Contributors
üatibirí (she/they) is a metaphobolist, poet and performer hailing from the west of Puerto Rico, who’s been writing non-stop for the past ten years. Now translocated to Barrio Obrero, Santurce, in 2022 she published kontinenta {kai}ribe, her latest poetic manifesto. However, feeling that words were not enough, they started exploring the body as support for their artistic curiosities. Recently, this metaphoric dimension opened the doors to present their work at diverse public and cultural spaces, for example: the exhibition “El bello no ser de nuestros cuerpos” at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Art World 4 at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico; and the “Foro Nacional de Juventudes Cuir”, celebrated at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. üatibirí studied at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus, but afterwards, choose to continue developing as an artist in alternative spaces and communities like Taller Libertá, Teatro Público and La casa protegida de ponkas y jamonas. Her latest project is called “la libre komu”, a transdisciplinary organization for alternative and political pedagogy and poetic exploration. // üatibirí (¿¿??). poeta performera metafobolista de la madreüesta trans~loka~lisá en bario obrero, santurse {en la isl(et)a de san juan}. luego de abortar barias manifiestas a lo largo de dies años sin parar—entre eias la más resiente: kontinenta {kai}ribe (Sad Vacation Press, 2022)—, komprendo ke la palabra no da; por eso fu{e}go a la karne komo soporte. esta dimensión metafórika, me abre puertas a enkarnar en: El bello no ser de nuestros cuerpos (Whitney Museum of American Art, 2022); Art World 4 (Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, 2023); Foro Nacional de Juventudes Cuir (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, 2022), entre otras espasias {kontra}kulturales i públikas. kon una tesis en el tintero en la UPRM, pongo en pausa mi maestría pa praktikar la kadukasión de konseptos impuestos por la akkkademia. emprendo una búskeda alterna de {â~}ser fuera de ‘lo tradisional’; portales son: Taller Libertá; La Casa Protegida de Ponkas y Jamonas; Teatro Público; la residensia en Guion_Bajo; el diplomado kon el Proyecto AntiCanon; las práktikas mediante la red Mundo Performance; por mensionar algunos. en mi aôra impulso—kontra toas las prekariedades {de/en} la kolonia—el proiekto la libre komu; una espasia transdisiplinaria pedagójika donde krear dede la metáfora es prioritisado komo ajensia polítika~reboLUSionaria. bio tradusía al inglés por josé colón laboy.
Genevieve Abravanel’s short fiction is available or forthcoming in the Missouri Review, American Short Fiction, North American Review, the Normal School, Indiana Review, Southeast Review, and elsewhere. She has received grants and fellowships from the American Association for University Women (AAUW) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and is currently working on a novel.
D.M. Aderibigbe is from Lagos, Nigeria. His debut book of poems, How the End First Showed (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018), won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, among other honors. His poems appear in The Nation, Ploughshares, and New England Review, among others. He’s currently an assistant professor in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi.
José Alaniz, professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Department of Cinema and Media Studies (adjunct) at the University of Washington, Seattle, has published three monographs, Komiks: Comic Art in Russia (University Press of Mississippi, 2010); Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond (UPM, 2014); and Resurrection: Comics in Post-Soviet Russia (OSU Press, 2022). He has also co-edited two essay collections, Comics of the New Europe: Reflections and Intersections with Martha Kuhlman (Leuven University Press, 2020) and Uncanny Bodies: Disability and Superhero Comics with Scott T. Smith (Penn State University Press, 2019). He formerly chaired the Executive Committee of the International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF) and was a founding board member of the Comics Studies Society. In 2020 he published his first comics collection, The Phantom Zone and Other Stories (Amatl Comix). His current book projects include Comics of the Anthropocene: Graphic Narrative at the End of Nature.
Samuel Rafael Barber is 0.00000001253133% of the population, a Chicano from South Texas, and the author of the chapbook Thousands of Shredded Scraps of Paper Located across Five Landfills, That if Pieced Together Form a Message. A PhD candidate at the University of Denver, his fiction appears in DIAGRAM, the Normal School, Passages North, Puerto del Sol, Quarterly West, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. According to life expectancy tables, he will live another 51.2 years.
T.S. Bender is a writer and teacher who grew up outside of Philadelphia and now lives in Maryland with his wife and beagle. He is currently working on a novel, which includes “Bellarosa.”
