VALA GALLERY
 
 

Envisioning a New Age Poetry & Open Mic 2026



Envisioning a New Age Poetry & Open Mic 
7-9 PM Central Time



R. Nikolas Macioci 

January 21, 2026
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84159483498?pwd=bXVXiQnoWNIZ3kffGZ5tZLVfaM1QER.1

R. Nikolas Macioci earned a PhD from The Ohio State University, taught for Columbus City Schools for thirty years. OCTELA, the Ohio Council of Teachers of English, named Nik Macioci the best secondary English teacher in the state of Ohio. 

Nik is the author of twenty-three books. He was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize, and twice for a Best of the Net award.  He won First Place in the 1987 National Writer's Union Poetry Competition, judged by Denise Levertov, First Place in The Baudelaire Award Competition, sponsored by The World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets (1989), Second Place in Zone 3's first annual Rainmaker Awards, judged by Howard Nemerov (1989), Second Place in the Writer's Digest annual competition, judged by Diane Wakoski (1991), and he received the Blaine R. Hall Award for best poem of the year in Kentucky Poetry Review (1991).  




Neil Daswani 

February 11, 2026
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83017540903?pwd=IFuf4NlcX3RHYXatbwFKLubfo6yyFa.1

Neil Daswani, a former career banker and relatively recently minted poet wrote sporadically in his youth, followed by a “lunga pausa”. Working from his pandemic purgatory, wrote six books of poetry. His work has been showcased at the Singapore Writers Festival, and at the Jaipur and Bangalore Literature Festivals as well as in poetry anthologies published in the US, UK and South Asia.




Melia Reddick  (Koetry)

March 11, 2026
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84082122956?pwd=1PXH

Melia Reddick has been writing and sharing poetry under the stage name, Koetry, for 6 years.
 
At 19, Koetry is finalizing their first manuscript for publication and hopes their words will plant seeds of connection that say: “You are not alone”.
 
Koetry loves being active in local theater, making music and reading. They currently run poetry workshops for youth and adults at the Hardin County Public Library.
 
Connect with Koetry on instagram: @among.the.koa.trees
 
 
 


Chris Dean
Indiana Beat Poet Laureate (2025-2027)
April 01, 2026
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89334707761?pwd=a3tbEb2e5cgdIRPMRbabUvl81hnIBw

Chris  is a storyteller, graphic designer and Magpie Poet who writes from the heart of Indiana where they live with their husband and too many cats to mention. 

Along with Wendy Cartwright, Chris is co-founder of Keeping the Flame Alive Press. 

Their work has been featured online, in multiple print anthologies and they are the author of “tales from a broken girl,” “we're all stories in the end,” and the forthcoming “pyre” from Keeping the Flame Alive Press.





Sandra Rivers-Gill
Poet Ambassador of Northwest Ohio for the Ohio Poetry Association (2024-2026)

May 13, 2026
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81639668392?pwd=3TUHyLFJ8jbuvaQkbkczQa9u7L6Mmp.1

Sandra is an award-winning poet, playwright and teaching artist.  Her work often addresses themes of family, race and society, and has been nominated for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She has led poetry workshop for women in recovery, as well as creatively aging adults. Her work has been featured in journals and anthologies; Rattle, ONE ART, Sheila-Na-Gig, Silver Birch Press, Rise Up Review, As It Ought To Be; and Ohio: The Body Poetic/River Roots poets,  A Letter to Our Children, Poets for Peace, Death Never Dies, and others.  She is the inaugural Poet Ambassador of Northwest Ohio for the Ohio Poetry Association (2024-2026), and editor of poetry anthologies, Dopeless Hope Fiends (Radio Room Press, 2018), Vibrant Voices (PP&P Press, 2025)  Her debut poetry collection, As We Cover Ourselves With Light, (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023), was a finalist for the 2024 Eric Hoffer Book Award.  
www.sandrariversgill.com  Facebook @ Sandra Gill, Instagram @Sandra.Gill.52



Chinụa Ezenwa-Ọhaeto

June 17, 2026
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88405387478?pwd=9ru9OQDhaUYMJr8w0dPJan0fOQm4YW.1

Chinụa Ezenwa-Ọhaeto is an Igbo and Nigerian poet, fiction and non fiction writer, and essayist, exploring the themes of culture, religion, lineage, ancestry, divination (dibia afa), post-colonialism, migration and the complexities of existence.

He became a runner-up in the Sparks Poetry Competition, Memorial University, Canada, 2023. In 2018, he won the Castello di Duino Poesia Prize and the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize (EOPP). In 2019, he was the winner of the Sevhage/Angus Poetry Prize. Winner of the Special ANMIG (National Association of the Mutilated and Invalids of War) prize: promotion of feelings of brotherhood between peoples, love of freedom and defense of peace, organized by Centro Giovani e Poesia di Triuggio, Italy, 2022. In 2023, Ezenwa-Ọhaeto was shortlisted for Writivism Poetry Prize, the Alpine Poetry Fellowship, and the 2024 runner-up in the African and Africa American Studies Program (AAASP) Best Graduate Paper Prize hosted by the Institute for Ethnic Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His works have appeared in Isele Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, Oxford Poetry, Massachusetts Review, Frontier, Palette, The Common, Southword Magazine, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Mud Season Review, Notra Dame, Anmly, The Republic, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Ruminate and elsewhere.

