Contributors

Notes on Contributors...

San Francisco Bay Area poet and actor Tony Aldarondo studied theater at the American Conservatory Theater, toured two seasons with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, taught Shakespeare summer camps and is a member of the Screen Actors’ Guild. Tony has performed his music and poetry in venues from L.A. to the Bay.

Noor Al-Samarrai is a poet and performer fascinated by the confluence between space and memory. Her debut poetry collection, El Cerrito, was published by Inside the Castle Press in 2018, and was recognized by the Arab American Book Awards. She is currently working on a book about life and love in mid-20th century Baghdad.

Dee Allen is an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. Active on the creative writing & Spoken Word tips since the early 1990s, he is the author of 5 books: Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater and Skeletal Black, all from POOR Press, and coming soon, Elohi Unitsi, from Conviction 2 Change Publishing and has 26 anthology appearances under his figurative belt so far.

Daniel Ari poet laureate of Richmond, California produced the city’s first anthology of poetry. His book One Way to Ask (Norfolk Press, 2016) combines poems in a new 17-line form called queron with illustrations created and curated in collaboration with 67 artists including Roz Chast, R. Crumb, Henrik Drescher, and Wayne White. The book won the Eric Hoffer da Vinci Eye Award. His poetry won the the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest. His writing has appeared in Poet’s Market, Writer’s Digest, McSweeney’s, Defenestration, and The Wayfarer. He is transitioning into his new life as a spiritual guide.

Abe Becker has been published in Cimarron Review, Juked, Fourteen Hills, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Cogitate, After Happy Hour Review, Drunk in A Midnight Choir, sPARKLE & bLINK, and Be About It. He teaches poetry in the schools, caregives for quadriplegic people, and dotes on animals when their humans skip town. The grand slam champion of Cal Slam and the Berkeley Poetry Slam, he hosts Get Lit, a monthly new work showcase for Nomadic Press.

Karma Bennett has ten years of experience in publishing, and is a popular speaker on writerly topics. She has lectured on the book business for the San Francisco Writers Conference and Writerly’s PubCamp in Seattle. From large anti-globalization protests like the World Bank and the G8, her activism has covered a diversity of tactics. In the eighties she was arrested during a sweatshop campaign as one of the “Westcott 12,” this nationwide protest led to a trial and a hundred-day camp out protest. She was ultimately exonerated by a jury of her peers for the crime of protesting in a “non-free speech zone” (thanks, Dubya). She is President of California Writers Club, the oldest writing organization West of the Mississippi.

Sara Biel is a poet, visual artist, and social worker. Her work combines original text with different art materials. She is passionate about collaborative art and performance processes, and focuses on art as a medium for building community. Sara’s work has been featured in Oakland’s Moondrop productions and sPARKLE & bLINK. The editor of Colossus: Bay Area Poets Challenge Immigration Injustice, Sara and Karla Brundage collaboratively curated and produced the 2013 Temescal Insitu project.

Pushcart Prize nominee Sheryl J. Bizé-Boutté is an Oakland-based multi-disciplinary writer and poet. With Oakland as the backdrop, she is known for her short stories and poetry; informative, well researched commentary; and lively, attention-grabbing presentations. Her books and poetry have been described as “rich in vivid imagery,” and as “great contributions to literature.” More at www.sheryljbize-boutte.com

Bryant B. Bolling holds a Master of Arts degree in Musicology & a B.S. Degree in Music Education from Morgan State University. A Fulbright Scholar who studied in Kenya and Tanzania, Bolling was commissioned by the Maryland State AIDS Administration and the Baltimore City Health Department to write and direct a Rap Musical: It’s A Time for Life: We’re Protecting Ourselves Against AIDS. Bolling lives in the Bay area with his wife Zakiyyah, and is bandleader of Royal Ragtime Revue Minstrel Troupe and the Bryant Bolling Quartet. Bolling has been commissioned by Akonadi Foundation on three occasions to write and perform productions addressing community awareness.

Heather Bourbeau’s fiction and poetry have been published in 100 Word Story, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cleaver, Eleven Eleven, Francis Ford Coppola Winery’s Chalkboard, The Cardiff Review, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. She is the Chapman University Flash Fiction winner and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her work has been featured in several anthologies, including Nothing Short Of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story, America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience (Sixteen Rivers Press), and Respect: Poems About Detroit Music (Michigan State University Press). She was a contributing writer to Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond with Don Cheadle and John Prendergast.

Elaine Brown a.k.a. Poet E Spoken is a Mother, writer, author, Teacher, Co-host of My Word Open Mic & Poetry Express. She combines freestyle poetry with history to Change Mindsets. Her CD Every Knee Part II is in the works.

Hilary Brown is a Pushcart-nominated poet and queer disability activist living in Chicago. Her collection, When She Woke She Was an Open Field, is available from Headmistress Press. Other work can be found in Queerly, Apt, The Ocotillo Review, and The South Carolina Review.

Tyrice Brown was born and raised in Lynchburg, Virginia around Southern Black women who engrained their herstory in her hair, skin, soul, and mind. Her work represents their stories, and she writes from the perspective of being Black and female in America (including all the complexities that come with that identity). She is a warrior for women’s rights, and has worked with numerous nonprofits from the West Coast to Virginia supporting the mission of educating and protecting marginalized women. She holds Masters Degree in English/Creative Writing and Bachelors Degree in Women’s /African American Studies. Currently working in higher education, her poetry is published in Our Spirits Carry Our Voices, and is the web consultant for West Oakland to West Africa an international poetry exchange. She resides in Texas.

Karla Brundage is a Bay Area based poet, activist, and educator with a passion for social justice. Born in Berkeley, California, Karla spent most of her childhood in Hawaii where she developed a deep love of nature. Founder of West Oakland to West Africa Poetry Exchange (WO2WA), Brundage facilitates cross-cultural exchange between Oakland and West African poets. Her poetry, short stories and essays have been widely anthologized and she has one book, Swallowing Watermelons. You can see what she is up to now at her website westoaklandtowestafrica.com.

Josephine ‘Jos’ Burns earned a B.S. in Geological Sciences and Engineering from Cornell University and an M.S. in Environmental Management from the University of San Francisco. She butters her bread with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing expertise, when she’s not dabbling in entomology. Currently, she resides in Northern California with two daughters and one husband, which is plenty.

James Cagney, Oakland, CA, has been published in Poetry Daily, the Maynard, Civil Liberties United, and Silver Pinion among others. His first book, Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour Of Chaos Theory, is the winner of the PEN Oakland 2019 Josephine Miles award and is available at NomadicPress.org. His writing is found at TheDirtyRat.blog

From New York Zakiyyah G.E. Capehart, poet/storyteller, performing artist, visual artist, radio producer and host, studied at Henry Street Settlement, Frank Silver’s Workshop, and HB Studio. In 2002 she relocated to the Bay Area with her husband Bryant Bolling. In Oakland she is involved with the Stagebridge Theatre Company and made her storyteller debut at Julia Morgan Theatre in Berkeley. Zakiyyah studied radio production and engineering at KPFA 94.1FM radio. Her voice can be heard on Full Circle. She’s a member of the Writer’s Workshop (Downtown Oakland Senior Center) and the Cousin Zica Writer’s Group. Zakiyyah is a two time grantee of funds from the Akonadi Foundation. In 2018 Zakiyyah traveled to Ghana, West Africa with the West Oakland To West Africa Poetry Exchange Group (WO2WA). She is working on her first book of poems and short stories, focusing on her experiences in Ghana.

Lilian Caylee Wang won a writing contest as a five-year-old in Tennessee. Since then, she’s eaten countless PB&J sandwiches, worked on an anthology of the lives of San Francisco’s homeless, fallen in love, written essays about culture and food, discovered she loves boxing, had her heart broken, and become a poet. Her work has been published in the Huffington Post, Whetstone Magazine, and The Disconnect.

Gamal Chasten, poet, playwright and composer, is a founding member of Universes theater ensemble, originally out of New York. Gamal’s theatrical writing credits include: The Last Word, God Took Away His Poem, The Black Mann Act Trail of Jack Johnson, The Wall, and for Universes: The Ride, Slanguage, Ameriville, and Let Bygones Be, featured at the Humana Festival’s 2010 Ten Minute Play series, Party People (Universes) 2014 debut Berkeley Rep, AmericUS Cincinnati Playhouse 2020.

Sharon Coleman, a fifth-generation Northern Californian with a penchant for languages and their entangled word roots, co-curates the reading series Lyrics & Dirges and co-directs the Berkeley Poetry Festival. She’s the author of a poetry chapbook Half Circle (Finishing Line), and a book of nano-fiction, Paris Blinks (Paper Press).

Paul Corman-Roberts second full length collection Bone Moon Palace will be released by Nomadic Press Fall 2020. Previous collections include 19th Street Station (Full of Crow Chap Series, 2011) Notes From An Orgy (Paper Press, 2014) and We Shoot Typewriters (Nomadic Press, 2015.) Currently he teaches at the Older Writer’s Lab in conjunction with the SF Public Library as well as the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute, when he’s not working as a substitute at the Oakland Unified School District while occasionally filling in on drums for the U.S. Ghostal Service and chauffeuring a 16 year old musical theater major around the East Bay..

Elizabeth Costello’s chapbook RELIC was recently released by Two Way Mirror Books. She has taught creative writing to graduate students and incarcerated youth and is a member of the teaching and learning community of The Yoga Room, Berkeley. She writes fiction and arts commentary as well as poetry, and you can find some of her work at elizabethscostello.com.

Susan Dambroff is a poet, performer, and teacher. Her chapbook Conversations with Trees was published in 2018 by Finishing Line Press. Her manuscript, “A Chair Keeps the Floor Down,” is also soon to be published by Finishing Line Press. Her book of poems, Memory in Bone was published in a limited letterpress edition in 1984 by Black Oyster Press. She has been published in literary journals and anthologies, including Civil Liberties United, Ghosts of the Holocaust, Stoneboat, Birdland Journal, Red Bird Chapbooks, and Earth’s Daughters. She performs throughout the Bay Area in Spoken Duets, a poetic collaboration with Chris Kammler.

Colin Dodsworth finished the Berkeley City College film maker program. At the age of 8 he published his first illustration in Mondo2000. A graphic and web designer, his YouTube videos been viewed by millions.

An ink stained wretch, Fred Dodsworth spent most of the last thirty years in newsrooms picking fights with mayors, police chiefs, and editors. He lost most fights, but notches on his belt include one police chief, one mayor and numerous politicians. He writes poetry because there’s more truth to be found in poetry than any news story. His stories and poems have been published in Red Light Lit, Rag Mag, Troop, Oakland Review #3, riverbabble, Transfer, Milvia Street, Bay Area Generations, Writing Without Walls, Saturday Night Special, Something Worth Revising, US Represented, 11-9 the Fall of Democracy, RISE!, and others. He’s currently shopping a book of poems, a book of short stories, and a novel

Elaine de Coligny just recently began writing poetry. She came to the East Bay in 1986 to study at Pacific School of Religion where she worked with people experiencing homelessness. After earning her Master’s of Divinity in 1991 she went on to direct, Building Futures with Women and Children, an emergency shelter and housing organization. Addressing homelessness has been her life’s work, which she now does at the public policy level as the Executive Director of EveryOne Home. She and her partner of 32 years raised four children together.

Carol Dorf has three chapbooks, Given, Some Years Ask, and Theory Headed Dragon. Her poetry appears in About Place, Slipstream, The Mom Egg, Sin Fronteras, Surreal Poetics, Scientific American, Shofar, and Maintenant. Poetry editor of Talking Writing, she is interested in the intersections between poetry, disability, science and parenting.

Susanne Dyckman is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, A Dark Ordinary (Furniture Press Books), and equilibrium’s form (Shearsman Books), the chapbooks, Counterweight, Transiting Indigo, Source, Hearing Loss, and, in collaboration with Elizabeth Robinson, Vivian Maier - 11 Photographs in 20 poems. She co-edited Five Fingers Review and Instance Press, and hosted the Evelyn Avenue reading series. She lives and writes in Albany, California.

Michael Tod Edgerton is the author of Vitreous Hide (Lavender Ink 2013). His poems have also appeared in Boston Review, Coconut, Denver Quarterly, EOAGH, Interim, New American Writing, New Orleans Review, Posit, and Sonora Review, among other journals. He holds an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and a PhD in English from the University of Georgia. A native of Lexington, KY, Tod teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San José State University and lives with his husband in the city that used to be San Francisco.

