We are honored to feature this incredible lineup of LGBTQ+ writers for OutWrite 2023.
Jennifer L. Abod (she/her) PhD, Intercultural Media Education and Women’s Studies. Abod’s poetry appears in Sinister Wisdom, One Art, Metro Washington Weekly, and is forthcoming in Wild Crone Wisdom: An Anthology of Poetry and Stories, and Artemis Journal. Abod is an award-winning radio producer, talk-show host, and documentary filmmaker, (Women Make Movies). Jennifer was the singer in the New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Band (1970-1976). She sings standards and originals in Long Beach, CA.
David Jackson Ambrose has an MFA in Creative Writing from Temple University, an MA in Writing Studies from Saint Joseph’s University, and a BA in Africana Studies from The University of Pennsylvania. His debut novel, State of the Nation, was a 2018 Lambda Literary Award finalist in the Gay Fiction category. His second novel, A Blind Eye (NineStar Press) was named by Lambda Literary as one of April 2021’s most anticipated books. Unlawful DISorder is his third novel.
Nic Anstett, a queer speculative writer from Baltimore, MD, is a graduate from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, University of Oregon’s MFA program, the Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Retreat, and the Tin House Summer Workshop where she was a 2021 scholar. Her work appears in Witness Magazine, Passages North, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Nic is currently at work on a collection of short stories and a novel.
Neema Avashia (she/her) is the daughter of Indian immigrants, and was born and raised in southern West Virginia. She has been an educator and activist in the Boston Public Schools since 2003, and was named a City of Boston Educator of the Year in 2013. Her first book, Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place, was published by West Virginia University Press in March. It has been called “A timely collection that begins to fill the gap in literature focused mainly on the white male experience” by Ms. Magazine, and “A graceful exploration of identity, community, and contradictions,” by Scalawag. The book was named Best LGBTQ Memoir of 2022 by BookRiot, was one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2022, and is a Lambda Literary Award finalist. She lives in Boston with her partner, Laura, and her daughter, Kahani.
Danielle Badra (she/they) is a queer Arab-American poet originally from Michigan who is the current Poet Laureate of Fairfax. Her poems have appeared in Mizna, Guesthouse, Cincinnati Review, Duende, The Greensboro Review, Bad Pony, Rabbit Catastrophe Press, Split This Rock, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and elsewhere. Dialogue with the Dead (Finishing Line Press, 2015) her first chapbook, is a collection of contrapuntal poems in dialogue with her deceased sister. Her second book, Like We Still Speak, was selected by Fady Joudah and Hayan Charara as the winner of the 2021 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize (University of Arkansas Press, 2021).
Mariah Barber is an author, certified health education specialist, DEI consultant, and researcher who has been working in public health for over a decade. Barber holds an MPH in community, social and behavioral health as well as a B. S. in public health with a concentration in community health and a B.A. in international studies with a concentration in Latin America. Her professional experience also includes working as a radio personality, spoken word artist, content curator, mentor, moderator, researcher, counselor, facilitator, writer, research advocate, organizer, teacher, podcaster, blogger, public speaker and educator which all influence the passion that she brings to public health initiatives. Her mission and mantra in life is: “Some People Do, Some People Never Do, Some People Overdo, How Do you Do?” Barber does things to uplift unheard voices.
Bendi Barrett (he/him) is a speculative fiction writer, game designer, and pretendadult living in Chicago. He’s published two interactive novels: Avatar of the Wolf (https://www.choiceofgames.com /avatar-of-the-wolf) and Fate of the Storm Gods (https://www.choiceofgames.com/fateof-the-storm-gods). Both are available through Choice of Games. He also writes gay erotic fiction as Benji Bright and runs a patreon (https://www.patreon.com /benji_bright) for the thirsty masses. He can be found at Benmakesstuff.com (https://Benmakesstuff.com) and on twitter as both @bemdo and @benji_bright.
Eboné Bell (she/her) is a business owner, speaker, and trailblazer who shines bright in the world of entrepreneurship, DEI, LGBTQ issues, media, and activism. She is the founder and editor of Tagg Magazine, an award-winning print publication and media company serving LGBTQ women across the country.
Tagg Magazine celebrates ten years of telling thousands of stories, creating safe spaces for queer women, and providing important resources for the LGBTQ community. Over the past five years, Tagg Magazine has been named “Top 25 LGBTQ-Owned Companies” by the Washington Business Journal.
