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.
Lisa Konoplisky’s plays have been produced in NY, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Lansing. Her play Dog Park premieres in 2023 in Anchorage. Her plays have been developed with The Bechdel Group and The Workshop Theatre in NY. Residencies include Ragdale, Jentel, Annex Theatre, Elsewhere Studios. She’s a semi-finalist for the Inge Festival, the Ashland New Play Festival and Play Penn Development Conference and a finalist for the Shattered Globe Global Playwrights Series and Chicago Dramatists Writer’s Residency. She has been a guest artist at both UW-Madison and the University of Wyoming. Education: BA, Lafayette College, MFA (Creative Writing) Columbia College, Chicago, MFA candidate (Playwriting): NYU/Tisch (2024). She’s a certified Kettlebell and Strength Coach and loves all the critters, great and small. @KonopliskyM.
Liv Morris hawks stories at Harvard Book Store, an indie bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She holds an MA in Children’s Literature and an MFA in Writing for Children from Simmons University. She grew up in Kentucky and now lives in Boston with her wife, two cats (Bo and Pawl Simon), and a frankly irresponsible number of stuffed animals. You can find her on Instagram @livmmorris and on Twitter @dragonologuy.
Originally from Ontario, Canada, Loren Walker’s debut fiction novel EKO won the Library Journal Indie E-book Award for Science Fiction, was awarded a BRAG Medallion, shortlisted for the Half the World Global Literari Award, and selected as a Shelf Unbound Notable Indie title. The sequels, NADI, INSYNN, and NYX were released to high acclaim. In addition to fiction, Loren’s micro-chapbook of poetry neverheart was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2021. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, and chosen as a finalist in the Beulah Rose Poetry Contest and the Harbor Review Editor’s Prize. A member of The Collaborative in Warren, Rhode Island, Loren is alsoa linocut printmaker and ‘impressionist embroiderer.’ She lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Instagram @lorenwalkercreates Twitter @lorencreates. Website: www.lorenwalker.net
Luz Rosales is a Mexican-American college student and horror lover from South LA. Their work has been published in Strange Horizons, Black Telephone Magazine, Cotton Xenomorph, Okay Donkey, Perhappened, and elsewhere. They are an editor for Ginger Bug Press and a reader for Farside Review, X-R-A-Y Lit, and The Gamut Mag. When they aren’t reading or writing, they’re usually either watching cooking shows, looking at birds online, or hanging out with their cats.
Twitter: @TERRORCORES
Instagram: @luzziemcguire
Malik Thompson is a Black queer man from Washington, DC. He is an avid reader of all genres, a bookseller at Black, queer owned Loyalty Bookstores in DC, and a Janet Jackson super fan. Malik’s poems have been published in Voicemail Poems, Split This Rock’s The Quarry, and other places. You can find Malik’s thoughts on literature via his Instagram account @negroliterati.
María José Maldonado (she/they/fairy) is a Salvadoran-Ecuadorian writer & artist born & raised in Queens, NY. Their work is queer, feminist & leftist Central American. She hates cismen & loves to Instagram: @saymariajose
María José is a proud alum of Macondo Writers Workshop (Fiction) 2021, a 2020-2021 Barbara Deming Fund grantee for feminist fiction, a 2020-2021 Leslie-Lohman Artist Fellow, and a 2019-2020 Queer|Art Mentorship Literature Fellow mentored by Charles Rice-Gonzalez. She completed her first docushort “CALL 1-800-SALVI” as a grantee of Toronto Queer Film Festival’s DIY Film Lab 2020-2021.
Marilyn Schotland (they/them) is a poet and playwright from Ann Arbor, MI by way of Philadelphia. Their work explores themes of queer Jewish history, postmemory, and the cosmos. In 2021, their play “The Dybbuk on Orchard” was a semi-finalist for Jewish Plays Projects. They are the author of the micro-chapbook Boychik (Ghost City Press). They hold a B.A. in History of Art, French, and History of Medicine from the University of Michigan, and are currently pursuing their MFA in Dramatic Writing at the University of Southern California. You can find them on various sidewalks in various cities with a cup of coffee in hand, or on the internet @m_schotland.
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.
Patricia Martin (she/they) is a NJ-born, LA-based writer and founder of the blog The Glam Femme. Patricia writes QTPOC-focused contemporary fiction that subverts societal norms and thoughtfully promotes diverse experiences and authentic voices. Her short stories are published in Midnight & Indigo and MMURE. They’re a freelance contributor for several publications and a 2020 AWP Writer to Writer and 2022 The Word Editor-Writer mentee. Patricia’s manuscript incorporates themes of love, found family, and identity. An editor and attorney by trade, Patricia also considers herself an advocate for those discovering their creative voices as she has done. Twitter @Patriciamwrites, IG @patriciamartinwrites
