Zachary Kluckman

Zachary Kluckman is an Albuquerque poet, editor, teaching artist, and community organizer. His manuscript Psalms Against Forgetting was named a finalist for the 2026 Akron Poetry Prize. He is the author of four poetry collections, including Rearview Funhouse and When I Say Ghost, I Don’t Mean Dead, winner of the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize. His work appears or is forthcoming in North American Review, Muzzle, RHINO, Atlanta Review, Arts & Letters, and elsewhere. He is the founder and festival director of Albuquerque’s Chicharra Poetry Festival. My website is zacharykluckman.org, and I’m on Instagram at @physicalpoet.

Don McIver

Don McIver is ABQ slam team veteran, was an award winning host/producer of KUNM’s Spoken Word Hour and Afternoon Freeform (2001-2026), and the author of The Noisy Pen (2006), The Blank Page (2012), Mud in the Stacks (2023), and Here (2025).  He was an editor of A Bigger Boat: The Unlikely Success of the Albuquerque Poetry Slam Scene (2012). 

He’s performed all over the United States, helped create and run the Albuquerque Poet Laureate Program (2010-2026), produced poetry events big and small including being the Media Director for the Bravos Awards winning 2005 National Poetry Slam (the largest poetry slam in history), and been published in numerous magazines and anthologies.  

A teacher by training, he's inching towards retirement at Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) where he runs CNM's tutoring and computer centers.

Emmy Pérez

Emmy Pérez is the author of Paper america: New and Selected Poems (TCU Texas Poet Laureate Series), Boxes with Zero Tolerance (Mouthfeel Press), With the River on Our Face (University of Arizona Press), and Solstice (Swan Scythe Press). Her work has been published in anthologies such as Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage, and other publications. A member of the Macondo Writers Workshop, she co-founded Poets Against Walls collective, lives in the Texas border region, and works as an educator. She is the 57th Poet Laureate of Texas and served from 2020-2021.