Eboné was featured in Forbes Magazine as an “Inspiring Black Entrepreneur Changing Our World.” And that’s exactly her mission: To create change and leave a stamp on this world. One of those stamps includes starting a student group for LGBTQ people of color while attending University of Maryland College Park. Twenty years later the group is still going strong. In 2018, Eboné founded the Tagg Scholarship Fund—a scholarship created specifically for young, queer, women of color who can’t afford to attend school.
In addition to running a media company, she shares her knowledge and passion as a Keynote Speaker. Over the past few years, she’s presented at over 100 organizations and schools like Microsoft, Deloitte, Sourcepoint Technologies, Edward Jones, VistaPrint, Penn State, and Rochester Institute of Technology, just to name a few.
Steve Bellin-Oka (he/him) is a queer poet and publisher. His first book of poems, Instructions for Seeing a Ghost, won the Vassar Miller Prize and was published by the University of North Texas Press. He is also the author of four chapbooks, most recently Tell Me Exactly What You Saw and What You Think It Means, which won the LGBQT+ Chapbook Prize from Southern Collective Experience Press. He has been awarded fellowships from the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Yaddo, the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the National Parks Arts Foundation. In 2022, he started Fork Tine Press, which focuses on publishing the work of queer BIPOC and queer disabled writers. He teaches at Wyoming Seminary in Kingston, Pennsylvania. Visit him online at stevebellinoka.com.
Allison Blevins (she/her) is a queer disabled writer and the author of Cataloguing Pain (YesYes Books, 2023), Handbook for the Newly Disabled, A Lyric Memoir (BlazeVox, 2022), and Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021). She is also the author of the chapbooks fiery poppies bruising their own throats (Glass Lyre Press, forthcoming), Chorus for the Kill(Seven Kitchens Press, 2022), Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), part of the Robin Becker Series. Allison is the Founder and Director of Small Harbor Publishing and the Executive Editor at the museum of americana. She lives in Minnesota with her spouse and three children. For more information, visit allisonblevins.com.
Brandon Blue is a black, queer poet, educator and MFA candidate at Arizona State University from the D(M)V. He is an assistant editor for Storm Cellar Magazine and his work has or will appear in Barzakh, the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Poetry Anthology, [PANK], and more. His work is also featured in the Capital Pride Poem-a-Day event. His work has received the support of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. His chapbook, Snap.Shot, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
KB Brookins is a Black, queer, and trans writer, cultural worker, and artist from Texas. They authored How to Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press 2022), winner of the Saguaro Poetry Prize and an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book in Literature; and Freedom House (Deep Vellum 2023), recommended by Vogue and Autostraddle among others. KB’s writing is published in Poets.org, HuffPost, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. They are currently a National Endowment of the Arts fellow. KB’s memoir Pretty (Alfred A. Knopf 2024) is forthcoming. Follow them online at @earthtokb.
Dustin Brookshire (he/him) is the author of the chapbooks Never Picked First For Playtime (Harbor Editions, 2023), Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021), and To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). He is the co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023) and the co-editor of a forthcoming forms anthology from Harbor Anthologies. His work has earned him both Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations, appeared in numerous publications and been anthologized in Divining Divas: 100 Gay Men on their Muses (Lethe Press, 2012) and The Queer South: LGBTQ Writes on the American South (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014). Dustin is the curator of the Wild & Precious Life Series, founder/editor of Limp Wrist, founding chapter president of the South Florida Poets (a chapter of the Florida State Poetry Association), program director for Reading Queer, and a founding member of FLAWN (Florida Local Artist & Writers Network). Find him online at dustinbrookshire.com.
Krista Burton (she/her) is the creator of the popular blog Effing Dykes and was a frequent contributor to the online magazine Rookie. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Elle, and VICE. She lives in Minnesota.
Gerard Cabrera is Puerto Rican from Springfield, Massachusetts, the birthplace of the first American dictionary, Dr. Seuss, and basketball. His debut novel, Homo Novus, was published in October 2022, by Rattling Good Yarns Press, and was supported by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and a Bread Loaf Bakeless Foundation fellowship at The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. Other writing has appeared in Gay Community News, Acentos Review, Angel Rust, Apricity, JONATHAN, Kweli, and Digging Press. An attorney, he lives and works in New York City. Visit him at www.gerardcabrera.com.
Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic from Virginia. His debut poetry chapbook, May All Our Pain Be Champagne: A Collection of Real Housewives Twitter Poetry (Alien Buddha Press, 2022), was longlisted for Perennial Press’ 2022 Chapbook Awards. He has had fiction, poetry, and literary reviews published in Quail Bell Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Barrelhouse, Sage Cigarettes (Best of the Net Nominee, 2023), Stories About Penises (Guts Publishing, 2019), and more. http://carriganak.wordpress.com or Twitter @carriganak.
Philip Clark is the co-editor of Invisible History: The Collected Poems of Walta Borawski (Rebel Satori, 2022), winner of the 2023 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. His previous books are Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS and In the Empire of the Air: The Poems of Donald Britton. The recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, he is completing a biography of H. Lynn Womack, a pioneering gay publisher from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. He lives near Washington, D.C.
Coach (they/them)
John Copenhaver’s historical crime novel, Dodging and Burning (Pegasus), won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery, and his second novel, The Savage Kind (Pegasus), won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ Mystery. He cohosts on the House of Mystery Radio Show. He’s a founding member of Queer Crime Writers. He’s a faculty mentor in the University of Nebraska’s Low-Residency MFA program and teaches at VCU in Richmond, VA. His forthcoming novel, Hall of Mirrors, is the sequel to The Savage Kind.
jason b. crawford (They/He/She) is a writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. Their debut Full-Length Year of the Unicorn Kidz is out from Sundress Publications. crawford holds a Bachelor of Science in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University and is the co-founder of The Knight’s Library Magazine. They are the winner of the Courtney Valentine Prize for Outstanding Work by a Millennial Artist, the winner of the Rhino’s Founders Prize, a finalist for the Frontier’s Open prize, Vella Chapbook Contest, Variant Lit Chapbook Contest, and the 2021 OutWrite chapbook contest winner in poetry. crawford was a finalist for the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid 2021 Poetry Contest. Their work can be found or is forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, Split Lip Magazine, RHINO Poetry, Four Way Review, Cincinnati Review, Frontier Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, among others. They hold an MFA in poetry from The New School.
A co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City, Curtis Chin (he/him) served as the non-profits’ first Executive Director. He went on to write for network and cable television before transitioning to social justice documentaries. Chin has screened his films at over 600 venues in sixteen countries. He has written for CNN, Bon Appetit and the Emancipator/Boston Globe. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Chin has received awards from ABC/Disney Television, New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and more. His memoir, “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant” will be published by Little, Brown in Fall 2023. He’s currently writing projects for PBS and Warner Bros. and his essay in Bon Appetit was just selected for Best Food Writing in America 2023.
Jeffrey Dale Lofton (he/him) hails from Warm Springs, Georgia, best known as the home of Roosevelt’s Little White House but calls the nation’s capital home now. He moved to Washington for an acting job and stayed, finding work on the stages of DC’s theaters and performing arts centers, including the Kennedy Center, Signature Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, and Studio Theatre. He even scored some television appearances. Today, he is a senior advisor at the Library of Congress, surrounded by books and people who love books—in short, paradise. His short work has appeared in Well Read Magazine and will be in the forthcoming Beyond Queer Words Anthology (December 2023). Red Clay Suzie is his first novel, a fictionalized memoir written through his personal lens growing up a queer, physically-misshapen outsider in a conservative family and community in the Deep South. It has won the Seven Hills Literary Prize for Fiction, was recently named a finalist for the Foreword Indies LGBTQ+ Fiction Book of the Year, and was a Lambda Literary Most Anticipated Book.
Margot Douaihy is the author of the queer crime novel SCORCHED GRACE, the inaugural title of Gillian Flynn Books. SCORCHED GRACE was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and a Best Book of 2023 by Marie Claire and The Guardian.
Eboni Dunbar (she/her) is a queer, black woman who writes queer and black speculative fiction. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her partner. She received her BA from Macalester College and her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. She is a VONA Alum, an associate editor for PodCastle, an acquiring editor for FIYAH Literary Magazine and a freelance reviewer. Her work can be found in FIYAH, Drabblecast,Anathema: Spec from the margins and Nightlight Podcast.
