Sam Barbee’s newest collection is titled Apertures of Voluptuous Force (2022, Redhawk Publishing). He has three previous poetry collections, including That Rain We Needed (2016, Press 53), a nominee for the Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best poetry collections of 2016. Also, Uncommon Book of Prayer (2021, Main Street Rag) chronicling family travels throughout England.

His poems currently appear in Cave Wall, Asheville Poetry Review’s 30 Year Anthology, and The Anthology of Appalachian Writers (WV), among others; plus on-line journals Dead Mule School of Literature, American Diversity Report, Grand Little Things, Verse-Virtual, and Medusa’s Kitchen. He is a two-time Pushcart Nominee.

He served as President of the Winston-Salem Writers, and also NC Poetry Society, and is one of the originators of the Poetry In Plain Sight — now in its thirteenth year — a poetry initiative to feature NC poets on broadside posters and display them in NC towns statewide.

Kat Bodrie is a writer, editor, and publisher in Winston-Salem, NC. She is the author of Toward a Unified Theory of Self (2nd edition). co-author of Bone Orchard: Reflections on Life under Sentence of Death(2nd edition), and co-author of the therapeutic prompt book Digging Deep: Writing for Self-Discovery, Healing & Transformation. Her poems have been published by Painted Pebble Lit Mag, Poetry South, West Texas Literary Review, Poetry in Plain Sight, and others. Kat writes about sexuality, spirituality, mental health, suicide, grief, prison conditions, and nature-as-metaphor. She is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of bramble press and bramble, an online poetry lit mag, and Director of Publications for Execution Intervention Project. Learn more at katbodrie.com.