Lauren Camp is the Poet Laureate of New Mexico and author of five books, most recently Took House (Tupelo Press, 2020). Two new books—Worn Smooth Between Devourings (NYQ Books) and An Eye in Each Square (River River Books)—are forthcoming in 2023. Her honors include the Dorset Prize and finalist citations for the Arab American Book Award, Housatonic Book Award, and Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry.
Luisa Caycedo-Kimura is a Colombian-born writer, translator, and educator. Her honors include a John K. Walsh Residency Fellowship at the Anderson Center, an Adrienne Reiner Hochstadt Fellowship at Ragdale, and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry. Her work has also been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. Luisa’s poems appear or are forthcoming in the Cincinnati Review, Sunken Garden Poetry 1992-2011, RHINO, Diode Poetry Journal, Mid-American Review, Nashville Review, the Night Heron Barks, and elsewhere.
Yuan Changming started to learn the English alphabet in Shanghai at age nineteen. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include twelve nominations for The Pushcart Prize, fifteen chapbooks, and appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008–17), Best New Poems Online, and Poetry Daily, among 1989 others, across forty-nine countries. Yuan was a poetry judge for Canada’s 2021 National Magazine Awards. Early in 2022, Yuan began writing and publishing fiction.
Arianne Elena Payne is a Black writer, multidisciplinary creative, and aspiring historian from Chicago, Illinois. She has received the 2022 Graybeal-Gowen Poetry Prize, the 2022 Virginia Downs Poetry Award, and the 2019 Frederick Hartmann Poetry Prize. Her work has been featured in Voicemail Poems, TORCH, Shenandoah and is forthcoming in the Indiana Review and Hooligan Magazine. Situated in the complexities and lyricism of Blackness, girlhood, and geographies of resistance—her work strives to take Black people and their histories seriously.
Amanda Gaines is an Appalachian writer and PhD candidate in creative nonfiction in Oklahoma State University’s creative writing program. Her poetry and nonfiction appear in Barrelhouse, Willow Springs, Rattle, Redivider, New Orleans Review, Southeast Review, the Southern Review, Juked, Pleiades, SmokeLong Quarterly, Ninth Letter, and Superstition Review.
Florence Gonsalves is an author, poet, and educator at Virginia Tech where she teaches creative writing. She has published two novels with Little Brown Young Readers, Love and Other Carnivorous Plants and Dear Universe, and her essays and short stories appear or are forthcoming in Lit Hub, Hobart, and Pulp Magazine. In 2020, Florence founded the Dandy Line Poetry Troop, a community arts endeavor based in the New River Valley that aims to demystify “high brow” art through the spontaneous production of free, typewritten poems. For commissions, events, and inquiries, visit her online.
Clarie Gor is a Kenyan writer. Her writing has been published in Catapult, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Audacity, and Stillpoint Magazine, among others. Her stories have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize among others.
Robin Gow (they/fae/it pronouns) is a trans poet and witch author from rural Pennsylvania. Fae is the author of several poetry books, an essay collection, YA, and middle-grade novels in verse, including A Million Quiet Revolutions (FSG Books for Young Readers, 2022).
Chelsea Harlan is the author of Bright Shade, selected by Jericho Brown as the winner of the 2022 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize. She holds a BA from Bennington College and an MFA from Brooklyn College, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. She lives in rural Appalachian Virginia, where she was born and raised, and where she works at a small public library.
Patrycja Humienik, daughter of Polish immigrants, is a writer and performer based in Seattle, Washington. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, the Adroit Journal, SAND Journal Berlin, 128 Lit, Ninth Letter, the Slowdown show, and elsewhere. She has collaboratively developed performance work for Titwrench Festival, GayCity Seattle, REDCAT New Original Works Festival, Dikeou Literary Series, and Film on the Rocks at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Patrycja is working on her first book.
Margot Kahn is the author of a biography, Horses That Buck (University of Oklahoma, 2008), and a chapbook, A Quiet Day with the West on Fire (Floating Bridge Press, 2021). Twice nominated for The Pushcart Prize, her poems appear in the Hopkins Review, New England Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere.
