The Vessels of Light Team
Alexis Leigh Ragan
Founder & Editor in Chief
Alexis Leigh Ragan is a deep-image poet fascinated by epiphanic shifts, or as she delights to think of it, a literary vessel for Christ’s light to dwell, convinced that the creative arts serve as a powerful window of worship that leads humanity back to the beauty of God’s heart. She created the literary journal,Vessels of Light, to live as a virtual lighthouse holding literary vessels that shine for the Lord. She was chosen as a Harriet Williams Emerging Writer for 2026 and received the Mary Purcell Beach Scholarship for the best written essay in 17th-18th century studies. Alexis has been published in places such as The Ekphrastic Review, Rip-Rap, Ekstasis ( now Inkwell), Calla Press, Alabaster Co, Heart of Flesh,The Way Back To Ourselves, and Christianity Today. She holds an MFA in poetry at California State University Long Beach. Her debut poetry collection, Fortress, released this summer 2026. You can find it on places such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Since grad school, she had begun the journey of being an English professor.
Courtney Moody
Lead Editor
Courtney Moody is a Tampa-based writer and poet. Her work has appeared across various publications, including MANTIS, Red Flag Press, Inkwell (formerly Ekstasis Magazine), and Brain Mill Press’ British Science Fiction Association Award-nominated anthology, Ab Terra 2024. In 2022, her poem “Florida Anatomy” was awarded 2nd place for the Florida State Poet’s Association Award, and in 2024, she was invited to contribute to Christianity Today’s Advent devotional, A Time for Wonder. She is passionate about cultivating the light of Christ in the literary landscape and is thrilled to be part of the vision of Vessels of Light.
Emma McCoy
Operations Editor
Emma McCoy (M.A) has two poetry books: This Voice Has an Echo (2024) and In Case I Live Forever (2022). She has been published in places like Across the Margin, Stirring Literary, and Thimble Mag. She reads for Chestnut Review and Whale Road Review. She’s probably working on her novel right now. Catch her on Substack: https://poetrybyemma.substack.com/
Gabrielle Johnson
Lead Image Visionary
Gabrielle Johnson, owner of Chasing Horizons Photography, specializes in branding and creative lifestyle portraits. With a rich blend of educational and artistic experience, she brings depth and vision to her work with Vessels of Light, and as a mission and faith-driven artist herself, she finds perfect harmony in working alongside this literary journal. Her photographs are foundational in visually portraying the messages present in the Lit-House and beyond. She is delighted to be a part of the team and the vision moving forward!
Stephanie Hanno
Assistant Image Visionary
Grace Cultivar
Lead Spanish Poetry Editor & Translator
Stephanie Hanno is a wedding and fine art photographer with a natural, storytelling approach. She loves capturing real, unposed moments that feel honest and timeless. Rooted in her Syriac Orthodox Christian faith, Stephanie is inspired by tradition, family, and the beauty found in everyday life. Her work is all about preserving genuine emotions with both artistry and heart.
Grace Cultivar is a writer and mixed-media artist based in Florida. She has created visual media about Puerto Rican history for the forthcoming documentary Bajari and about the diasporic experience for the forthcoming stage play Jayuya Forever. Her writing similarly centers on cultural belonging, generational family history, and the quest for heaven. When she’s not cooking for her husband and children, she is working on her novel and a series of paintings that highlight the traditions of her heritage. You can find Grace's bilingual poetry at Vessels of Light, where she serves as Spanish translator and assistant editor.
Jacqueline Cleaveland
Fiction Editor & Assistant French Editor of Poetry
Jacqueline Cleaveland is a writer, poet, and historical journalist born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Her poetry has been featured in publications such as Ekstasis, As Surely As the Sun, and Beatnik Cowboy with a recent short story publication in Vessels of Light’s glimmering summer issue Message in a Bottle. Her love for French language began as a young girl, a passion which she studied throughout college. She began her writing career at age seventeen, authoring magazine features on the 20th-century history of the cities such as Hidden Hills and Calabasas. When she isn’t writing or walking on dirt trails thinking about her novel, you can find her playing the piano, working her way through Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, or riding horses Western-style throughout the Simi Hills.
Yannick Imbert
Guest French Editor & Translator
Yannick Imbert teaches theology at Faculté Jean Calvin in the lovely town of Aix-en-Provence in southern France. He has published books at the intersection of theology and culture, including on transhumanism. He is a passionate Tolkien scholar and published a book on Tolkien's imagination and faith, From Imagination to Faërie: Tolkien's Thomist Fantasy. He has recently rediscovered his deep love for poetry and began publishing a few pieces in Ekstasis, Pensive, Macrina, or Foreshadow. He writes in French at delagracedansencrier.com. He is looking forward to dedicate more time to his love of poetry as guest French editor at Vessels of Light!
Georgina Wells
Illustrator & Poetry Reader
Georgie is a Poet, Illustrator and Creative Writing Mentor, with an English Literature degree. Her Christian faith is deeply infused in her writing and she adores encouraging others to spill from the soul and write. She thoroughly enjoys experimenting with form and curating eclectic collages, economizing words to excavate impact; allowing new meaning to marinate. Self-expression in tandem with the Holy Spirit, as Jesus inspires all that Georgie writes.
The Story of How Vessels of Light Began:
While studying English Creative Writing at California State Long Beach, a seed was planted in my heart to create a space where the light of the Lord could be illuminated within Scripture-inspired creative literature, namely within the art of poetry. This all started when I began to walking through the Gospel of John for the first time, ( a profound book in the Bible drenched with significant text of light and darkness ) while I was studying the contemporary poets of America.
In class, I was continuously fascinated by how often the symbol of light was portrayed in poems grappling with the darkness of humanity. Every day, I sat there stunned as I listened to the internal groans and seeking of poets who coped with a broken world in need of Jesus, realized or not, often evident in the lack of light that trickled between the lines — and then in other poems, in various ways, it became so clear that God’s character was revealed through the presence of light, whether it be explicitly or metaphorically represented; simply put, an epiphany struck me.
I have always been amazed with the powerful essence of light in the Bible. How Jesus Christ is both the true “light of the world” ( John 8:12) and then describes us as diligent lights who shine in reflection of Him ( Matthew 5:16). This relationship, as we see, is intimately two-fold, for to become a “vessel of light” we are first filled with the flame of the Holy Spirit, a miracle igniting at belief and forever burning in faith. Hence, the inspiration of this literary lighthouse derives itself from the Biblical significance of a clay crafted vessel, which represents our earthly bodies intricately molded from dust, and the eternal fire burning inside of us, which represents the glorious gleam of Christ’s salvation burning within to then radiate out, into this world.
The more I read both creative literature alongside the veracity of Scripture and wrote poetry of my own, the more I started to see poems as “little vessels of light” of their own, with the ability to carry, within the literary community and beyond, the flame of hope into a shadowed world. As an artist and poet, I longed to share the scintillating connection made between the everlasting Word and literary works that point to the true Light, and desired to create a platform where this mission could be pursued deeply and celebrated creatively by all people.
May we all burn brightly for Christ,
Alexis Leigh