Wendy McVicker and Cathy Cultice Lentes

Wendy McVicker, 2020-2022 poet laureate of Athens, Ohio, is a longtime Ohio Arts Council teaching artist. Her most recent chapbook, Zero, a Door, was also published by The Orchard Street Press (2021). She loves collaborating with other artists and performs with instrumentalist Emily Prince under the name “another language altogether” whenever she gets the chance. Stronger When We Touch is her first full-length collaboration with another poet.

Cathy Cultice Lentes recently retired from teaching and working with students with disabilities as part of the Special Education/Psychology team in Meigs County, Ohio. In 2016, she published a poetry chapbook, Getting The Mail (Finishing Line Press). In addition to poetry, Lentes writes creative nonfiction and a variety of works for children. She earned her MFA in Writing for Young People from the Solstice Program in 2013.

Wendy McVicker and Cathy Cultice Lentes admired each other’s work from afar before becoming good friends and have often published in the same literary journals and anthologies, most recently, I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing, Ohio’s Appalachian Voices (SheilaNa-Gig Editions, 2022).