In 2014 the Moscow-based Lena Uzhinova (b. 1967), writing as Alyona Kamyshevskaya, published My Sex, a graphic memoir which strips the veil off Soviet-era sexual mores, in the author’s trademark tragicomic style. Uzhinova is a leading voice in Russian comics today; still, her publisher Boomkniga took a risk in releasing such material. Sure enough, it sparked a backlash from mostly male readers who denounced its “pornographic” depiction of late-Soviet sexual realia, such as inadequate sex education; the lack of women’s hygiene products and contraceptives; and rape culture. Nothing like it had ever appeared in Russian comics before, certainly not a longform work. My Sex did the Russian comics industry a tremendous service, by proving that comics don’t have to be funny (though parts of Uzhinova’s work are hilarious, in a cringe-inducing way), and they don’t have to be for kids. In short, My Sex, part of a new wave of graphic memoir, offered Russian readers a new platform for discussions of previously taboo topics and of the Soviet past, at the same time breaking new ground for the expressive potential of comics in a country that long resisted the form as semi-literate trash.
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, PhD, emigrated from Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when she was six. She is author of three poetry collections: 40 Weeks (YesYes Books, 2023), Don’t Touch the Bones (Lost Horse Press, 2020), and The Many Names for Mother (Kent State University Press, 2019). Her poems and essays appear in Poetry, Ploughshares, and Brevity, among others. Julia is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Denison University.
Born in Western North Carolina, Grey Wolfe LaJoie holds an MFA from the University of Alabama and they work as an instructor and coordinator for Auburn University’s Alabama Prison Arts & Education Program. Their work has been featured in such journals as the Threepenny Review, Crazyhorse, and Copper Nickel, and their debut collection, Little Ones, will be released in the fall of 2024.
St. Petersburg-based Olga Lavrenteva (b. 1986) belongs to a resolutely post-Soviet generation of comics artists turning to a traditionally marginalized art for new avenues of expression that include depictions of the nation’s historical disasters—part of what I term Russian comics’ twenty-first century “Nonfiction Turn.” In her fourth published work, the comics biography Survilo (Boomkniga Press, 2019), Lavrenteva delivers her largest (over three hundred pages) and most painfully trauma-focused piece of graphic narrative. Based on the memories of her 93-year-old grandmother, it follows the arrest of Valentina Survilo’s father and the family’s exile during the 1930s Stalinist repressions, her return to Leningrad in time to experience the city’s horrific 900-day siege by the Germans during World War II, and her father’s posthumous rehabilitation by the state. Survilo traces the—at times inexplicable—will to live under unimaginably nightmarish conditions, as well as the post-traumatic repercussions and profound fear that forever grips those “lucky enough” to have survived. The book functions as well as a retrospective account of the entire Soviet era: what it did to its citizens’ psyches and how those still living (along with their children) must cope in a stark new capitalist reality – in this it recalls the work of the Nobel-winning chronicler of twentieth-century Russian horrors, Svetlana Alexievich. In short, Survilo and other recent comics like it are fashioning new platforms for previously taboo discussions of the traumatic Soviet past, at the same time breaking new ground for the expressive potential of comics in Russia. Russian critics and readers have responded overwhelmingly positively to Survilo, with Lavrenteva’s work landing on a number of 2019 Top Ten lists. In talking it up to people, I always call it “the Russian Maus.”
Michelle Lerner is the author of the poetry chapbook Protection (Poetry Box, 2021). She has an MFA from The New School, directs the Laura Boss Poetry Foundation, and mentors Gazan writers through We Are Not Numbers. Her poems have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets. Her fiction manuscript Ring has been a finalist or longlisted for multiple awards, and will be published by Bancroft Press with an expected publication date of October 8, 2024.
Nabila Lovelace is a first-generation Queens-born poet, whose people hail from Trinidad and Nigeria. Sons of Achilles (YesYes Books, 2018), her debut book of poems, is out now. You can currently find Nabila kicking it in Tuscaloosa.
LaTanya McQueen is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (2022 Fellowship in Prose) and the Elizabeth George Foundation. She is the author of two books—the essay collection And It Begins Like This (Black Lawrence Press, 2017) and the novel When the Reckoning Comes (Harper Perennial, 2021).
Librarian, mother, and minor trickster, Janna Miller is published in SmokeLong Quarterly, Cheap Pop, Whale Road Review, Necessary Fiction, Best Microfiction 2023, and others. Her story collection, All Lovers Burn at the End of the World, is forthcoming from SLJ Editions in 2024. Generally, if the toaster blows up, it is not her fault.
