Bruiser Mag At Normals

John Crawford lives in Odenton, Maryland. His debut collection LEONARD! was published as part of BRUISER’s second zine series in October 2025. He would like to call attention to the necessity of the LRT Red Line to the I-70-Dundalk transit corridor.

Owen Edwards is from Huntingtown, Maryland. He is the author of Pieces of Was, forthcoming from BRUISER. His writing has appeared/is forthcoming in The Hopkins Review, the Rose Books Reader, Terrazzo Mag, and elsewhere. His website is owenpauledwards.com.

Dean Bartoli Smith is a published poet and nonfiction author. His new book, Magic Show is his third collection of poetry following Baltimore Sons (Stillhouse Press, 2021) and American Boy (WWPH, 2000). His poetry has appeared in Smartish Pace, Poetry East, Open City, Beltway and Upstreet, among others. Born and raised in Baltimore, he is also the author of Never Easy, Never Pretty: A Fan, A City, A Championship Season (Temple, 2013). He is the director of Duke University Press.

nat raum (they/them, b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist and writer based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. nat is the editor-in-chief of fifth wheel press and the author of origin trilogy, journal of various worries, this book will not save you, and many chapbooks, full-length collections, and photography publications. Past and upcoming publishers of their work include Poet Lore, beestung, Baltimore Beat, Split Lip Magazine, Poetry Online, and others.

natraum.com

fifthwheelpress.com

Instagram: @gr8earlofhell

X: @gr8earlofhell

Lilly Merrill is a poet from New Hampshire who occasionally works in immersive theater and is in the process of moving back to Brooklyn. She has had work in Hobart, Bruiser, Michigan City Review of Books and elsewhere. She is the incoming poetry editor for Burial Magazine!

Jameson Draper is from Detroit but lives in Baltimore, the two greatest cities on the planet. He bruises at Bruiser and edits fiction at Michigan City Review of Books. He lives with his girlfriend and two cats. He loves Negronis, baseball and the smell of rain.

Michael Baruch is from Ellicott City, Maryland and has probably lived in New York City long enough to be a New Yorker too. Over the past decade he has been a career counselor, an investment banker, a financial reporter, a bookseller, a cold caller, a haiku typewriter, a yoga instructor, and an influencer’s assistant. His work has appeared in Bruiser, ritual dagger, dirt child, talking about strawberries all the time, and elsewhere.

Carson Jordan is a poet and educator. She is the founder of MIND PALACE POETRY, a third space inspired workshop series, and was the inaugural Poet in Residence at the Ruth Stone House in Goshen, Vermont. Her full length, DEAD HAND, is out with Blush Lit. Her work can be in Bruiser Mag, Noir Sauna, high horse magazine, and ritual dagger zine. 

Noam Hessler is an American poet and translator currently based in the Hudson River Valley. Hessler is the author of Officeparks (Farthest Heaven, 2025); they are currently at work on three manuscripts of original poetry and a translated miscellany of works by several Silver Age Russian poets. Their writing can be found in Bruiser, Apocalypse Confidential, Burial Magazine, HAD, Hobart, and Do Not Submit, among other locations, and they can be reached on Twitter @poetryaccnt1518.