About
SWWIM (Supporting Women Writers in Miami) was co-founded by Jen Karetnick and Catherine Esposito Prescott. SWWIM sustains and amplifies women poets by creating a living archive of contemporary poetry, cultivating community, and connecting poets across generations while solidifying Miami as a nexus for the literary arts.
SWWIM publishes, promotes, and celebrates women-identifying writers and all gender-expansive definitions of that term with a year-round reading series held at The Betsy-South Beach in Miami Beach, FL and the online poetry journal SWWIM Every Day.
Poems first published in SWWIM Every Day have been included in Best American Poetry and the Best American Poetry blog, Best of the Net, Best Spiritual Literature, The Orison Anthology, Poets.org, Poetry Daily, The Slowdown, Substack Reads, The Writer’s Almanac, and Women's Voices for Change, among other anthologies, podcasts, and columns, and have garnered Pushcart nominations from contributing editors.
Editors
Catherine Esposito Prescott
Founder + Editor-in-Chief
Catherine Esposito Prescott is the author of Accidental Garden (Gunpowder Press, 2023), which won the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize (selected by Danusha Laméris) and the chapbooks Maria Sings (Dancing Girl Press, 2017) and The Living Ruin (Finishing Line Press, 2013). Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, EcoTheo Review, Green Mountains Review Online, Mezzo Cammin, MER VOX, NELLE, Northwest Review, Pleiades, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, West Trestle Review, Grabbed: Poets & Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment, & Healing and The Orison Anthology. She is the Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of SWWIM Every Day. Prescott holds an MFA from NYU. An RYT 200-HR yoga instructor with a 300-HR yoga philosophy certification, Prescott teaches vinyasa yoga and yoga philosophy and leads yoga and writing retreats. See http://catherineespositoprescott.com anand https://www.sparkretreat.net/ (she/her)
Mary Block
Senior Editor, Director of Development
Mary Block is a Miami-born, Miami-based poet. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mudfish, Best New Poets 2020, RHINO, Nimrod International Journal, and Sonora Review, among other publications. Her work can be found online at Rattle, SWWIM Every Day, Aquifer—The Florida Review Online, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of New York University's Creative Writing Program, a 2018 Best of the Net finalist, a 2012 finalist for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. www.maryblock.net (she/her)
Kai Coggin
Contributing Editor-at-Large
Kai Coggin is the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Hot Springs, and author of four collections, most recently Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press 2021). She is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, a CATALYZE grant fellow from the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and host of the longest-running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award, twice named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, and nominated for Arkansas State Poet Laureate and Hot Springs Woman of the Year, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated six times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016, 2018, 2021— awarded in 2022. Ten of Kai’s poems are going to the moon with the Lunar Codex project, and on earth they have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Best of the Net, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, Bellevue Literary Review, TAB, Entropy, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Tupelo Press, and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review and serves on the Board of Directors of the International Women’s Writing Guild. She lives with her wife and their two dogs in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas. (she/her)
Jen Karetnick
Founder + Managing Editor
Jen Karetnick is a Jewish-American, chronically ill author of 11 poetry collections, including Inheritance with a High Error Rate, winner of the 2022 Cider Press Review Book Award (January 2024); The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, 2020), winner of the 2021 CIPA EVVY Gold Medal and an Eric Hoffer Book Award Poetry Finalist; and The Crossing Over (2019), winner of the 2018 Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition. Her poems have received first place from the Sweet: Lit Poetry Contest, Tiferet Writing Contest for Poetry, Hart Crane Memorial Prize, and Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, among other honors, and received support from the Vermont Studio Center, Pine Meadows Ranch Center for Arts & Agriculture, Wildacres Retreat, Artists in Residence in the Everglades, Mother’s Milk, Centrum Residencies, and elsewhere. Jen's work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cold Mountain Review's 50th-anniversary issue, Michigan Quarterly Review's 60th-anniversary issue, Missouri Review Poem of the Week, Notre Dame Review, and others. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of California, Irvine, and an MFA in fiction from the University of Miami. See jkaretnick.com or follow on Instagram @JenKaretnick. (she/her)
Mia Leonin
Associate Editor
Mia Leonin is a Cuban-American poet, writer, and educator. She is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Fable of the Pack-Saddle Child (BkMk Press), awarded second place for the International Latino Book Award. Other titles include Braid, Unraveling the Bed, and Chance Born (Anhinga Press), and a memoir, Havana and Other Missing Fathers (University of Arizona Press). She has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the State of Florida Department of Cultural Affairs, the Barbara Deming Fund, and the University of Miami. She has taught creative writing for over twenty years at the University of Miami. She has given talks, poetry readings, and writing workshops at Miami Dade College, Broward College, Miami Dade County Public Library, The Betsy Hotel, The Wolfsonian Museum, O, Miami, Books & Books, The Miami Book Fair, the Spanish Cultural Center, the University of Miami, Penn State, Indiana University, the University of Missouri, and others. In addition to poetry and creative nonfiction, she has written extensively about Spanish-language theater, dance, theater, and culture in Miami. Publications include Miami Herald, New Times, Dance Magazine, WLRN, and others. (she/her)
