Our Mentors
Our Mentors
(2025)
(2025)
Our Mentors
(2025)
Our 2025 mentors have been recognized by numerous awards and organizations such as:
YoungArts, Foyle Young Poets of the Year, National Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards, Best of the Net, Best New Poets, Academy of American Poets, the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, Tin House, The Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, the National Arts Council, the Fine Arts Work Center, Lambda Literary, Brooklyn Poets, the Gregory Djanikian Scholarship, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Kundiman, the National Poetry Competition,the Miami Book Fair, The Best American Essays, Best Small Fictions, TEDx, Button Poetry, YouthSpeaks, Pulitzer Center, and the National Youth Poet Laureate program.
Additionally, they have been published in or edit for prestigious magazines such as:
POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, American Poetry Review, Poets.org, The Kenyon Review, Joyland Magazine, Oxford Poetry, New England Review, The Yale Review, Cincinnati Review, Narrative Magazine, FENCE, Literary Hub, Salt Hill Journal, Shenandoah, The Washington Square Review, The Harvard Review Online, Indiana Review, Electric Literature, Pleiades, The Maine Review, The Offing, Poetry Northwest, ONLY POEMS, Poet Lore, The Adroit Journal, Black Warrior Review, Ploughshares, BOMB, Waxwing, Passages North, and more.
BY THE NUMBERS: 2025
30
30
Mentors
4
4
Guest Workshops
Aliyah Cotton
Aliyah Cotton
Poetry
Aliyah Cotton is a queer poet of color from Reston, VA. She earned her MFA at Boston University and her work has appeared in Adroit, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Redivider, Salamander, and elsewhere. She was a 2024 Gregory Djanikian Scholar, received a nomination for the 2024 Best of the Net Anthology, and was also nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize. In her free time Aliyah loves to make music, skateboard, birdwatch, and lose to her friends at chess! Maybe one day she'll win, or maybe she won't. Either way, she'll never stop watching TikTok edits of that one scene from Harry Potter where they're all playing wizard chess.
Aliyah Cotton is a queer poet of color from Reston, VA. She earned her MFA at Boston University and her work has appeared in Adroit, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Redivider, Salamander, and elsewhere. She was a 2024 Gregory Djanikian Scholar, received a nomination for the 2024 Best of the Net Anthology, and was also nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize. In her free time Aliyah loves to make music, skateboard, birdwatch, and lose to her friends at chess! Maybe one day she'll win, or maybe she won't. Either way, she'll never stop watching TikTok edits of that one scene from Harry Potter where they're all playing wizard chess.
Andres Cordoba
Andres Cordoba
Poetry
Andres Cordoba is a Massachusetts-born writer. A recipient of the Thayer Fellowship and the Patricia Kerr Ross Award, he was named a 2019 Breakout 8 Writer in poetry by Epiphany: A Literary Journal and a finalist in Black Warrior Review's 2020 Poetry Contest. He was a scholarship recipient and graduate of the Brooklyn Poets 2022 Mentorship program and was named a 2023 Periplus Mentorship Fellow. His work can be found in The Gandy Dancer, As It Ought To Be, Epiphany: A Literary Journal, and The Harvard Review Online. He is currently a MFA candidate in poetry at Brown University where he was the recipient of the Edwin Honig Memorial Award for poetry and the John Hawkes Award for fiction. He wants you to know: he ran the fastest mile in his entire sixth grade–– some have said it galvanized a small New England community.
Andres Cordoba is a Massachusetts-born writer. A recipient of the Thayer Fellowship and the Patricia Kerr Ross Award, he was named a 2019 Breakout 8 Writer in poetry by Epiphany: A Literary Journal and a finalist in Black Warrior Review's 2020 Poetry Contest. He was a scholarship recipient and graduate of the Brooklyn Poets 2022 Mentorship program and was named a 2023 Periplus Mentorship Fellow. His work can be found in The Gandy Dancer, As It Ought To Be, Epiphany: A Literary Journal, and The Harvard Review Online. He is currently a MFA candidate in poetry at Brown University where he was the recipient of the Edwin Honig Memorial Award for poetry and the John Hawkes Award for fiction. He wants you to know: he ran the fastest mile in his entire sixth grade–– some have said it galvanized a small New England community.
Christian Yeo Xuan
Christian Yeo Xuan
Poetry
Christian Yeo Xuan (he/they) is a poet, novelist, playwright, and actor based in Singapore by way of Beirut and Paris. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Oxford Poetry, Indiana Review, The Mays, and New Singapore Poetries, among others. He has placed or been a finalist for the National Poetry Competition, the Poetry London Pamphlet Prize, and the Bridport Prize. He has received support from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Tin House, and the National Arts Council. In his other life he spends a lot of time looking at fashion boys get ready with him.
Website: christianyeoxuan.com
Christian Yeo Xuan (he/they) is a poet, novelist, playwright, and actor based in Singapore by way of Beirut and Paris. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Oxford Poetry, Indiana Review, The Mays, and New Singapore Poetries, among others. He has placed or been a finalist for the National Poetry Competition, the Poetry London Pamphlet Prize, and the Bridport Prize. He has received support from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Tin House, and the National Arts Council. In his other life he spends a lot of time looking at fashion boys get ready with him.
Website: christianyeoxuan.com
DeShara Suggs-Joe
DeShara Suggs-Joe
Poetry
DeShara is a queer, Black poet and visual artist. She co-founded Daughter’s Tongue (an all-women writing collective), worked as the Creative Director of Workshops at Winter Tangerine, and is a former member of the Youth Speaks Collective. She received her MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts and fellowships from Callaloo, the Poetry Incubator, and Pink Door. In 2021 and 2024, she received a nomination for Best of the Net, and Reckon News named her one of the “17 trailblazing queer and trans poets of our generation.” She has published poems in Apogee Lit, Voicemail Poems, Poet Lore, The Texas Review, Torch Literary Arts, and elsewhere. She published her debut chapbook, If My Flowers Bloom, with Button Poetry in 2024. She has also been featured on Button Poetry’s YouTube platform and has performed at the likes of Spotify, Yahoo, and Pinterest.
DeShara is a queer, Black poet and visual artist. She co-founded Daughter’s Tongue (an all-women writing collective), worked as the Creative Director of Workshops at Winter Tangerine, and is a former member of the Youth Speaks Collective. She received her MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts and fellowships from Callaloo, the Poetry Incubator, and Pink Door. In 2021 and 2024, she received a nomination for Best of the Net, and Reckon News named her one of the “17 trailblazing queer and trans poets of our generation.” She has published poems in Apogee Lit, Voicemail Poems, Poet Lore, The Texas Review, Torch Literary Arts, and elsewhere. She published her debut chapbook, If My Flowers Bloom, with Button Poetry in 2024. She has also been featured on Button Poetry’s YouTube platform and has performed at the likes of Spotify, Yahoo, and Pinterest.
Hafsa Zulfiqar
Hafsa Zulfiqar
Poetry
Hafsa Zulfiqar is a poet from Pakistan. Her work which has received the WNDB Walter Grant, three Best of the Net and a Pushcart nomination explores brown identity, dreams, language, liminality, and above all the notion of inheritance; it can be found or is forthcoming in Electric Literature, Pleiades, The Offing, Up the Staircase Quarterly, AAWW: The Margins, South Dakota Review, Kitchen Table Quarterly, The Maine Review, & elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine. If not curled up with a book or watching a movie that gives her butterflies, she can be found learning her sixth language!
Website: linktr.ee/hafsazulfiqarunar
Hafsa Zulfiqar is a poet from Pakistan. Her work which has received the WNDB Walter Grant, three Best of the Net and a Pushcart nomination explores brown identity, dreams, language, liminality, and above all the notion of inheritance; it can be found or is forthcoming in Electric Literature, Pleiades, The Offing, Up the Staircase Quarterly, AAWW: The Margins, South Dakota Review, Kitchen Table Quarterly, The Maine Review, & elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine. If not curled up with a book or watching a movie that gives her butterflies, she can be found learning her sixth language!
Website: linktr.ee/hafsazulfiqarunar
Kaitlyn Airy
Kaitlyn Airy
Poetry
Kaitlyn Airy (she/her) is a Korean American poet and adoptee. Raised on a small island in the Salish Sea, she currently resides in Charlottesville, where she graduated with an MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia. She was the 2020 winner of the Phyllis L. Ennes contest hosted by the Skagit River Poetry Foundation, featured in Narrative Magazine as one of their 30 writers below 30, and her essays and poems have been finalists in contests hosted by Ninth Letter, Shenandoah, and The Iowa Review. She serves as an essays and reviews editor for Poetry Northwest. In her spare time she enjoys consulting the oracle, tracking down patches of ghostpipes, and experimenting with fermentation.
Website: kaitlynairy.com
Kaitlyn Airy (she/her) is a Korean American poet and adoptee. Raised on a small island in the Salish Sea, she currently resides in Charlottesville, where she graduated with an MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia. She was the 2020 winner of the Phyllis L. Ennes contest hosted by the Skagit River Poetry Foundation, featured in Narrative Magazine as one of their 30 writers below 30, and her essays and poems have been finalists in contests hosted by Ninth Letter, Shenandoah, and The Iowa Review. She serves as an essays and reviews editor for Poetry Northwest. In her spare time she enjoys consulting the oracle, tracking down patches of ghostpipes, and experimenting with fermentation.
Website: kaitlynairy.com
Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong
Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong
Poetry
Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong is from Oregon. Her work can be found in The Adroit Journal, Best New Poets, ONLY POEMS, Pleiades, and Poet Lore, among others. A 2025 Oregon Literary Fellow, she has also received support from the Mineral School Artist Residency, Fine Arts Work Center, and Brooklyn Poets.
Website: kayleejeong.carrd.co
Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong is from Oregon. Her work can be found in The Adroit Journal, Best New Poets, ONLY POEMS, Pleiades, and Poet Lore, among others. A 2025 Oregon Literary Fellow, she has also received support from the Mineral School Artist Residency, Fine Arts Work Center, and Brooklyn Poets.
Website: kayleejeong.carrd.co
Kéchi Nne
Nomu
Kéchi NneNomu
Kéchi Nne
Nomu
Poetry
Kéchi Nne Nomu is a Nigerian writer. Her work has been published in The Yale Review, Narrative Magazine, Boston Review, The Sun and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University and has taught most recently at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She was named a 2024 LOATAD Black Atlantic Resident in Ghana, and a 2023-24 Fine Arts Work Center Fellow.
Kéchi Nne Nomu is a Nigerian writer. Her work has been published in The Yale Review, Narrative Magazine, Boston Review, The Sun and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University and has taught most recently at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She was named a 2024 LOATAD Black Atlantic Resident in Ghana, and a 2023-24 Fine Arts Work Center Fellow.
Mark Kyungsoo Bias
Mark Kyungsoo Bias
Poetry
Mark Kyungsoo Bias' work appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, New England Review, Gulf Coast, Georgia Review, Narrative, The Adroit Journal, Cero Magazine, Best New Poets, The Margins, and the Academy of American Poets, which awarded him the 2022 Joseph Langland Poetry Prize, among other journals. A 2021 Tin House Scholar, he has been offered scholarships from Kundiman and a "Contributor Award" from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. His work has also been featured in Literary Hub, Poetry Daily, and the Saejowi Initiative for National Integration. He received his MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he was a REAL Fellow.
Website: markkyungsoobias.com
Mark Kyungsoo Bias' work appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, New England Review, Gulf Coast, Georgia Review, Narrative, The Adroit Journal, Cero Magazine, Best New Poets, The Margins, and the Academy of American Poets, which awarded him the 2022 Joseph Langland Poetry Prize, among other journals. A 2021 Tin House Scholar, he has been offered scholarships from Kundiman and a "Contributor Award" from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. His work has also been featured in Literary Hub, Poetry Daily, and the Saejowi Initiative for National Integration. He received his MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he was a REAL Fellow.
Website: markkyungsoobias.com
Miriam Alex
Miriam Alex
Poetry
Miriam Alex is a lover of all things slice-of-life. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2023, OSU's The Journal, and Poet Lore among others. If you spot her in the wild, don't be afraid to say hello! She'd love to meet you, especially if you bring snacks and a karaoke machine.
Website: miriamalex.carrd.co
Miriam Alex is a lover of all things slice-of-life. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2023, OSU's The Journal, and Poet Lore among others. If you spot her in the wild, don't be afraid to say hello! She'd love to meet you, especially if you bring snacks and a karaoke machine.
Website: miriamalex.carrd.co
Quang Mai
Quang Mai
Poetry
Quang Mai (he/him) was born in Hanoi, Vietnam. His poems have been published in American Poetry Review, AAWW, diaCRITICS, Waxwing, among others. He is the author of the chapbook Journals to (Story Factory, 2019).
Quang Mai (he/him) was born in Hanoi, Vietnam. His poems have been published in American Poetry Review, AAWW, diaCRITICS, Waxwing, among others. He is the author of the chapbook Journals to (Story Factory, 2019).
Quinton Okoro
Quinton Okoro
Poetry
Quinton Okoro is a Black, nonbinary poet from Nigeria, with a BA in Creative Writing from UNC-Chapel Hill. They are a 2024 Djanikian Scholar and the winner of a University & College Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, among other awards. They serve as a poetry reader for Muzzle Magazine. Their poetry is featured in The Adroit Journal, Poetry Northwest, Poets.org, Nimrod International Journal, and elsewhere. When they're not writing, they enjoy trying out new recipes in the kitchen, taking long walks and looking at trees, and napping with their cat, Naomi.
Website: quintonokoro.com
Quinton Okoro is a Black, nonbinary poet from Nigeria, with a BA in Creative Writing from UNC-Chapel Hill. They are a 2024 Djanikian Scholar and the winner of a University & College Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, among other awards. They serve as a poetry reader for Muzzle Magazine. Their poetry is featured in The Adroit Journal, Poetry Northwest, Poets.org, Nimrod International Journal, and elsewhere. When they're not writing, they enjoy trying out new recipes in the kitchen, taking long walks and looking at trees, and napping with their cat, Naomi.
Website: quintonokoro.com
Sanna Wani
Sanna Wani
Poetry
Sanna Wani is a poet, translator and editor based in Toronto. Her debut poetry collection, My Grief, the Sun (House of Anansi Press, 2022) won the 2023 Trillium Award for Poetry. She is the creator and cohost of the poetry podcast, Poet Talk. When not writing or reading, you can find Sanna on the pottery wheel; walking her dog, Juniper; or consulting one of her tarot decks. She loves daisies and hopes to someday write a romance novel.
Website: sannawani.com
Sanna Wani is a poet, translator and editor based in Toronto. Her debut poetry collection, My Grief, the Sun (House of Anansi Press, 2022) won the 2023 Trillium Award for Poetry. She is the creator and cohost of the poetry podcast, Poet Talk. When not writing or reading, you can find Sanna on the pottery wheel; walking her dog, Juniper; or consulting one of her tarot decks. She loves daisies and hopes to someday write a romance novel.
Website: sannawani.com
Saturn Browne
Saturn Browne
Poetry
Saturn Browne is from Connecticut and New York City. Her work has been recognized by Best of Net, Pulitzer Center, UK Poetry Society, FOX61, NBC, and others. The 2024 inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of Connecticut, she loves to steep tea, attend art gallery openings, and her wired headphones.
Website: saturnbrowne.framer.website
Saturn Browne is from Connecticut and New York City. Her work has been recognized by Best of Net, Pulitzer Center, UK Poetry Society, FOX61, NBC, and others. The 2024 inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of Connecticut, she loves to steep tea, attend art gallery openings, and her wired headphones.
