2026 Retreat Faculty
Poetry Instructor
Ariana Brown
Ariana Brown is a queer Black Mexican American writer and the author of We Are Owed. (Grieveland, 2021) and Sana Sana (Game Over Books, 2020). A national collegiate poetry slam champion, Ariana holds a B.A. in African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies, an M.F.A. in Poetry, and M.S. in Library Science. She lives and works in Houston, TX, where she teaches creative writing to teens. She has been writing, performing, and teaching poetry for over a decade.
Poetry Instructor
Saúl Hernández
Saúl Hernández is a queer writer, who was raised by former undocumented parents. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso. Saúl is a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. His debut poetry collection, How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters, is a 2025 Lambda Literary Award Winner in Gay Poetry, a Texas League of Writers’ Discovery Award Winner, was longlisted for a PEN Open Book Award, and received the Institute of Letters’ honor-winner for First Book of Poetry. He's the winner of both the 2022 Pleiades Prufer Poetry Prize judged by Joy Priest & the 2021 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize judged by Victoria Chang. His poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize & Best of The Net. Saúl’s work is featured in American Poetry Review, Poetry Daily, The Slowdown, Literary Hub, & elsewhere.
Nonfiction Instructor
Camille U. Adams
CAMILLE U. ADAMS, Ph.D. was born and raised in beautiful Trinidad and Tobago. She is the author of the explosive memoir How To Be Unmothered: a Trinidadian memoir, finalist in the Restless Books Prize in New Immigrant Writing 2023. Camille’s memoir writing is
featured in Passages North, Citron Review, XRAY Literary Magazine, Variant Literature, The Forge Literary Magazine, Kweli Magazine, and was awarded Best of the Net 2024 (creative nonfiction). Her other honours include an awarded fellowship as an inaugural Tin House Reading Fellow, an inaugural Granta nature writing workshop fellowship, an inaugural Anaphora Arts Italy Writing Retreat Fellowship, a McKnight Doctoral Fellowship, a Community of Writers Fellowship, A VONA scholarship, and a Roots Wounds Words Fellowship.
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Short Fiction Instructor
Annell López
Annell López is the winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the author of the short story collection I’ll Give You a Reason, a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for best debut short story collection. Named a best short story collection of 2024 by Electric Literature, I’ll Give You a Reason has been longlisted for the Maya Angelou Book Award, the Reforma Latinx Book Award, and shortlisted for the Clark Fiction Prize. Most recently, López was recognized as a Gambit’s 40 under 40. Her work has appeared in Guernica, American Short Fiction, The Common, Brooklyn Rail, Refinery29, and TIME. López received her MFA from the University of New Orleans, where she was awarded the Joanna Leake Fiction Prize. She is working on a novel.
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Novel Instructor
Benedict Nguyễn
Benedict Nguyễn (she/her) is a #freelanceflailing dancer, writer, and creative producer who's taught workshops for AAWW, Tin House, and at Louis Place. She’s danced in recent projects by Sally Silvers, Kris Seto, Monstah Black, among other choreographers, appeared in the short film “Don’t F*ck with Bà” (2024, dir. Sally Tran), and began developing the dance theater work “DEFENSE” with Sugar Vendil in 2025. Her writing on labor and culture has appeared in The Baffler, BOMB Magazine, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Review of Books, and AAWW’s The Margins. A Publishers Weekly 2025 Writer to Watch, Benedict is the author of the [redacted] freelance labor zine nasty notes (2022). Her debut novel Hot Girls with Balls (Catapult 2025) was an ABA Indie Next Pick, an Aardvark Book Club Pick, and a USA Today National Bestseller.
Ariana Brown
Poetry Cohort
Stephen Energia Gifford-Bell
Stephen Energia Gifford-Bell is a white Ecuadorian nerd raised in Florida and residing in Patagonia. He was a DreamYard Project Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium Fellow and holds a BA in poetry from Warren Wilson College, where he received the college’s Levis Prize for his creative thesis. His poems have appeared in Asterales, The Swannanoa Review, HAD, and elsewhere. He’s trying to invite his ghosts to play.