Diamond Forde
Contributing Editor-at-Large
Diamond Forde’s debut collection, Mother Body, is the winner of the 2019 Saturnalia Poetry Prize. Forde has received numerous awards and prizes, including a Pink Poetry Prize, a Furious Flower Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award from Claremont Graduate University. A Callaloo, Tin House, and Ruth Lilly Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg fellow, Forde’s work has appeared in POETRY, Obsidian, Massachusetts Review, and more. In her spare time, Forde also serves as the interviews editor of Honey Literary and the fiction editor of Nat. Brut. (she/her)
Caridad Moro-Gronlier
Senior Editor
Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the Poet Laureate of Miami Dade County, the first woman in county history to be appointed to the post. A career educator and community-driven poet, Caridad’s public work and literary engagement include collaboration with numerous South Florida stakeholders. Caridad is the author of three books of poetry, including Tortillera, the winner of the TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Prize published by Texas Review Press (2021) and a new book of poetry, As to Your Comment (forthcoming 2024). She is also the editor of Grabbed: Poets and Writers Respond to Sexual Assault, Empowerment and Healing (Beacon Press, 2020). Caridad serves as the Associate Editor for SWWIM Every Day, an online daily poetry journal for women identifying poets, and as The Betsy’s Writer’s Room Poetry-Curator-At- Large. In 2023, she was Series Editor of From the Writer’s Room at The Betsy for a monthly column for The New Tropic (2023). In addition, her work has been featured in The Best American Poetry Blog, Verse Daily, NPR, The Hive, Split This Rock, Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry, and others. Caridad is the recipient of a Julia Peterkin Literary Award (2023), an International Latino Book Award Honorable Mention (2022), an Eric Hoffer Book Award Honorable Mention (2022), First Horizon Award Finalist (2022), two Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs Miami-Dade Individual Artists (MIA) Grants (2023 and 2023), an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant (2015), and a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in poetry (2007). She lives with her wife and son in Westchester. (she/her)
Emma Trelles
Contributing Editor-at-Large
The ninth Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, Emma was born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents. She is the author of Tropicalia (University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize and a finalist for Foreword/Indies poetry book of the year, as well as the chapbook Little Spells (GOSS183, 2008). She is the recipient of fellowships and honors from CantoMundo, Letras Latinas, and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. Emma curates the Mission Poetry Series and, in April 2022, became the series editor of the Alta California Chapbook Prize for Latinx poets, which selects two chapbooks for publication in bilingual editions through Gunpowder Press. (she/her)
Alexandra Lytton Regalado
Associate Editor
Alexandra Lytton Regalado is a Salvadoran American author, editor, and translator. She is the author of Relinquenda, winner of the National Poetry Series (Beacon Press, 2022); the chapbook Piedra (La Chifurnia, 2022); and the poetry collection, Matria, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). Alexandra holds fellowships at CantoMundo and Letras Latinas; she is winner of the Coniston Prize, and her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, poets.org, World Literature Today, Narrative, and Gulf Coast, among others. Her translations of contemporary Latin American poetry appear in Poetry International, FENCE, and Tupelo Quarterly and she is translator of Family or Oblivion by Elena Salamanca and Prewar by Tania Pleitez. She is co-founding editor of Kalina, a press that showcases bilingual, Central American-themed books and she is assistant editor at SWWIM Every Day an online daily poetry journal for women-identifying poets. See www.alexandralyttonregalado.com (she/her)
Christell Victoria Roach
Contributing Editor-at-Large
Christell Victoria Roach is an Emmy-nominated poet and performer from Miami, Florida. As a descendant of Miami’s first Black Pioneers, she writes about Blackness, the Blues, and many different types of love. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Miami after graduating from Emory University with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Creative Writing & African American Studies. She writes poetry that embraces and expands the Southern Gothic to the tropics. Her recent work has been published by the Academy of American Poets, POETRY Magazine, Obsidian Literary Journal, Scalawag Magazine, and The Miami Rail. She is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University working on her first book of poetry entitled Bluesing. (she/her)
Readers + Staff
August
Director of Communications
August (they/them/theirs) is a queer, multiracial essayist. Their work revolves around the intersections of femininity, queerness, and culture, and the forced binaries that are inflicted on bodies who do not fit within the mold. Their work can be found in Variety Pack, Coffin Bell Journal, and just femme & dandy. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing from Sam Houston State University and a Bachelors in Creative Writing from University of Iowa.