His full- length poetry collection, The Naming, will be out on December 1, 2025 with African Poetry Book Fund via Nebraska press. The Naming explores the movements, excesses, and extremes of existing as a post modern individual, connecting these experiences to familial ancestry and lineage. The poems in this collection examine the various ways one remains tied to their ancestors which spanned eleven generations by re-imagining memories, history, childhood, homestead, kinship, migration, and the intersections of the past, present, and possible futures. Through this exploration, the collection seeks to rebuild a world that doesn’t merely replicate realities but reinvents, enshrines, and re-stories them.
https://www.chinuaezenwa-ohaeto.com





James Borders
July 15, 2026
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89842911697?pwd=bSIpbj5rgUIm6aYV16p70xn0WHGjOp

James Borders is a poet, husband, grandfather, and recovering curmudgeon. After decades of writing pithy, satirical poems and grocery lists, he decided to get serious about poetry. James is a member of Bistro Poets and former host of Peripatetic Poets based in Columbus, Ohio. Recent poems have appeared in Meniscus Literary Magazine, Madness Muse Press, and several in collections from Poetry is Life Press. James released his first book of poetry in 2022, Resurrecting Onions, Kung Fu Treachery Press. He is currently working on a memoir in poems about his childhood to published sometime in 2026.




Tommy Sheffield 
August 19, 2026
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81578642040?pwd=0cP0d6TqWkaQd3OYeQPgFMbxbM2vFC.1

Tommy Sheffield is a disabled, Neurodivergent writer who lives in Washington, DC, where he teaches high school English in Southeast DC. His poems, stories, and essays have been published in ucity review, Adelaide, Sanitarium, Ghosts City Review, and a number of other publications. His chapbooks From Whom We Trace the Bones, Ashore, Where God Has Gone, and These Things Are Often Sealed Within were published as a four-book series by Voice Lux Press in March 2022. He has served as the Poetry Editor for Stillhouse Press for a number of years, editing and publishing five critically acclaimed poetry books, and helping to oversee new projects.

 
Karen Scott is a poet living in Columbus, Ohio. She is a member/ supporter of Ohio Poetry Association (OPA), a past participant in the Women of Appalachia Project, and a proud member of the SALON writing group.   
 
Her work has been published in Common Threads [annual OPA members anthologies]; Women Speak [Women of Appalachia anthologies]; Delirious: A Poetic Celebration of Prince (2016); Sun & Shadow, Wood & Stone (2022); the inaugural issue of the Northern Appalachia Review (2020); American Graveyard: Calls to end gun violence (Read or GreenBooks); The Dead Pets Poetry Anthology (Transcendent Zero Press); and the Final issue of Pudding Magazine, and Quaranzine published by OPAWL(https://www.opawl.org/quaranzine). “Monsters” and “Mo Leisgeul”s were published on Moon Tide Press website as Poet of the Month August 2022 (https://www.moontidepress.com/august-2017). “Tha Mi Duilich” was made into a broadside on (https://poetrysuperhighway.com).  

 


Macha Greenleaf-Maple
MSW 
October 14th 
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84068292976?pwd=r2kx4ADfdLm0t8ktkI0NOVadRKEzbR.1

Macha Greenleaf-Maple believes poetry, like song, is a way to main-line one another’s emotions. She believes expression is what helps us stay alive in the most difficult parts of our lives, and would add to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that the need to express ourselves to and with others is basic—like shelter and touch—and helps alleviate suffering no matter how grim.
 
Macha has degrees in psychology, women’s studies, and social work, which helped her frame an understanding for her decades of work with people in crisis, particularly women and children in homeless situations. Poetry, art, music, dogs, and humans who offered compassion have helped her heal things from childhood that needed healing, to choose to stay alive—clean and sober, to celebrate loving whomever and however she loves, and to believe in the power of sharing what she’s gathered in life so far. Macha lives with her poet/artist husband John  and their good little dogs, Ghost and Fendi in Independence, Missouri.




A.M Hayden
Sinclair College Poet Laureate (2021-2025)
November 18, 2026
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86969005825?pwd=MUHIZLxrBydHV5LtlEFF3b8EDrlLpj.1

A.M. Hayden served as Poet Laureate for Sinclair College from 2021-2025 and is a Tenured Professor of Humanities, Philosophy, and World Religions, receiving the League for Innovation Teaching Excellence Award (2020) and the Distinguished Faculty Scholars Award (2024). She has two full length poetry collections (American Saunter: Poems of the U.S. and Old World Wings: Poems of Europe) and one chapbook (How to Tie Tobacco), published by FlowerSong Press and Wild Ink Publishing. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a River Heron Editors' Choice Winner, she lives on a windy farm with her family and many rescues including a blind, three-legged dog named Vinny Valentine and a three-legged goat named Old Man Jenkins.
Socials:  
FB: https://www.facebook.com/WindyChickenPoet
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/windychickenpoet/
Website: windychickenpoet.com
 
 
 
 
Aldo  Amparán 
December 16th
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87214075851?pwd=exUi0FWaOwUEt4qOp565vqvmJacdmq.1

Aldo Amparán is the author of Brother Sleep (Alice James Books, 2022), winner of the Alice James Award and a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Their second book, The House Has Teeth, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in September 2026. They have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts & CantoMundo.
 
Amparán’s work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, New England Review, & the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, among other literary journals.  

https://aldoamparan.com/