Contributors

AL-BUHTURI (821–897 CE) was a distinguished Abbasid poet, celebrated for his mastery of badīʿ, a device reliant in rhetorical embellishment and innovation in poetic expression. Born in Manbij, Syria, he was a contemporary of Abu Tammam, whose influence shaped Al-Buhturi's sophisticated use of imagery and ornamentation. While his early work reflects his upbringing in Bedouin society, his Diwan also demonstrates the refinement of court panegyric conventions—all of which has made him a pivotal figure in the evolution of Abbasid verse.

ALDO AMPARÁN is the author of Brother Sleep (Alice James Books, 2022), which won the Alice James Award in 2020 and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Their second book, The House Has Teeth, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in September 2026. Amparán has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and CantoMundo. Their work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere.

CHRISTINE BARKLEY is an Irish-American writer based in the Pacific Northwest. Her poems and essays can be found in The Journal, Yale Review, Massachusetts Review, West Branch, Grain, Manhattan Review, Salamander, and Missouri Review, among others. She is the associate poetry editor of The Dodge, and a poetry reader for TriQuarterly.

ALISSA M. BARR is a writer and registered nurse from Alleghany County, Virginia. Her work can be found in Ninth Letter, Poet Lore, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere.

ROSEBUD BEN-ONI is the author of several collections of poetry, including If This is the Age We End Discovery (2021), which won the Alice James Award and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Her work has been commissioned by Paramount, the National September 11th Memorial, and the Museum of Jewish Heritage. She has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Queens Arts Fund, Queens Council on the Arts, and CantoMundo. Her work appears in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, NPR’s The Slowdown, AGNI, Poetry Society of America, among others.

MICHAEL BOCCARDO’s poems have appeared in various journals including Kestrel, storySouth, Spoon River Poetry Review, Rattle, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, Iron Horse, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Comstock Review, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, and Best New Poets, as well as the anthologies The Power of the Feminine I: Vol II and Southern Poetry Anthology, VII: North Carolina. He is a four-time Pushcart nominee and a finalist for the James Wright Poetry Award. He resides in High Point, North Carolina, with two rambunctious tuxedo cats. Additional work can be found at www.michaelboccardo.com

SÉBASTIEN LUC BUTLER was born and raised in Michigan. He is the author of Sky Tongued Back with Light (forthcoming 2026), winner of the Black Lawrence Chapbook Competition. Recognized with the Patricia Cleary Miller Award, Sébastien has been a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Levis Book Prize. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Narrative Magazine, Pleiades, Bennington Review, Black Warrior Review, and The Greensboro Review, among others. A Poe/Faulkner Fellow in Poetry while at the University of Virginia, he currently reads for The Adroit Journal and lives in New York City.

DEESOUL CARSON (he/they) is a poet and educator from San Diego, California, currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. His work is featured or forthcoming in Voicemail Poems, Muzzle Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Offing, and elsewhere. A Stanford University alumnus, DeeSoul has received fellowships from The Watering Hole and New York University, where he received his MFA. Find more of his work at deesoulpoetry.com.

JODY CHAN is a poet, care worker, and community organizer based in Toronto/Tkaronto. They are the author of two books of poetry, sick (Black Lawrence Press) and impact statement (Brick Books), a member of Daybreak Poets Collective, cohost with Sanna Wani of the podcast Poet Talk, and a member of Toronto Writers Against the War on Gaza.

LARS CHINBURG is a writer from New Hampshire. His favorite food is banana cream pie. You can find more of his published work at larschinburg.com.

ALEX CONNORS is an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Idaho where they are the 2024-2025 Hemingway Fellow.

CELIA CUMMISKEY is a recent graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s MFA program. Her work has appeared in the Missouri Review, Post Road, CRAFT, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

TOLU DANIEL is a writer and editor. He is an MFA Creative Writing graduate from Washington University in St. Louis and a graduate of Kansas State University’s English Masters. His essays and short stories have appeared in Catapult, Blue Mesa Review, Isele Magazine, Olongo Africa, The Nasiona Magazine, Lolwe, Prachya Review, Elsewhere Literary Journal, and a few other places. He is currently a PhD Student in Comparative Literature at Washington University in St Louis.

SHARON DOLIN is the author of seven poetry books, most recently Imperfect Present (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022) and Manual for Living (Pittsburgh, 2016). Her fourth book, Burn and Dodge, won the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. A 2021 NEA in Translation recipient, she is also the author of Hitchcock Blonde: A Cinematic Memoir (Terra Nova Press, 2020) and two books of translation: Book of Minutes (Oberlin College Press, 2019) and Late to the House of Words: Selected Poems by Gemma Gorga (Saturnalia Books, 2021), winner of the Malinda A. Markham Translation Prize, and shortlisted for the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize.

