Abbi (she/her) is a chronic overthinker and hates standardized bios. She's learning to love her disruptive voice and will flip a table -- metaphorically, of course -- to make a point. So far she's royally pissed off her family, 95% of white people, and every group she's ever turned to for a sense of belonging. Freelancer-turned-biz owner + entrepreneur, Abbi supports women of color in their visibility efforts while momming close to full-time and trying to catch up on laundry. Her writing explores a reclamation of self and identity. She invites you to reach out @ask4abbi or @mybitcharilife (current tiktok handle).

Arcynta Childs is a writer from Washington, D.C. and the creator of @HomegirlMedia, for which she was recently awarded fellowships to the Maynard 200 program and the 202Creates residency. Arcynta is now working on writing the young adult fiction series she’s been wanting to write since forever – doing it scared, but determined to do it. Arcynta is rarely outside, but if you run into her, she’s probably ripping and running with her shorty. After a few tough years, she’s finding her way back to - and through - words. When she gets them right they’ll be here: https://arcynta.com/

Catherine “Kat” Boyd has been fortunate to have been immersed in words from her earliest days. She has worked with nearly every studio in Hollywood and has been the head writer for a soap opera website & a paid soap opera episode writer. She’s placed as a finalist in the Passages North Wasnode Short Fiction Competition, won the F(r)iction Magazine literary competition, & was long-listed for the Voyages YA Summer Prose competition. She also received a We Need Diverse Books grant for writing for youth. Most recently she was a Top Ten Finalist in the Launch Pad Prose competition, a Kimbilio Fellow and a Tin House Fellow.

Joy Notoma is a Nigerian-American fiction writer & journalist whose words are in Epiphany, The Woodward Review, Longreads, Catapult, CNN, Al Jazeera, and other outlets. A 2022 Kimbilio Fellow, she has been in fiction workshops at Tin House and Hurston/Wright. She believes writing is a gift we can all access, a principle she puts into action as a teacher for New York Writers Coalition. She started the first ever Europe chapter of Women Who Submit and is happiest when she’s surrounded (virtually) by writers who live in too many countries to name. She lives in Toulouse, France where she is working on a short story collection and a novel. Tweets @joyinstillness. www.joynotoma.com

Laura Dujmovich hails from Michigan, currently resides in Pennsylvania, and is ready to find roots somewhere warm, with a thriving, diverse community. Laura has spent 15 years in corporate leadership. Her career informs her character creation, focusing on finding love in a chosen community of fellow altruists. Believing her path to healing lies within revealing herself through her writing, Laura centers her work on autofiction. Her overthinking mind is quieted underwater with a memorized film score playing in her ears. She is currently working on her first novel. Twitter: @LauraDujmovich

Monika Gupta [she/her] is an alum of Tin House, Kenyon Review, & One Story workshops, & is a former VP of Marketing at a cybersecurity startup. Her work has been featured in the New York Times’ Modern Love at 13 project and her short story, “Baby Arjun”, won first prize in So to Speak’s 2022 Fiction Competition & was a Finalist in ScreenCraft’s Cinematic Short Story Competition. She is currently working on a novel exploring identity, belonging, & cross-generational prejudices centered around a Midwestern South Asian community. When not writing, she can be found in the kitchen, concocting new dishes while dancing to eighties music. Connect with her on Twitter @guptamnka.

Nailah Tataa (She/They) was born in Nairobi Kenya in a refugee camp to two South Sudanese parents. While immigrating to Mi'kma'ki, they dreamed of turning their fantastical imagination into worlds she could share with the world. Their writing explores themes of alienation, immigration, afrofuturism and identity using scifi and fantasy as her playground. They are often seen running through the city armed with a book and headphones. They can be found on instagram under @nailahmoonkjipuktuk and twitter @NailahTataa

Rashi Rohatgi is an American Desi Norwegian with writing in The Toast, Midnight Breakfast, and No Contact Mag, among others. Her forthcoming novella, Sita in Exile, will be released in 2023 by Miami University Press. She is the first English translator of the seminal Mauritian novel Blood-Red Sweat (Lal Pasina), and Fiction Editor at Waxwing Literary Journal. You can find her on a beach in the Arctic, on twitter at @rashirohatgi, or at www.rashirohatgi.com.