Derek Yen
Derek Yen writes code in the mornings and everything else in the evenings. He owes poetic education to Brooklyn Poets, In Surreal Life, and the McCormack Writing Center. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Apogee Journal, Fourteen Hills, ANMLY, Seventh Wave, Lucky Jefferson, and elsewhere. When not writing, he is a copy editor for the speculative fiction magazine khōréō, and he shares an apartment in Brooklyn with his partner, their dog, and several houseplants. Find him online at derekiswriting.com.
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Jude M. Walker
Jude M. Walker (they/he) is a Trans gender-menace who dreams of the liberated world we are collectively building. Jude is a poet, teacher, community gardener, and Brooklyn Poets fellow (Spring 2026). They are blessed to live in Brooklyn, NY and befriend all the neighborhood cats.
Cindy J. Xie
Cindy J. Xie is an environmental health researcher and storyteller, born and currently based in Los Angeles. She received her master's degree from the MIT Department of Urban Studies & Planning and has worked in Cabo Verde, the Philippines, and Brazil, investigating the impacts of global environmental change on human health. Her poems have been published in Sine Theta Magazine, Anthroposphere Magazine, Climate Storytelling 2075, and MassPoetry, as well as displayed at Boston City Hall and the Queens Council on the Arts. You can find her online at cindyjxie.github.io.
Gabi González
Gabi González (she/they) is a queer poet and fiction writer of Afro-Caribbean ancestry born and raised in New York City. Her work investigates grief, lineage, queerness, and pleasure. Invoking her ancestral legacy, she believes deeply in the end of empire and grounds her writing in struggles for liberation -- past, present, and future. She is currently based in Brooklyn, where she is employed as a social worker.
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Jennifer Castro
Jennifer Yadira Castro is a Dominican American poet from Providence, Rhode Island. Her poetry lives at the intersection of grief, relationships, and identity. She examines mourning as a cultural, spiritual, and communal practice. Jennifer explores the all-consuming, transformative experience of grief and loss, touching every part of our ways of being. After the death of her Papi, Jennifer has learned to witness death in her everyday life. Jennifer’s writing is an anthology of this reckoning.
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Jane Shi
Jane Shi is a poet, writer, and organizer living on the occupied, stolen, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. Her debut poetry collection echolalia echolalia (Brick Books, 2024) was shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. She wants to live in a world where love is not a limited resource, land is not mined, hearts are not filched, and bodies are not violated.
Dannie Ruth
Dannie Ruth is a poet and writer from Washington, D.C. Her work has been published in Toho Journal, Queenzenglish.mp3: (Roof Books, 2020), The Inquisitive Eater, and Solstice Literary Magazine.
Her chapbook, Inside the Orb of an Oracle, is the Summer Chapbook Prize selection (C&R Press, 2019). Ruth earned an MFA in Poetry from The New School, has received support from Catapult, Cave Canem, Torch Literary Arts, and Aspen Words. She is an inaugural cohort member of SeaSalted Honey’s Writing Residency in Senegal, West Africa.
Saúl Hernández
Poetry Cohort
Ruowei Lim
Ruowei Lim (they/she) is a writer-in-progress with roots in Shanghai and Singapore. Their poems have been longlisted for the Lucent Dreaming Poetry Prize, Afterimage Press’ Manuscript Bootcamp, and nominated for Best of the Net. She is a featured reader in Sundress Publications' 2026 Poets in Pajamas series and an alumnus of Granta’s Writing Memoir workshop. They are also a Poetry Reader for The Adroit Journal. Find out more about Ruowei’s work at dialecticofhope.wordpress.com.
Eva Saavedra
Eva Maria Saavedra is a first generation Peruvian-American poet, educator, and single mother born and raised in New Jersey where she currently resides with her son. She received her BA from SUNY Purchase and an MFA in writing and translation from Columbia’s School of the Arts. Her chapbook, Thirst, was selected by Marilyn Hacker for the Poetry Society of America’s 2014 New York Chapbook Fellowship. Her poetry has appeared in Callaloo, The Acentos Review, Apogee Journal, and PANK.
