Issue 19
Alexandra Burack (she/her) is a poet, editor, and writing coach in the U.S. Her recent work appeared in The Sewanee Review, Bulb Culture Collective, and engine (idling), among other venues, and is forthcoming as an author feature in ucity review. She is a Poetry Editor for Iron Oak Editions and reads poetry for The Adroit Journal, The Los Angeles Review, and $ Poetry is Currency. More of her work can be found at: https://www.alexandraburack.com/
Angela Townsend (she/her) is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and seven-time Best of the Net nominee. She writes from the United States, and her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, The Normal School, SmokeLong Quarterly, and West Trade Review, among others. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar and works for a cat sanctuary. Angela lives with Type 1 diabetes, laughs with her mother every morning, and loves life affectionately.
Andrea Smith (she/her) is a writer and mother of two from the US. She is a black woman living in Pennsylvania. In her free time, she finds inspiration from writing prompts and real-life events. Her creative spirit leads her to knitting projects. This curious individual has published essays for Broad Street Review and short stories for Bookends Review and Rigorous.
Carol D’Souza is a poet and translator from Bangalore, India. Her work has previously appeared in Almost Island, The Sunflower Collective, Hakara, Indian Cultural Forum, voice & verse, Qurbatein, ASAP|art, the Economic and Political Weekly, Muse India, gulmohur quarterly, and elsewhere. My translations of poetry and short fiction from Hindi to English have either appeared or are forthcoming in Samovar, Asymptote, The Bilingual Window, Red River Anthology of Twenty-first Century Hindi Poets, and elsewhere.
Emily Ferro Sortor (she/her/hers) is a Delaware-based artist and writer. She holds an MA in Art History from the University of Delaware and has a decade of experience in the art world. Her artwork has been exhibited around the United States and her writing has been featured by publications including the Journal of Victorian Culture Online and the Walker Art Center’s Walker Reader. Find her on instagram @sortorfunnyjokes.
Nabiha Gillani (she/her) is a fine arts graduate from Lahore College for Women University, 2022. Specializing in painting, she has also honed her skills in miniature painting, mixed media, sculpture, printmaking, and book illustration. Her artwork, deeply influenced by her experiences with dyslexia, reflects a unique imaginative perspective. Since graduating, Nabiha has showcased her work in several prominent exhibitions, including The Design Summit, Walled City, Lahore, (March 2024), and ARJUMAND PAINTING AWARD, (November 2023).
Victoria Lilly (she/her) is a writer and social science researcher in Eastern Europe. In her free time, she enjoys reading historical fiction and non-fiction, and learning to play the piano. She has been published in several anthologies and magazines, and one of her short stories has been nominated for the 2025 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Her Twitter/X is @WriterLilly.
Nah Hannah (she/her) is a poet in Kenya. She likes to use her voice to exemplify issues in society and advocate for equality. She also writes original simple quotes that can be found on Instagram, at: @njungehannah. Some of her works have appeared in the Punk Monk Magazine and Writers Space Africa.
Sandy (Olson-Hill) (she/her) is an artist with a disability. Her work has been published in BlazeVOX (The Sun Shows How it’s Done [ 2022]) Wordgathering, and The Awakening among numerous other quality literary journals and anthologies. Hill resides in Florida and is a mixed media Arts4llFlorida Teaching Artist throughout Florida Schools. She is honored to have her poetry pieces published in The Missing Slate.
Jehan Loza (she/her) is an Egyptian-Australian refugee who arrived in Australia in the 1970s, earned her PhD in Australian History in 2003 and built a career in business while raising three daughters. Now a full-time writer, she explores themes of identity, belonging, and resilience. Jehan’s manuscript, Tariq’s Daughter, was recently longlisted for the Richell Prize for Australian Emerging Writers. She currently lives in Melbourne with her partner and their spoodle, Chester.
Khadija Sehar Alam (she/her) is a nineteen-year-old girl from Lahore, Pakistan, who believes that literature, art and language are pursuits that keep her faith in humanity alive. She writes in her free time, taking inspiration from her own experiences, focusing specifically on the complexity of human emotions and the existentialist human affair.
Mahmoud Mahran Abu Dayyeh is from the Gaza, Palestine.
From shattered Gaza. I am from Khan Yunis, the city of resilience, the city of love and life, the city of dreams and reality that has now become a city of rubble and destruction, a city of memories, a city of sorrow and grief. I am 23 years old and bear the responsibility of caring for 8 people in addition to my parents. GOFUNDME
Elinor Davis (she/her) led a peripatetic early life, eventually settling in Northern California, USA. After finishing a BA in sociology and realizing she had no marketable skills, she also got a nursing degree and license. She lives on an urban homestead where she helps weed the garden and works as a health care writer/editor. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous U.S. and international publications.
Joan Mazza (she/her) has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self. Her poetry is widely published and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Comstock Review, Prairie Schooner, Slant, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia.
Taylor Aamot (she/her) is a writer from Los Angeles who uses her work to explore anxiety, gender, queerness, and any feelings that are just too big for names.
Faithna Geffrard (she/her) is a Haitian American writer. She is an alum of Roots.Wounds.Words, Wild Seeds Retreat, and VONA.
Richard A. Perez Jr. (he/him) is a writer whose short stories have appeared in L.A. Affairs: 65 True Stories, Blink-Ink #38, and It All Dies Anyway: L.A., Jabberjaw, and the End of an Era. He lives in the San Gabriel Valley and sometimes can be found on IG @10000blackcats
Emily Ferro Sortor (she/her) is a Delaware-based artist and writer. She holds an MA in Art History from the University of Delaware and has a decade of experience in the art world. Her artwork has been exhibited around the United States and her writing has been featured by publications including the Journal of Victorian Culture Online and the Walker Art Center’s Walker Reader. Find her on Instagram: @sortorfunnyjokes
J.B. POLK is Polish by birth, and a citizen of the world by choice. Her first story was short-listed for the Irish Independent/Hennessy Awards, Ireland, 1996. Since she went back to writing fiction in 2020, more than a 140 of her stories, flash fiction and non-fiction, have been accepted for publication. She has recently won 1st prize in the International Human Rights Arts Movement literary contest.
Shehrbano Minallah is an educationist in Pakistan/Canada. In her free time, she enjoys reading (preferably South Asian literature) and writing. She also loves reading children’s books with her three children. She has a master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Chicago which she attended as a Fulbright scholar. She can be reached at [email protected]
Sara Haq (fluidity/rock/tree/etc.) is an artist, gardener, writer, cat-lover and sacred medicine practitioner based in London, UK. Her work is interdisciplinary in approach. The content is reflective of personal experience & processes which often explore intercultural relationships & ecologies, power dynamics, transformation & interactions between art, nature, healing & social change. Sara’s work has been exhibited and published widely. Notable commissions include: Para Site – Hong Kong, 10th Berlin Biennale, Wellcome Collection and forthcoming publication with Bethlem Gallery in 2025. Instagram @monkeytreepro