Rosabelle Glover is a Caribbean American writer. Inspired by the lyricism and poetry of her ancestors, her writing endeavors to depict the complex intricacies of race, class & ethnicity and the intersectionality of race & gender in America and abroad. She has earned higher education degrees from NYU, Fordham and Columbia University before rediscovering her passion for creative writing. Ms. Glover’s work has previously been published in Catapult magazine. In 2022, she was a Fiction Contributor to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Instagram: @rosabelleglover

Rosemary Ferreira (she/her) is a Dominican New Yorker with working-class roots. Her writing explores race, social class, diasporic identity, and gentrification and has been featured in Split this Rock, La Galería Magazine, and BoldLatina. She earned a B.A. in Environmental and Urban Studies from Bard College and an M.Ed. in Student Affairs at the University of Maryland, College Park. Now residing in Baltimore, Rosemary loves to explore cities and challenge herself through baking and gardening. You can find her on Twitter @FerreirRosemary and Instagram @paralaluna.

Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez (she/they) is a writer and educator living in Queens, New York. They are a Mexican immigrant,, raised in Cicero, Illinois. Their stories have been published in Strange Horizons, Acentos Review, Longreads, Okay Donkey, Reckon Review, Mixed Mag, Craft Literary, and elsewhere. Sonia's writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fiction, and Best Microfiction.They are a lover of books, flowers, and sweets. Learn more about Sonia here: https://soniaarodriguez.com/.

Currently based in Connecticut, Taimoni Knighton's first love was writing and her second love was art. Despite this, she spends more time daydreaming than she actually does putting her pen to paper. She likes to spend her time interior decorating and hanging with her loved ones. You can find her on Instagram (@taiyour.shoes) and on twitter (@monimusings)

Camille U. Adams is a memoirist and poet from Trinidad and Tobago. She earned her MFA from CUNY and is a current Ph.D. Candidate in Creative Nonfiction at FSU where she has been awarded a McKnight Doctoral Fellowship. Her writing has been long-listed in the Graywolf Creative Nonfiction Prize 2022 and selected as a finalist for The 2021 Orison Anthology Award in Nonfiction. Camille’s memoir work is featured/forthcoming in Passages North, Citron Review, XRAY Literary Magazine, Wasafiri, and elsewhere. Camille can be found on Twitter at @Camille_U_Adams and on Instagram at Camille_ua.

Based in LA, Cecilia Caballero (Twitter: @la_sangre_llama, Instagram: @bookworm_por_vida) is a poet, creative nonfiction writer, teaching artist, lecturer of Ethnic Studies, & co-editor of The Chicana Motherwork Anthology. She is a 2022 Visiting Teaching Artist with the Poetry Foundation, & aims to cultivate more communal spaces of storytelling and social justice for BIPOC folks. She is an alum of workshops with Tin House, VONA, Macondo, and the Women’s National Women’s Book Association, & her prose and poetry appear in Dryland, Epiphany, The Acentos Review, and elsewhere. Her work been nominated for a Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Rhysling award. She is finishing a memoir.

Celeste Chan (she/her) is a writer and artist, schooled by DIY culture and immigrant parents. She founded and directed Queer Rebels, curated experimental film programs for MIX NYC, joined Foglifter Literary Journal as a board member, and toured with Sister Spit. She’s screened films in Austin, Tijuana, Berlin, and her writing can be found in The Rumpus, cream city review’s genrequeer folio, Gertrude, and Citron Review. A Hedgebrook alumna, she’s currently writing her memoir. Her favorite color is leopard-glitter-rainbow. www.celestechan.com

Desiree Browne is a Brooklyn-based writer of narrative nonfiction. Awed by the everyday, she’s spent her career telling real, true stories. Desiree’s culture reporting has appeared in The Village Voice, New York Observer, The Awl, MarieClaire.com and other outlets. She was a 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Voices of Color Fellow. Desiree is the author of forthcoming essays in Midnight & Indigo and Gotham Writers Workshop’s Razor magazine. A lover of classic film and social dancing, she lives with her cat Shaka Zulu. www.desireebrowne.com

Elina Zhang is a writer/organizer in Pittsburgh, PA, where she received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. She writes about gendered violence and unruly desires. Elina is a 2022 Periplus Fellow.