Jonah Mixon-Webster is a poet and conceptual sound artist from Flint, Michigan. His debut poetry collection, Stereo(TYPE), received the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award. He is the inaugural Mellon Arts Postdoctoral Fellow in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University and the recipient of the Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry. His works are featured in Obsidian, Harper’s, the Yale Review, Callaloo, and Best American Experimental Writing.
A sort of travel journal that’s as much about an inner journey and a reckoning with Russia’s troubled history, Yulia Nikitina’s Storm Diary recounts the author’s sojourn along the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous region, on the Yamal peninsula, through Vorkuta in the Komi Republic and on to the Kara Sea in the Russian arctic. A native of Salekhard, Nikitina (b. 1988) traveled by foot, train, and off-road vehicle across more than three hundred kilometers (186 miles), writing and drawing all along the way. As Nikitina told an interviewer: “Since the age of sixteen I have been living with anxiety, constant nervousness, and fears related to social interactions. For me the possibility of traveling means a lot, because many of my fears are connected to the use of different kinds of public transportation, of traveling together with other people. Before I used to think that there was no way I could go off somewhere far away and that I would never get to see the world. That’s why I wanted to share what I learned in this particular journey and my experiences as a whole."
Myr Olivares (they, elle/ she, ella) - Escritorx, artista y educadorx en sexualidad. Caribeñx. Graduadx de Periodismo y Lenguas Extranjeras de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras. Cursó además estudios en Teatro y de Estudios de la Mujer y el Género en dicha institución. Siguió estudios en Comunicación y Teatro en la Universittà Cattolica del Sacro Cuore en Milán. Formó parte de diversas producciones teatrales dentro y fuera de Puerto Rico. Laboró en periodismo y fotoperiodismo para diversos periódicos y medios del país y ha colaborado con otros medios internacionales como Vozed y la publicación en español EÑES de Medium. Sus poemas han sido publicados en la Antología Casa Emilio y en la antología de poesía Mirar Pa’ Dentro. Su poema Olvido fue traducido al italiano por el Progetto7LUNE. Participó del Festival Colaborativo Agua Viva de México, encuentro literario autogestivo de mujeres y personas género disidentes. Su enfoque va dirigido a las comunidades latinxs, les jóvenes y miembros de la comunidad LGBTQIA+, y en fomentar la equidad e inclusión en los diversos espacios. Se encuentra trabajando en su primer poemario. Actualmente reside en Houston.
Kalie Pead is a queer writer from Salt Lake City, Utah, but she will always consider home to be somewhere between the red rocks of Moab and the wilds of Wyoming. Currently she is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Notre Dame, living in South Bend, Indiana with her partner, two cats, and dog. Her work is published or forthcoming in Folio, Black Annis Books, The Martello, and the Whiskey Blot.
St. Petersburg’s Varvara Pomidor (Varvara Vladimirovna Lukyanova, b. 1975) graduated from the Nikolai Roerich Art Institute and the St. Petersburg Art and Industry Academy. She also took a course in printmaking and photography at the Georg Simon Ohm Fachhochschule in Nuremberg, Germany and later served as art director of the design studio Mediamama. From book illustration and design, she eventually turned to comics. Her work is characterized by a whimsical, childlike but at the same time disconcertingly adult sensibility; her stories at times touch on questions beyond the personal, to tragedy and historical trauma. In her story/cycle Pravda, Pomidor combines memory fragments, Soviet politics, and collage to depict a late Soviet-era childhood.
Ketsia Ramos is a transdisciplinary artist from Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, artist in residence of Taller Libertá, and founder of Edtorial Casa Cuna and the festival LA JUNTILLA. They have exhibited their work for more than a decade across the Caribbean and South America in an effort to decentralize the arts. Their recent publications include Selección de poesía inédita (2019) and Aceite de palo (2022), with both poetic works focusing on self-knowledge, healing, and violence from a decolonial Caribbean perspective. Ketsia Ramos es artista transdisciplinaria de Adjuntas, Puerto Rico. Es artista residente en Taller Libertá y fundadore de Editorial Casa Cuna y el festival LA JUNTILLA. Lleva una década exponiendo su trabajo en el Caribe y Sudamérica en un esfuerzo por descentralizar las artes. Sus publicaciones recientes llevan como título Selección de poesía inédita?(2019) y Aceite de palo (2022), ambas obras poéticas enmarcadas en el autorreconocimiento, la sanación y la violencia con una mirada decolonial del Caribe.
