Aqueela C. Britt published her first novel, London Reign, under the pseudonym, A.C. Britt in 2007. She writes raw, matter-of-fact stories about LGBTQ identified black and brown kids trying to live their best lives. She obtained her MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University (2018) and has penned several works of short and long fiction, poetry and essays. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work from Columbia College, South Carolina and a Master of Social Work from Simmons University (formerly Simmons College).
Aqueela C. Britt is the Director of Field Education and Associate Professor of Practice for the Simmons University Bachelor of Social Work program.
Daniel Garcia’s essays appear or are forthcoming in Ninth Letter, The Offing, Quarterly West, Guernica, Passages North, The Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Poems appear or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Electric Literature, Crazyhorse, Porter House Review, and others. A recipient of prizes, scholarships, and grants from Bat City Review, So to Speak, Tin House, PEN America, and others, Daniel is the InteR/e/views editor for Split Lip Magazine and the Creative Nonfiction editor for GASHER Journal. Daniel’s essays also appear as Notables in The Best American Essays. Daniel tweets @daniellovesyooh.
Freda Epum (FREE-DUH EYY-POOM) is a Nigerian-American writer and artist from Tucson, AZ. She is the author of Entryways into memories that might assemble me (selected for the Iron Horse Literary Review Chapbook Prize by Lacy M. Johnson). Her work has been published in The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Vol 1. Brooklyn, Entropy, Heavy Feather Review, Nat.Brut, Third Coast, Rogue Agent, the 2020 Bending Genres Anthology, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from Miami University in Oxford, OH. A 2018 Voices of Our Nation/VONA fellow, her work has also been supported by the Tin House Writers Workshop, the Ragdale Foundation, the Anderson Center at Tower View residency, and the Jordan Goodman Prize.
J.P. Der Boghossian founded the Queer Armenian Library to address the lack of Armenian visibility in queer literature and the lack of queer visibility in Armenian literature. His current project is a first-of-its-kind essay collection from a Queer Armenian writer. His essays are featured in The Sun Isn’t Out Long Enough (Anamot Press) and Imagining and Seeing: Voices from the Armenian Diaspora (University of Texas Press). He hosts the podcast This Queer Book Saved My Life! interviewing LGBTQ guests about the queer books that saved their lives and discussing the book with the author. He is a founding board member of the International Armenian Literary Alliance. @jpderboghossian @thisqueerbook
Liana Fu (they/she) is a queer nonbinary Cantonese writer and organizer from Chicago. She studied at the University of Chicago while organizing for student of color power. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and Scholastic Art & Writing national silver medalist with an affinity for hybrid forms. Using critical race and gender theory, their creative practice playfully reimagines, critiques, and builds upon the Cantonese diasporic archive as a contested site of imperialism and capitalism. You can find their work in Hyphen Magazine, The Margins, Glass Poetry, and at lianafu.com. In their free time, they enjoy running their food Instagram (@mushroomhatersonly) and occasionally tweeting @liana_lfu.
noam keim (they/them – @thelandisholy) is a trans Jewish Arab medicine maker and transformative justice practitioner, who spends their days building webs of liberation with individuals impacted by the legal system.
noam self-publishes a zine called the Land is Holy in which they weave the threads of
colonialism, longing, reverence to the natural world, trauma healing and what it means to live through climate collapse. They currently live on Lenape land currently known as Philadelphia and you can usually find them walking around the city, in the woods or in their backyard, watching the bees, moss and birds, and listening to trap and bachata.
sheena d. (@bookofsheena) is an essayist, storyteller, and humorist based in NYC. sheena is a first-year provost diversity fellow and doctoral student at Columbia School of Journalism, studying the intersections of comedy, race, and social movements. A lover and by-product of Taco Bell, Wendy’s, and White Castle, she is at work on an essay collection about what growing up in a fast food test market and later bouncing between four continents, nine countries, and six U.S. states has taught her about belonging, otherness, and home. Find sheena’s work on bookofsheena.com or in Split Lip Magazine, Taco Bell Quarterly, Autostraddle, The Seventh Wave, and elsewhere.
SM Sukardi is a writer, essayist, and critic who likes to think about religion, classical music, the archive, and especially any of the weird intersections of the above. SM has received a fellowship from Periplus and is based in Brooklyn, where they also recently learned to play the recorder (poorly).
Soniya Munshi (@somunshi) is a writer, researcher, and educator based in Queens, NYC. Her work takes up themes of feminist interdependence outside of heteronormative structures, the potential of grief and loss to facilitate healing and transformation, and illness and disability in migrant communities of color. Her writing has been encouraged by VONA, Tin House, Monson Arts, Blue Mountain Center, and others, and has appeared in Scholar and Feminist Online, Feminist Formations, Asian American Law Journal, Teachers and Writers, and elsewhere. She is working on a novel, a short story collection, and a memoir that explores how working in gender justice movements informed her experiences of caring for her terminally ill father. She is a nibling devotee, an enneagram enthusiast, and a lover of autumn asters.
Tauheed Zaman (he/him) is a Bengali-American writer and physician who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. His non-medical writing has been featured in Salon, Foglifter Press, and at LitQuake 2021. When not writing, you can find him singing with the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. IG: agentmowgli