Flávia Monteiro is a Brazilian nonfiction writer based in Miami, FL. She writes essays that are predominantly gloomy with sparse giggling opportunities. Her work has been published in Vol.1 Brooklyn, and First Person Singular. She’s also an alumna of VONA and Kenyon Writers Workshop. You can find her tweeting erratically at @flavia_monteira.

Mayookh is a proud queer Indian writer based in North Carolina. He is currently pursuing his MFA from NCSU and is working on a stories that explore sexuality, art, mythology, and family through a queer South-Asian voice. His work have appeared in platforms such as Crooked Fagazine, Mezosfera Magazine, MAP-Bangalore, with upcoming features in kal-FICTIONS anthology, The Third Eye and The Audacity by Roxanne Gay.

Misha Ponnuraju is a Malaysian American writer from Loma Linda, California. Misha founded the Dirty Cowboys Café, an interdisciplinary writing workshop for writers of marginalized genders. She works at Kundiman, a literary nonprofit that uplifts Asian American writers. Misha is also the Community Manager for Foglifter Press, a literary magazine that centers & celebrates LGBTQ+ voices. Her writing explores conceptions of home, belonging, & love within the apocalypse. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming in Shade Literary Arts & Kissing Dynamite Poetry. She is @anothermishap on all social media platforms.

noam keim (they/them) is a trauma worker, medicine maker and flâneur freak based on stolen Lenni-Lenape land known as Philadelphia. Born a settler of Occupied Palestine in a Jewish Arab family, noam was raised in France, and these experiences have shaped their abolitionist politics. Their non-fiction writing weaves themes close to their heart: antizionism, reverence to the land, healing, queerness, colonialism, plants. They are a Lambda Literary ’22 Emerging LGBTQ Voices Fellow, a RAWI member and sit on the advisory board for YallaPunk! Connect with noam on IG or Twitter: thelandisholy or visit their website www.thelandisholy.com.

Phillip Dwight Morgan (he/him) is a Toronto-based writer, outdoor enthusiast, & prison abolitionist. His writings explore the intersections of race & representation in Canada politics and, increasingly, in nature and wilderness narratives. His writing has appeared in Outside Magazine, HuffPost Canada, Maclean’s, CBC News, & the Toronto Star, among others. When he is not writing, Phillip is often camping, reading, or playing with his three-legged Siamese cat Rosie. Phillip lives in a small apartment between a Buddhist temple & a daycare where the sounds of chanting and gongs frequently meld with choruses of “Baby Shark.” Find him on Twitter @philldmorgan & IG: @phillipdwightmorgan

SG Huerta (they/he) is a queer Chicane writer from Dallas. They are the nonfiction editor for Porter House Review & a reader for ANMLY & Split Lip Magazine. SG is the author of the chapbook The Things We Bring with Us (Headmistress Press 2021), whose title poem was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Their second chapbook, Last Stop, is forthcoming with Defunkt Magazine in 2023. More of their work can be found in HAD, Split Lip Magazine, (mac)ro(mic), Infrarrealista Review, & elsewhere. They live in Texas with their partner and two cats in an apartment full of books & an excessive amount of coffee mugs. Find them at sghuertawriting.com & on Twitter @sg_poetry

Victoria Lagunas (she/her/ella) is a first-generation U.S.- born Latina of Mexican heritage. As a young adult navigating spaces that mercilessly reminded her that she did not fit in, Victoria found solace in writing. As a licensed, masters level social worker, Victoria has over a decade’s worth of experience working in the non-profit world. Victoria’s practice is heavily informed by her ancestral histories, personal experiences, her gratitude towards community, and her desire to concurrently teach and continue learning radical self-love and self-compassion through her work. When she is not working, reading, or writing, Victoria can be found watching Ancient Aliens, cuddling with her bichon companion, Rambo.

