a DJ for her local radio station. Her work has appeared in Five Minutes and River Teeth’s "Beautiful Things."
John Owen has been a record-industry hack, academic historian, music journalist, IT helpdesk drone, higher-ed leader, Dungeons & Dragons podcaster, and amateur yeast rancher. People nearby often catch him monologuing about flavor chemistry, role-playing games, music theory, and speculative fiction.
Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, dadakuku, Nixes Mate Review and The Ugly Monster. He has also been published in anthologies such as French Connections, Sounds of Wind, Reimagine America, and The Vagabond Lunar Collection. His newest collections are All's Well Isn't You and Cant Republic: Erasures and Blackouts. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine and co-organizer of the annual Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives and works in Boston.
Heather Wright has an MFA Creative Writing at Boston University and an MA in English Literature from Salem State University where she served as editor of Soundings East. She is a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow. Her work is in The Brooklyn Rail, The Gloucester 400+ Project and elsewhere. IG @heatherwrights
Micro Marvels emcee Susanna Baird (she/her) is founder and editor of Five Minutes. When not writing or editing, she helps lead the nonprofit Clothing Connection, volunteers with the Salem Literary Festival, and readsreadsreads.
Micro Marvels emcee Kevin Carey’s poetry collections include: The One Fifteen to Penn Station, Jesus Was a Homeboy, Set in Stone, Olympus Heights, and Revere Beach Stories and three books of fiction: The Beach People, Murder in the Marsh and Junior Miles and the Junkman. Kevin is the co-founder of Molecule. Kevincareywriter.com
Brooke Delp is a writer, educator, and photographer whose work has appeared in several publications and earned multiple awards. She is currently working on a screenplay, a memoir, and a novel, but her most meaningful project to date has been raising her two wonderful daughters.
Beth Forrestal lives in Salem and serves on the Salem Lit Fest Committee. She is also a co-founder of The Clothing Connection, a nonprofit that provides clothing to students in Salem's public schools. Outside of volunteering, Beth enjoys spending time with her family, reading, and occasionally playing video games. She recently completed her master’s in museum studies.
Bobbi Lerman is a writer of personal and travel essays, as well as historical romance. Passionate about storytelling, happiest when exploring both new destinations and old favorites. Whether wandering cobblestone streets or imagining the past, she's always chasing a good story. Follow her on her online writing community: Scribbler's Ink at www.facebook.com/groups/351022088275863 or on Instagram @scribblersink6 or at scribblersink.com.
Ian Owens lives in Essex, MA where he writes, acts in community theater, and chases rainbows. He is also working feverishly on a medieval historical fiction trilogy based on Icelandic sagas. His first book, a cycling memoir called "Riding the Big One," can be found at ianowens.com.
Pedro Poitevin is a bilingual poet, translator, and mathematician originally from Guatemala. His work explores the expressive possibilities of poetic constraint across languages and disciplines, and has appeared in Rattle, The Common, Literary Matters, Asymptote, River Styx, Nimrod, The Mathematical Intelligencer, and Letras Libres. He is the author of six poetry collections, including Nowhere at Home (Penteract Press, 2023) and Letras griegas (Praxis, 2022), and the recipient of the 2021 Juana Goergen Poetry Prize and the 2025 Premio Internacional de Poesía Rever. He teaches mathematics at Salem State University.
Jacquie Valatka is Business Manager of the House of the Seven Gables. She enjoys teaching, reading, traveling, languages, photography, hiking, karate, swimming, running, and much, much more.
Pamela Bloomfield has worked for many years as an independent consultant to governments and nonprofits. Her stories have appeared in Five Minutes, Molecule, Parhelion, Rivanna Review, Foliate Oak, and other literary magazines. She once spent a summer working as a barmaid in South Devon, England.
