Contributors’ Bio

Azalea Aguilar (she/her) is a Pushcart Prize–nominated Chicana poet in the United States. She was recently named one of LatinoStories.com’s Top 10 Latine Debut Authors. Her debut chapbook, Foxhole published by Bottlecap Press was featured in the NYU Latinx Project’s La Treintena 2026. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Angel City Review, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The Acentos Review, Somos en Escrito, and The Mid-Atlantic Review.

Beau Maibaum (ze/hir) is a 27-year-old Butch writer, documentary filmmaker and part time dishwasher living in Leipzig, Germany. Ze studied in Hildesheim and Wales and is interested in modern and historic christian faith practice, rural and peripheral landscapes, butch/trans micro histories and all things East Germany. Hir art can be found on Instagram under @birkenperson and online under beaumaibaum.de.

Brianna (she/her) has taught English all over the place; ask her about weight lifting, food, or her TBR pile. She’s from San Francisco and would defend its literary scene to the death. She’s published on nineteenth-century American women’s literature and contemporary authors like Octavia Butler. Her fiction and reviews have been featured in or are forthcoming from Fish Barrel Review, Blue Villa, and Necessary Fiction. You can find her on IG at @dr.bbwrites.

Carla Sarett’s (she/her) latest poetry chapbook, Any Excuse for a Party, is out from Bainbridge Island Press. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of Net, Best Microfiction and Best American Essays. Carla serves as Contributing Editor for New Verse Review and earned a PhD from University of Pennsylvania. She is currently based in San Francisco. https://carlasarett.com/

Cecilia Kennedy (she/her) taught Spanish and English composition and literature in Ohio for 20 years before moving to Washington state in 2016. She has two short-story collections: Twenty-Four-Hour Shift: Dark Tales from on and off the Clock (DarkWinter Press) and The Places We Haunt (Baxter House Editions).

DL Shirey (he/him) from Portland, Oregon, is the author of over 75 published stories and non-fiction. Obviously, this is a comic, so there’s that, too. Find out more at msha.ke/dlshirey.

Doley Henderson (she/her) is a Toronto-based, award-winning, MFA (Creative Nonfiction) published in the Globe & Mail, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, The New Quarterly, and other Canadian and U.S. journals. She writes with wit and grit about journeys: medical, mystical, and motorcycle. Doley is inspired by world music that keeps her dancing on-and-off the page.

Fatima Hafsa (she/her) is a poet trapped in a doctor’s body. Both these identities have fought to make room for themselves and over time have reluctantly reached a compromise. Between these two distinct personalities, lies the third — that of a mother — which promises to take over and erase everything else. Poems bring her solace and they have been written mainly to make sense of the chaos in her head. But as with poetry, her themes are universal and personal at the same time.

Grace Massey (she/her) is a poet, classical ballet and Baroque dancer, gardener, and socializer of feral cats who lives in Newton, Massachusetts. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and have appeared in many journals, including Quartet, One Art, and River Heron Review. Grace’s chapbook, A Future with Bromeliads, is available from RiverGlassBooks. She can be reached at https://www.gracemasseypoet.com/

Ibtsam Tahir (he/him) is rewriting the script, this Lahore based artist has spent seven years turning traditional Urdu and Persian techniques into a contemporary language for the queer diaspora. Starting with classical strokes, he’s evolved to render identity, desire and belonging through fractured alphabets and fluid forms, asking who gets written into tradition and who gets erased. His work has been a part of different international and national shows and publications (The Seedlings Magazine, The Superpresent Magazine, Monograph, JustArt Newspaper Club). “I use calligraphy to carve out a space where the self isn’t just tolerated but celebrated.”

Jensen Young (they/them) lives in South Carolina and writes speculative and realistic fiction, and was nominated for Best of the Net 2026. Jensen has been featured in Mulberry Literary, Bloodletter Magazine, Mania Magazine, and Blood+Honey, among others. You can reach out at @jensenyoungwriter.bsky.social.

