Event Organizers & Staff - Fresh Voices from the U.P.

Ari is an MFA candidate and composition instructor at Northern Michigan University, with a focus on creative nonfiction & hybrid work that explores issues of queer identity & history and connections to the natural world. Ari also specializes in social media management, community support, and copyediting, and works with several literary magazines, including Passages North and Wizards in Space Magazine. When they're not writing, reading, or teaching, they can be found collecting rocks on the shores of Lake Superior and experimenting in the kitchen with local ingredients. You can learn more and contact him at http://arikoontz.com.

Dacia is an MFA candidate at NMU where she writes Creative Nonfiction that is concerned with the inner lives of animals, the natural world, and how both inform our understanding of what it means to be human. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, The Forge Literary Magazine, Chestnut Review, 45th Parallel, and others. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net in both 2019 and 2020, and in 2022 her flash essay "Here // Not Here" won the Roadrunner Nonfiction Prize. Her chapbook "This is for the Naming" is coming out in summer 2023.