Akira Ritos (they/she) is a Filipino nonbinary lesbian from Illinois studying English and Creative Writing at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. They were the 2021-2022 nonfiction nominee for UIUC for the AWP Intro Journals Project and the 2021-2022 recipient of the Junior Quinn Award at UIUC and has been previously published in Poetically, WrongDoing Magazine, Marias At Sampaguitas, and Eunoia Review and is forthcoming in the-lickety-split and Yuzu Press. You can follow them on Instagram @akirasoh, Facebook @Akira Ritos, or Twitter @akirasohspice.

alice agro-paulson (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based developmental editor, storyteller, and poet. Her writing examines themes of intergenerational trauma, remothering, and the reclamation of self, health, and joy. She is currently conjuring the ancestors to a portal of healing while working on a hybrid speculative memoir. alice is also an unschooling mama, a bird nerd, and a plant hoarder. She can be found on Instagram & Twitter @alliagroedits.

c.r. glasgow is a non-binary, queer, first-generation Afro-Caribbean-American healing artist, writer & educator. c’s work has been supported by Hugo House, VONA, The Watering Hole, Hurston/Wright & Anaphora. Their chapbook the Devils that raised Us will be longlisted at Frontier Poetry. c’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Lawrence Press, Breathe, Moko: Caribbean Arts & Letters & Rigorous Magazine with various performances such as Brooklyn Yawp, Hugo House & Elliott Bay Book Company. Twitter @fearlesscrg, IG @garudagrin

donia salem harhoor (they/she) is a Disabled egyptian-american anthophile. Executive director of The Outlet Dance Project, founder of the Duniya Collective, they are an alum of Community of Writers, Open Mouth Poetry Retreat, & Urban Bush Women’s Summer Leadership Institute. harhoor was Ground For Sculpture’s inaugural Performing Artist in Residence. A 2022 Lambda Literary Poetry Fellow and Frontier Poetry New Voices finalist, they were a 2021 runner-up for Spoon River Poetry Review's Editor's Prize and finalist for Palette Poetry’s Sappho Prize. donia's work has appeared in Mizna/AAWW’s I WANT SKY, Swim Pony’s TrailOff project, Anomaly, SRPR, and Sukoon magazine.

Karen Zheng (@KarenZheng20) is a first-generation, queer, Chinese-American. Her poetry has been featured in Emerson Review, Sine Theta Magazine, Honey Literary, The Wave, and elsewhere. She is a Breadloaf Writers’ Conference Contributor in 2022. In her free time, she hosts the Mx. Asian American podcast and Tucked in Bed podcast. She loves a good red bean mochi and is obsessed with Chinese pastries. Recently, she has been binging thrillers and true crime podcasts while working out. Find out more about her at https://www.karenzheng.com/.

Leo Smith (they/them) is a Black, queer transmasculine poet from Inglewood, CA. They are a recent graduate from Smith College with a B.A. in English/Spanish and a concentration in poetry. From their first chapbook, The Body’s Owner Speaks, the poems “Drive Home” and “After the Drive Home, I Want to be an Astronaut” were awarded the Rosemary Thomas Poetry Prize. Their work also appears in Arcanum Magazine. Leo loves entertaining their friends, joyful movement, and discovering new ways to feel embodied. You can find Leo on Instagram @sun.ruled.

Marisa Lin (she/her) is a daughter of Chinese immigrants who settled in Rochester, Minnesota. She discovered poetry during her last year of college. Marisa is an alumna of the VONA, Community of Writers, Kenyon Review, and Elk River Writers Workshops, with work forthcoming or published in Lucky Jefferson, Poetry South, and Cottonwood Magazine. Previously, she worked at the City of San José and is now pursuing a Master’s of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. She appreciates a good game of Bananagrams. IG: @marisawrites.

