contributor bios—
hodges adams (they/them) is a michigander poet who received their MFA from the university of virginia. their work has appeared in shenandoah, cutbank, december magazine, northwest review, fourteen poems, and elsewhere. they were the runner-up for the phoebe spring 2023 poetry prize and a finalist for both the 2023 c.d. wright emerging poets prize and the 2022 jeff marks memorial poetry prize. hopefully they will transform into a beam of sunlight someday soon.
David Maduli is a Filipinx father, husband, poet, and educator. His work, often inflected by decades as a DJ and public school teacher, has received the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and National 1st Runner-Up for Inlandia’s Hillary Gravendyk Prize. Born in San Francisco, he is a longtime resident of East Oakland, Lisjan Ohlone land, where he completed his MFA at Mills College with a fellowship in Community Poetics. His work has been showcased at events such as SF Litquake and RAWdance’s Step/Song/Story series, and his poems appear recently in Sonora Review, Cream City Review, Kweli Journal, and The /tƐmz/ Review. In addition to his work in public schools, he is an instructor in the MFA in Writing program at Lindenwood University.
Sydney Jin Choi was born and raised in the Bay Area. She earned her MFA from Rutgers University - Newark. You can find her work in AAWW's The Margins, Grist Journal, Apogee Journal, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. Currently, she resides in Brooklyn.
Ryan Skrabalak is a poet originally from so-called “Upstate New York” currently living in so-called “Kansas” with his dog, Donkey. His latest book, The 10,000 Afternoon Technicolor Sycamore Family Earth Band, is forthcoming this autumn from Ursus Americanus Press. He edits the press Spiral Editions, deejays a weirdo music radio show, and organizes for AFT Local 6403.
Steve Orth is a poet based out of Oakland, CA. His first book, THE LIFE & TIMES OF STEVE ORTH, was published by Dogpark Collective in 2020. His recent work has appeared in Hot Pink Magazine, Afternoon Visitor, the Bullshit Lit Anthology, and Trilobite.
Emily Chaney (she/they) is some white bitch who has been writing poetry for an amount of time and may write more if the mood strikes. Trust your instincts. Do your dishes.
Isaac George Lauritsen’s acts of writing, drawing, and living most often take place in his hometown of Chicago, IL. His recent poems can be found or are forthcoming in Cola Literary Review, Fine Print Press, Fourteen Hills, New Ohio Review, Rubbertop Review, and elsewhere. His picto-poems are in Bear Review, HAD, and TILT, a subdivision of Tilted House. You can look at his photos and photos of his drawings on Instagram: @ig_laurit
Zach Peckham is a writer, editor, and educator. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in jubilat, Territory, Poetry Northwest, Oversound, Always Crashing, American Book Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in poetry from the NEOMFA and teaches at Cleveland State and the Cleveland Institute of Art. He is the managing editor at the CSU Poetry Center and editor-in-chief of the Cleveland Review of Books.
Elliot Robinson is a poet whose works have appeared in SHOPPINGHOUR, Futures Trading, and Tilted House. He lives with his wife and daughter in New Orleans.
Vaughn M. Watson is a Pushcart-prize nominated writer based in New York City. His poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have been published in literary journals as varied as Tahoma Literary Review, About Place, and The Common.
Yaddyra Peralta is a Honduran-American poet, essayist, and editor. She has been the recipient of residencies from The Betsy Writer’s Room, Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University, and O,Miami Poetry Festival’s Off-Shore virtual residency for poets of the Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in BOMB, Grist, Ploughshares, The Florida Review, and the anthologies Eight Miami Poets (Jai Alai Books), The Breakbeat Poets, Vol. 4: LatiNext (Haymarket Books), and Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness (University of Florida Press), among others. Yaddyra is the recipient of the 2023 Marjory Stoneman Douglas Poetry Award and lives in Miami, FL.
Evan Schnair is a poet and educator based in San Francisco.
Trina Porte has performed, spray painted, been archived, edited, exhibited, and read in New York, Minneapolis, New Lebanon, and elsewhere. Most of her work takes the form of poetry and opinion-giving. She will piss you off and make you laugh at the same time, then try to sell you her CD (buy it before all the copies get smashed by right-wingers). She also makes a fine genoise, knows how to say “thank you” in fourteen languages, and was born in Brooklyn.
Michelle Renee Hoppe (Shelli Hoppe) is a nonbinary, queer, disabled Latinx author and artist living in Iowa City. Her work appears in Saw Palm, South 85 Journal, The Massachusetts Review, and Litro Magazine, among others. Her work is shown internationally and collected in Saudi, South Korea, and South Africa. She attends Maryland Institute College of Art for her UX Design MPS degree after earning a BA from Brigham Young University in English.
Benjamin Stallings is an American poet and musician based in Georgia. He grew up in Beijing, China. His writing has appeared or will appear in DIAGRAM, Figure 1, Interim, TILT, and others.