Rusty Morrison, senior editor and co- publishers
Rusty Morrison is co-founder, co-publisher of Omnidawn since 2001. Her upcoming book, Risk, will be published by Black Ocean this year (2024
). Her other books include include After Urgency (won Tupelo’s Dorset Prize), the true keeps calm biding its story (won Ahsahta’s Sawtooth Prize, James Laughlin Award, Northern California Book Award, & DiCastagnola Award from PSA), and Beyond the Chainlink (Ahsahta; finalist for the NCIB Award & NCB Award). She was awarded a fellowship by UC Berkeley Art Research Center’s Poetry & the Senses Program (in the its inaugural year of 2020). Her poems have appeared on the Poetry Foundation website, on their podcast series Poetry Now, in Colorado Review, Fence, Iowa Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. Her creative nonfiction & poetry has appeared in Entropy; and her nonfiction at Harriet. Her critical essays appeared at Kenyon Review and Pleiades among other places. She is a recipient of fellowships from UC Berkeley’s Arts and Research Center, Civitella Ranieri, Djerassi, and other artist residencies. She has taught in MFA programs, been a visiting poet at colleges, and teaches workshops through Omnidawn and elsewhere. She offers private poetry consultations. For more info, see her website: www.rustymorrison.com
Laura Joakimson, executive director and co-publisher
Laura Joakimson is a Bay Area and Seattle writer and poet who spent several years on the planning committee for Litquake, San Francisco’s homegrown literary festival. Her work has appeared in Quiet Lightning, Magnitude, and Scissors & Spackle. She was an English teacher in South Korea for two years, and more recently worked for seven years in a San Francisco print shop. She has a master’s degree from Western Washington University in poetry. She also brings experience in social media and marketing to her work at Omnidawn.
Sophia Carr, production editor
A San Francisco native, Sophia Carr graduated summa cum laude from the University of San
Francisco, where she studied English. She has written film, literature, and music reviews for two
publications: the literary magazine Zyzzyva, and the newspaper Washington Square News. Her
experiences at these publications, as well as with composing an award-winning poetry book for
her senior thesis that touched on her childhood experiences and the isolation of the pandemic,
ignited her interest in editorial work and the publishing industry. She hopes to utilize her career
to focus on bringing more social justice centered books into the world. Prior to being
Omnidawn’s production editor, she worked on our social media team.
Omnidawn was begun by Rusty Morrison and Kenneth Keegan in 2001. Before his death from cancer in October 2022, Ken Keegan & Rusty Morrison appointed Laura Joakimson to take on Ken Keegan’s role as Omnidawn’s Executive Director.
Anthony Cody, poetry editor
Anthony Cody is the author of The Rendering (Omnidawn, 2023), and Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn, 2020), winner of the 2018 Omnidawn Open Book Prize. His debut book won a 2021 American Book Award and 2020 Southwest Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, PEN America / Jean Stein Award, L.A. Times Book Award, and the California Book Award. He is a CantoMundo fellow from Fresno, CA with lineage in the Bracero Program and Dust Bowl. Anthony collaborates with Juan Felipe Herrera’s Laureate Lab Visual Wordist Studio, serves as a poetry editor for Noemi Press and Omnidawn.
Liza Flum, poetry editor
Liza Flum holds an MFA in poetry from Cornell, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2020, AGNI, Narrative, Meridian, Washington Square Review, Lambda Literary, and Zócalo Public Square. She is a recipient of a Barbara Deming individual artist grant, and her writing has been supported by fellowships from the Saltonstall Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, Aspen Summer Words, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She is currently a PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah.
Kimberly Reyes, poetry editor
Kimberly Reyes, is the author of the upcoming poetry collection Nebraska (Omnidawn 2025), and of the collections vanishing point. (Omnidawn 2023), Running to Stand Still (Omnidawn 2019), finalist for the 2020 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, and for Civil Coping Mechanisms’ 2017 Mainline Competition, and Warning Coloration (dancing girl press 2018), finalist for the Two Sylvias Press 2017 Chapbook Competition. Kimberly Reyes’ nonfiction book of essays Life During Wartime (Fourteen Hills 2019) won the 2018 Michael Rubin Book Award. Reyes’ work is featured in various international outlets including The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly, Time.com, The New York Post, The Village Voice, Alternative Press, ESPN the Magazine, Film Ireland, The Irish Examiner, Poetry London, Poetry Ireland, RTÉ Radio, NY1 News, The Irish Journal of American Studies, The Best American Poetry blog, poets.org, American Poets Magazine, The Feminist Wire, and The Stinging Fly. Kimberly Reyes has received fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, the Fulbright Program, CantoMundo, Callaloo, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Tin House Workshops, the Irish Arts Council, Culture Ireland, the Munster Literature Centre, the Prague Summer Program for Writers, Summer Literary Seminars in Kenya, the Community of Writers, and other places. Reyes is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in English (poetry) at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
Sharon Zetter, poetry editor
Sharon Zetter is a writer, editor, and artist living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work has appeared in Dusie, NOÖ Journal, Aurochs, Greenbelt Review, Calaveras, Monday Night, Shampoo, Soft Skull and Blood Pudding Press among others. She runs Called Back Books with the poet LM Rivera and serves as a poetry editor for Omnidawn Publishing.
Rob Hendricks, poetry editor, post-pub contest editor
Rob Hendricks is the author of OPPRESSORFACE (Fourteen Hills, 2019). Recent poems can also be found in The Ana and Transfer Magazine.
Jeffrey Kingman, copy editor
Jeffrey Kingman’s poetry collection, BEYOND THAT HILL I GATHER, was published by Finishing Line Press in June of 2021. His poetry chapbook, ON A ROAD, was published by Finishing Line Press in December of 2019. He is the winner of the Red Berry Editions 2015 Broadside Contest, the winner of the 2018 Eyelands Book Award (Greece) for an unpublished poetry book, a finalist in the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk Prize poetry book competition, and he received honorable mention in the 2017 Quercus Review Press Fall Poetry Book Award. He has poems published in PANK, Clackamas Literary Review, Crack the Spine, Visitant, and others. Jeff has a Master’s degree in Music Composition and has been playing drums in rock bands most of his life.
Jennifer Metsker, marketing for rusty forwards
Jennifer Metsker’s is the author of the poetry collection Hypergraphia and Other Failed Attempts at Paradise from New Issues Press. Her poetry has appeared in Beloit, Rhino, Birdfeast, Gulf Coast, The Cream City Review and other journals. Her audio poetry has been featured on the BBC Radio’s Short Cuts. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she is the Writing Coordinator at the Stamps School of Art and Design.