JORDAN E. FRANKLIN is a poet from Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Stony Brook Southampton and is currently a doctoral candidate at Binghamton University. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection, when the signals come home (Switchback Books), and a poetry chapbook, boys in the electric age (Tolsun Books). Her work has appeared in Breadcrumbs, Frontier, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Southampton Review, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2017 James Hearst Poetry Prize, the 2020 Gatewood Prize, and a finalist of the 2019 Furious Flower Poetry Prize.

JENNIFER GALVÃO is a writer from New York. She received her MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. She teaches creative writing at Kenyon College, where she is the 2023-2025 Kenyon Review Fellow. She is at work on her first novel.

GEMMA GORGA was born in Barcelona in 1968 and holds a PhD in Philology from the University of Barcelona, where she is Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Spanish Literature. She has published seven poetry collections in Catalan, most recently Mur (Meteora, 2015), which won the Premi de la Critica de Poesia Catalana, and Viatge al centre (Godall Edicions, 2020). She has also published two memoirs as well as two translations from English to Catalan: one of the Indian poet Dilip Chitre and the other a co-translation of selected poems by Edward Hirsch.

LI HAI is a lecturer at Hefei University of Technology, also a PhD candidate, who has published three books of translation (from English into Chinese), including Kitty Fitzgerald’s Pigtopia. His translations of Chen Xianfa’s poems have been published by Acumen, Modern Poetry in Translation, and The Hong Kong Review.

XINYUE HUANG is a bilingual poet writing in both English and Chinese. Currently an MFA candidate in poetry at NYU, her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, Pigeon Pages, Electric Literature, Poemeal, and other journals. She was a semi-finalist for the 2021 Joy Harjo Poetry Contest, a finalist for the 2022 Black Warrior Review Poetry Prize, and the winner of the 2023 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize.

BEN KLINE (he/him) lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. A poet, storyteller and Madonna mega-fan podcaster, Ben is the author of the chapbooks Sagittarius A* and Dead Uncles, as well as the poetry collections It Was Never Supposed to Be (Variant Literature,) Twang (ELJ Editions,) and Stiff Wrist (fourteen poems.) His work has appeared in Poet Lore, Copper Nickel, Florida Review, DIAGRAM, Poetry, and other publications. Learn more at https://linktr.ee/benkline.

EDUARDO MARTÍNEZ-LEYVA was born in El Paso, Texas, to Mexican immigrants. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Boston Review, The Journal, Frontier Poetry, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. He’s received fellowships from CantoMundo, The Frost Place, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Lambda Literary Foundation, and a teaching fellowship from Columbia University, where he earned his MFA. His debut poetry collection, Cowboy Park, was selected by Amaud Jamaul Johnson as the winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry and is forthcoming in November 2024 from The University of Wisconsin Press.

SYDNEY MAYES is a poet from Denver, Colorado. Winner of the 2021 Iowa Chapbook Prize, her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Atlantic, Poets.org, Obsidian, Denver Quarterly, Booth, Gulf Coast, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Prairie Schooner. In 2024 Mayes was honored as the inaugural ONLY POEMS Poet of the Year, selected by Roger Reeves as a finalist for the Furious Flower Prize and by Marilyn Chin as a finalist for the Adrienne Rich Award. Executive Editor of Nashville Review, Mayes is an MFA Candidate in poetry at Vanderbilt University.

RASHMITHA MUNIANDI is a writer and journalist from Bangalore, India. She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she is the recipient of the 2023-24 Poets & Writers and REAL Fellowships. She writes fiction on race, postcolonial India, and deities.

WILL PEWITT (he/him) teaches at the University of North Florida where he offers courses in global literatures as well as interdisciplinary courses that work with Jacksonville's local refugee populations. He has had work most recently appearing in The Oxford Anthology of Translation, Arab Lit Quarterly, and North American Review, is currently on staff with The Adroit Journal, and is working on a book featuring his original translations of Classical Arabic poetry by Andalusian women. More of his work can be found at WPewitt.com.

IVY RAFF is the author of What Remains (Editorial DALYA, 2025), winner of the Alberola International Poetry Prize, and Rooted and Reduced to Dust (Finishing Line Press, 2024). Her Best of the Net-nominated poems appear in Ninth Letter, Electric Literature’s The Commuter, and West Trade Review, among numerous others, as well as in the anthologies London Independent Story Prize Anthology (London Independent Story Prize, 2023), and Aesthetica Creative Writing Prize Annual (Aesthetica, 2023). Ivy serves artist communities as MacDowell's Senior Systems Project Manager and as a member of Seventh Wave Magazine’s editorial team.

SEAN REYNOLDS is a poet and translator living on Dakota land in Minnesota. He is a graduate of the SUNY Buffalo Poetics Program. His translation of the queer Swiss poet Gustave Roud's collection Air of Solitude (2020) was published by Seagull Books. His poetry has appeared in Nimrod International Journal, Shearsman, River Heron Review, and Little Red Leaves, among other journals.