Lalit Wankhade (he/him) is an associate professor at the SGGS Institute of Engineering and Technology, Nanded, India. He had published widely in international journals. His flash fiction has appeared in Twenty-two Twenty-eight.

Lisa Shulman (she/her) is a poet, children’s book author, and teacher. Her poetry has appeared in Sheila-na-gig, About Place, Anacapa Review, Catamaran, Kitchen Table Quarterly, ONE ART, New Verse News, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Fragile Bones, Fierce Heart. A Pushcart nominee, Lisa lives in Northern California where she teaches poetry with California Poets in the Schools, and workshops for women in recovery. www.lisashulman.com

Maureen Neal (she/her), fairly new to the world of literary journals, is an essayist, poet, and teacher whose creative work has appeared in High Country News, The Examined Life Journal, and Active Voices IV. When not engaged in working with the treasure trove of materials left behind by her mother, she enjoys hiking, bicycling, gardening, skiing, and reading. She lives in western Colorado (USA) with her life partner and two wonderful cats.

Megan Denese Mealor (she/her) resides in Jacksonville, Florida. Nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize, she has authored five poetry collections: “Bipolar Lexicon” (Unsolicited Press, 2018); “Blatherskite” (Clare Songbirds, 2019); “A Mourning Dove’s Wishbone” (Cyberwit, 2022); “A Cat May Look Like a King” (Dancing Girl Press, 2026); and “Coals to Newcastle” (Cyberwit, 2027).

Megan Wildhood (she/her) is a cyclist, saxophonist, gym enthusiast, cat lover and writer whose work has appeared in her poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017), her full-length poetry collection Bowed As If Laden With Snow (Cornerstone Press, May 2023) as well as Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere. You can learn more about her at meganwildhood.com.

Penny Newcombe (she/her) is a writer from London, England. She has an MA in Creative Writing from City, University of London. When she’s not working long hours as a registered nurse, she can be found preventing her children from turning forbidden zones into launchpads or haunting any quiet place that doesn’t throw her out for overstaying her welcome. Her work has also appeared in IHRAM Press and Feign Lit Magazine.

Ruchi Sneha (she/her) is an author from India. With a Creative Writing MA from the University of Birmingham, she is currently working as a Digital Editor for Hachette. Her work has featured in 7 literary magazines. She can be found online as @EphemeralesqueWriting.

Sam Backlund-Clapp (she/her) is a graduate of the University of Amsterdam, writing on napkin scraps in her spare time. Growing up in rural middle America taught her the love language of desolate wastelands and dried corn husks. She has been printed in Notch Magazine, Pacific Review, and Bending Genres Journal, and had a piece nominated for the 2025 Best of the Net Anthology. Keep up with her on Instagram @sbacklundclapp.

Sidrah Haque (she/her) is a civil servant and writer based in Islamabad. Her work has appeared in Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Cerebation Magazine, Alhamra Literary Review and Oxford University Press and has been long-listed by the Zeenat Haroon Writing Competition (2024).

Snehal Amembal (she/her) is an Indian writer based in Surrey, UK. She is the runner-up of the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition and the author of the memoir PapaMa’s Portrait and the poetry collection Magical Mundane. Her work explores home, migration, memory, motherhood and chronic illness, finding the extraordinary in everyday life. She has been published in Business Insider, Motherly and The Everyday Magazine, and is currently writing The Homes We Carry.

Susan M. Pendley (she/her), a US writer with roots in the Texas hill country, loves hiking, kayaking and cycling. With a BA in English, she is a recipient of SHSU’s Excellence in Writing Award. Among publications, “You Said It Would Rain” is a Four Tulips contest finalist. She is a poetry reader and editor for literary magazines and can be found on Instagram @susan_m_pendley.

Thomas Andrew Green

Tirza Garcia Olivares (she/her/ella) is an emerging Mexican-American writer living in Chicago. She recently earned a B.S. in Creative Writing and Psychology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her work has previously appeared in Prosetrics Magazine, Ruby Literary Press, and will soon appear in Viscera Literary and World Insane. When not writing, she enjoys reading and doing yoga. Find her on Instagram: @tirza.olivares.1534