Alex Bortell
Alex Bortell is a Chicago-based poet. He is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. His work appears or is forthcoming in Foglifter, the Mississippi Review, RHINO, Split Lip Magazine, Sundog Lit, and elsewhere.
Jonathan Navas
I am a Salvadoran-American educator from New Jersey and a stay-at-home dad. I live in Bangkok with my family. I hope that by attending the Virtual Summer Retreat I can come away filled with a better understanding of the craft of writing poetry with this wonderful community.
Ellie Celine Labampa
Ellie Celine Labampa (she/her) is a Filipino-American poet who resides in the Bay Area, California. She contemplates the Filipino diaspora through her poetry while also spinning tales about growing up feeling like an outsider, and her obsession with pop culture. Her writing skills are better than her juggling skills, but ask her to juggle and she’ll do it. Her debut BuliLit chapbook, Depressed in Dealer’s Hall was released via Sampaguitas Press in December 2025.
Allison Baldwin
Allison Baldwin holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetic Medicine from Dominican University of California. Her work has been published in the disability pride anthology In Praise of Despair, published by Beyond the Veil Press. She is a columnist for The Poetry Lab and a reader for Only Poems.
Kevin Carson
Kevin Carson is a poet, educator, and immigrant rights activist based in Brooklyn, New York. A Caribbean writer of native heritage, his work explores identity, history, and the undocumented experience. He has received fellowships from Brooklyn Poets, The Watering Hole and The Seventh Wave. His poetry is featured or is forthcoming in the IHRAM Press, Ave Astra, Bloodlust Magazine, Eunoia Review, Lunae Lit Review and elsewhere. He seeks to amplify the diverse voices of his community using poetry as a tool for activism.
Julissa Rodriguez
Julissa Rodríguez is a transdisciplinary artist, cultural worker, community organizer and proud gender expansive queer Boricua/Taíno who comes from a long line of raucous and rebellious women. Their arts facilitation and free expression through percussion, theatre, dance, poetry/spoken word and the visual arts is meant to honor our African, Indigenous, and Queer Ancestors/Trancestors, and activate spaces for community building, kinship and collective thriving. They are an alum of Tin House Summer Workshop ‘24 and VONA ‘24, and have had the pleasure & privilege of being a poetry fellow with Abode Press and Roots.Wounds.Words. in 2025.
Amiel Katz
Amiel Katz (she/her) is a queer poet and historian. Her work is rooted in lived experience and archival research to (re)imagine just futures. Her writing has been supported by Macondo, McCormack Writing Center, Orion Magazine, and Abode Press. You can find her work in Horizon Review, Bat City Review, and on instagram @amiel.katz.
Loren Guay
Loren Maria Guay is a poet and speculative fiction writer. Their debut chapbook, Living Fossils, was awarded the 2025 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize and published by Texas Review Press (2026). Their work has appeared in beestung, ANMLY, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Breakwater Review, and elsewhere, earning nominations for Best Microfictions, Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. They were a 2024 Periplus Fellow. Born in Asunción, Paraguay and adopted to/raised in Brooklyn, Loren is currently a Ph.D. student in English and Education at the University of Michigan.
Valeria Pedraza
Valeria Pedraza is a queer Mexican writer from the Pacific Northwest. Her work has been published in Muzzle Magazine. A McCormack Writing Center Workshop alum, she has received fellowships from Brooklyn Poets and Undocupoets. She lives in New York City.
Camille U. Adams
Nonfiction Cohort
Jay Mercury
Jay Mercury is an artist, comedian, and existential jester. If you asked them to describe their work at the moment, it would be "like looking through a kaleidoscope." Jay's current writing projects explore the complexities of their identity and the way it refracts through this moment in time. Their memoir, brown girl in the rain, explores the multigenerational journey of her family from India to Trinidad to the United States.
