Gabrielle Busby is a sophomore at Nashville School of the Arts, and has patricipated in workshops at school with Southern Word. Her writing career began as a hobby with a past friend to explore each others minds and expand on ideas. After joining NSA, she has started to slowly put her work out in the world and explored past the idea of writing for herself and few friends. She doesn't stick with the same genres often as she likes to journey into different worlds that can clash against each other. Examples of this is two novels in the works of an adventure of pirates and a horror story between college students. She hopes to put her name and works out there past being born and raised in Nashville, and to share themes that she hopes can better the world in even a small impact.

Nina Coyle is a practicing poet and facilitator in Nashville. Born the middle child of a Filipina immigrant mother and American father, she has a tenderness toward the ambiguity of things. Her writing draws from sacred traditions and sidewalk observations. She begins each day with two slices of toast.

Aloe Franke. I am an animal lover and like to be supportive of other people's ideas if they share them with me. I also like to play tennis and volleyball.

Brenna Feeney. I am a musician, writer, and poet from Washington state based in East Nashville. I've studied opera; lived in Austria, Italy, and NYC; seen leatherback turtles nesting in Trinidad and a solar eclipse smack-dab in the Libyan desert. You can find my poem, "Daily Bread", in "GRLSquash: Issue 05" this Fall. My prose, poetry, and music live at brennafeeney.com.

Deidra Kelly is a freshman at Nashville School of the Arts, and has past affiliations with Southern Word. She found her passion for writing as an outlet for dealing with depression, and today the themes of psychoanalytic complexity, fear, and mystery are still her most abiding muses.

Andrés Martinez is Director of Policy and Communications for Conexión Américas, the Nashville-based nonprofit dedicated to building a welcoming community and creating opportunities where Latino families can belong, contribute, and succeed. Prior to joining Conexión Américas, Andrés worked at the Texas Civil Rights Project in Austin, TX, coordinating civil rights lawsuits aimed at positively impacting policy and defending the civil rights of minority and low-income Texans. In Nashville, Andrés also serves on the board of directors of Nashville Pride and the Oasis Center, and was elected by Metro Council to serve on Nashville's Community Oversight Board, which he currently chairs.

Clay Steakley is the founding editor of the online arts journal Outer Voice. He has worked professionally as a writer, actor and musician for 20 years. Clay’s writing has been published alongside Aimee Bender and Lauren Groff in Slake, as well as in Cathexis Northwest Press, Fiction Fix, From the Depths, Waxing & Waning and more. He was a finalist for a PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship, and received the Ruby P. Treadway award for creative writing from Belmont University. Clay has been an actor, musician, day laborer, and arts journalist. He recently returned to his hometown of Nashville after a long and delirious exile in Los Angeles. He's happy to be back.

Nora Masters, is a senior in the literary arts conservatory at Nashville School of the Arts. She loves participating in dance, visual arts (primarily textiles like crocheting and sewing), and theatre, but writing (especially songwriting and poetry) is her favorite medium. She is a Nashville native and has grown up immersed in all art forms - both as a participant and as an audience member.

Joshua Moore is a Nashville poet, and Host/Producer of Nashville Public Radio’s Versify podcast, as well as the Lead Producer for VPM’s forthcoming podcast Seizing Freedom. His work on Versify was nominated for a 2020 Webby Award in Arts and Culture, and Versify was named the best podcast of 2020 by the Nashville Scene. He formerly served as the 2019-2020 Curb Center Fellow in Creating Writing. He is the former Co-Poetry editor and Comics editor of the Nashville Review. He is the winner of a 2018 Academy of American Poets University Prize, a scholarship recipient from The Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and The Virginia Quarterly Review Writers’ Conference. He received his BA in English Writing with a minor in Biology Pre-Medicine, from Eureka College, and his MFA in Creative Writing - Poetry, from Vanderbilt University. He is a recipient of the Ronald W. Reagan Fellowship, and former editor of Impressions Literary Arts Journal.

Ella Neely is a junior at Valor College Prep. She has had a passion for creative writing since she was nine. Her favorite subjects are mythology, ancient history, theater and astrology. She was part of the One Voice Nashville internship program in the summer of 2019, where she completed a podcasting project on herbalism. She has been involved with Southern Word in and outside of school, and hopes to major in archaeology or creative writing in college.

Nyla Spencer is a sophomore at Nashville School of the Arts and has past experiences with working with Southern Word. Her writing career started in seventh grade when Southern Word workers told her she had a gift. Ever since, she been writing and learning more about herself as a writer. Her writing is always inspired from real life experiences and real world problems. She hopes to continue her writing journey and proceed to become a better author.