Issue 72 Contributors
Jessica Abughattas’s debut collection, Strip, won the 2020 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. She is a Kundiman fellow and a graduate of the Antioch University Los Angeles MFA in Creative Writing. Born and raised in California by Palestinian immigrants, she now lives on Tongva land in Los Angeles.
Paula Ethans is a writer, poet, organizer, and human rights lawyer from Canada. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal, Ethel Zine, The Quarantine Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, nymphs publications, WordsFest Zine, Bareknuckle Poet, and more. She most recently won the 2019 Trans Europe Expression Slam finals in Manchester, UK. You can follow her on Twitter @PaulaEthans.
Cassandra Griffing recently graduated from Kansas State University in December 2020. There, she was an undergraduate in English Creative Writing and minored in Anthropology. She has previously been published in Elementia, and Green Blotter.
Melissa Fite Johnson is a high school English teacher who lives with her husband and dogs in Lawrence, KS. She is the author of Green (Riot in Your Throat, 2021) and A Crooked Door Cut into the Sky, winner of the 2017 Vella Chapbook Award (Paper Nautilus Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Pleiades, SWWIM, Sidereal, Stirring, Whale Road Review, Broadsided Press, and elsewhere. Find her online at melissafitejohnson.com.
Sara Luisa Kirk is a poet, teacher, and the author of only all the blood (Grey Book Press). Her work is featured or forthcoming in SWWIM, Anak Sastra, Hobart, and wildness. Sara lives and teaches in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where she co-curates Magic Theatre, a monthly poetry series. Find her at saralkirk.com.
Koss is a queer writer and artist with an MFA from SAIC. They have work published (or forthcoming) in Best Small Fictions 2020, Diode Poetry, Chiron Review, Spoon River Review, Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Spillway, Bending Genres, Anti-Heroin Chic, Rough Beast, and others. Her hybrid book, One for Sorrow, is due out in late 2020/early 2021 by Negative Capability Press. Keep up with Koss on Twitter @Koss51209969 and Instagram @koss_singular. Their website is http://koss-works.com.
Andrew Kozma’s poems have appeared in Blackbird, The Believer, Redactions, and Bennington Review. His first book of poems, City of Regret (Zone 3 Press, 2007), won the Zone 3 First Book Award. Keep up with him on Twitter at @thedrellum.
Katie Darby Mullins teaches creative writing at the University of Evansville. She’s been published or has work forthcoming in journals like Barrelhouse, The Rumpus, Iron Horse, Harpur Palate, and Prime Number. She helped found and is the executive writer for Underwater Sunshine Fest, a music festival in NYC. Her first book, Neuro, Typical: Chemical Reactions & Trauma Bonds came out on Summer Camp Press in late 2020.
Alix Perry is a white queer and trans writer living on occupied Coast Salish land (Greater Seattle). Their work has been published in Papeachu Review, the Courage is a Gift anthology, An Injustice!, and elsewhere. Their pen-named alter ego writes fiction for Scribd. More at alixperrywriting.com and on Instagram @enchantedkeloid.
Justin Vicari is a poet, a film and literature theorist, and a translator, almost completely self-taught, although they attended classes at the University of Pittsburgh. They are the author of eight books, including two full collections of poems, In Search of Lost Joy (Main Street Rag, 2018) and The Professional Weepers (Pavement Saw, 2011). Currently they are writing poetry about being intersex and about having Asperger's. Vicari's work appears in Rattle and other journals.
Jen Yáñez-Alaniz is new to submitting her poetry after many years of writing. She is currently working on a collection of work that explores the repressive denigration of racial, sexual and personal value in patriarchal religion and society. Based on her own perceptions, her poetry utilizes the metaphors of traditional Catholicism and caste-level colonialism, to break free from painful traditions and to reveal hidden oppression. She also participates with and organizes readings promoting mental health awareness. She writes poetry to maintain mental health wellness and draws from personal experiences as well as through her experiences having grown up with a brother and father with multiple diagnoses. Jen is co-founder of Welcome: A Poetry Declaration, a platform for refugee and immigrant voices in partnership with San Antonio, TX. Immigration Liaison’s Office. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, Cutthroat: Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century, I Sing: The Body, and Cloud Women’s Quarterly Journal.