Haj Yazdiha
Hajar Yazdiha is a sociologist, writer, and thinker whose world view has been indelibly shaped as a daughter of Iranian refugees and revolutionaries. She writes about the politics of memory and belonging, exploring the forces that bring us together and keep us apart as we work to forge collective futures. Hajar is author of The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement and her public writing has been featured in outlets including The LA Times, Time Magazine, and The Hill. She is also a proud mother to two kids and two cats.
Aileen McGraw
Aileen McGraw (she/they) is a writer and caregiver. After a decade living and working in Seattle, she is now pursuing her MFA in Writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their writing embodies intimacies of fractured and reformed families, the healing power of pain and pleasure, and what we owe each other. Aileen’s work has been supported by The Seventh Wave, shortlisted for CRAFT Literary’s 2025 Memoir Excerpt & Essay Prize, and published in Nautilus, Safe Slut Talk Zine, F News Magazine, and a now-defunct group Tumblr. She lives in Chicago with her identical twin brother.
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mav
mav is a writer, artist, and scholar who blends a deep love for humanity, liberation, and sociology with a commitment to truth-telling. As a fat, disabled person of color, their work illuminates the realities of the world, examining the interconnected struggles and joys that define our shared existence. mav creates to push themselves and others to envision a liberated world.
Q. Qurrat ul ain Raza Abbas
Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas (Q.) is a Pakistani writer and academic. With nearly two decades of experience as an educator and creative practitioner, she has worked across print, performance, and digital storytelling. Her work, nominated for Best of the Net 2026, won the Melanie Hook Creative Nonfiction Award (2025), was runner-up in 2026, and was also runner-up for the Gertrude Claytor Poetry Prize. Her writing appears in Seventh Wave, Jet Fuel Review, and Homescapes, among others. Supported by VONA, Tin House, and Abode, she is currently working on a matrilineal memoir tracing Sufi heritage and lost languages. She holds an MFA from Hollins University and two M.A.s in Literature and Linguistics.
huiyin zhou 徽音
huiyin zhou 徽音 (they/ta/她) is a diasporic bird and ordinary alien shapeshifting in relation to water, body, and land. From dongguan, china and based in durham, NC, they take photos, create exhibits, sing and write. huiyin co-directs the Chinese Artists and Organizers (CAO) Collective离离草, curates at NorthStar Church of the Arts, and dreams from Queen Street Magic Boat.
huiyin has been awarded residencies at Pedantic Arts (PA), The Luminary (MO), BRIClab (NY), Vox Populi (PA), and School of the Alternative (NC). Their work has been published by Homie House Press, Massachusetts Review, positions: asia critique, Cha, Sine Theta Magazine, The Seventh Wave, Scholar & Feminist Online, and more.
Raesin Caine
Raesin Caine (she/her) is a Black, queer, and autistic writer from Chicago. She was a 2025 Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ+ Voices Fellow and attended the 2026 McCormack Writing Center Winter Online Workshop (formerly Tin House Workshop) for creative nonfiction. When not analyzing data as an overdose surveillance epidemiologist, Raesin enjoys solving puzzles from the New York Times Games package, visiting her local conservatory, and knitting. She lives in Massachusetts with her wife, several plants, and miles of yarn.
Christina Lee
Christina Lee (she/they) is a disabled and chronically ill Korean writer hibernating on Lenape land (Brooklyn) with her partner and senior rescue dog. She has been awarded fellowships from the Unexpected Shape Writing Academy and VONA, and is an alum of the McCormack Writing Center Workshop. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Turning Leaf Journal, 8ball, New Menard Press and more. Find her editing creative nonfiction with WE THE SOIL, or at christinaylee.net
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Ashley Espinoza
Ashley Espinoza is a Latina writer living in rural Colorado. She received her MFA from the University of Nebraska. Her work has been published in The New York Times Tiny Love Story, Business Insider, Blood Orange Review, Assay, Brevity’s Blog, The Forge, Reckon Review and JMWW among other journals. She is a 2025 Periplus Fellow and a Tin House Workshop alum. She is writing a memoir about growing up with a teen mom, and about becoming a single mother.