Marisol Silva (she) is a poet & lawyer who's learning quechua and folkloric Peruvian dances. She writes poetry on Mami_soy_emo (IG) about growing up in the liminal of 2 Americas, therapy, pollo a la brasa & ancestral memory. She loves double texting, cooking papa a la huancaína and sharing food with her friends as her love language. She believes there's magic in the mouth numbness caused by spicy aji amarillos. A Roots, Wounds, Words Alum her writing is in Chifladazine, Wisdom Body Collective, Rimay y Raiz zine, & mamisoyemo.substack.com.

Michellan Sarile-Alagao (she/her) is a Filipino writer, editor, and educator. She’s written one full-length poetry collection, a chapbook, and a verse-novella. Her most recent work is a Filipino-English read-aloud book that guides children through simple coping strategies for dealing with sadness. Mich is currently working on a poetry collection meditating on/into various types of trauma, memory, child rights, and freedom. Find her on Insta @michalagao and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/michellan.alagao

MT Vallarta is a poet and the 2022-2023 Guarini Dean's Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian American Studies at Dartmouth College. They research feminist, queer, and crip theories and contemporary Filipinx diasporic poetry. TTheir work has been published in Madwomen in the Attic, Nat. Brut, Apogee Journal, and others. Their microchapbook, The Science of Flowers, was published with Blanket Sea Press. A Kundiman fellow and Pushcart Prize nominee, their forthcoming poetry collection, What You Refuse to Remember, won Harbor Edition's 2022 Laureate Prize. They were raised in Historic Filipinotown, Los Angeles.

Noel Yu-Jen (she/her) is a storyteller-musician born & raised on the California coast. She is the recipient of the Theodore H. Holmes ’51 and Bernice Holmes Poetry Prize from Princeton University, and a Stadler Center June Poets Fellowship from Bucknell University. She writes about (re)creation myths, cyclical genealogies, and all our hidden multiplicities. Her work can be found in diode poetry, The Best Teen Writing of 2016, and The Cadaverine, and she has attended workshops with The Adroit Journal, Winter Tangerine Review, and The Speakeasy Project. Noel is working on her first full-length manuscript, and now lives in Brooklyn; follow all iterations of her on instagram @naiumebird.

Rocío Franco is a Chicana poet and activist. She holds fellowships from the Rad(ical) DreamYard Consortium and The Watering Hole. She’s an alum of Jericho Brown’s advanced workshop and VONA. She is a Best of the Net nominee, and her poetry has been taught to high schoolers in New York. Her poems have appeared in The Acentos Review, Chicago Reader’s Poetry Corner, the Exposition Review, La Libreta, La Raîz Magazine, Snapdragon Journal, and others. She works at a union health fund and strongly believes in universal healthcare. She loves exploring Chicago with her family and practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Apoorva Mittal (they/she) is a queer author from northern India. They want to tell stories that break the monolith of the desi diaspora and present desi queerness in all its twisted beauty. Their short stories and essays have appeared and are forthcoming in Catapult and Electric Literature. They are a 2022 Lambda Literary Fiction Fellow and an alum of 2022 Tin House Winter Workshop. They home in Mississippi with their married partner and a river dog named Jake Barnes. They can be found on Instagram and Twitter @MittalWrites.

Ash Huang (she/her) is a Chinese American writer based in San Francisco. Her fiction appears in Alien Magazine, and her essays are featured in Catapult, Fast Company, Offscreen Magazine, and elsewhere. She is an alum of the Tin House Workshop and the Periplus Fellowship. Her speculative fiction examines themes such as our complicated relationship with social media, inherited and intergenerational stories, and her particular slice of Chinese America. She is currently working on a fantasy novel and a short story collection. Find her online on Twitter and Instagram as @ashsmash.

