Lightscatter Press Board of Directors
Danielle Susi is the author of the chapbook The Month in Which We Are Born (dancing girl press, 2015). Her writing has appeared in Knee-Jerk Magazine, Hobart, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She received her MFA in writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is the founder and former editor of HOUND literary journal. Her full-length manuscript A River Always Ends at a Mouth, has been selected as a semi-finalist for both the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize at Persea Books and the Hudson Prize at Black Lawrence Press. Additionally, she is an award-winning journalist, having received an Excellence in Political Journalism Award from The Washington Center and a shared National Mark of Excellence Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Katherine Allred (Vice President) is an anatomically modern human who roams the Great Basin and makes her home in the Wasatch foothills. She shares her habitat with four human offspring, three canines, two serpents, and one adult human partner. Allred enjoys using sophisticated writing technologies and making meaning and culture with members of her community. She also works as an instructional designer and passionately practices agrarian activities such as knitting, weaving, baking, gardening, and traditional mending techniques. Allred is the author of the chapbook Light Passes Through (SLCC PS Press 2016) and has had essays published in the anthology collection Baring Witness and the Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Issues and Media. She won first place in the Best Feature Story collegiate category from the Utah Press Association in 2016 and was the Writers@Work annual conference undergraduate scholarship recipient that same year. She was Literary and Managing editor of Folio Literary and Arts Magazine 2014-2015. Allred graduated from the University of Utah with a BS in Writing and Rhetoric Studies in 2019. Allred has no chill and never will.
Natalie Young (President) is a founding editor for the independent poetry magazine Sugar House Review. She has worked as a graphic designer for around 15 years, and is currently an art director for an ad agency based in Salt Lake City, though she lives in Cedar City with her husband Nano Taggart and their two dogs. Natalie received her BFA in art from Utah State University and her MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. Her own poetry has been published in Los Angeles Times, South Dakota Review, Tampa Review, Green Mountains Review, Terrain.org, and others. Natalie is left-handed, half Puerto Rican, and a fan of Dolly Parton and mustard.
Tacey Atsitty, Diné (Navajo), is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta'neeszahnii (Tangle People). She was born in Logan, UT, grew up in Kirtland, NM but is originally from Cove, AZ. Atsitty is a recipient of the Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship, the Corson-Browning Poetry Prize, Morning Star Creative Writing Award, and the Philip Freund Prize. She holds bachelor’s degrees from Brigham Young University and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY, EPOCH, Kenyon Review Online, Prairie Schooner, Crazyhorse, New Poets of Native Nations, and other publications. Her first book is Rain Scald (University of New Mexico Press, 2018). In addition to serving on Board for Lightscatter Press, she is the director of the Navajo Film Festival, Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for the Urban Indian Center of Salt Lake, a member of Advisory Council for BYU’s Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, coordinates the Native American Program and organizes the Intermountain All-Women Hoop Dance Competition at This is the Place Heritage Park.
Ben Gunsberg’s poetry appears in Poetry Daily, DIAGRAM, and Mid-American Review, among other magazines. He is the author of the poetry collection Welcome, Dangerous Life (Turning Point, 2018) and the chapbook Rhapsodies with Portraits (Finishing Line, 2015). His writing has won awards from the University of Michigan Hopwood Center and the Utah Division of Arts and Museums, and he has been a finalist or semifinalist for several book contests, including the University of Wisconsin’s Brittingham and Pollack prizes and The Georgia Prize. He lives in Logan, Utah, and teaches English at Utah State University, where he directs the Graduate Specialization in Creative Writing. He moonlights as the Multi-medium Editor for Sugar House Review.
Lisa Bickmore (Publisher) is the author of three books of poems: Haste
(Signature Books, 1994), flicker, winner of the 2014 Antivenom Prize from
Elixir Press, and Ephemerist (Red Mountain Press, 2017). Her poems and video work have been published in Tar River Poetry, Sugar House Review, SouthWord, Hunger Mountain Review, Terrain.org, Quarterly West, The Moth, MappingSLC.org and elsewhere. In 2015, her poem 'Eidolon' was awarded the Ballymaloe International Poetry Award. She is Professor Emeritus of English at Salt Lake Community College, where she was the recipient of the SLCC Foundation Teaching Excellence Award in 2006. At SLCC, she taught writing of all sorts, as well as publication studies, and is one of the founders of the SLCC Publication Center. In the summer of 2022, she was named Utah's Poet Laureate by Governor Spencer J. Cox.