Nicole J. Evans Somerville
Nicole J. Evans (she/her) is a Black woman, born and reared in Los Angeles who writes poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. 2024 James Kirkwood Prize nominee with poetry being published in an upcoming FlowerSong Press anthology and a Blacklandia/Inlandia Books anthology. Pre-Matriarch, future Ancestor, Black sheep, vision alchemist, generational curse breaker, generational blessing manifestor, dream catcher, tale weaver, aspiring griot, empath, latent gardener, inherent inherited beautician, poet by heart, writer by revelation, and singer of her own songs.
IG @itsnicolejeanine
Giselle Reid
Giselle Reid, a Jamaican-born writer, culturalist, and immigration lawyer raised between New York City and Costa Rica, holds a JD from Georgia State (1999), an MPA from Walden (2009), an MAPW in creative writing from Kennesaw State (2021), and a BS in Intercultural Relations from Lesley (1995). Her publications include Shelter In Place and THR Interview Series: Garrard Conley (The Headlight Review), Public Policy, Social Change, and the Ethics Triangle (Journal of Social Change), The Legacy of Colonialism (Touro International Law Review), and My Daddy Broke My Heart (The Jamaican Gleaner). Her work bridges law, culture, and personal narrative.
Ahalia Persaud
Ahalia Persaud is an Indo-Guyanese writer born in Queens and raised in Brooklyn whose work explores relationship dynamics, identity and diaspora politics. She was in the 2025 cohort of SOUNDTYPE Music Writers Residency at Asian Arts Initiative. Her practice has been supported by other workshops and organizations from the Lewis Latimer House Museum, NY Writers Coalition, Sackett Street Writers.
Ahalia is currently working as an arts administrator, community advocate and her family’s archivist. If she’s not blasting music through her car stereo, she’s reading a book while riding the MTA. She is an MFA writing school dropout.
Annell López
Short Fiction Cohort
Lauren Grey
Lauren Grey is a copywriter and has an MFA in creative writing from the University of New Orleans. She writes fiction and particularly enjoys magical realism and horror.
Sasha Charlemagne
Sasha Charlemagne (she/they) is a writer and researcher with a background in publishing and cultural criticism. Her creative and academic work focuses on the history of Black lesbian identity and sisterhoods in publishing, working to create tangible evidence of their lives, their art, and the conversations most important to their histories through short stories, artist books, zines, and similar short-form works. She received her BA at Howard University before completing a Master’s in Media Studies at Pace University.
Henrick Karoliszyn
Henrick Karoliszyn is a New Orleans-based writer. His fiction was published in the 2025 Hemingway Shorts literary anthology, shortlisted twice for The Letter Review Prize, a finalist for the 2026 Ellis Prize for Fiction and the Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Prize, and named winner of the 2025 Breakwater Fiction Contest. His work has also been featured in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, FOLIO Literary Journal, Superlative Literary Journal along with upcoming issues of New Ohio Review, and the Threepenny Review.
Blake HC Mihm
Blake HC Mihm lives in southwestern Virginia with his two dogs. His work has been featured in Lilac Peril, BULL, Dishsoap Quarterly, OUCH! Collective and is upcoming in West Trade Review. He was selected as one of the poets for DC Pride Poems 2024. You can read more of his writing at blakehc.wordpress.com.
Casper Falls
Casper E. Falls (he/fae) is a transmasc story ghost with mostly good intentions. When he isn’t busy fighting the follies of a mortal body or writing worlds that make more sense than this one, fae loves buddy reading with faer wife, cheating death in TTRPG games, and swooning over emotionally unavailable video game characters. His passion for queer, intersectional Disability Justice is reflected in his work, which has appeared in ARTIFICE & ACCESS, REVERENT, THERE’S A HAINT IN THAT THERE HOLLER, and other publications. Looking for him? Follow the trail of cats! (Or go to linktr.ee/casperfalls)
Adialyz Del Valle Berríos
Adialyz Del Valle Berríos is a Queer Puerto Rican based in Orlando with an MFA from the University of Central Florida with work in Hexagon Magazine. She is a Short Fiction Fellow for Abode Press and a reader for Hugo Finalist Khoreo Magazine. You can find her lurking in aquariums marveling at the wonders of the natural world.
