1:15-2:15 pm, Saturday, November 8, 2025
115 Education Building

Dave Essinger

Dave Essinger vividly remembers sheltering under school cafeteria tables for “fallout drills” in case of nuclear war, and has been more or less expecting the world to end ever since. His new post-apocalyptic novel This World and the Next is available from Main Street Rag Publishing Company in print and all the best outlets in ebook. His first novel, Running Out, was released in 2017, also from Main Street Rag, and is out digitally as well as in audiobook. Other recent writing appears in Gargoyle, Sport Literate, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has been General Editor of the AWP Intro Journals Project since 2016. He currently teaches creative writing and edits the literary magazine Slippery Elm at the University of Findlay, in Ohio.

Jonie McIntire is the Poet Laureate of Lucas County in Ohio. Her first two chapbooks were Beyond the Sidewalk (NightBallet Press, 2017) and Not All Who Are Lost Wander (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her third chapbook, Semidomesticated, was the winner of the Red Flag Poetry 2020 Chapbook contest, originally released in March 2021 and re-released through Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in July 2022. 

Her poetry has been published in Waterwheel Review, North of Oxford, Gasconade Review, Khroma, Malarkey Books, Dissonance Magazine, Women Speak – Women of Appalachia Anthology, and in many other journals and collections. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize and has even been stamped into cement in Toledo, Ohio as part of the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo’s Sidewalk Poetry series.

McIntire is the poetry editor for Of Rust and Glass and serves as Membership Chair for the Ohio Poetry Association. She hosts a monthly poetry reading series, Uncloistered Poetry, which has been going for over six years and currently runs in-person and on-line events each month.