Charan P. Morris is a poet/performer/educator transplanted from Chicago to New York. She has been teaching literature in the NY public schools for seven years. Poetry takes its rightful place in her life — neck and neck with teaching. She has performed as a feature poet at a number of festivals and venues, namely The Brooklyn Academy of Music, Nuyorican Poets Café, DC Poetry Festival. Charan has shared a stage with artists such as Gill Scott-Heron, Lemon Anderson, The Last Poets, Staceyann Chin, Ishle Park, Tara Betts and others. After completing the Cave Canem spring writing intensive, she has just finished her first chapbook, When A Locked Door Opens, which explores the shifting relationship between family and the self.
Tanya Olson teaches English at Vance-Granville Community College. Her work has appeared in Boston Review, Cairn, Main Street Rag, Pedestal, Elysian Fields, Fanzine, and Southern Cultures. She won the 2005 Independent Poetry contest, was a runner-up for the 2009 Rita Dove Award, and received a 2010 “Discovery” Award from the 92nd Street Y and the Boston Review. She is a member of the Black Socks poetry group, and serves on the board of the Carolina Wren Press. (Photo by Derek Anderson.)
Anders Renee is a purple seahorse living in a trannyboi’s body with a queer mind that is up to no good. He just received his BA in Gender Studies from Scripps College and can’t wait to explore his own voice and discover new ones. When he’s not cutting people’s hair he can probably be found eating a burrito and scribbling down poems on paper plates.
Among other publications, Tracy Rosenthal’s fiction, essays, and opinion have appeared in The New Republic, Art in America, and FENCE.
Danielle Stanard has been living in California for the past two years with her girlfriend, but they will be heading back to her home state of Minnesota in June to be closer to her family. She is a proud big sister, daughter, granddaughter and niece. She is hard at work on her MFA at Antioch University, Los Angeles, and currently works as a TA at Ashford University, an online campus. She is a vigilant feminist and a very serious nerd.
July Westhale is a femme shark/radical-archivist with a weakness for botany & hot air balloons. An archive enthusiast, she has published with academic conferences around the world, focusing on queering normative forms of record keeping. Her poetry has most recently been published in A Sharp Piece of Awesome and Bang Out!. She has forthcoming publications in 580 Split and Generations. A graduate of Mills College, she is currently an MFA candidate at Lesley University. She believes that her story should be told the way she wants it to be, and yours should too.
Robin Talley is a young adult novelist who dreams of being the queer J.K. Rowling, the female John Green, or the slightly cheerier Suzanne Collins, though she’s not picky and would be willing to settle for the combined sales totals of all three. When she’s not writing, Robin spends her days planning online communications strategy for progressive nonprofit organizations. Robin is represented by Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. She lives in Washington, D.C.
Ean Weslynn is an Aries, UW-Madison graduate and a self-taught writer. When not running a support group for queer youth in Madison, Ean works on his urban fantasy series The Quarterlife Crises. The first book, The Freshman Fifteen, will be e-published fall 2011.
John Boucher started writing in 2005 in HIV+ Writing Workshops sponsored by AIDS Healthcare Foundation, AIDS Project Los Angeles, and the LA Gay & Lesbian Center. His first published piece, “Speaking in Tongues,” appeared in Washburn University’s inscape literary journal, where it won the 2009 Best Nonfiction award. John was a 2009 PEN Center USA Emerging Voice Fellow, and is the recipient of a 2009/2010 Community Access Scholarship to UCLA, where he studied and worked on Dichondra, his collection of humorously dark nonfiction stories. John attended Corcoran College of Art and Design and earned his MFA from Claremont Graduate University. Born in 1962 and raised in Los Angeles, John lives in West Hollywood. (Photo by Don Tinling.)
Kathy Bougher is an educator, progressive lesbian feminist activist and writer living in Denver, Colorado. She taught immigrant student in public schools for thirty years, and now teaches at the University of Colorado Denver. She is active in the immigrant rights movement in Denver, and travels to Mexico and Central America frequently where she writes about immigration and collaborates with feminist and lesbian groups in El Salvador. Her writing appears in off our backs: feminist newsjournal, Poetalk, and make/shift.
