Joshua Lew McDermott is a Pittsburgher who originally grew up in Idaho and Utah. His first full poetry collection, Codex, was released in August, 2019 by Hand to Mouth Books, the latest publishing outfit of legendary Berkeley poet and publisher Charles Potts.

McDermott is the co-founder of the new small press/poetry website Line Rider Press, along with his twin sister and fellow poet Jessica Colleen McDermott. Line Rider launched in June 2019. The site spotlights a different poem/poet weekly and also publishes cultural commentary and essays. The press’s inaugural print publication We’re Dancing like Planets Now: The Selected Poems of M. Tyler Esplin is coming out in August, 2019.

McDermott is also a sociologist and activist who has been published by Jacobin Magazine online, the Hampton Institute, and in academic journals. He is the president of the African Socialist Movement International Support Committee, an organization which promotes equality, press freedoms, and democracy in the Mano River Region of West Africa. He is also the co-editor for Africanist Press, a progressive news and print publisher based in Sierra Leone.