Jess Galan
Jessica Galán is an educator & writer based in Hartford, Connecticut. She received a 2019 fellowship with The Highlights Foundation and was a Kweli 2020 inaugural fellow. Her Pushcart nominated fiction has appeared in Kweli, Huizache, and 2024 Connecticut Literary Anthology.
Her work has been supported by Soaring Gardens Artist Residency and The Highlights Foundation. She's revising AGUACERO, an intergenerational diaspora story about the 1930s Puerto Rican eugenics campaign set in Tras Talleres Puerto Rico and near-future Fair Haven, Connecticut.
Jess teaches reading and writing to amazing high school students.
Jarrett Kaufman
Jarrett Kaufman has been awarded scholarships from the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, the Cambridge Writers Workshop, and the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference. In 2025, he was a Desert Nights, Rising Star Fellow. His fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has won numerous literary awards, including the Mary Mackey Fiction Award, the Gertrude Stein Fiction Award, the Missouri Writers Guild President’s Award for Fiction, and the Ernest Hemingway Flash Fiction Prize. His stories have been published in many literary journals. Most recently, his work has been published in Fiction Southeast, Arkansas Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and The South Dakota Review.
Jonathan Jackson
Jonathan Jackson is a native of Youngstown, Ohio. He was a recipient of a 2025 Writers of Color Scholarship from Gotham Writers Workshop and a Literary Support Award from The Boston Writers of Color. Jackson’s fiction has appeared in Blood+Honey and his nonfiction in Blavity. A poet and songwriter, Jackson studied Music Business at Columbia College Chicago. In 2021 Jackson began teaching Creative Writing with Community Works, an arts enrichment nonprofit in New Orleans, where he now serves as Program Engagement Manager. Jackson is currently working on his debut novel and tufting endless amounts of rugs.
E.A. Noble
E.A. Noble is a queer, neurodivergent, disabled author and poet. Her debut novel, When Blood Meets Earth, won a 2025 Indie Literary Award. She is an acquiring editor for FIYAH Lit Mag & Rawhead Journal. She is Marketing Chair for WisCon. Her previously published and future works can be found in FIYAH Lit Mag, Harriet’s House, Kawandi, and more to come. For more information, please visit theeajournal.me
Luci Strong
Luci Strong is a writer, hailing from Mississippi. Her Southern experiences and love of the Scholastic Book Fair shape her style. Her works have appeared on the blog for aspiring writers, HeyYoungWriter, and the podcast, Her Own Words. When she is not reading, writing, or working in healthcare, she enjoys baking, long nature walks, and connecting with fellow authors at book events. Her current read is Our Vicious Oaths by N.E. Davenport.
Summer Russell
Summer is a fiction writer currently based in Connecticut. Her writing tends to lean towards Southern Gothic, Horror, and Speculative Fiction.
Benedict Nguyễn
Novel Cohort
Ash Gabrielle
Ash Gabrielle is a transfem writer and historian living in Central Asia. She was selected as a 2026 Abode Press Novel Retreat Fellow, and was a reader and editor for LUPERCALIApress. Her work is forthcoming in The Silk Road. Find her out in the desert, playing with her cat, or at www.ashgabrielle.com
Ashanthi De Silva
Ashanthi De Silva an emerging writer based out of Chicago, IL. She strives to portray disabled characters who exist at multiple intersections in life with humor and vulnerability. She is currently working on a debut novel exploring immigration, disability, and belonging. For her, writing is a tool to help others reimagine new worlds for themselves and the larger collective. When not writing, she can be found hiking, or at least thinking about it (you never know how many spoons you’re going to have).
