Tina Cardona believes in the generative power of poetry to heal. As a clinical social worker, a registered yoga teacher, and an occasional (but passionate!) poet, she spends her days obsessing on how to combine creativity, health, movement, and expansive states of mind in order to help people achieve satisfaction and joy in living.  Tina spent years in graduate school at the University of Houston studying poetry and art before switching to Social Work as a profession. She now works in schools coaching teachers, counselors and administrators on how to build skills to connect with students. She likewise coaches students on how to self-regulate emotions, and she advocates for both students and staff on the front lines of education.  She has been writing poetry since she was 13 years old (and hiding it just as long)  and has been a part of Houston’s poetry scene for over 20 years.  Besides publishing her work and performing locally, Tina has also co-hosted multiple events including hotpoet's’ now infamous solstice gatherings, which have been called Dionysian. Perhaps her proudest accomplishment is having raised an amazing daughter who is now a professional artist. On the weekends, Tina can be found caring for her many dogs and one cat as well as hatching ideas with Kelly over cocktails.

Kelly Ann Ellis lives, works, and writes in Houston, Texas, where she obtained an MA in English Literature from the University of Houston. Cofounder of hotpoet, she is also a long-time member of Poets in the Loop critique group. She has been published in various journals and received awards from BAWL and San Gabriel Writers League. She also had two winning poems in Public Poetry’s Artlines ekphrastic contest in 2012, when her work was showcased in the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Two recent publications include a poem in Echoes of the Cordillera, a 2018 collection of poems in response to photography, a cine-poem accepted in the REELpoetry festival in Houston in 2018, and another in 2021. Her work was featured in the poetry, music. and dance production “It’s About Love” in the Houston Fringe Festival in 2019, and more recently her short fiction was performed in the podcast The Short Story Show as the second-place winner of their 2020 contest. She was nominated in 2020 for a Pushcart prize for her poem “Reef," published in Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast.. Kelly travels whenever she can and spends time on the nearby Gulf Coast when she can't, where she enjoys writing fiction and essay as well as poetry and where she never fails to find inspiration in the tug of the ocean. 

Jack Kendall currently lives in semi-retirement in San Jose, Costa Rica. Until 2018, he had divided his time between the Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. He earned a B.A. degree in English and completed graduate courses toward a Masters of Arts in Management. Most of his adult life has been spent working in the financial services area, much of the time as a bookkeeper/accountant, primarily for nonprofits, or as a stockbroker/financial planner. Along the way he became a Certified Financial Planner, a Chartered Life Underwriter, a Chartered Financial Consultant, and a Certified Fund Specialist. His interests include social psychology, behavioral economics, guitar, history, and deeply personal conversations that spin themselves through the night. His poetry is written mostly for his own amusement and amazement.  He has owned five small businesses and has the distinction of being the only man in Texas who could go broke owning a gun store.