CSU POETRY CENTER DIRECTOR
Mike Geither is a playwright and solo performer whose work has been seen in San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax, New York and London. He is a four-time Ohio Arts Council fellow and has served as a resident artist at Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito. Recent works include The Long Hard Days of Dick Golden (Verum Series, 2026), Thick (U of Ottawa, 2024), The Body is the Best (Lit Youngstown, The River Clyde Pageant, NACL, Chicago Dramatists, 2022), Heirloom (convergence-continuum, 2019), Ismene (U of Ottawa, 2017), The Events of the Warren County Fair as Observed by a Young Astronaut (Independent Production, 2017 - 2019), Objectively/Reasonable (Playwrights Local, 2016/17), Creation Myth (convergence-continuum, 2016), how small, how far away (Zuppa Theatre, Halifax, 2016), Flame Puppy (Playwrights Local, 2015), Tear It Off (convergence-continuum, 2015), and Loki and Lucy (Talespinner, 2014). He is currently a Professor of English at Cleveland State University where he teaches in the Northeast Ohio MFA (NEOMFA) in creative writing and a life-long birdwatcher. His current work focuses on fragmentation, non traditional narrative and climate change.
ANISFIELD-WOLF FELLOW IN WRITING & PUBLISHING
Xan Forest Phillips, a poet hailing from rural Ohio, is the acclaimed author of HULL (Nightboat Books, 2019) and a recipient of the Whiting Award. He is the 2024-2026 Anisfield Wolf Fellow in Writing and Publishing at Cleveland State University and has received fellowships from Brown University, Callaloo, Cave Canem, The Conversation Literary Festival, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics. Xan is the recipient of the Lambda Literary Award, the 2023 Oscar Williams and Gene Derwood Award, and a 2022 Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh Grant. His poetry has been translated into Spanish, Czech, and Slovenian. Xan’s poetry can be found in Berlin Quarterly Review, BOMB Magazine, Crazyhorse, Poets.org, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Kristen Tetzmann (née Tetzlaff) is a poet and painter from Wisconsin. She received her BA in Art Therapy and Creative Writing from Mount Mary University. She is a second-year poetry candidate in the NEOMFA program. Her work has appeared in Bodega Magazine, Furrow, Respect Your Mother, and elsewhere. She knows how to say “watermelon” in twenty-six languages.