Keshni Naicker Washington’s (she/her) stories are influenced by the 2 places she calls home: born in an apartheid segregated township in South Africa, as a teenager she witnessed the transition to democracy. After a decade in D.C. she has finally adapted to Orion being the right way up in the night sky. Her writing examines her evolving definition of home and belonging, the communities she has known, built, lost, and claimed & and annotates the effect of the tides of social and political change that move her, and us all. An alumna of VONA & Tin House, she has published in Mer Vox Quarterly, Pen in Hand & Yellow Arrow literary journals.

Born in Harlem, NY, Dr. Lemny Perez is an Afro-Dominican writer, actress, psychologist, abstract NFT artist, curator & collector. In 2005, she earned her M.A.in Writing and Conscious from the New College of California in San Francisco. Dr. Lemny has been anthologized in the “Washington Heights Memoir Project” by the Dominican Writers Association and is a 2005 Voices of our Nations Arts Foundation alum.

Malachi Lily (they/them) is a black, shapeshifting storyteller who plays in the decaying underbelly, the technicolor disco, and the mossy altar as a poet, illustrator, and director. As a writer and energy worker, they practice spiritual channeling to summon stories/wisdoms of queer love and cosmic horror that decompose the colonial fears of nature, monsters, darkness, femininity, sexuality, accountability, liminality, and death. Their work has been utilized/recognized by Black Quantum Futurism, In These Times, 3311 Productions, Hachette Publishing, The Baffler, Beyond Queer Words, and more.

Melissa A. Watkins is a new writer, and a lifelong fan of fantasy, sci-fi and speculative fiction. She's surprised every time Luke Skywalker finds out who his real father is, fights the air whenever Rue dies in The Hunger Games, and wonders out loud why Frodo never met a Black elf. She grew up in Colorado but has spent most of her adult life in Europe and Asia, teaching and creating. Her fiction has been published in midnight & indigo and her non-fiction in Raising Mothers. In 2022 she participated in the Under The Volcano Writing Residency in Mexico. She’s currently working on the outline for a novel about alien social workers. Find her on Instagram @equalopportunityreader

N.D. Rao (he/him) is a creative writer and entrepreneur exploring postcolonial futures. He is working on a novel, the sequel to a novella, a three act play, a collection of short fiction, and some other stuff, too. He was a participant in OneStory’s Summer Writer’s Workshop with Matthew Salesses, Aspen Summer Words with Lan Samantha Chang, and a 2022 finalist in the Speculative Fiction Foundation’s AC Bose Grant for Speculative South Asian fiction. His work has been published or is forthcoming in The Festival Review, Kajal Magazine, Coe Review, RIZE by Running Wild Press, Archipelago by Allegory Ridge, and the World Futures Review. Say hello: ndrao.com or @naveen101 on Twitter.

Raised in a nomadic foraging/hunting/farming family all over Canada, Shan Powell is a storyteller, multidisciplinary artist, swamp hag, and chinchilla wrangler. She is a graduate of the Writers’ Studio at Simon Fraser University and the LET(s) Lead Academy at Yale University. Her literary and visual art has been published in Augur, Feminist Studies Journal, Prairie Fire, Porcelain Artists of Canada, Yellow Medicine Review, and several anthologies. Her plays have been produced at several festivals. You can find more of her work on Instagram (@shanmonster)

Shebati Sengupta (she/they) is a PhD student in American Studies. She is the recipient of fellowships from the MVICW and Brooklyn Poets. She has published in Lantern Review and the Rights Collective Zine.

Willow Woo (she/her) grew up in a haunted house in LA. She was late diagnosed as an adult with Autism, CAPD, ADHD, and OCD. Never seeing herself in stories, she believes representation has power beyond words. She writes supernatural tales where neurodiverse Asian American characters always take center stage. Willow’s writing can be found in Lunchbox Moments and the upcoming BIPOC anthology. A horror nerd, her favorite monster will always be Cookie Monster. Willow lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she reads voraciously to her rescue mutts, Zero and Waffles."