Hildie S. Block
for "Flash Flood"
Hildie S. Block (she/her) is a night owl, a writer, a teacher, and a little obsessed with the weather. Her days in Virginia with her family and Axolotl named Xipe! don't start until after a cup of coffee. PANTRY, a book of micro essays, is coming from Stanchion Press in 2026. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Salon, Cortland Review, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. When not writing, she's teaching, leading workshops at the Writer's Center writer.org and on her own www.hildieblockworkshop.com.

Barbara Westwood Diehl
for "Neighbors Through the Fence"
Barbara Westwood Diehl is senior editor of The Baltimore Review. Her fiction and poems appear in a variety of journals, including Fractured Lit, South Florida Poetry Journal, Poetry South, Painted Bride Quarterly, Five South, Allium, Split Rock Review, Blink-Ink, Midway, Free State Review, Ghost Parachute, Pithead Chapel, Raleigh Review, New World Writing Quarterly, Tiny Molecules, Sky Island Journal, Gargoyle, and Cleaver. She is the winner of the 2025 L+S Press Mid-Atlantic Chapbook Series Contest for her chapbook, Foolish.

Mel Edden
for "Qualm-free, Menopausal Poet Vacuums in Bra and Knickers One Afternoon in the Peak of a Maryland Summer"
Mel Edden is a British poet based in Maryland and a Best of the Net nominee. Her poems feature in Gargoyle,The Loch Raven Review, Welter, Slant, Washington Writers Publishing House, and elsewhere.Mel directs Manor Mill poetry events in Monkton, MD and edits their anthology Poets of Manor Mill. She is currently working towards her first solo collection. More information at www.meledden.com.

Katherine Gekker
for "New World Symphony"
Katherine Gekker is the author of two poetry collections: O My Charmer and In Search of Warm Breathing Things. Her poems have appeared in many journals. She served as Poetry Assistant Editor for Delmarva Review. Composers Eric Ewazen and Carson Cooman have set collections of Gekker’s poems to music. Gekker was born in Washington, DC. She founded a commercial printing company in 1974 and sold it 31 years later.

Jennifer Keith
for "Trauma Gardeners: A Customer Review"
Jennifer Keith’s poems have appeared in The Nebraska Review, Sewanee Theological Review, Quartet, Free State Review, Smartish Pace, Best American Poetry 2015 and elsewhere. Keith was a finalist for the 2021 Erskine J. Poetry Prize from Smartish Pace and her first full-length poetry book, Terminarch, was selected by David Yezzi for the 2023 Able Muse Book Award. A new manuscript, Rising Lights, is currently short-listed at Galileo Press.

Karen Laugel
for "Shroud"
Karen Laugel is a poet, painter, paddler, and physician, raised in the Midwest and living on the Delaware coast. Her work has appeared in multiple publications including Gargoyle, Quartet (Editor’s Choice), the Tipton Poetry Journal, and Medicine and Meaning. She is a member of three writer’s groups, as well as the Lonely Dog-Lovers Club, having long ago lost her heart to her cocker spaniel, Spunky.

Betsy Mars
for "All Your Life"
Betsy Mars is a poet, photographer, and an editor at Gyroscope Review. Betsy’s poems are widely available online and in print, in journals such as ONE ART, SWWIM, Sheila-Na-Gig, Thimble, Book of Matches, and the anthology Signed, Sealed, Delivered: The Motown Poetry Review (Madville Press). Betsy’s two chapbooks are Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, co-authored with Alan Walowitz. Her full-length book, Rue Obscure, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions.

Jane C. Miller
for "My Son, My Icarus"
Jane C. Miller is the author of Canticle for Remnant Days (2024) and coauthor of Walking the Sunken Boards (2019). A winner of the Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Contest and two Delaware Division of the Arts fellowships, her work has appeared in numerous journals including RHINO, Colorado Review, Whale Road Review and on buses through the Luzerne County, PA Poetry in Transit program. Miller coedits the online poetry journal, ൪uartet. www.janecmiller.com

Sherri Wright
for "Elegy for Pocket Change and Penny Candy"
Sherri Wright belongs to Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild and Key West Poetry Guild.  She practices yoga, and volunteers for a local food rescue. Her work has appeared in Bluebird Word, Delaware Beach Life, Raven’s Perch, and Quartet. Winter of My Life, her chapbook, was published by Kelsay Books in 2024. Her essay “Braiding Sweetgrass With My Daughter” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the Bay to Ocean Journal.

Hannah Zerai
for "The Picnic in the Wallpaper"
Hannah Zerai is a student, writer, and artist from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, The Mighty, and The Skinny Poetry Journal.