Gulet Isse (IG: @blvcktor) is a Somali American writer, actor, and curator. Originally from New Orleans, they are now living in South Central LA.
Three years ago, Gulet co-founded the BXD Collective (@bxdcollective), a curated group of multidisciplinary artists from around the world. Every summer, the Collective puts on an exhibition, featuring various mediums, from film and photography to ceramics.
They graduated from USC this past fall with a double major in Acting & Narrative Studies. Since graduating, they’ve acted in various TV series, films, and music videos, all while developing their own screenplays. When they’re not on set, they’re most likely out on a hike or baking up vegan goodies.
Hannah Gregory is a trans, queer writer. Her writing has appeared in Passages North, The Normal School, Taco Bell Quarterly, HAD, Okay Donkey, and elsewhere. She is an alum of CRIT, and is at work on a novel and a linked story collection about community and isolation. She holds a graduate degree in public policy and works for an environmental nonprofit. At the golden hour, you can find her on the streets with her trusty AE-1. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her wife and their dog, Trixie, a bearded queen. Twitter and Instagram: @hannahgrgr
Honora Ankong is a poet, writer, and educator from Cameroon with an MFA in poetry from Virginia tech. Her debut chapbook of poems chapbook of poems “our gods are hungry for elegies” is out now with Glass Poetry Press. Her other words can be found published at Foglifter, Cream City Review, Poetry Daily, The Maine Review, Lolwe, and elsewhere. They’re a 2022-2023 Fulbright grant recipient to Mauritius & have held fellowships and residencies at Goodyear arts, Hurston/Wright foundation, and Lambda Literary. You can find her @honoora on Twitter & @yungwestafricanpoet on Instagram
Irene Villaseñor’s writing appears in Queer Nature: An Ecoqueer Poetry Anthology, My Phone Lies to Me: Fake News Poetry Workshops as Radical Digital Media Literacy, Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, Nat. Brut, Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, Santa Fe Writers Project’s Quarterly Journal, and Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought. Irene is also a co-curator for the Bespoke Next Gen series at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division bookstore. She was invited to read her poetry at the 2022 Whitney Biennial: Quiet As It’s Kept, as part of an event honoring A Gathering of the Tribes. IG / Twitter: IreneSenor
Dale Walls is the author of the forthcoming novel The Queer Girl Is Going to Be Okay. She is currently a graduate student at Stanford University studying art history. When not writing, they can be found creating educational videos about artists of color on their YouTube channel, Art in Color. Find her online @dalewalls_ or dalewallsauthor.com.
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
Juniper Johnson (b. Inglewood, CA) is an interdisciplinary artist who marries visual and literary elements to explore the labyrinthine nature of Blackness. While her screenwriting and prose highlight identity, coming of age, and the unconventional comforts of found family; her fine art photography is an unwavering homage to Black American love, culture, and life. She wields a BFA in Creative Writing from Ringling College of Art and Design with minors in Photography, Film Studies, and Art History. In undergrad, she curated her first solo exhibition “The Jubliant Art of Being Black” and became a Women of Color Unite Screenwriting Mentee. Her words can be found in Midnight and Indigo, Neptune Magazine, Fifth Wheel Press, and elsewhere. Her instagram is up the road @junipers.street; to find her Twitter, take a left on @junipers_street.
Leo Aquino is a non-binary queer Filipinx storyteller living in Los Angeles. They write queer romcoms, narrative nonfiction, and poetry. They also created Queer and Trans Wealth, an anti-capitalist personal finance resource for queer and trans folx looking for financial freedom from capitalism.
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.
Kiefer Lloyd (he/him) is a writer from Portland, Oregon whose work explores queer narrative and masculinity. He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is working on his thesis novel, a queer retelling of the Oedipus myth set among the firefighting camps of the American west. His work has been published in The Portland Review.
Kiefer recently directed a short film and his play Ticking, the story of the first school shooting in American history, will premiere in Edinburgh in the fall of 2022.
Instagram @kief.er; Twitter @kief_er.