Sofia Fey is a Lesbian and Non-Binary writer living in LA. Currently, they are the founder of the Luminaries Poetry workshop, and poetry editor at Hooligan Magazine. They love to be with their friends, but mostly, to beat them at Mario Party. They tweet @sofiafeycreates.
Kelly J. Ford is the author of The Hunt, the Anthony-nominated Real Bad Things, and Cottonmouths, a Los Angeles Review Best Book of 2017. Kelly writes crime fiction set in the Ozarks and Arkansas River Valley.
Catherine Gewertz (she/her) has been a cocktail waitress, garage band singer, pie baker, typewriter poet and newspaper reporter. She loves a nice turn around the two-step floor, and a glass of Bourbon, neat. Her work appears in Raw Art Review, True Chili, and the Altadena Literary Review.
Robyn Gigl is an author, attorney and advocate. Robyn’s first novel, BY WAY OF SORROW, was published by Kensington Books in March 2021. It was called “quietly groundbreaking” by the NY Times and named one of the best crime novels of 2021 by CrimeReads. Her Second novel, SURVIVOR’S GUILT, published in January 2022, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, was named as one of the best crime novels of 2022 by the NY Times and won the Joseph Hansen Award for LGBTQ+ Crime Writing. Robyn’s third novel, REMAIN SILENT, will be published on May 23, 2023. The main character in each of her books is New Jersey criminal defense attorney Erin McCabe. Erin is brave, smart, funny and transgender. Robyn lives in New Jersey, where she practices law by day, and works on her fourth Erin McCabe novel by night. Fortunately, she has a very boring social life.
Susana Gonzales (she/her) was raised in the Air Force and has grown to see the world through multiple lenses. She lives in southern California with her wife Suzanne. She has been published in Sheila Na Gig, Gyroscope Review, One Art, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Drunk Monkeys and As You Were: The Military Review.
Through an LGBT comedy career that spans over thirty years, poems keep showing up in the joke notebooks of Mimi Gonzalez (We/Us/Ours). Since earning her MFA, she’s reveled in helping others discover the joy of listening to their creative impulse and tapping into the vein of writing waiting to be heard inside themselves. An excellent community builder and healing opportunity, her Write Hear writing workshops are in-demand programming requested by LGBT centers and online communities including The Center in LA and Women on the Net.
Dorothy Randall Gray (She/her, Your majesty) is author of the bestseller SOUL BETWEEN THE LINES, former Los Angeles Poet-in-Residence, award-winning artist, and ED of Women Writers and Artist Matrix. She has conducted transformational writing workshops throughout the U.S., India, China, as well as in correctional, corporate and university facilities. Her writings are published in numerous anthologies including VOICES, WOMAN, THE PASSION COLLECTION, and her latest volume SHARING THE SAME SKY.
Born in Annapolis, Maryland, and raised in Baltimore, poet and librarian Reginald Harris was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for his first book, 10 Tongues, and won the 2012 Cave Canem /Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for Autogeography. A member of the National Book Critics Circle and recipient of Individual Artist Awards for poetry and fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council, his work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and online including Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, Lambda Literary Review, Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call, Encyclopedia of Contemporary Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Literature of the United States, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South and The Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS. He and his partner live in Brooklyn.
Greg Herren is an award-winning author and editor from New Orleans. To date, he has published over forty novels, fifty stories, and has edited over twenty anthologies. He is currently up for three Anthony Awards: Best Anthology for Land of 10000 Thrills; Best Humorous Mystery for A Streetcar Named Murder; and Best Children’s/Young Adult for #shedeservedit. He lives in New Orleans with his partner of 28 years.
K. Iver is a nonbinary trans poet from Mississippi. Their poems have appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill, TriQuarterly, The Adroit, and elsewhere. Their book Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco won the 2022 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry and is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. Iver is the 2021-2022 Ronald Wallace Fellow for Poetry at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. They have a Ph.D. in Poetry from Florida State University.
Renee James is a confessed English major and out transgender author who is also a spouse, parent, grandparent and Vietnam veteran. She took up fiction writing after a long career in magazines as a writer, editor, and owner. Since 2012, she has published six novels and several short stories under various bylines. Her seventh novel, BeatNikki’s Café, was released by Amble Press in June.