Catherine Abbey Hodges
Reader
Catherine Abbey Hodges is the author of the poetry collections In a Rind of Light (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2020); Instead of Sadness, selected by Dan Gerber for the 2015 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize from Gunpowder Press; and Raft of Days (Gunpowder Press, 2017). Her poems appear widely in venues including Narrative, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, Atticus Review, SWWIM, and Chicago Quarterly Review. They’ve been anthologized, featured on The Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Orison Anthology, and Best of the Net. An award-winning teacher, Catherine served on the English faculty of Porterville College for 20 years before retiring in 2021. She writes, edits, teaches privately, and collaborates with musician and labyrinth-maker Rob Hodges in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada. Visit catherineabbeyhodges.com for further info. (she/her)
Sylvanna Vitali
Reader
Sylvanna Vitali is a graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy, where she served as an editor for The Interlochen Review. Her work has been featured in DREGINALD and on Interlochen Public Radio. Originally from Miami, she is fascinated by language, bilingualism, and work that interrogates these. She resides between Miami and wherever the contents of her little Jansport may take her. (she/her)
Deborah Bacharach
Reader
Deborah Bacharach is the author of Shake & Tremor (Grayson Books, 2021) and After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her poems, essays and book reviews have been published in journals nationally and internationally, including Midwest Quarterly, Poetry Ireland Review, Vallum, Cimarron Review, New Letters and Poet Lore. She has received three Pushcart prize nominations and a Pushcart prize honorable mention. Educated at Swarthmore College and the University of Minnesota, Debby lives in Seattle with her family. She is a college writing instructor, editor, and tutor and teaches poetry workshops for children. Find out more about her at DeborahBacharach.com. (she/her)
M.B. McLatchey
Reader
M.B. McLatchey is a poet and writer living, writing, and teaching in Florida. She is a Professor of Humanities at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Poet Laureate of Florida's Volusia County, Arts & Wellness Ambassador for the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and U.S. Ambassador to the HundrED global foundation for innovation in education. She is the author of five books, including the award-winning titles Beginner’s Mind (Regal House Publishing, May 2021) and The Lame God (May Swenson Award, Utah State University Press), and a recipient of the American Poet Prize from the American Poetry Journal, the Annie Finch Prize from the National Poetry Review, a 2020 Pushcart nomination, and Best of the Net nomination. She received her graduate degree in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, a Master of Arts in Teaching from Brown University, an MFA in Poetry from Goddard College, and her B.A. from Williams College. (she/her)
Minnie Wu
Social Media Intern
Minnie Wu is a high school junior at The Pennington School. Her poetry and prose have been published in SWWIM Every Day, Blue Marble Review, Pennyroyal, Teen Ink, and other literary magazines. Minnie participated in the 2023 Iowa Young Writers Studio Summer Residential Program and the 2024 Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program. In the 2024 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, she was recognized as a Gold Key recipient and a Gold Medalist for her poetry and photography. Minnie loves spending time with her pets and enjoys watching K-dramas.
Rebecca Brock
Reader
Rebecca Brock’s work has been published or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, CALYX, Mom Egg Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, SWWIM, Whale Road Review and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from The Bennington Writing Seminars and was a finalist in the 2021 Joy Harjo Poetry Contest at Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts. Her first chapbook was a semifinalist in the New Women’s Voices Contest at Finishing Line Press and is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2022. Idaho born, she is raising her two sons in Virginia and still isn’t used to the humidity. You can find more of her work at rebeccabrock.org. (she/her)
Jude Marr
Reader
Jude Marr is a Pushcart-nominated nonbinary poet. They are the author of We Know Each Other By Our Wounds (Animal Heart Press, 2020) and Breakfast for the Birds (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Their work has also appeared in many journals in the US, the UK, and beyond, including three times in SWWIM Every Day. Jude has an MFA from Georgia College and a Ph.D. from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. A native Scot, Jude recently returned to live in the UK after 10 years of teaching, writing, and learning in the US. The transatlantic connection remains strong, though. Jude is Social Media Manager at Animal Heart Press and a Poet in Pajamas for Sundress in June 2022. Find them on Twitter @JudeMarr1 and Instagram @jude.marr, or go to judemarr.com (they/them)
Susan Cohen
Reader
Susan Cohen is the author of Democracy of Fire (2022), A Different Wakeful Animal (2016), and Throat Singing (2012), as well as two chapbooks and a non-fiction book. A former journalist and contributing writer to the Washington Post Magazine, she earned an MFA from Pacific University. Her poetry has appeared in 32 Poems, Northwest Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, Southern Review, SWWIM, Verse Daily, and many anthologies. Her honors include the Rita Dove Award, Milton Kessler Poetry Prize, Terrain.org 11th Annual Poetry Prize, and the Red Wheelbarrow Prize. She lives in Berkeley, California. www.susancohen-writer.com (she/her)
Elizabeth Sylvia
Reader
Elizabeth Sylvia is the author of None But Witches: Poems on Shakespeare’s Women, winner of the 2021 3 Mile Harbor Press Book Prize. She has been a semi- or finalist in competitions sponsored by DIAGRAM, 30 West, and Wolfson Press. Elizabeth’s poetry has been published in over 30 journals, including here at SWWIM (before she became a reader, of course). She was educated at Hampshire College and the University of Washington. A native of Martha’s Vineyard, she lives in southern Massachusetts, where she teaches English and coaches debate. Her work can be found at elizabethsylviapoet.net, alongside episodes of her occasional podcast I Want to Talk About This Poem.
readers emeritae
Maylin Enamorado-Pinheiro, Rebecca Jane, Shenu Kathymoon, Lytey Kay