Allison King is an Asian American writer and software engineer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In technology, her work has ranged from semiconductors to platforms for community conversations to data privacy. Her short stories have appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Diabolical Plots, and LeVar Burton Reads, among others. The Phoenix Pencil Company, a Reese's Book Club pick, is her first novel.

*photo by Jimmy Zeng

Hope For Rain is an Indie rock band featuring singer Bradley Lynch, guitarist Alex Clegg, and drummer Andy Pagan. Though a young band, they have already recorded 8 singles and 2 EPs and have over 150k streams on Spotify. They have been working on a new EP at Q Division, where Earfull’s Jon Lupfer heard them and asked them to take part in our June series...because, well, he thinks they're good!

*photo by Megan Clegg

Lauren Acampora is the author of The Wonder Garden, The Paper Wasp, and The Hundred Waters. Her work has won or been nominated for the GLCA New Writers Award, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the Story Prize, and the New England Book Award, and she’s been named an Artist Fellow in Fiction by The New York Foundation for the Arts. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, One Story, New England Review, Missouri Review, Guernica, Story, and The Common. The story “Dominion,” from The Animal Room, has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2025.

*photo by Thomas Doyle

The Franc Graham Band is a sound all their own: groove and grit, poetry without pretense–or what a beloved Irish fan called “hillbilly hip.” They’re riding the wave of last year’s single, “Boston,” a love letter to the city they’ve low-rocked since the ‘90s. Steve Morse of The Boston Globe declared them “immensely underrated, cool and commanding.” They’ve shared the stage with icons like Odetta and Lucinda Williams, who dubbed herself “a Franc Graham convert.” The band is stacked with greats -- Chris Rival, Richard Gates, and Tauras Biskis -- and their many albums are graced by legends like Jay Bellerose, Billy Conway, Jerome Deupree, and Paul Bryon -- coming together to create music that remains timeless.