Caritza Berlioz
Caritza Berlioz is a writer and editor based in New York with roots in Honduras. She is a graduate of The City College of New York (CUNY) MFA program and has been awarded residencies at Pocoapoco and VONA. Her writing has also been supported by the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, The Kenyon Review, and Abode Press. Her first insight into the professional creative world was working in animation and the bullpen of a comic book publisher many moons ago. She is currently writing a novel and, at times, short stories.
daniel barrios
daniel barrios (he/él) is a Dominican/Puerto Rican writer and educator from Staten Island, New York. His debut collection of short stories, A Good Impression, is forthcoming from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Cornerstone Press (2028). His collection was a finalist for the 2025 EastOver Prize for Debut Short Story Collections and a 2025 finalist for the Black Lawrence Press Immigrant Writing Series. He is the winner of The Brooklyn Review's 2023 Fiction Contest: This Time It's Personal! and was selected as a semifinalist for the 2026 Anthony Veasna So Scholarship in Fiction. His writing appears in Tendon Magazine, Pleiades Magazine, & The Brooklyn Review.
Hayat Essa
Hayat Essa is a Somali American writer based in Seattle. Her writing
seeks to understand the world around her, often beginning with a
conversation overheard or a question that won't leave her alone, and ending somewhere more personal. Coming from a culture where stories live in the conversation, she keeps finding herself drawn to the stories that
were never written down.
Leslie Lopez
Leslie Lopez (b. 1998) is a Dallas-raised, Chicago-based emerging writer. She is currently pursuing a Master’s of Science in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. When not crocheting (badly) or laughing (loudly), you can find them working on their first novel about grieving lesbians, the power of nostalgia, and complicated sister dynamics.
Meron Fikru
Meron Fikru (she/her) is an Ethiopian-American writer based in Seattle, WA. In her non-fiction writing, she shares social commentary on politics, tech, culture, and criminal justice for her blog. In her fiction writing, she crafts stories of formidable women battling dystopian and/or haunting environments. Her work prompts us to interrogate our assumptions and challenge the systems that surround us. Her writing is grounded in history and is deeply feminist, anticolonial, anticapitalist, and anti-racist. Her literary mentors (favorite writers) are James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Omar El-Akkad.
Nate O-G
Nate Olivarez-Giles is a queer fiction-writer, poet, and journalist. His writing explores themes of masculinity, sexuality, climate change, anti-fascist resistance, and Chicano futurism. He’s a member of the Writers Grotto and an MFA candidate at the University of San Francisco. Nate works as a freelance journalist, writing coach, and content designer. Recently, he's been a bodyguard and a DJ, too. He grew up across the Phoenix area and currently lives in West Oakland. You can learn more about him at nateog.com.
Raja'a Khalid
Raja’a Khalid was born in Saudi Arabia to Pakistani parents and grew up in Dubai where she still lives. She has an MFA in Art from Cornell University and is an alum of the Winter Workshop at the McCormack Writing Center (formerly Tin House). Her stories have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize and appear or are forthcoming in publications such as The Rumpus, Strange Horizons, River Styx and elsewhere.
Serena Lukas Bhandar
Serena Lukas Bhandar is a witch, a 2023 Lambda Literary Fellow, a 2025 Banff Centre resident in Science Fiction, and recently defended her creative Masters thesis—a choose-your-own confabulated memoir—under the supervision of Oji-Cree writer Joshua Whitehead.
Bhandar’s debut chapbook of poetry, this dying body, weaves themes of transcendence and substance (ab)use in homage to The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, who received a copy and loved it.
Stefanie DeMaria Febus
Stefanie DeMaria Febus (She/Her) is a Bronx, New York-born writer and poet. Her work explores grief, ancestral longing, and the complicated tenderness of home. Her work has appeared in The Acentos Review, MUTHA Magazine and About Place Journal. She is currently based in Connecticut, where she is working on a novel about a Nuyorican playwright from the uptown projects trying to find home in the downtown theater world. Follow her writing on Substack @stefaniedemariafebus or Instagram @stefanie_demaria