Our annual West Branch reading features recent contributors and new editorial staff members.Mary Kovaleski Byrnes is the author of the poetry collection So Long the Sky (2018). She teaches writing and literature at Emerson College, and is the co-founder of the EmersonWRITES program, a free creative writing program for Boston Public School students.Ji Hyun Joo is a writer raised in San Diego, California and Gyeongi-Do, South Korea. She completed her M.F.A in Fiction at Columbia University, where she is a recipient of the 2020 Felipe P. De Alba Fellowship and a nominee for the Henfield Prize.Alice Liang is the incoming Associate Poetry Editor of West Branch. A poet based in Brooklyn by way of China and Michigan, she received her MFA in poetry from NYU in 2025.Keri Miller is the incoming Associate Fiction Editor of West Branch. She received her MFA from Florida State University and her PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers where she served as associate editor of Mississippi Review.