Jeanni Ritchie
Jeanni Ritchie is a freelance journalist and author from Alexandria, Louisiana. A former educator, she is a graduate of Bolton High School and LSU. She has four grown children. Her love of teaching and all things juvenile spurred her to get a Master’s Degree in Education while living in Oklahoma.
Promoting mental health positivity, heritage preservation, and equal rights for all citizens, she strives to use her voice for change. Writing from the intersection of community, faith, and pop culture, she is also a Tiktok creator and can be found at tiktok.com/@jeanniritchie. She is a lifelong theatre fan, pizza aficionado, arts- in-education supporter, and perennial Peter Pan. If she’s not at her desk writing, she’s likely on a playground swing or crossing something off her bucket list.
Lafe Jones
Lafe Jones is the Vice President of Louisiana Central, the regional economic development organization for the 10-parish central Louisiana region. He brings more than 35 years of business planning, marketing, and management experience to the organization.
Lafe Jones grew up in Avoyelles Parish and later attended LSU of Alexandria before transferring to LSU-Baton Rouge where he earned his Bachelor's Degree in mass communication. He earned an Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) in 1997 and was named a Senior Practitioner of the Southern Public Relations Federation in 1998. He also won the Public Relations Association of Louisiana (PRAL) state Professional Achievement Award that same year. Jones is an avid country music fan, enjoys great art, theater, literature, and movies, and is married to Evelyn Jones. They live in Alexandria and have two grown children and two granddaughters.
Kate Hodnett
Kate Hodnett is a Cenla native and an LSUA alumni. She has had nonfiction short stories published 4 separate times in the National Best-Selling Book Series "Chicken Soup for the Soul." She was voted as one of Louisiana's Best Emerging Poets for 2 consecutive years through ZPublishing House.
F.E. Sterling
After 35+ years working in the Mental-Health field, as a MS Behaviorist-Psychologist, F. E. Sterling threw in the towel and retired. During those rewarding years, most every word he put to the page was, by necessity, scientifically based—until another necessity required that he employ a different language to address what Behaviorists rarely talk about the inner workings of the “black box”. Since then, he’s had works published in New Voices In Poetry and Prose, Mobius, The Lyric, The Road Not Taken and Louisiana Review.
Mary F. Striegel
Mary F. Striegel is a retired art conservation scientist from the National Park Service. Since the age of seven, Mary has written and performed poetry. She was part of the Los Angeles Poetry Ensemble from 1989 to 1995 with Ann Braeff, Ellyn Maybe, Gwynne Garfinkle, and Christa Polkinhorn.
Richard Moriarty
Richard Moriarty is 86 years old, still working every day, as a manager for the same employer with whom he has been employed for now going on 65 years. [The oldest tenured employee in the history of the firm.
He has been awarded every honor that a person could possibly achieve in business: Who’s Who in Government, Who’s Who in Finance & Industry, Who’s Who in America, the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award [with special citation], and twice received the Charles Dunbar Public Service Award, as well as the Service Above Self award from the Lecompte Rotary Club. In addition, elected the Senior Warden of St. James Episcopal Church in Alexandria.
Billy K. Craig
Billy K. Craig is a lifelong resident of Rapides Parish, living between Pineville and Kolin. He started writing poetry and songs around the age of 15. He also dabbled in art, painting, and drawing and ended up detailing steel (drafting structural steel for commercial buildings).
His current influences are Billy Collins, Kay Ryan, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Charles Butkowski. His older influences are Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Percy Bysshe Shelly, and Robert Frost.