Alejandra Rosa is a nonbinary afroqueer writer, performer and mover. Child of a baker, and grandchild of Doña Sarah, their work has been published in the New York Times, Time Magazine, 80grados, and revista étnica, as well as in the anthologies Sanaré (Editorial Étnica, 2022) and Ese lugar violento que llamamos normalidad (La Impresora, 2022). Winner of the Gabriel García Márquez Award for Cultural Journalism in 2019 and 2020. Author of Levadura (La Secta de los Perros, 2022). Member since 2022 of the antiracist dance-theater group Danza Orgánica. Simultaneously, they are pursuing a doctorate in Afro-Performance y Literature at Harvard University. // Alejandra Rosa es escritore, performere y movedore afrocuir no binarie. Hije de un panadero, y niete de doña Sarah, su trabajo ha sido publicado en el New York Times, Time Magazine, 80grados, revista étnica, así como en las antologías Sanaré (Editorial Étnica, 2022) y Ese lugar violento que llamamos normalidad (La Impresora, 2022). Ganadore de Beca Gabriel García Márquez de Periodismo Cultural 2019 & 2020. Autore de Levadura (La Secta de los Perros, 2022). Desde el 2022, forma parte de la compañía de danza-teatro antirracista Danza Orgánica. Simultáneamente, estudia un doctorado en Afro-Performance y Literatura en Harvard University.
The first Russian book-length graphic novel about disability, I Am an Elephant received unusual attention in the mainstream press for a comics work, leading the publisher Boomkniga to offer a larger-than-usual print run. Written by disabled author, filmmaker, and musician Vladimir Rudak (b. 1968, based in Petrozavodsk), with art by leading Russian comics artist Lena Uzhinova, it is largely based on Rudak’s experiences after becoming paralyzed in an accident. Veering from classic realism, the novel takes on a surrealistic, whimsical tone at times more appropriate to a children’s book or animated cartoon, with the motif of “life is a stage” a paramount theme. The central character divides his identity in two: one a flamboyant, even obnoxious talking elephant, the other a silent rag doll, representing spirit and body, respectively. In the course of its 135 pages, through monologues, enacted scenes and memories, I Am an Elephant explores contemporary Russian prejudices and beliefs regarding the disabled, the sexual yearnings of wheelchair users, and the emotional labor of dealing with paralysis as a “macho” man. Nothing like it had appeared in Russian comics before, certainly not in book-length form.
Jane Satterfield is the recipient of awards in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, Maryland Arts Council and Bellingham Review. Her essays have received awards from Florida Review and the Heekin Foundation. Her books of poetry are Her Familiars, Assignation at Vanishing Point, Shepherdess with an Automatic and the forthcoming Apocalypse Mix, winner of the 2016 Autumn House Poetry Prize. She is also the author of a memoir, Daughters of Empire. Born in England, Satterfield teaches at Loyola University Maryland. Visit her online at https://janesatterfield.org.
Megan Snyder-Camp is the author of three books of poetry: The Forest of Sure Things (Tupelo, 2010), Wintering (Tupelo, 2016), and The Gunnywolf (Bear Star, 2016). She is the recipient of fellowships and grants from Bread Loaf, Djerassi, the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, and the 4Culture Foundation. Her work has also appears in Ecotone, the Antioch Review, The Hopper, the Southern Review, the Sewanee Review, Field, and elsewhere. She lives in Seattle.
Tom Sokolowski completed an MFA at the University of Central Florida where he was awarded a Provost’s Fellowship. He’s currently a PhD candidate at Florida State University, and his other fiction is featured or forthcoming in the Minnesota Review, the Masters Review, Prime Number Magazine, and elsewhere. Tom served in the Florida Army National Guard. He is married to the poet Olivia Murphy Sokolowski, and lives in Tallahassee.
Ann Wilberton is a queer poet and librarian living in Rhode Island. She’s interested in writing about queer joy, memory/forgetting, invisible disability, and aging. She is enrolled in the MFA program at UMass Boston. Her work can also be found in Rattle, Maine Review, and Critical Read.
Tanya Žilinskas lives in Northern California. Her work appears in Southern Humanities Review, Puerto del Sol, the Florida Review, Porter House Review, Meetinghouse, and elsewhere. She is working on a novel about internet conspiracies in the aughts and a linked story collection set in a surreal version of Marin County.