Christine Drawl
Executive Director & Design
Christine Drawl joined Passager as a graduate student intern in 2015, learning everything about publishing (and Passager) from the bottom up. Now a fiction writer and designer, she has since received her MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore. Her book of short stories, Grandmother Tree, was a 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist. Having grown up in small-town Ohio, raised on her grandmother’s stories, she recognizes the significance of passing your story on—a remarkable process she gets to witness at Passager again and again. Christine spends much of her non-Passager time “reviving” the 1890s house where she, her musical husband and their young daughter, live.
Rosanne Singer
Editor-in-Chief
Rosanne joined the Passager staff in 2019 and learned first-hand what goes on behind the scenes at a small press. And not just any small press, but Passager, where she has been part of the careful and loving process of reading and choosing material for the twice-yearly journals and individual collections. Rosanne spent 25 years as a teaching artist in the Maryland schools and was part of small arts teams working with wounded warriors and their families at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and with pediatric patients at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC. In May 2025 she completed an MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts at University of Baltimore and produced a collection of her poetry titled Home Theater. Poetry and memoir work of hers appears in Allium, Grist, The Baltimore Fishbowl and Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine.
Mary Azrael
Senior Editor
Mary Azrael, Passager editor for over thirty years, said, “I’ve come to know remarkable people, ages 50 to 103, through their poems, stories, memoirs, and letters. What they say continues to surprise me and enrich my life.” Author of four books of poetry and the libretto for Lost Childhood, an opera, she has led poetry workshops for people ages 8-80 through Maryland’s Poets in the Schools and the Johns Hopkins Odyssey (continuing studies) program. As a Feldenkrais practitioner, she guides people through lessons to improve flexibility of movement and thinking. Words that make her heart leap up: bird, puppet, book, boots, post office. She loves finding real letters in her mailbox. Born in 1943, she is the oldest Passager staff member.
Asher Ruck
Managing Editor
Asher Ruck joined the Passager team as the Managing Editor in the Fall of 2025 through the Barbara Appell MFA Fellowship at the University of Baltimore, where they are currently a first-year student in the Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program. At UBalt, they are a fiction writer, writing realistic short stories and flash fiction, but they also write biographies of living people and one-act plays. In their work, Asher explores interpersonal relationships, mental health, queer identities, and interactions between strangers. Outside of writing, Asher works as a direct support professional for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and is a passionate volunteer for Camp Lilac, a summer camp in Ohio for transgender and gender-diverse teenagers.
Jon Shorr
Podcast Producer
Growing up, Jon Shorr loved listening to radio drama, the “theatre of the mind.” He still does. Over the course of his career, along with teaching high school and college, he’s hosted a late night “classic” poetry show on Baltimore’s big band radio station and written and produced audio and video documentaries. Now that he’s retired (and, ironically, wearing hearing aids), he spends a lot of his time writing short stories and essays, writing and producing Passager’s weekly podcast Burning Bright, and looking for ways to bring more attention to Passager’s mission of publishing work by older writers.
Guest Readers
2025 Poetry Contest
John Biggs
Pat Brown
Joyce Stevens Brown
Niki Leopold
David Pickering
Joel Savishinsky
Joyce Schmid