Crystal Oliver – Director
Crystal Oliver is a poet and songwriter living in Southern Maryland with particular interests in literary citizenship as community service, studies in songwriters, and professional literacy. She is a lecturer of English, an adjunct professor of Music, the Director of the Chesapeake Writers’ Conference, and the Poetry Editor at EcoTheo Review. Her areas of teaching specialization include creative writing, the poetics of song, and feminist and multicultural critical approaches to the literature of music, magic, and addiction. She has also taught at Pratt Institute, The City University of New York, and Brooklyn College, among other places. She has released four albums: Fixing to Break (MW Records, 2002), Bessie’s Last Stand (2003), Voter (2007), and Light it Up (2012). Her writing has appeared in Bluestem, The Brooklyn Review, The Delmarva Review, Woman, and Southern Maryland: This Is Living.
Oliver received the 2022 Jordan Teaching Exemplar Award and the 2022 Andy Kozak Faculty Contribution to Student Life Award. She received the Henrietta Spiegel Creative Writing Award from the University of Maryland, College Park, and earned her M.F.A. in Poetry from Brooklyn College.
Karen Leona Anderson
Poetry
Karen Leona Anderson is the author of the poetry collections Receipt (Milkweed Editions) and Punish honey (Carolina Wren). Her work has most recently appeared in POETRY magazine, Pleiades, Little Star, EcoTheo Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, ZYZZYVA, The Best American Poetry, and other journals and anthologies; her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Grant. She is a professor of English at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
Randle Browning
Randle Browning is a writer from Texas interested in art, family, and landscape. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Believer, The New York Review of Architecture, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, the Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere, and has been supported by the Jentel Artist Residency. Randle holds an MA in English Literature from Boston College and an MFA from Columbia University, where she served as print editor of the Columbia Journal and now teaches creative writing. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and daughter and is working on a nonfiction book about five generations of her Texas family.
Matt Burgess
Fiction
Matt Burgess is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Dogfight, A Love Story and Uncle Janice. He has published short stories in a variety of magazines, written extensively for film and television, and is currently the chair of the English and Creative Writing department at Macalester College.
Jennifer Cognard-Black
Food Essays
A professor of English, Jennifer Cognard-Black teaches a variety of creative writing and literature courses, including classes in the literatures of food, food writing, and food justice. A Fulbright Scholar to both Slovenia and the Netherlands, she received the 2020 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching, considered the “Nobel Prize for teachers.” Jennifer is the author or co-editor of six books, including Books that Cook: The Making of a Literary Meal (NYU Press 2014) and Good Eats: 32 Writers on Eating Ethically (NYU Press 2024). She also publishes short fiction under the pen name J. Annie MacLeod in such journals as Story, Versal, So to Speak, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, among other places. In addition, Jennifer produces lecture series for Audible, including an Audible Original called “Books that Cook: Food & Fiction.” And although she has lived in Maryland for a quarter century, Jennifer still considers herself a Nebraskan.
Erik Dionne
Youth Workshop
Erik Dionne is a songwriter, musician, producer, and poet living in Southern Maryland where he has been teaching high school English for 14 years. He teaches several courses including digital composition and creative writing, while also facilitating extracurricular clubs which provide opportunities for students to collaborate, create, and share their art with their school and local communities. He released his first album, Questionable Motives, under the artist name Dog Army in 2021, and will release his second album, Woodwose: Exigence & Exodus, in 2026. His music has appeared in Plectrum Magazine, American Pancake, and Alt77, among other publications. His poetry has appeared in the journals Noir Nation and Wingless Dreamer, and featured on BBC Future. Additionally, Erik contributes album reviews for the online magazine Groove Art Universe.
Eva Freeman
Writer-in-Residence
Eva Freeman is a writer whose work has appeared in Granta, Citizen, The Catamaran Literary Reader, Salt Hill Journal, and Black Renaissance Noire, among others. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland and a BA in English from Yale University. She has received support from the de Groot Foundation, Hedgebrook and Kimbilio. Her personal essay, “The Coptic Cross,” was included on the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses’ “Reading List for Black History Month 2025,” and her debut novel, The Blood of Both, is represented by Lauren Abramo at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. She is a former network news producer and currently lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Jerry Gabriel
Fiction
Jerry Gabriel’s first book of fiction, Drowned Boy, won the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and was published in 2010 (Sarabande Books). It was a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” pick and was awarded the 2011 Towson Prize for Literature. His second book of fiction, The Let Go, was published in 2015 (Queen’s Ferry Press). His stories have appeared in One Story, Epoch, Fiction, Five Chapters, The Missouri Review, failbetter, and Big Fiction, among other publications. His work has been short-listed for a Pushcart Prize, and he has received grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2004), the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (2011), and the National Endowment for the Arts (2016). He is the Project Director for SlackWater: A Journal of Environmental and Cultural Change in Southern Maryland. His first novel, Deserters, will be published by Acre Books in May 2026.
Allison Glaser
Conference Assistant
Allison is a Junior at St. Mary’s College of Maryland studying English with minors in Philosophy and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies. She is the Assistant to the Chesapeake Writers’ Conference, a Writing & Speaking Center peer tutor, and the English Program Student Ambassador. Additionally, she serves as the Acting President of the SMCM AVATAR Literary Magazine. She is passionate about literature and writing, specifically poetry and creative non-fiction. She is acutely interested in how writing shapes our understanding of the world and ourselves.