Jzl Jmz aka [Lady Tournament] beamed down in Los Angeles ’92 & is reuploading herself to the internet. Her professional career includes positions at Blavity, The Offing, Winter Tangerine & more. She’s been featured in the LA Times, Poetry Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Ms. Magazine, PEN America, Willamette Weekly, The New York Public Library & several anthologies. She’s the author of Mannish Tongues (Platypus Press 2017) & The 2021 Poetry Center Book Prize-winning: The Black Condition ft. Narcissus (Nightboat 2019). She curated Beyond Special Issue (a collective critique on tokenism in (Trans*) poetry) & THEE SPACE Poetry Prize with Shade Literary Arts. She’s editing Bettering American Poetry Vol. 2 (Bettering Books 2017) A Portrait in Blues (Platypus Press 2019) & Her film & performance works have been installed & screened across the country from classrooms to museums. She has been a Lambda Literary Fellow, Precipice Art Grant Recipient through Portland’s Institute of Contemporary Art & Artist-in-Residence at Ori Gallery. She’s an occasional rapper & founder of Tournament.Haus Mutual Aid Fund. Find her talking slick or in another dimension.
Cyree Jarelle Johnson (he/him) is a poet and writer from Piscataway, NJ. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Boston Review, WUSSY, The Wanderer, Vice, Rewire News, The Root, and Nat. Brut among other publications. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University with support from Davis Putter Scholarship Fund. SLINGSHOT, his first collection of poetry, won a 2020 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry, and is available now from Nightboat Books. Development of the work was supported by Astraea Foundation’s Global Arts Fund, Culture/Strike Climate Change and Environmental Justice Fellowship, and the Rewire News Disabled Writers Fellowship. He is a recipient of a 2023 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2020 Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from Poetry Foundation, and was the inaugural Brooklyn Public Library Poet-In-Residence.
Rick Karlin (he/him) has been a freelance journalist and editor for the past 40+ years, He is currently the food & travel editor for Out South Florida and a contributing writer for The Bay Area Reporter, Grab Magazine and Out Traveler. His latest book is “Last Call Chicago: 1001 LGBT-Friendly Taverns, Hang-outs and Haunts,” was published in 2022 and was ranked number one on Amazon’s LGBT Studies category. His memoir “Paper Cuts: My Life in Chicago’s Volatile LGBT Press” was published in 2019.
Lambda Literary Fellow, QueerWise emeritus, & aging femme, Bonnilee Kaufman (she/queer) was officially trained as an Educational Diagnostician & Special Education Instructor. She recently retired from the California Community College System. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming: Journal of Lesbian Studies, Crone Review, 42 Stories Anthology, Altadena Review, Ghosts of the Holocaust, Milk & Honey-A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry, The Brillantina Project, Sinister Wisdom, Selfish, Gyroscope Review, Queer Loving Ang(st) Journal, and Los Angeles Library National Poetry Month Newsletter.
Brent Lambert (he/him) is a Black, queer man who heavily believes in the transformative power of speculative fiction. He resides in San Diego but spent a lot of time moving around as a military brat. Currently, he manages the social media for FIYAH Literary Magazine and just had an anthology produced with Tor.com titled Breathe FIYAH. He can be found on Twitter @brentclambert talking about the weird and the fantastic.
A.Z. Louise (they/them) is a lover of birds, a writer of words, and a believer in the healing powers of peppermint tea. After leaving their job as a civil engineer, they took up poetry and fiction instead, but they still harbor a secret love of math. Links to their work can be found at azlouise.com (http://azlouise.com)
Ronna Magy (she/her) is a poet and memoirist with writing recently published or forthcoming in journals and anthologies including The Los Angeles Press, Poetry Super Highway, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Wild Crone Wisdom, Persimmon Tree, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Writers Resist, Sinister Wisdom, and Nasty Women Poets. She’s completing her first poetry manuscript. Ronna holds degrees from UC Berkeley and University of Michigan. She’s a retired textbook writer and instructor of English as a Second Language.
Caly McCarthy (she/her) currently resides in Washington, DC and over the last decade has contributed her labor to the work of gardens, archives, museums, progressive churches, and global research networks. Her writing often explores the experience of inhabiting a body, but it just as frequently narrates memories of family and food. She has published in Christian Century and enfleshed.