Kathy Lynn Carroll is a writer living along the Connecticut shoreline. Her work has appeared in Blink-Ink, Five Minutes, The First Line, 50-Word Stories, and elsewhere. She publishes the children’s book review blog, Celebrate Picture Books. She finds inspiration in walking around her woodsy backyard with her cat, Angus, who shows her how to look and listen for the little things, and finding random artifacts from the families who previously lived in her 1895 farm house. Web: celebratepicturebooks.com Instagram: @celebratepicturebooks
Five Minutes contributor Misti Duvall is a writer and law professor newly relocated to Boston, where she writes fiction, essays, and sometimes poetry. Find her online at mistiduvall.com.
Jack Giaour (he/him/his) is a queer kinky pisces who lives in an attic in Winthrop, MA. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University, is currently a poetry reader for Abode Press, and has taught literary workshops for the Salem Arts Festival, MassPoetry, and the Belgrade Art Studio. He won the 2023/2024 BOOM Chapbook Contest from Bateau Press with his manuscript hunting the bugs, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Nixes Mate Review, the Sonora Review, and Fourteen Hills, among other journals.
Jennifer Martelli (she/her) is the author of Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree, longlisted for the Mass. Book Award. Her work has appeared in Poetry and the Academy of American Poets Poem a Day. Martelli is a Massachusetts Cultural Council and VCCA fellow. She is co-poetry editor of MER.
Jason O’Toole is Poet Laureate Emeritus of North Andover, MA. He serves on the advisory board of the New England Poetry Club, and as treasurer of the Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco. His newest full-length collection is The Strange Misgivings of the Sadly Gifted (Dead Man’s Press Ink).
Dawn Stahura is a poet and artist from Salem, Massachusetts. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears in such journals as The Comstock Review, Rhino, Plexus Review, and Rogue Agent. Dawn serves as the Poetry Editor and Managing Editor of Soundings East. Find her at www.dawnstahura.com
Varsha Venkatesh writes from Bangalore, India. She’s been previously featured in FlashFlood '25, Exposition Review, Moss Puppy Magazine, Five Minute Lit, among others. She can be found on Bluesky at @varshawrites86.bsky.social.
“A sad philosopher just trying to create something that matters” by night, and an educator by day, Elliot Gray Boodhan’s poetry is transformative. His work appears in new words {press}, Poet’s Choice and Queeah. Elliot’s debut chapbook to have survived is forthcoming from Bottlecap Press. Check out his Instagram @apoetgray.
Kymm Coveney (Boston, 1959) lives in Barcelona and spends summers in Jamaica Plain. History of Milk, her translation of award-winning novelist Mónica Ojeda's poetry collection, will be published by Coffee House Press in 2026/27. In the US, her most recent poems have been included in California Quarterly, Molecule: a tiny lit mag and Lyrical Somerville. Bluesky: @kymminbarcelona.bsky.social Facebook: kymm.coveney Instagram: @kymmcoveney Twitter: @kymminbarcelona betterlies.blogspot.com
Elena Eimert is an urban planner by trade, an audacious pedestrian by choice, and a volunteer by light coercion.
An interior designer by day, Five Minutes contributor Betsy Ellor spends her free time hiking, walking the beach with friends, and annoying her tweenage son. Her recent work includes Heroic Care and the picture book, My Dog is NOT a Scientist. Her novel Hera comes out this fall. @betsyellor on Instagram, Facebook, and Substack
Richard Hoffman is the author of five books of poetry: Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, winner of The Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the Sheila Motton Book Award from The New England Poetry Club; Emblem; Noon until Night, which received the 2018 Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry, and People Once Real. He is Emeritus Writer in Residence at Emerson College and Nonfiction Editor of Solstice.
Arthur Neong hails from Malaysia and taught for eleven years before doing his MA. He finds poetry and short prose capture essence like nothing else.
Jill Pabich lives in Salem with her kids and too many animals. She is an award-winning artist and sometimes a painter and sometimes a writer.
David Earl Williams has been his alias since birth. His new chapbook A.I. Yokohama Yankees Twelve, A.I. Rio-Atlanta Dantes 36 Long-12” … Mysteriously Tied After 9 … or The Sock Puppet Melodrama is available for purchase or as a free download at C22press.wordpress.com. His previous chapbook, Everybody Lives Here One Night at a Time, Hillbilly DaDa Poetry may be found at wetcementpress.com.