Matthew Burgess is an Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College. He is the author of a poetry collection, Slippers for Elsewhere (UpSet Press, 2014), and two children’s books, Enormous Smallness: A Story of E. E. Cummings (Enchanted Lion Books, 2015) and The Unbudgeable Curmudgeon (Knopf, 2019). He edited an anthology of visual art and writing titled Dream Closet: Meditations on Childhood Space (Secretary Press, 2016), as well as a new collection titled Spellbound: The Art of Teaching Poetry (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 2019). A poet-in-residence in New York City public schools since 2001, he also serves as a contributing editor of Teachers & Writers Magazine. 

Susan Karwoska is a writer, editor, and teacher. She is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship in Fiction; a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace residency for emerging artists; and residencies at the Ucross Foundation and at Cummington Community of the Arts. From 2005-2014 she was the editor of Teachers & Writers Magazine and currently serves on its editorial board. She is also on the board of the New York Writers Coalition and has served on NYFA’s artist advisory board. She writes and edits for a variety of publications and organizations, works as a writer-in-the-schools, and lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she is at work on a novel.

Asari Beale is a writer, advocate for children’s literacy, and the Executive Director of Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Prior to joining Teachers & Writers, she served as a fundraising and communications professional at Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service and Reach Out and Read of Greater New York. In addition, she has taught literature and creative writing at Hunter College, Brooklyn College, and Fordham University.

Joshua Garcia (he/him) is a poet, writer, and the managing editor of Teachers & Writer’s Magazine. He is the author of Pentimento (Black Lawrence Press 2024), and his poetry has appeared in Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Passages North, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the College of Charleston and has received a Stadler Fellowship from Bucknell University and an Emerge—Surface—Be Fellowship from The Poetry Project. He lives and writes in Brooklyn, New York.

India Choquette (she/her) is a writer, teacher, and Editorial Fellow at Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Her fiction has been published by Foglifter Journal, and she is the recipient of a fellowship from Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference. She teaches composition and creative writing at the City College of New York, where she is also working on her MFA in creative writing. In 2022, she was awarded the Teachers and Writers award for excellence in teaching by the City College English Department. She is also an editor at Promethean, the City College literary journal, and a mentor with Girls Write Now.

Luke Sullivan (he/him) is a writer, educator, and Editorial Fellow at Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Luke is pursuing an MFA at City College of New York and has been teaching third grade and coaching competitive debate at the Dalton School for the past three years. He is also a writing mentor with Transforming Lives. Before that, he worked in Shanghai in the education-technology start-up space.