From Editorial Assistants Ayling Dominguez, Cari Muñoz, and Natalie Stevens: The Hayden’s Ferry was conceived here, in Arizona, a place of migration and borderlands. At the heart of this desert is the movement of light, sound, and body. We sought to return to the beginning of HFR, specifically its 20th century publications, for a retracing of our contributors’ migratory lineages. Several themes that came to light in these pieces were personal journey, movement, displacement, definition, and redefinition of home.
Migration
“Faded Green Card“ by D. Nurkse (issue 2, 1987)
“The Suburbs of Eden” by Katharine Coles (issue 7, 1990)
“Spadefoot Toads and Storm Sewers” by Susan J. Tweit (issue 12, 1993)
“Shame” by Kirsten Scott (issue 15, 1994)
“Corners of Night” by Yusef Komunyakaa (issue 19, 1996)
“Terremotos: in the Land of Earthquakes” by Virgil Suarez (issue 25, 1999-2000)
Note: The art for this collection is from Arthur Wesley Dow’s Floating World: Composition (1905 edition).
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Ayling Zulema Dominguez (they/she) is a poet, mixed media artist, and youth arts educator from Bronx, NY, with roots in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. As an artist in an abolitionist mindset, their work explores the question: Who are we at our most free? Ayling turns to poetry because of the potential they see in curious manipulations of language to bring forth building blocks for radically different, care-centered futures. They were a 2021 Laundromat Project Create Change Fellow, 2020 DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium Fellow, in community at The Watering Hole Poetry Retreat, and awarded the Laundromat Project Seed Grant to host poetry workshops for BIPOC caretakers in laundromats throughout the Bronx and Brooklyn. Ayling was a 2023 Prufer Poetry Prize Finalist, and received Honorable Mention for the 2022 Lorca Latinx Poetry Prize. They are an active mentee in the Latinx in Publishing Writers Mentorship Program, and the Unlock Her Potential Mentorship Program. Select poems of theirs have been published in Moko Magazine, La Galería Magazine, The Protest Review, The Mujerista, 433 Magazine, Latino Rebels, The Bronx Free Press, and Alegria Magazine’s Latinx Poetry Anthology. Ayling is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Arizona State University, and serves as Editorial Assistant for Hayden's Ferry Review, and Culture Change Coordinator with United We Dream.
Cari Muñoz is a third-year MFA student in poetry at ASU.
Natalie Stevens is an undergraduate student pursuing a degree in both English Literature and German at Arizona State University. She is currently an Associate Fiction Editor at Hayden’s Ferry Review.