Sonja Mongar is the author of Two Spoons of Bitter – a winner of the 2019 Royal Palm Literary Award from the Florida Writers Association – fiction based on Mongar’s time in Jacksonville. Journalist, memoirist, songwriter and blues harmonica player, she is a retired professor of English (University of Puerto Rico) where she specialized in creative writing. She currently teaches in the Western Connecticut State Low Residency MFA in Creative & Professional Writing. Her current project is Riders of the Dust – a 1920s Western screenplay inspired by her fierce Montana grandmothers. JaxbyJax is delighted to welcome Sonja to read at JaxbyJax.

JaxbyJax Literary Arts Festival VII is a celebration of Jacksonville Writers Writing Jacksonville. Generous sponsors include Baptist Health, Chamblins Uptown & Bookmine, Delegal & Poindexter, PA; Scribbles, and Brad Kuhn & Associates, LLC.

The 2020 festival will take the form of a documentary video, with watch parties at noon on Saturday, October 17th and 7 p.m. on Sunday, October 18th. For details, see jaxbyjax.com.

Tayve Neese’s work has appeared in journals and anthologies around the United States and abroad including The Paris Review (online edition), Comstock Review, Fourteen Hills, and diode. She was longlisted for the 2019 University of Canberra Vice Chancellor\’s International Poetry Prize in Australia. Her full-length collection of poems, Blood to Fruit, was published in 2015. Locust, her second collection of poems, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in Ireland. She is Co-founder and Co-executive Editor of Trio House Press and is Primary Editor of The Banyan Review, an international, online journal. Neese currently resides on a barrier island off the coast of Florida.

JaxbyJax Literary Arts Festival VII is a celebration of Jacksonville Writers Writing Jacksonville. Generous sponsors include Baptist Health, Chamblins Uptown & Bookmine, Delegal & Poindexter, PA; Scribbles, and Brad Kuhn & Associates, LLC.

The 2020 festival will take the form of a documentary video, with watch parties at noon on Saturday, October 17th and 7 p.m. on Sunday, October 18th. For details, see jaxbyjax.com.

JaxbyJax is proud to announce the student writers who will read their work in the documentary video for 2020.

Hannah Glaser

Shaun McCurdy

Mr. DoGood

Trinity Jones

Summer Carrier

(directed by Tiffany Melanson)

Su Ertekin-Taner

JaxbyJax Literary Arts Festival VII is a celebration of Jacksonville Writers Writing Jacksonville. Generous sponsors include Baptist Health, Chamblins Uptown & Bookmine, Delegal & Poindexter, PA; Scribbles, and Brad Kuhn & Associates, LLC.

The 2020 festival will take the form of a documentary video, with watch parties at noon on Saturday, October 17th and 7 p.m. on Sunday, October 18th. For details, see jaxbyjax.com.

Thomas Ferriello is a graduate of the University of North Florida where he studied English and creative writing. His work has appeared in Bending Genres, The Talon Review, and is forthcoming in Quarterly West. He reads, writes, and attempts to play the piano so people will think he is cultured. It’s yet to work. He co-hosts the literature loving podcast, Alive Poets Society, with two much smarter and funnier people.