Kakalak Anthology of Poets & Artists

Mary Alice Dixon

Photo by Julia Fay Photography

Mary Alice Dixon, born in Appalachian coal dust, raised in Carolina red clay, is a multiple Pushcart nominee who grows sunflowers in cow manure. She has worked as a professor of architectural and landscape history and as an advocate for abused children and unhoused families. Her writings, including the poems in her chapbook, Snakeberry Mamas: Words from the Wild (Charlotte Lit Press, 2025), rise from her love of the Appalachian wild coupled with the granny magic she learned as child. Mary Alice’s mountain granny, a blind seamstress, taught Mary Alice hope in the healing of earth held in the mysteries of plants, chants, and places.

These mysteries move Mary Alice to build small altars of the broken—fallen feathers, twigs, dead leaves. Sometimes she adds wishbones on which she tries to draw wings. Next she writes the word “HOPE” on small stones she places at the altars’ feet. Then she listens for the voices of our wounded Mother Earth. From these rituals come poems and stories as well as the design of the Grief Writing and Collage Workshops she leads for hospice and other groups. These workshops include nature walks, found poems, and plenty of her homemade gingerbread.

Mary Alice is a winner of both the Poetry Society of SC John Edward Johnson Prize and the North Carolina Writers’ Network Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition. She has also been a finalist for the NC Poetry Society Poet Laureate Award, the Broad River Rash Award in Poetry, the NC Writers Network Doris Betts Fiction Prize, the Lit/South Fiction Award, and shortlisted for the Anthology (Ireland) Poetry Competition Award, among other accolades.

Mary Alice’s work appears in numerous venues, including Appalachian Places, Braided Way, Cathexis Northwest, Common Threads, County Lines, Fourth River, Gyroscope Review, Heron Tree, Kakalak, Litmosphere, The Main Street Rag, moonShine review, Mythic Circle, North Coast Voices, Northern Appalachian Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Passager, Persimmon Tree, Petigru Review, Pinesong, Plant People, Please See Me, Poetry in Plain Site Posters, Poets for Science, Skeleton Flowers, Soul Forte, Stonecoast Review, storySouth, and Swing.

Mary Alice is deeply honored to be a part of the Kakalak team and moved by Kakalak’s history as a landscape of hope. Find more about Mary Alice in The Authors Guild and Poets&Writers directories as well as at www.maryalicedixon.com.

Kimberlyn
Blum-Hyclak

Kimberlyn Blum-Hyclak makes her home and writes in Lancaster, SC, but her Midwest roots still burrow deep. Small-town life and nature are most often the subjects of her poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction, but sometimes family and grands find a place, too.

Kim is the author of the poetry collection, In the Garden of Life and Death: A Mother and Daughter Walk (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2014) and the author of St. Anne Catholic Church: A Century of Faith, the compilation of her parish’s 100-year history. A Pushcart Award nominee, Kim’s work has appeared in moonShine review, Iodine, Kakalak, and other anthologies,, including the inaugural issue of Northcoast Voices where “Middle Age in the Millennium” was an Editor’s Choice.. In 2021, her poem “Cycling” was included in Crossing the Rift: North Carolina Poets Respond to 9/11. Her poems, “Quilting” and “Middle Age in the Millennium,” each received an Honorable Mention in the 2025 SC Poetry Society spring contest, and she recently completed a full collection of poetry with three other women, her Poet Sisters, which they hope will find a home later this year.

She has organized and participated in three exhibits of ekphrastic poetry and the art that inspired it for the Lancaster County Council of the Arts, and is an artist for the LCCA’s Creative Tuesdays program, in which she leads writing workshops. For ten years, she emceed a monthly reading and open mic, Afternoon of Poetry and Prose, in Rock Hill, SC. Kim previously served on the SCWA (formerly SCWW) Board and the first Rock Hill Poet Laureate selection committee.

When not writing, Kim can be found reading, playing in the dirt (gardening) or with her grands, or traveling with her hubby. In 2024, she completed her dream of walking El Camino, a 477-mile pilgrimage across
Spain, from Pamplona to Santiago. Visit her blog,
where she opens her window to writing, nature,
and other observations each Monday: www.awriterswindow.wordpress.com. 

Kim’s excited to once again be part of the Kakalak editorial team.