Jo McDaniel (she/her)
Tonee Moll is a queer poet, essayist, and educator. They are the author of Out of Step: A Memoir, which won the Lambda Literary Award in bisexual nonfiction and the Non/Fiction Collection Prize. Their latest book, You Cannot Save Here, won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize and is available now from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Their poetry has also received the Adele V. Holden award for creative excellence and the Bill Knott Poetry Prize. It has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of Net, and it is included in anthologies that have been finalists for both the Lammys and the Ignyte awards.
Tonee holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from University of Baltimore and a Ph.D. in English from Morgan State University. They are a Gemini.
Caridad Moro-Gronlier (she/her) is the author of Tortillera (TRP 2021), winner of The TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series: Florida, The 2022 Eric Hoffer Book Award Honorable Mention 2022 First Horizon Award Finalist and 2022 International Latino Book Award Honorable Mention, as well as the chapbook Visionware (Finishing Line Press 2009). She is a Contributing Editor for Grabbed: Poets and Writers Respond to Sexual Assault (Beacon Press, 2020) and Associate Editor for SWWIM Every Day an online daily poetry journal for women identifying poets. Her recent work can be found at Best American Poetry Blog, Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology, Poesia De Protesta, Split This Rock, Limp Wrist, and others. She resides in Miami, Florida with her family. Find her online at caridadmoro.com.
Charles Rice-González, born in Puerto Rico and reared in the Bronx, is a writer, LGBTQ activist, co-founder of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance and an Assistant Professor at Hostos Community College. His novel, Chulito, received recognition from the American Library Association and the National Book Critics Circle, he co-edited From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction, and his play I Just Love Andy Gibb was published in Blacktino Queer Performance: A Critical Anthology. His writing’s been published in nearly a dozen anthologies including Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing (University of Wisconsin Press 2011), Love, Christopher Street (Vantage Point 2012), QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking (Syracuse University 2016), and his article on Culturally Relevant Pedgogy will appear in Teaching Black (University of Michigan Press 2020). His honors include the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award in 2014, an award from the New York City Council in 2016, the Men(cion) Award from 100 Hispanic Women in 2017 and a Gay City News Impact Award in 2017 for his activism and contributions to advancing the lives of LGBTQ people, and a Lannan Foundation Fellowship in 2018. He’s the chair of the board for The Bronx Council on the Arts and The National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, and is on the advisory board of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop.
Steven Riel is the author of two full-length collections of poetry: Edgemere and Fellow Odd Fellow. His chapbook Postcard from P-town was published as runner-up for the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. His poems have appeared in The Minnesota Review and International Poetry Review. He edits the Franco-American journal Résonance. Recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, Riel was also named the 2005 Robert Fraser Distinguished Visiting Poet at Bucks County (PA) Community College.
dave ring (he/him)
Kim Roberts (she/her) is the author of six books of poems, most recently Corona/Crown, a cross-disciplinary collaboration with photographer Robert Revere (forthcoming from WordTech Editions, November 2023). She is editor of the anthology By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of our Nation’s Capital (University of Virginia Press, 2020), selected by the East Coast Centers for the Book for the 2021 Route 1 Reads program as the book that “best illuminates important aspects” of the culture of Washington, DC. For twenty years, she edited the literary journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and since 2010 she has co-curated the web exhibit, DC Writers’ Homes, with Dan Vera. Roberts is the author of the popular guidebook, A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (University of Virginia Press, 2018). In 2023, she was one of five LGBTQ+ Poets-in-Residence at the Arts Club of Washington, and was chosen for the inaugural cohort of nine Individual Practitioners in the Humanities, awarded by Humanities DC. http://www.kimroberts.org
Natasha Saje (she/her) is the author of five books of poems, including The Future Will Call You Something Else (Tupelo Press, 2023); a postmodern poetry handbook, Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory (University of Michigan Press, 2014); and a memoir-in-essays, Terroir: Love, Out of Place (Trinity University Press, 2020). She teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program.
Carla Rachel Sameth (she/her) is the Co-Poet Laureate for Altadena, CA. Her chapbook, What Is Left was published December 2021; her memoir, One Day on the Gold Line was reissued in 2022 and her poetry collection, Secondary Inspections will be released November 2023. Her writing appears in a variety of publications and has been selected three times as Notable Essays of the Year in Best American Essays. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. a Pasadena Rose Poet, a West Hollywood Pride Poet, and a former PEN Teaching Artist, Carla teaches creative writing to diverse communities and has taught incarcerated youth.
