Jennifer Taylor is a writer, editor, and book critic currently living in Georgia. She has dreamt of beginning a retreat for writers because of the connection she discovered after attending a workshop in California three years ago that led her to graduate school.

She is a co-founder and fictional editor of damselfly press, a new online fiction and poetry journal for women. Her writing has appeared in Atlanta’s Finest Dining, Inkling Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Pittsburgh Magazine, and Southern Distinction. She was a nonfiction editor for The Fourth River, the publication from Chatham University, where she received her MFA. Jennifer was a writer-in-residence for five weeks at the Writing Retreat in New Brunswick, Canada, to work on her forthcoming novel.

Lesley Dame is a writer and editor living in Florida.  She is a co-founder and poetry editor for damselfly press, and she also served as poetry editor for The Fourth River, a Chatham University publication, where she received her MFA.  Lesley is the author of Letting Out the Ghosts, a poetry chapbook.  A great book-lover, her passion for writing, reading, and dissecting poetry combined with the experience of graduate-level workshops has led to a sincere desire to share this infatuation with others.  She is a firm believer that everyone should feel comfortable tackling a poem.