We are excited to announce that Emily Blair has joined cahoodaloodaling as an Associate Editor!
Emily is a queer Appalachian poet and blue-collar scholar. Originally from Fort Chiswell, Virginia (you may have stopped there for gas once), she now lives in central North Carolina, where she teaches first-year writing, literature, and creative writing at a community college. She earned a BA in Creative Writing and Literature from Virginia Tech and an MA in English from the University of Louisville before settling in the Tar Heel State, where she lives with her perfect precious baby cat Plum and all the houseplants that Plum has not yet managed to eat.
Emily’s first published chapbook, WE ARE BIRDS, explored queer relationships and intimacy. She is currently working on a collection of prose poems about queerness, Appalachia, body horror, and her family, all of which have more in common than she originally anticipated. She also writes a monthly column for Boshemia Magazine. More of her published works and information about her can be found on her website, emilyblairpoet.com.
When she isn’t teaching, reading, or writing, she enjoys cooking, exploring North Carolina with her partner and their dog, and trying to find the best lox bagel in the south. She’s always up for recommendations on the bagel part.
Ashley M. Jones is a poet, organizer, and educator from Birmingham, Alabama. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press, 2017) and dark / / thing (Pleiades Press, 2019). Her poetry has earned local and national awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at CNN, The Oxford American, Origins Journal, The Quarry by Split This Rock, Obsidian, and many others. She teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival in Birmingham, Alabama.
Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Alabama with four incredible mammals. Find her poems and prose in recent issues of Juked, DIAGRAM, New South, Mantis, VOLT, Cloudbank, New Orleans Review Online, and others. Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize in Short Fiction. She serves as Poetry Editor for Pidgeonholes and President of the Alabama State Poetry Society. More arcana online at 
cahoodaloodaling turned six this May and I can hardly believe it. We’ve been incredibly lucky, both with who has volunteered time on staff and the amazing submissions we’ve received for our themed calls. With 26 issues under our belt, we’re excited to move into our 7th year!
Wes Jamison’s work appears or is forthcoming in 1913, Diagram, Fifth Wednesday, Essay Press, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
Guest Editor’s Spotlight: