Past Mentors
Past Mentors
(2024)
(2024)
We are currently recruiting for our 2025 mentor cohort and would love to hear from you! To apply, shoot us an email at sunhousementorship@gmail.com with a cover letter and CV. For more info, see the 'For Prospective Mentors' section of our FAQ.
We are currently recruiting for our 2025 mentor cohort and would love to hear from you! To apply, shoot us an email at sunhousementorship@gmail.com with a cover letter and CV. For more info, see the 'For Prospective Mentors' section of our FAQ.
We are currently recruiting for our 2025 mentor cohort and would love to hear from you! To apply, shoot us an email at sunhousementorship@gmail.com with a cover letter and CV. For more info, see the 'For Prospective Mentors' section of our FAQ.
We are currently recruiting for our 2025 mentor cohort and would love to hear from you! To apply, shoot us an email at sunhousementorship@gmail.com with a cover letter and CV. For more info, see the 'For Prospective Mentors' section of our FAQ.
Our 2024 mentors have been recognized by numerous awards and organizations such as:
YoungArts, Foyle Young Poets of the Year, National Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards, U.S. Presidential Scholars in the Arts, the MacDowell Fellowship, Best New Poets, Best of the Net, Lambda Literary, YouthSpeaks, Tin House, Adroit Prizes, The Best American Essays, Urban Word YPL, Best Small Fictions, Goodreads, and the National Student Poets Program.
Additionally, they have been published in or edit for prestigious magazines such as:
Ploughshares, POETRY, Kenyon Review, Poets.org, The New York Times, Electric Literature, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Northwest, Joyland Magazine, American Poetry Review, Shenandoah, Passages North, BOOTH, The Penn Review, DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, Split Lip Magazine, AAWW: The Margins, Washington Square Review, Black Warrior Review, The Adroit Journal, Salt Hill Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and more.
Past Mentors
(2024)
BY THE NUMBERS: 2024
26
26
26
Mentors
4
4
4
Guest Workshops
Info
Yasmine Bolden
Yasmine Bolden (they/them) is a Black American and Niitsitapi-descended 21-year-old poet, sister, educator, and plant mom. When they're not writing about their homegirls, queering the Bible, and ancestral corniness, they're singing with their college's Afro-diasporic acapella group, trying out new twist-out methods, and cultivating a napping practice. They're a Writing Seminars and Africana Studies double-major at Johns Hopkins University, and their poems have been planted in Sundress Academy for the Arts' 2023 Best of the Net Anthology, The Feminist Center for Creative Work's Salima Magazine, Rootwork Journal, Academia, Alocasia, and beyond. At heart, they're still the voracious reader who talked their way into getting more than the five book limit from their elementary school library. You can gush with them over the moon and the poetics of A.A.V.E. on Twitter @blkpunningpoet, and on Instagram @blackpunningpoet.
Index
(Mentors)
Click on a mentor's name to see more information about them!
Yasmine Bolden
Poetry
✺
Saturn Browne
Poetry
✺
DeeSoul Carson
Poetry
✺
Steph Chang
Poetry
✺
Daniel Garcia
Poetry
✺
Maria Gray
Poetry
✺
Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong
Poetry
✺
Andrew Kang
Poetry
✺
Laetitia Keok
Poetry
✺
Divyasri Krishnan
Poetry
✺
Ugochukwu Damian Okpara
Poetry
✺
Claire Pinkston
Poetry
✺
Tyler Raso
Poetry
✺
Elyse Thomas
Poetry
✺
Tariq Thompson
Poetry
✺
Yi Wei
Poetry
✺
Mimi Yang
Poetry
✺
Miles Hardingwood
Spoken Word
✺
Kath Oung
Spoken Word
✺
Alora Young
Spoken Word
✺
Vincent Chavez
Fiction
✺
Mia Grace Davis
Fiction
✺
Ai Li Feng
Fiction
✺
Renny Gong
Fiction
✺
Kelly X. Hui
Fiction
✺
Nandita Naik
Fiction
✺
Info
(Mentors)
Yasmine Bolden
Poetry
Yasmine Bolden (they/them) is a Black American and Niitsitapi-descended 21-year-old poet, sister, educator, and plant mom. When they're not writing about their homegirls, queering the Bible, and ancestral corniness, they're singing with their college's Afro-diasporic acapella group, trying out new twist-out methods, and cultivating a napping practice. They're a Writing Seminars and Africana Studies double-major at Johns Hopkins University, and their poems have been planted in Sundress Academy for the Arts' 2023 Best of the Net Anthology, The Feminist Center for Creative Work's Salima Magazine, Rootwork Journal, Academia, Alocasia, and beyond. At heart, they're still the voracious reader who talked their way into getting more than the five book limit from their elementary school library. You can gush with them over the moon and the poetics of A.A.V.E. on Twitter @blkpunningpoet, and on Instagram @blackpunningpoet.
Saturn Browne
Poetry
Saturn Browne (she/they) is a Chinese-Vietnamese immigrant and the Connecticut Youth Poet Laureate, East Coast Asian American Student Union (ECAASU) artist in residence, and the author of BLOODPATHS. Her work has been recognized by Gone Lawn, Gasher, Beaver Mag, Pulitzer Center, Foyle Young Poets, and others. She is an undergraduate student at Yale University. Find her at saturnbrowne.framer.website.
DeeSoul Carson
Poetry
DeeSoul Carson (he/they) is a poet and educator from San Diego, CA, currently residing in Brooklyn, NY. His work is featured or forthcoming in Voicemail Poems, Muzzle Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Offing, & elsewhere. A Stanford University alum, DeeSoul has received fellowships from The Watering Hole and New York University, where he is an MFA candidate in the Creative Writing program. When he's not writing poetry, you can probably find him napping, trying to 100% another video game in his collection, or fighting onions as he gets into cooking more. Find more of his work at deesoulpoetry.com
Steph Chang
Poetry
Steph Chang (she/they) is a writer, editor, and curator from Vancouver, Canada. Her work appears in The Adroit Journal, The Rumpus, The Offing, Waxwing, The Penn Review, wildness, Frontier Poetry, and Poets.org, and was selected for inclusion in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and The Best of the Net Anthology. She won the 2021 Adroit Prize for Poetry, judged by Carl Phillips, and was the runner-up of the 2020 Adroit Prize for Poetry, judged by Jericho Brown. Additionally, she has been recognized by The Poetry Society of the UK, League of Canadian Poets, Anthony Quinn Foundation, Academy of American Poets, and the Alliance of Young Artists & Writers.
A first-generation college student, Steph studies English, Creative Writing, and Art History at Kenyon College, where she worked as an Associate at The Kenyon Review and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Sunset Press. Last summer, she interned at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When not writing, she enjoys yoga, going gallery-hopping, trying new tinned fish, reading print magazines (which she still subscribes to), and listening to a mix of Mitski, Chappell Roan, Everything Everything, and Etta Marcus. You can find her at @stephchaang on Twitter and stephchang.me.
Daniel Garcia
Poetry
Daniel Garcia is a poet, essayist, and editor. Daniel’s essays appear in Quarterly West, Guernica, Passages North, The Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. Poems appear in Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Electric Literature, swamp pink (formerly Crazyhorse), and others. Daniel is the InteR/e/views editor for Split Lip Magazine, a two-time Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Voices Fellow, and a former Emerging Writer Fellow with SmokeLong Quarterly. Daniel’s essays also appear as Notables in The Best American Essays. An unapologetic tarot girlie, Daniel loves taking pictures of the moon and is obsessed with enjambment, disconnecting from grind culture, and the connection between memory, time travel, and the queer concept of yearning. Daniel dreams of a free Palestine in this lifetime. Find Daniel on Twitter @_iloveyoudaniel or at danielwritespoetry.com.
Maria Gray
Poetry
Maria Gray is a departmental poetry fellow at NYU and the current Managing Editor of COUNTERCLOCK Journal. Her work appears in Best New Poets, The Columbia Review, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, and others, and she has received honors and fellowships from organizations including poetry.onl, The Lumiere Review, The Adroit Journal, Bates College, and New York University. She lives in Brooklyn and works at the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, where she helps run the National Student Poets Program. Aside from writing, Maria likes to read, bake, doomscroll, sing in the shower, and play guitar.
Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong
Poetry
Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong has work in ONLY POEMS, Shenandoah, and The Columbia Review, among others. She loves being from Oregon.
Andrew Kang
Poetry
Andrew Kang is a writer from Baltimore. They were the winner of the 2022 Narrative High School Writing Contest, judged by Jericho Brown, and have writing published in AAWW. They study Social Studies and Comparative Literature at Harvard College and organize for Palestine on their campus as well as the Xīn Shēng | 心声 Project, which combats disinformation within the Chinese diaspora.
Laetitia Keok
Poetry
Laetitia Keok is a writer and editor from Singapore. Her work has been shortlisted for the Oxford Poetry Prize, nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Nina Riggs Poetry Award, and published in wildness, Diode Poetry Journal, and Peach Mag, amongst others. She has received scholarships from Singapore's National Arts Council and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Currently, Laetitia edits for Sine Theta Magazine, and is an MFA candidate in Poetry at New York University. She loves light, marginalia, and taking pictures of her friends. laetitia-k.com
Divyasri Krishnan
Poetry
Divyasri Krishnan studies at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work appears in DIAGRAM, Muzzle Magazine, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere. She has further been recognized by the Best of the Net, Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, Periplus Collective, Pittsburgh Humanities Festival, and the Palette Poetry Awards.
Ugochukwu Damian Okpara
Poetry
Ugochukwu Damian Okpara is a Nigerian writer and poet. He is the author of the poetry collection, In Gorgeous Display (Fordham University Press, Sept 2023). A 2023 Lambda Literary fellow and an alumnus of Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Trust Creative Writing Workshop, his work appears in Poetry Magazine, Poetry Wales, Lolwe, The Republic, Salamander Magazine, and elsewhere. He is also the author of the poetry chapbook, I Know the Origin of My Tremor (Sundress Publications, 2021). When not writing or reading, he can be found binge-watching nature documentaries on YouTube.
Claire Pinkston
Poetry
Claire Pinkston is a biracial Black poet studying at Yale University. Her work has been previously recognized by the YoungArts foundation and the University of Louisville and is published in Tinderbox, Palette Poetry and The Offing, among others. When she's not writing, Claire enjoys embroidery, baking, and looking at Miffy collectibles online. She believes in poetry's capacity to guide us toward a liveable future.
Tyler Raso
Poetry
Tyler Raso (they/she) is a trans character, poet, and teacher. Their work has shared space with Electric Literature, Foglifter Journal, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, Passages North, Salt Hill Journal, The Journal, and elsewhere. They're currently a reader for The Maine Review and Split Lip Magazine, and they were a 2023-2024 Poetry Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. They're very passionate about pickling, making jams, Animal Crossing, lollygagging, eating fruit, Halloween, and going for walks.
Elyse Thomas
Poetry
Elyse Thomas (she/they) is a second-generation Puerto Rican and Jamaican writer from Miami, FL, and a rising senior at Yale University, double majoring in Comparative Literature and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration studies. She has been writing poetry since she was ten years old, and her first poem was about blueberries! Elyse was a 2021 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and her writing has been recognized by YoungArts, the UK Poetry Society, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, among others. Throughout the 2023-24 academic year, Elyse has served as Co-President of WORD: Performance Poetry at Yale, where she has experienced the joy of leading, writing, and performing with a community of incredible poets on campus. In her free time, Elyse also enjoys taking voice lessons, dancing hip-hop and salsa, and learning languages!
Tariq Thompson
Poetry
Tariq Thompson is a poet and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of the chapbook LONE LILY (Sunset Press, 2021). His poetry has appeared in the American Poetry Review, The Adroit Journal, Sixth Finch, wildness and elsewhere. Thompson was a finalist for a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and was awarded the 2020 Adroit Prize for Poetry. He holds an MFA in poetry from New York University, where he was a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow. You can learn more about Tariq by visiting tariqthompson.com.
Yi Wei
Poetry
Yi Wei is a writer unconditionally supportive of Palestinian resistance and liberation. Her work has been awarded or placed for the Frontier OPEN, the Lois Morrell Poetry Prize, the Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry, the Sappho Prize for Women Poets, Best of the Net, and the Lorraine Williams Poetry Prize. She is currently editing at AAWW and writing at NYU as a Writer In the Public Schools fellow.
Mimi Yang
Poetry
Mimi Yang (they/she) currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, but they are always dreaming their way back home to Shanghai. A Best of the Net and Forward Poetry Prize nominee, their work has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, the UK Poetry Society, and their work can be found in Cream City Review, ANMLY, Booth, the Penn Review, and elsewhere. When they're not, they're working as a graphic designer for the College Hill Independent, Sine Theta, and the Ivy Film Festival, among others. She loves printmaking, bilingual publications, and making zines for the community.
Poetry Mentors
Miles Hardingwood
Spoken Word
Miles Justice Hardingwood is a poet, writer, activist, and creative from Brooklyn, NY. He is a 2023 National Student Poet and a 2022 NYC Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador. His poetry has received a Scholastic National Gold Medal and an American Voices Medal, and he has performed at venues such as The White House, The Schomburg Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and Vice President Kamala Harris’s Black History Month Celebration. He enjoys exploring the intersection between personal identity and social change, and always tries to use art to make a difference, on both an individual and societal level.
He currently attends Hunter College High School, where he is vice president of the Black Student Union. He also co-founded PASSWord, Hunter’s Poetry and Slam/Spoken Word club, and is constantly looking for ways to build community through writing. He has volunteered with Gallery Players Theater, The People’s Theatre Project, and was a youth fellow with city councilwoman Shahana Hanif, seeking to better his community through politics, activism, and service.
Kath Oung
Spoken Word
Katherine Oung (they/them) is an undergraduate student at Vanderbilt University and a two time YoungArts winner in Spoken Word. Their journalistic writing can be found in the New York Times, Atmos Magazine, Vox, and more. They enjoy basking in the sun and making Spotify playlists based on poems that they like. Their twitter is @kathoung.
Alora Young
Spoken Word
Alora Young is the 2021 Youth Poet Laureate of the Southern United States. She is a Presidential Scholar of the Arts, a two-time TEDx Speaker, a Scholastic Gold medalist, an Americans for the Arts round table fellow, a YoungArts winner in Spoken Word, a recipient of the Princeton Prize in Race Relations, Spring Robinson Literary Prize, the Lin Arison Excellence in Writing Award, and the International Human Rights Day Rising Advocate Award. She was also nominated for Best of the Net by Rattle Magazine. She is the founder of AboveGround, an organization seeking to create equity in Nashville elementary schools through creative writing and Black history. She has publications in or upcoming in the New York Times, Rattle, Washington Post, Signal Mountain Review, Rigorous Mag, and Ice Colony Journal. Alora Young is a college student, an actor, as well as a poet, and she has performed her poetry on CNN, CBS, and many local channels in Nashville. Alora currently attends Swarthmore College.
Her book Walking Gentry Home was released by Hogarth Books in August of 2022. It received a starred review in the Kirkus Review and it was nominated for a Goodreads Choice award.
Spoken Word Mentors
Vincent Chavez
Fiction
Vincent Chavez is a Chicano writer from Santa Paula, California. His fiction has appeared in Best Small Fictions 2023, The Adroit Journal, Southern Review, Wigleaf, Joyland, Kweli Journal, and The Masters Review. A MacDowell Fellow, Anthony Veasna So Scholar in Fiction, and Tin House Scholar, his work has been supported by the Macondo Writers Workshop, the Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation, and the Eastern Frontier Educational Foundation. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.F.A. in fiction from Virginia Commonwealth University. He loves to run, enjoys video games, and collects vintage snapback hats.
Mia Grace Davis
Fiction
Mia Grace Davis is an undergraduate student at Stanford University. Her work appears in Gone Lawn, The Tusculum Review, and Ice Lolly Review, among others. She is a 2023 National YoungArts Finalist in Writing and a U.S. Presidential Scholars in the Arts Semifinalist. When not writing, she can be found reading in a park, listening to Lizzy McAlpine, spending time with the people she loves, and eating way too much chocolate. Visit her at miagracedavis.com.
Ai Li Feng
Fiction
Ai Li Feng was born in Jiangxi, although she is currently based out of New England. Her fiction has been twice recognized by the Adroit Prize for Prose and she has received nominations for the Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions. She was runner-up for the Lumiere Writing Contest, selected by Elaine Hsieh Chou, and she reads for Split Lip Magazine.
Renny Gong
Fiction
Renny Gong just graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Creative Writing. At Columbia, he served as the EIC of 4x4 Literary Magazine. His work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Split Lip Magazine, Longleaf Review, and elsewhere. He loves to cook gumbo, which is a hearty stew popular in the U.S. state of Louisiana. He loves to take things off the street. He will be attending the Iowa Writers' Workshop next fall.
Kelly X. Hui
Fiction
Kelly X. Hui is a fiction writer and abolitionist community organizer who supports the Palestinian liberation struggle. She is a Mellon Mays fellow at the University of Chicago, where she studies English, Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, and Creative Writing. She received the 2023 Adroit Prize for Prose, selected by Ocean Vuong, and recently turned down the 2024 PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers in solidarity with Palestine. You can find her on Twitter @halfmoonpoem.
Nandita Naik
Fiction
Nandita Shankar Naik (she/her) is a writer and computer science master's student at Stanford. Her writing is published in the Adroit Journal, Black Warrior Review, Waxwing, and other venues, and nominated for Best of the Net. When not writing, you can find her hiking, drinking green tea, or wandering a bookstore.
Fiction Mentors
Info
(Mentors)
Poetry Mentors
Tariq Thompson
Tariq Thompson is a poet and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of the chapbook LONE LILY (Sunset Press, 2021). His poetry has appeared in the American Poetry Review, The Adroit Journal, Sixth Finch, wildness and elsewhere. Thompson was a finalist for a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and was awarded the 2020 Adroit Prize for Poetry. He holds an MFA in poetry from New York University, where he was a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow. You can learn more about Tariq by visiting tariqthompson.com.
Yi Wei
Yi Wei is a writer unconditionally supportive of Palestinian resistance and liberation. Her work has been awarded or placed for the Frontier OPEN, the Lois Morrell Poetry Prize, the Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry, the Sappho Prize for Women Poets, Best of the Net, and the Lorraine Williams Poetry Prize. She is currently editing at AAWW and writing at NYU as a Writer In the Public Schools fellow.
Mimi Yang
Mimi Yang (they/she) currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, but they are always dreaming their way back home to Shanghai. A Best of the Net and Forward Poetry Prize nominee, their work has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, the UK Poetry Society, and their work can be found in Cream City Review, ANMLY, Booth, the Penn Review, and elsewhere. When they're not, they're working as a graphic designer for the College Hill Independent, Sine Theta, and the Ivy Film Festival, among others. She loves printmaking, bilingual publications, and making zines for the community.
Miles Hardingwood
Miles Justice Hardingwood is a poet, writer, activist, and creative from Brooklyn, NY. He is a 2023 National Student Poet and a 2022 NYC Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador. His poetry has received a Scholastic National Gold Medal and an American Voices Medal, and he has performed at venues such as The White House, The Schomburg Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and Vice President Kamala Harris’s Black History Month Celebration. He enjoys exploring the intersection between personal identity and social change, and always tries to use art to make a difference, on both an individual and societal level.
He currently attends Hunter College High School, where he is vice president of the Black Student Union. He also co-founded PASSWord, Hunter’s Poetry and Slam/Spoken Word club, and is constantly looking for ways to build community through writing. He has volunteered with Gallery Players Theater, The People’s Theatre Project, and was a youth fellow with city councilwoman Shahana Hanif, seeking to better his community through politics, activism, and service.
Kath Oung
Katherine Oung (they/them) is an undergraduate student at Vanderbilt University and a two time YoungArts winner in Spoken Word. Their journalistic writing can be found in the New York Times, Atmos Magazine, Vox, and more. They enjoy basking in the sun and making Spotify playlists based on poems that they like. Their twitter is @kathoung.
Alora Young
Alora Young is the 2021 Youth Poet Laureate of the Southern United States. She is a Presidential Scholar of the Arts, a two-time TEDx Speaker, a Scholastic Gold medalist, an Americans for the Arts round table fellow, a YoungArts winner in Spoken Word, a recipient of the Princeton Prize in Race Relations, Spring Robinson Literary Prize, the Lin Arison Excellence in Writing Award, and the International Human Rights Day Rising Advocate Award. She was also nominated for Best of the Net by Rattle Magazine. She is the founder of AboveGround, an organization seeking to create equity in Nashville elementary schools through creative writing and Black history. She has publications in or upcoming in the New York Times, Rattle, Washington Post, Signal Mountain Review, Rigorous Mag, and Ice Colony Journal. Alora Young is a college student, an actor, as well as a poet, and she has performed her poetry on CNN, CBS, and many local channels in Nashville. Alora currently attends Swarthmore College.
Her book Walking Gentry Home was released by Hogarth Books in August of 2022. It received a starred review in the Kirkus Review and it was nominated for a Goodreads Choice award.
Vincent Chavez
Vincent Chavez is a Chicano writer from Santa Paula, California. His fiction has appeared in Best Small Fictions 2023, The Adroit Journal, Southern Review, Wigleaf, Joyland, Kweli Journal, and The Masters Review. A MacDowell Fellow, Anthony Veasna So Scholar in Fiction, and Tin House Scholar, his work has been supported by the Macondo Writers Workshop, the Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation, and the Eastern Frontier Educational Foundation. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.F.A. in fiction from Virginia Commonwealth University. He loves to run, enjoys video games, and collects vintage snapback hats.
Mia Grace Davis
Mia Grace Davis is an undergraduate student at Stanford University. Her work appears in Gone Lawn, The Tusculum Review, and Ice Lolly Review, among others. She is a 2023 National YoungArts Finalist in Writing and a U.S. Presidential Scholars in the Arts Semifinalist. When not writing, she can be found reading in a park, listening to Lizzy McAlpine, spending time with the people she loves, and eating way too much chocolate. Visit her at miagracedavis.com.
Ai Li Feng
Ai Li Feng was born in Jiangxi, although she is currently based out of New England. Her fiction has been twice recognized by the Adroit Prize for Prose and she has received nominations for the Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions. She was runner-up for the Lumiere Writing Contest, selected by Elaine Hsieh Chou, and she reads for Split Lip Magazine.
Renny Gong
Renny Gong just graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Creative Writing. At Columbia, he served as the EIC of 4x4 Literary Magazine. His work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Split Lip Magazine, Longleaf Review, and elsewhere. He loves to cook gumbo, which is a hearty stew popular in the U.S. state of Louisiana. He loves to take things off the street. He will be attending the Iowa Writers' Workshop next fall.
Kelly X. Hui
Kelly X. Hui is a fiction writer and abolitionist community organizer who supports the Palestinian liberation struggle. She is a Mellon Mays fellow at the University of Chicago, where she studies English, Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, and Creative Writing. She received the 2023 Adroit Prize for Prose, selected by Ocean Vuong, and recently turned down the 2024 PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers in solidarity with Palestine. You can find her on Twitter @halfmoonpoem.
Yasmine Bolden
Yasmine Bolden (they/them) is a Black American and Niitsitapi-descended 21-year-old poet, sister, educator, and plant mom. When they're not writing about their homegirls, queering the Bible, and ancestral corniness, they're singing with their college's Afro-diasporic acapella group, trying out new twist-out methods, and cultivating a napping practice. They're a Writing Seminars and Africana Studies double-major at Johns Hopkins University, and their poems have been planted in Sundress Academy for the Arts' 2023 Best of the Net Anthology, The Feminist Center for Creative Work's Salima Magazine, Rootwork Journal, Academia, Alocasia, and beyond. At heart, they're still the voracious reader who talked their way into getting more than the five book limit from their elementary school library. You can gush with them over the moon and the poetics of A.A.V.E. on Twitter @blkpunningpoet, and on Instagram @blackpunningpoet.
Spoken Word Mentors
Fiction Mentors
Tyler Raso
Tyler Raso (they/she) is a trans character, poet, and teacher. Their work has shared space with Electric Literature, Foglifter Journal, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, Passages North, Salt Hill Journal, The Journal, and elsewhere. They're currently a reader for The Maine Review and Split Lip Magazine, and they were a 2023-2024 Poetry Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. They're very passionate about pickling, making jams, Animal Crossing, lollygagging, eating fruit, Halloween, and going for walks.
Elyse Thomas
Elyse Thomas (she/they) is a second-generation Puerto Rican and Jamaican writer from Miami, FL, and a rising senior at Yale University, double majoring in Comparative Literature and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration studies. She has been writing poetry since she was ten years old, and her first poem was about blueberries! Elyse was a 2021 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and her writing has been recognized by YoungArts, the UK Poetry Society, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, among others. Throughout the 2023-24 academic year, Elyse has served as Co-President of WORD: Performance Poetry at Yale, where she has experienced the joy of leading, writing, and performing with a community of incredible poets on campus. In her free time, Elyse also enjoys taking voice lessons, dancing hip-hop and salsa, and learning languages!
Nandita Naik
Nandita Shankar Naik (she/her) is a writer and computer science master's student at Stanford. Her writing is published in the Adroit Journal, Black Warrior Review, Waxwing, and other venues, and nominated for Best of the Net. When not writing, you can find her hiking, drinking green tea, or wandering a bookstore.
Saturn Browne
Saturn Browne (she/they) is a Chinese-Vietnamese immigrant and the Connecticut Youth Poet Laureate, East Coast Asian American Student Union (ECAASU) artist in residence, and the author of BLOODPATHS. Her work has been recognized by Gone Lawn, Gasher, Beaver Mag, Pulitzer Center, Foyle Young Poets, and others. She is an undergraduate student at Yale University. Find her at saturnbrowne.framer.website.
DeeSoul Carson
DeeSoul Carson (he/they) is a poet and educator from San Diego, CA, currently residing in Brooklyn, NY. His work is featured or forthcoming in Voicemail Poems, Muzzle Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Offing, & elsewhere. A Stanford University alum, DeeSoul has received fellowships from The Watering Hole and New York University, where he is an MFA candidate in the Creative Writing program. When he's not writing poetry, you can probably find him napping, trying to 100% another video game in his collection, or fighting onions as he gets into cooking more. Find more of his work at deesoulpoetry.com
Steph Chang
Steph Chang (she/they) is a writer, editor, and curator from Vancouver, Canada. Her work appears in The Adroit Journal, The Rumpus, The Offing, Waxwing, The Penn Review, wildness, Frontier Poetry, and Poets.org, and was selected for inclusion in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and The Best of the Net Anthology. She won the 2021 Adroit Prize for Poetry, judged by Carl Phillips, and was the runner-up of the 2020 Adroit Prize for Poetry, judged by Jericho Brown. Additionally, she has been recognized by The Poetry Society of the UK, League of Canadian Poets, Anthony Quinn Foundation, Academy of American Poets, and the Alliance of Young Artists & Writers.
A first-generation college student, Steph studies English, Creative Writing, and Art History at Kenyon College, where she worked as an Associate at The Kenyon Review and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Sunset Press. Last summer, she interned at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When not writing, she enjoys yoga, going gallery-hopping, trying new tinned fish, reading print magazines (which she still subscribes to), and listening to a mix of Mitski, Chappell Roan, Everything Everything, and Etta Marcus. You can find her at @stephchaang on Twitter and stephchang.me.
Daniel Garcia
Daniel Garcia is a poet, essayist, and editor. Daniel’s essays appear in Quarterly West, Guernica, Passages North, The Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. Poems appear in Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Electric Literature, swamp pink (formerly Crazyhorse), and others. Daniel is the InteR/e/views editor for Split Lip Magazine, a two-time Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Voices Fellow, and a former Emerging Writer Fellow with SmokeLong Quarterly. Daniel’s essays also appear as Notables in The Best American Essays. An unapologetic tarot girlie, Daniel loves taking pictures of the moon and is obsessed with enjambment, disconnecting from grind culture, and the connection between memory, time travel, and the queer concept of yearning. Daniel dreams of a free Palestine in this lifetime. Find Daniel on Twitter @_iloveyoudaniel or at danielwritespoetry.com.
Maria Gray
Maria Gray is a departmental poetry fellow at NYU and the current Managing Editor of COUNTERCLOCK Journal. Her work appears in Best New Poets, The Columbia Review, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, and others, and she has received honors and fellowships from organizations including poetry.onl, The Lumiere Review, The Adroit Journal, Bates College, and New York University. She lives in Brooklyn and works at the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, where she helps run the National Student Poets Program. Aside from writing, Maria likes to read, bake, doomscroll, sing in the shower, and play guitar.
Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong
Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong has work in ONLY POEMS, Shenandoah, and The Columbia Review, among others. She loves being from Oregon.
Andrew Kang
Andrew Kang is a writer from Baltimore. They were the winner of the 2022 Narrative High School Writing Contest, judged by Jericho Brown, and have writing published in AAWW. They study Social Studies and Comparative Literature at Harvard College and organize for Palestine on their campus as well as the Xīn Shēng | 心声 Project, which combats disinformation within the Chinese diaspora.
Laetitia Keok
Laetitia Keok is a writer and editor from Singapore. Her work has been shortlisted for the Oxford Poetry Prize, nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Nina Riggs Poetry Award, and published in wildness, Diode Poetry Journal, and Peach Mag, amongst others. She has received scholarships from Singapore's National Arts Council and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Currently, Laetitia edits for Sine Theta Magazine, and is an MFA candidate in Poetry at New York University. She loves light, marginalia, and taking pictures of her friends. laetitia-k.com
Divyasri Krishnan
Divyasri Krishnan studies at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work appears in DIAGRAM, Muzzle Magazine, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere. She has further been recognized by the Best of the Net, Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, Periplus Collective, Pittsburgh Humanities Festival, and the Palette Poetry Awards.
Ugochukwu Damian Okpara
Ugochukwu Damian Okpara is a Nigerian writer and poet. He is the author of the poetry collection, In Gorgeous Display (Fordham University Press, Sept 2023). A 2023 Lambda Literary fellow and an alumnus of Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Trust Creative Writing Workshop, his work appears in Poetry Magazine, Poetry Wales, Lolwe, The Republic, Salamander Magazine, and elsewhere. He is also the author of the poetry chapbook, I Know the Origin of My Tremor (Sundress Publications, 2021). When not writing or reading, he can be found binge-watching nature documentaries on YouTube.
Claire Pinkston
Claire Pinkston is a biracial Black poet studying at Yale University. Her work has been previously recognized by the YoungArts foundation and the University of Louisville and is published in Tinderbox, Palette Poetry and The Offing, among others. When she's not writing, Claire enjoys embroidery, baking, and looking at Miffy collectibles online. She believes in poetry's capacity to guide us toward a liveable future.
Info
Stella Lei
BIO
Stella Lei's writing appears in publications including CRAFT, Narrative, and Cotton Xenomorph, and she edits for Gasher Press and Split Lip Magazine. Her debut prose chapbook, Inheritances of Hunger, was published by River Glass Books in 2022.
WORKSHOP: SHAPING NEGATIVE SPACE
Negative space is what exists around the contents of the page, in between scenes, paragraphs, and even the contents of a sentence. This workshop will center around the depths of what goes unsaid, and how it can shape what is said to generate meaning. We will move through different levels of application--from the structural (e.g. micro-fiction and fragmentation), to the scene, to the sentence (e.g. parataxis)--considering how seemingly disjointed scenes/fragments/lines resonate against each other and the layer of meaning this resonance provides.
Index
(Guest Workshops)
Stella Lei
Negative Space
✺
Arah Ko
Pop Culture
✺
e.jin o' malley
Familial Memory & History
✺
M.J. Gomez
Faith & Religion
✺
Stella Lei
Negative Space
BIO
Stella Lei's writing appears in publications including CRAFT, Narrative, and Cotton Xenomorph, and she edits for Gasher Press and Split Lip Magazine. Her debut prose chapbook, Inheritances of Hunger, was published by River Glass Books in 2022.
WORKSHOP: SHAPING NEGATIVE SPACE
Negative space is what exists around the contents of the page, in between scenes, paragraphs, and even the contents of a sentence. This workshop will center around the depths of what goes unsaid, and how it can shape what is said to generate meaning. We will move through different levels of application--from the structural (e.g. micro-fiction and fragmentation), to the scene, to the sentence (e.g. parataxis)--considering how seemingly disjointed scenes/fragments/lines resonate against each other and the layer of meaning this resonance provides.
Arah Ko
Pop Culture
BIO
Arah Ko is a writer from Hawai'i and the author of Brine Orchid (YesYes Books 2025) and the chapbook Animal Logic (Bull City Press 2026). Her work is published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, The Threepenny Review, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. Arah has been nominated for Best of Net and Best New Poets and is the recipient of an Arthur Rense Prize through the Academy of American Poets. She received her M.F.A. in creative writing from the Ohio State University and is pursuing her Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. Catch her at arahko.com.
WORKSHOP: POP CULTURE PERSONA POETRY
In this generative workshop, learn how to combine the traditions of persona poetry with contemporary cultural characters from sources like anime, video games, Studio Ghibli films, and more. Reading packet includes poets Rita Mookerjee, Sarah Lao, Azura Tyabji, Jackson Neal, and Maya McOmie.
e.jin o' malley
Familial Memory & History
BIO
e.jin is an adoptee writer who is based in New York. They have received nominations for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Nashville Review, The Margins, The Shade Journal, and others. They are a Roots. Wounds. Words., Lambda Literary, and AAWW Margins Fellow.
WORKSHOP: TO BE INHERITED BY MEMORY
How do we write our own memories into the memories carried by family members? In this workshop, we will look at different approaches to combining personal memory with familial memory/history in poems and discuss the ethics of these works. While our primary texts will be poems, we will respond to multi-genre writing prompts.
M. J. Gomez
Faith & Religion
BIO
M.J. Gomez is a Muslim poet who unequivocally supports the movement for Palestinian liberation. He is the author of the chapbook Love Letters from a Burning Planet (Variant Literature, 2023). His work is featured in Frontier Poetry, the Dawn Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, the Selkie, and others. You can find him on Twitter @bluejayverses!
WORKSHOP: HOW CONTEMPORARY POETS APPROACH THE DIVINE
This seminar will focus on contemporary poems that utilize the idea of the Abrahamic God in new, unconventional ways. We’ll go through works by popular poets Kaveh Akbar, Chen Chen, and Ocean Vuong, assessing how these poets analyze divinity as we understand it today. We’ll discuss curiosity towards the unknowable, and how to implement difficult ideas into a generative writing practice.
Info
(Guest Workshops)
Info
(Guest Workshops)
Stella Lei
BIO
Stella Lei's writing appears in publications including CRAFT, Narrative, and Cotton Xenomorph, and she edits for Gasher Press and Split Lip Magazine. Her debut prose chapbook, Inheritances of Hunger, was published by River Glass Books in 2022.
WORKSHOP: SHAPING NEGATIVE SPACE
Negative space is what exists around the contents of the page, in between scenes, paragraphs, and even the contents of a sentence. This workshop will center around the depths of what goes unsaid, and how it can shape what is said to generate meaning. We will move through different levels of application--from the structural (e.g. micro-fiction and fragmentation), to the scene, to the sentence (e.g. parataxis)--considering how seemingly disjointed scenes/fragments/lines resonate against each other and the layer of meaning this resonance provides.
Arah Ko
BIO
Arah Ko is a writer from Hawai'i and the author of Brine Orchid (YesYes Books 2025) and the chapbook Animal Logic (Bull City Press 2026). Her work is published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, The Threepenny Review, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. Arah has been nominated for Best of Net and Best New Poets and is the recipient of an Arthur Rense Prize through the Academy of American Poets. She received her M.F.A. in creative writing from the Ohio State University and is pursuing her Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. Catch her at arahko.com.
WORKSHOP: POP CULTURE PERSONA POETRY
In this generative workshop, learn how to combine the traditions of persona poetry with contemporary cultural characters from sources like anime, video games, Studio Ghibli films, and more. Reading packet includes poets Rita Mookerjee, Sarah Lao, Azura Tyabji, Jackson Neal, and Maya McOmie.
e.jin o' malley
BIO
e.jin is an adoptee writer who is based in New York. They have received nominations for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Nashville Review, The Margins, The Shade Journal, and others. They are a Roots. Wounds. Words., Lambda Literary, and AAWW Margins Fellow.
WORKSHOP: TO BE INHERITED BY MEMORY
How do we write our own memories into the memories carried by family members? In this workshop, we will look at different approaches to combining personal memory with familial memory/history in poems and discuss the ethics of these works. While our primary texts will be poems, we will respond to multi-genre writing prompts.
M.J. Gomez
BIO
M.J. Gomez is a Muslim poet who unequivocally supports the movement for Palestinian liberation. He is the author of the chapbook Love Letters from a Burning Planet (Variant Literature, 2023). His work is featured in Frontier Poetry, the Dawn Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, the Selkie, and others. You can find him on Twitter @bluejayverses!
WORKSHOP: HOW CONTEMPORARY POETS APPROACH THE DIVINE
This seminar will focus on contemporary poems that utilize the idea of the Abrahamic God in new, unconventional ways. We’ll go through works by popular poets Kaveh Akbar, Chen Chen, and Ocean Vuong, assessing how these poets analyze divinity as we understand it today. We’ll discuss curiosity towards the unknowable, and how to implement difficult ideas into a generative writing practice.