Mackenzie Polonyi is a Pushcart-Prize-nominated paprika poet, storyteller, educator, and bookseller based in New Jersey. Her debut poetry collection, Post-Volcanic Folk Tales, won The National Poetry Series 2023 and will be published by Akashic Books in December 2024. Her writing may be found or is forthcoming in Barrelhouse Magazine, Crab Creek Review, Palette Poetry, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Tupelo Press, Diode Poetry Journal, Fairy Tale Review, Driftwood Press, Bennington Review, Quarterly West, where she was a finalist for their 2022 Poetry Contest, and elsewhere; furthermore, she was A Public Space 2023 Writing Fellowship finalist. Mackenzie earned her MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Cornell University, where she was a lecturer and a Robert Chasen Memorial Poetry Prize winner.