Deborah Fruchey is the author of five books and editor of another five. Her books include poetry, comedy romance, self help, and flash fiction. Her first novel was chosen as a Best Book by the American Booksellers Association in 1987. Visit Deborah at www.lafruche.net

Keith Mark Gaboury earned a M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College. His poems have appeared in Poetry Quarterly and New Millennium Writings along with chapbooks through Duck Lake Books and

The Pedestrian Press. Keith lives in Oakland, California. Learn more at www.keithmgaboury.com/wp.

Bill Gainer is a storyteller, a humorist, an award winning poet, and a maker of mysterious things. He earned his BA from St. Mary’s College and his MPA from the University of San Francisco. He is the publisher of the PEN Award winning R. L. Crow Publications and the ongoing host of Red Alice’s Poetry Emporium (Sacramento, CA). His latest book is The Mysterious Book of old Man Poems. Visit him in his books or at his website: billgainer.com.

Grey Rosado is bad with names but still wants to know yours. They write poetry, prose, short stories, and handwritten letters. They have featured, they are published, and they are currently looking for a Sugar Daddy to sate their lust for speckled stoneware.

noemi rose (Gonzalez-Barillas) learned as much about writing from the kitchens and living rooms of the Oakland literary community as she discovered upon graduating with an MFA from Mills College. She returned to Michigan where her tiny stone cottage served as home-base during the final decade of a stand-up comedy road career. Now noemi works in diversity communications. She still writes poems.

Daphne Gottlieb is a San Francisco-based writer. Her eleventh book and first novel, 1001 (my suicide note was in your handwriting and your handwriting was 12 point Helvetica), is expected in Fall of 2020. She spends her days trying to make the class war a fair fight, and her nights studying disasterology.

Hollie Hardy is the author of How to Take a Bullet, And Other Survival Poems (2014, Punk Hostage Press). She teaches writing classes at the SF Creative Writing Institute and Berkeley City College and hosts the popular Bay Area reading series Saturday Night Special, an East Bay Open Mic. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has appeared in numerous literary journals including Red Light Lit, Fourteen Hills, Eleven Eleven, sPARKLE & bLINK, The Common, Parthenon West Review, Bay Area Generations, Oakland Review, Milvia Street Journal, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, Ekphrastic California, and elsewhere. www.holliehardy.com

Phyllis Houseman was born in Detroit, MI. She earned a B.S. in Biology at the University of Michigan and following two years in Ecuador as a Peace Corps Volunteer, completed a Master of Science Education at Wayne State University. She taught science in Michigan and California, and in a mid-life career change, published several contemporary novels and short stories. Her Amazon Author’s page is: amazon.com/author/phyllis_g_houseman.

Hannah Grace Ingebretsen,19, Sociology Major, 3rd generation Bay-Area-Native, 1st generation college graduate.

Writer, educator, and healing arts practitioner Shilpa Kamat, was a finalist for the 2018 Gloria Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, and her chapbook, Saraswati Takes Back the Alphabet, was published by Newfound in 2019. Her writing is informed by ecology, global mythologies, and her diverse/ intersecting identities; centralizes in-between and underrepresented experiences; and has an orientation towards healing and connectivity. Shilpa has an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. She resides in the Bay Area, where she teaches writing and yoga. You can read more about her work at shilpakamat.com.

E.K. Keith is a Latinx poet who makes her home in San Francisco and road trips to her hometown in Houston. She shares her work in print, online, on the radio, at open mics, and on certain street corners. You can find her annually organizing Poems Under the Dome inside San Francisco’s City Hall and monthly at Mutiny Radio on Open Pages. Her first book, Ordinary Villains (Nomadic Press, 2018) was warmly received with nominations for the California Book Award, CLMP Firecracker Award, and Pushcart Prize.

Susan Kitazawa lives in San Francisco. A retired registered nurse, she makes art, writes, dances Argentine tango, and keeps involved in community. She is learning to live with increasing loss of eyesight and, she hopes, a deepening vision and sense of humor.

Sarah Kobrinsky was the 2013-2015 Poet Laureate of Emeryville. She is the author of Nighttime on the Other Side of Everything, New Rivers Press. She was born in Canada, raised in North Dakota, seasoned in England, and tempered in California.

D.L. Lang is the former poet laureate of Vallejo (2017-2019). She is the author of 12 poetry books, and one spoken word album. She can be found behind a mic throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and at poetryebook.com

Aqueila M. Lewis-Ross is a multi-talented, award-winning Bay Area Native well-versed in singing, poetry/spoken word, and journalism. Aqueila has studied and performed throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, and is a graduate of Napa Valley College and University of California, Berkeley. Her book of poetry, Stop Hurting and Dance, published by Pochino Press, is a collection of stories overcoming fear, oppression, gentrification, and police brutality; she honors what it means to live with resilience, love and prosperity. She holds the titles of Ms. Oakland Plus America 2014, SF Raw Performing Artist of the Year 2015, and was an Oakland Voices-KALW Community Journalist awardee in 2016 and Greater Bay Area Journalism Awardee in 2017.

Lisa Lim was born in Malaysia during the Second Malayan Emergency. She thinks in Malay, feels in English, writes in English and dreams in truth tables.

Halim Madi grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. Left at 17 to study in Paris and Toronto. Worked in London and Sao Paulo. Now lives in San Francisco. Halim is a TED speaker, a product manager at Oculus working on the future of computing and a poet. He published a collection of French poems at 16 called “Ricochets.” In 2019, 14 years later, he asked his friends for crowdfunding support and wrote “Flight of the Jaguar,” the story of what happened in these 14 years, the space between being a poet and becoming a poet. The leap of a cat. In 2020, also with his friends’ support, he wrote “In the Name of Scandal,” a collection of poems about sluthood, the immigrant identity, queerness and plants that make you see colors.

Juanita J. Martin is Fairfield’s First Poet Laureate, 2010-2012. She was a longtime member of Redwood Writers, 2007-2017, and is a current member of Napa Valley Writers, Benicia Writers Salon, Ina Coolbrith Circle, and Benicia First Tuesday Poets. Juanita is listed in Poets & Writers, Directory of Poets. Her poetry book The Lighthouse Beckons was accepted in Solano County Library. Her poetry appears in Blue Collar Review, SoMa Literary Review, Rattlesnake Review and others. She contributed non-fiction to Sonoma Discoveries Magazine. Juanita reads all over the Bay Area, and has been a featured reader at Beat Poetry Festival, Petaluma Poetry Walk, Berkeley Poetry Festival, and 100 Thousand Poets for Change. When she is not writing or volunteering, Juanita reads on Vallejo Ozcat radio’s ARTbeat or with Benicia First Tuesday Poets. www.jmartinpoetwriter.com

Ty Mecozzi lives in a basement in the Berkeley Hills where he writes and runs amongst redwoods. His writing has appeared in Sonoma State University’s literary magazine, ZAUM. He’s currently hoping for a way to publish his first novel, Four Corners.

Yolanda Morrissette was born in Little Rock Arkansas, a military brat. I suffered from mental illness, drug/ alcohol addiction and homelessness. I lived on the streets of the Tenderloin for 7 years. Now I help others deal with addiction and mental illness and as an advocate for the homelessness. “Being Homeless sucks, and I want to make a difference.”

Peggy Morrison grew up in Long Beach and Sacramento, went to college in Berkeley, Davis and Monterey, and raised her daughter in Watsonville while working as a bilingual teacher. She moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2011. Her first book of poetry, Mom Says, was published in 2020.

Sara Mumolo is the author of Day Counter (Omnidawn, 2018) and Mortar (Omnidawn, 2013). She serves as the Associate Director for the MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College. Her poems have appeared in 1913: a journal of forms, Lana Turner, PEN Poetry Series, San Francisco Chronicle, The Millions, and Zyzzyva. She has received residencies to Vermont Studio Center, Caldera Center for the Arts, and has served as a curatorial resident at Pro Arts Gallery in Oakland, CA.

Zephir O’Meara is looking for some good music recommendations. He feels out of touch. But if you suggest the wrong band to him, years later he will ridicule you in public. Not in a mean way.

Kelliane Parker is a queer, Latinx poet who co-hosts My Word Open Mic in Berkeley. As a survivor of long time childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, violent crime, generational trauma and domestic violence, Parker works to destigmatize dissociative disorders that are caused by trauma; in her words, she “unearths secrets and deconstructs stories.”