JUSTIN RIGAMONTI teaches English at Portland Community College and serves as the Program Coordinator for PCC's Carolyn Moore Writing Residency. His poems have been recently published or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Buckman Journal, and New Ohio Review, and his poem “The Secret” was published in the anthology Poetry of Grief, Gratitude, and Reverence from Wisdom Publications.

JORGE RÍOS is a human rights attorney and multi-genre writer from Monterrey, Mexico. His debut novel, Viento del oeste, is forthcoming from the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon Press in summer 2025. Poems and short stories appear in Luvina Magazine, Libros de la Politica, and the Ministry of Mexican Culture Anthology. Jorge's work has garnered the FONCA Young Creators Fellowship and a residency at Under the Volcano, where he now serves as Director of Operations.

ISAAC SALAZAR is an Austin-born and Houston-based poet. His work is published or forthcoming in AGNI, Honey Literary, orangepeel, The Acentos Review, and Where Meadows, among others. He is a graduate student at Rice University.

NOÉMI SCHEIRING-OLÁH (she/her, they/them) is an Autistic writer from Hungary. Her stories have appeared in Passages North, SmokeLong Quarterly, Fractured Literary, The Molotov Cocktail, Maudlin House, New Flash Fiction Review, among others; placed in the Bath Flash Fiction Award (third prize); and have been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and The Pushcart Prize anthologies. She’s a fan of stray cats and underdogs. Tweets and Bluesky: @itssonoemi. Virtual home: noemiwrites.com.

JAZ SUFI (she/hers) is a queer Iranian-American poet and arts educator. Her work has been published or is upcoming in Best New Poets, Best of the Net, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. She is a National Poetry Slam finalist and has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Watering Hole, and New York University, where she received her MFA. She is the Poet Laureate of San Ramon, California, where she lives with her dog, Apollo.

MALIK THOMPSON (he/they) is a Black queer person from Washington, DC. His work has been published in the Cincinnati Review, Denver Quarterly, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships and residencies from organizations including Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, the Anderson Center, and Sundress Publications. He can be found on IG via the handle @latesummerstar.

PAUL S UKRAINETS is a poet/translator living in Oakland on occupied Ohlone land. Their work appears in Nightboat’s Permanent Record anthology, the Seventh Wave, and elsewhere. Paul received their MFA from the Michener Center at University of Texas at Austin. They are committed to the liberation of Palestine and all oppressed people everywhere.

SANA WAZWAZ is a Palestinian-American writer, theater artist, and organizer. She is the chapter lead of American Muslims for Palestine Minnesota, where she organizes grassroots campaigns to end US complicity in Israeli colonization. In 2022, Sana was a member of New Arab American Theater Works’ Inaugural Playwright Incubator Program. Her writing has been seen in The Ghassan Kanafani Arts Anthology, Overtly Lit, Water~Stone Review, and the Colorado College Fine Arts Center. Sana holds a BA in English (Creative Writing Concentration) from Augsburg University, and is currently the program and administrative assistant at New Arab American Theater Works.

CHEN XIANFA (b.1967) is an Anhui-based Chinese poet and the author of over a dozen poetry collections and two collections of essays. Awards include the Chen Zi’ang Poetry Prize (2016) and Lu Xun Literature Prize (2018).

DAVID JOEZ VILLAVERDE holds an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. A CantoMundo fellow, he hasreceived honors from the American Academy of Poets, Best New Poets, and the Black Warrior Review. His work has recently been published in The Kenyon Review, The Adroit Journal, New England Review, AGNI, and FENCE. He lives in New York and can be found at schadenfreudeanslip.com.

HECTOR VIRAMONTES, also known as LOOSEBRAIN, is a Phoenix-based artist who studied graphic design at Chapman University. Skateboarding is at the core of everything that inspired his eventual path to painting. He is inspired by everything from interior design for color inspiration to shapes, typography, film, advertising design, books, music, the abstract expressionists, the baroque period, surrealism, contemporary art, his fellow peers, and, of course, Phoenix. His work combines the looseness of gestural brush strokes with underlying themes of life, mortality, and the human experience. His abstractions are combined with concrete elements to further communicate and connect with his audience. Nothing is left without purpose.

ADAM ZANZUCCHI graduated from Arizona State University (2018) with a bachelor’s of Design Science in architecture. Since then, he has been apart and closely related to MegaphonePHX, a shared studio space for emerging artists. These friendships and this space have allowed Adam to become more involved in showing work around Phoenix, Arizona, for the last six years. Along the way, Adam has been an experienced wood sculptor, working under Kerry Vesper, and building custom furniture for Peter Thomas Designs.

HOLLY ZHOU is a poet and mixed-media artist from the California desert, the unceded territory of the Cahuilla and Mojave peoples. Holly asks you to please commit to Palestinian liberation and the liberation of all oppressed peoples. At the time of writing this, over 190,000 Palestinians have been killed by the IOF. In the words of the writer Fargo Tbakhi, “Anywhere and everywhere you are, you can get in the way of the death machine; hold somebody’s hand tight and get in the way together. Revolution until victory for all of us.”