Rosario Santiago (they/we) is a Lesbian Puerto Rican writer, scholar-activist, and memory worker based on unceded Lenni Lenape lands. They are always writing, whether it’s horror fiction, role-playing games, or love letters. Their poem, “in death, you are” can be found in the 2022 OutWrite D.C “Pandemic as Portal” journal. You can usually find them shelving picture books in the children’s department at work. You can follow them on instagram @comingofagestories
Jennifer Savran-Kelly (she/they) lives in Ithaca, New York, where she writes, binds books, and works as a production editor at Cornell University Press. Her debut novel Endpapers won a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation and was selected as a finalist for the SFWP Literary Awards Program and the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Jen’s short work has been published in Potomac Review, Black Warrior Review, Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, Trampset, and elsewhere.
Gregg Shapiro (he/him) is the author of nine books including Refrain in Light (Souvenir Spoon Books, 2023). Recent/forthcoming lit-mag publications include San Pedro River Review, BarBar, Otherwise Engaged Literature and Arts Journal, The Penn Review, RFD, Gargoyle, Limp Wrist, Mollyhouse, Impossible Archetype, confetti, BP Review, and Panoplyzine, as well as the anthology Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville, 2023). An entertainment journalist, whose interviews and reviews run in a variety of regional LGBTQ+ and mainstream publications and websites, Shapiro lives in South Florida with his husband and their dog.
Caitlin Starling (she/her) is a writer of horror tinged speculative fiction and interactive media. Her first novel, The Luminous Dead, is out now from HarperVoyager. She tweets at @see_starling and has been paid to design body parts.
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is the author of Big Girl, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection and a best books pick from Time, Essence, Vulture, Ms., Goodreads, Booklist, Library Reads, and SheReads.com. Her previous books are The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora (University of Illinois Press, 2021), winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association, and the short story collection, Blue Talk and Love (2015), winner of the Judith Markowitz Award for Fiction from Lambda Literary. She is an associate professor of English at Georgetown University and lives in Washington, DC.
K.M. Szpara is a queer and trans author who lives in Baltimore, MD, with his small dog and large cat. He is the author of speculative novels such as FIRST, BECOME ASHES (2021) and DOCILE (2020), and a third forthcoming that follows up on his Hugo and Nebula nominated novelette, “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time.” They’re about cults and trauma, consent and debt, and a horny trans vampire, respectively. His short fiction appears in Tor.com, Uncanny, Lightspeed, and more. You can find himme on the Internet at kmszpara.com and on Twitter and Instagram at @kmszpara.
Malik Thompson (he/his) is a Black queer man from Washington, DC. He is a bibliophile and baked goods connoisseur. He works as a bookstore manager for Black, queer-owned Loyalty Bookstores in Petworth, DC, and served for two years as co-chair of OutWrite DC. Thompson has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, Tin House, and the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, and his poems are featured in Split This Rock’s The Quarry, the Queer Cookies Cookbook, and DC Queer Pride Poem-a-Day, among other publications.
Joan Tierney (she/her) is a writer and flight attendant based out of Philadelphia. Her works can be found in a variety of magazines and airports, and her science fiction collection Letters From the End of the World can be found on Lulu.
Addie Tsai a queer, nonbinary writer and artist of color living in Richmond, Virginia. He teaches Creative Writing at William & Mary, and earned their Master of Fine Arts from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and her PhD in Dance from Texas Woman’s University. She is the author of the queer Asian young adult novel, Dear Twin and the adult queer biracial Asian non-binary retelling of Frankenstein, Unwieldy Creatures. They are a staff writer at Spectrum South, and Fiction co-Editor and editor of Features & Reviews at Anomaly. He is Founding Editor and Editor in Chief at just femme & dandy.
Dan Vera (he/him) is a first-gen, borderlands-born, Queer-Tejano Latinx writer, editor, and literary historian of Cuban/Caribbean ancestry. Awarded the Oscar Wilde Award for Poetry and the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize, he co-edited Imaniman: Poets Writing In The Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute Books, 2016) and authored two books of poetry, most recently Speaking Wiri Wiri (Red Hen Press, 2013). He’s been featured by the Poetry Foundation, the NEA and in academic curricula, various journals and anthologies. He lives in Washington DC with his beloved Pete and their blessed dog Blossom. Twitter: @danvera