Lauren Parker, an Oakland-based writer, graduated from Hiram College’s Creative Writing program and has written for Toast, Tusk, Ravishly, The Bold Italic, Daily Xtra, Pulp Magazine, and Autostraddle. She’s the winner of the Summer of Love essay contest in the Daily Californian, the Vachel Lindsay poetry prize, and the author of the zine My Side of Our Story. She produces a monthly reading series in the Bay Area called Cliterary Salon, and embarrasses her family on Twitter @laurenink.

Susana Praver-Pérez is an Oakland-based poet. By day she works as a Physician Assistant and Associate Medical Director at La Clínica de la Raza in Oakland. By night she reads at poetry from San Francisco to San Juan, Puerto Rico. By nature, she is a storyteller, recounting that to which she bears witness through her poetic lens. Susana‘s first book of poetry, Hurricanes, Love Affairs and Other Disasters, is in the works.

Through creative nonfiction essays and poetry, Dena Rod aims to illuminate their diasporic experiences of Iranian American heritage and queer identity, combating negative stereotypes of their intersections in the media. Catch them on Twitter @alightningrod & at denarod.com

After leaving public health research in 2015, Jim Ross published nonfiction, poetry, and photography in over 100 journals and anthologies in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. In the past year, he’s published photo essays with text on homelessness in Barren, Kestrel, and The Manchester Review. Other publications include Columbia Journal, Ilanot Review, Litro, Lunch Ticket, The Atlantic, and Typehouse. Jim and his wife — parents of two health professionals working on the front lines and grandparents of five preschoolers—split their time between the city and the mountains.

Wanda Ali Batin Sabir is a journalist and author, moonlighting as an English professor at College of Alameda. She is also a Depth Psychologist, with deep roots in the bayous of Louisiana where she was born. Her interests and expertise are historic trauma and trauma healing – the Maafa, specifically ancestral memories, dream tending and the use of art and guided Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to stimulate those forgotten conversations, especially among Diaspora descendants.

Shawna Sherman is a poet and librarian at the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library in the African American Center.

Kim Shuck is a poet, educator and activist. Kim is the author of six solo books. Shuck has been the poet laureate of San Francisco since June of 2017. In April 2019 Kim was the recipient of an inaugural National Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.

Norma Smith is an East Bay writer and social justice activist and organizer. She has worked as a journalist, a translator-interpreter, community scholar-educator, event and conference organizer, and as an editor and writing coach and workshop facilitator. Her writing has appeared in literary, political, and academic journals. In 2017 Nomadic Press published Norma’s first book of poems, HOME REMEDY.

Julie Southworth, a writer in Berkeley, CA. Her work has appeared in Forum and Milvia Street Art and Literary Journal. Julie writes in order to give life to herself and her disabilities. Inspired by their use of form, Julie’s favorite authors include Claudia Rankine, Susan Steinberg, and William Carlos Williams. When not writing, Julie enjoys community theater, story games, and muesli.

Jan Steckel’s latest book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, December 2018) won two Rainbow Awards (for LGBT Poetry and Best Bisexual Book) and was a finalist for the poetry category of the Bi Book Awards. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. She lives in Oakland, California.

Gaby Herrera Stern is a poet and content writer living in San Francisco. She writes about the things that matter most-identity, loss, arts, culture, and parenting. When she’s not busy writing a chapbook on poetry or crisis schooling, you’ll find her safely keeping her distance. Follow her on twitter @gabyhstern.

Kimi Sugioka, educator, song writer, poet, mother, and lover of cats, rabbits and birds, has published two books of poetry; the newest of which is Wile & Wing on Manic D Press.

Donald X. Vaccarino was born in 1969, after years of not existing. He’s a world famous board game designer (there are no world famous board game designers), having made Dominion among others. His previous writing credits include the funny paragraphs on all the Dominion expansion boxes.

An award-winning musician, scholar, educator, and activist, Angela M. Wellman is the founder of the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music centering on the Black experience in the development of American musical culture and identity. She is presently completing her dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research explores the impact of racism and white supremacy on access to music education for Black students. Her photography explores life conditions and relationships (seen and unseen). Each photo has its own dynamic story, not one, but as many as it has viewers. Through photography, Angela wants to ignite curiosity and empathy.

Maw Shein Win is a poet, editor, and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks are Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects) and Score and Bone (Nomadic Press). Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. Win is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito (2016 - 2018), and she was a Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at UC Berkeley in 2019. Her poetry collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House will be published by Omnidawn in 2020. Mawsheinwin.com