Website: saturnbrowne.framer.website
Shlagha Borah
Shlagha Borah
Poetry
Shlagha Borah (she/her) is from Assam, India. Her work appears in Poetry Northwest, Cincinnati Review, Salamander, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and is an Assistant Editor at The Offing. She’s a 2024 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist and winner of the 2025 Miami Book Fair Poetry Emerging Writer Fellowship. She is the co-founder of Pink Freud, a student-led collective working towards making mental health accessible in India. She is obsessed with her dog, Oakley.
Website: shlaghaborah.com
Shlagha Borah (she/her) is from Assam, India. Her work appears in Poetry Northwest, Cincinnati Review, Salamander, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and is an Assistant Editor at The Offing. She’s a 2024 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist and winner of the 2025 Miami Book Fair Poetry Emerging Writer Fellowship. She is the co-founder of Pink Freud, a student-led collective working towards making mental health accessible in India. She is obsessed with her dog, Oakley.
Website: shlaghaborah.com
Tyler Raso
Tyler Raso
Poetry
Tyler Raso (she/they) is a poet, essayist, and teacher. Her work is featured or forthcoming in POETRY, Electric Literature, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, Salt Hill Journal, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. Previously a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center fellow, they currently live and teach in New York City. She feels most at home near rivers, and can be found tweeting @spaghettiutopia.
Website: tylerraso.com
Tyler Raso (she/they) is a poet, essayist, and teacher. Her work is featured or forthcoming in POETRY, Electric Literature, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, Salt Hill Journal, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. Previously a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center fellow, they currently live and teach in New York City. She feels most at home near rivers, and can be found tweeting @spaghettiutopia.
Website: tylerraso.com
Yasmine Bolden
Yasmine Bolden
Poetry
Yasmine Bolden (they/them) is a Black American/Nahilii poet, educator, and eldest sister who grew up writing against white supremacist mythology on the former plantation lands of United States President George Washington. Now, they're continuing that work while studying Africana Studies and Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where they perform in recurring Rituals of Remembrance that honor the lives of those enslaved on what is now university property. Yasmine is also co-founder and president of Bluejays & Poets, the institution's premier poetry and performance organization and was a 2024 Writers in Baltimore Schools Teaching Fellow. A Baltimore Youth Poet Laureate finalist and Angie Thomas-selected "I, Too, Am the Dream" Grand Prize Awardee, their work has been planted in Salima Magazine, Rootwork Journal, the National Library of Medicine, the 2023 Best of the Net Anthology, Ebony Tomatoes Collective, and their mom's Facebook page, among other publications. When they're not writing, Yasmine can be found rambling on and on to loved ones about queer interpretations of the Bible, experimenting with twist-out methods, or appreciating the poetic brilliance of Megan Thee Stallion. You can keep up with them on Instagram @blackpunningpoet, on Twitter (they will never call it X) @blkpunningpoet, or by keeping an eye out for the all-Indigenous summer issue they're co-editing over at Alocasia Journal!
Website: blackpunningpoet.wixsite.com/website
Yasmine Bolden (they/them) is a Black American/Nahilii poet, educator, and eldest sister who grew up writing against white supremacist mythology on the former plantation lands of United States President George Washington. Now, they're continuing that work while studying Africana Studies and Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where they perform in recurring Rituals of Remembrance that honor the lives of those enslaved on what is now university property. Yasmine is also co-founder and president of Bluejays & Poets, the institution's premier poetry and performance organization and was a 2024 Writers in Baltimore Schools Teaching Fellow. A Baltimore Youth Poet Laureate finalist and Angie Thomas-selected "I, Too, Am the Dream" Grand Prize Awardee, their work has been planted in Salima Magazine, Rootwork Journal, the National Library of Medicine, the 2023 Best of the Net Anthology, Ebony Tomatoes Collective, and their mom's Facebook page, among other publications. When they're not writing, Yasmine can be found rambling on and on to loved ones about queer interpretations of the Bible, experimenting with twist-out methods, or appreciating the poetic brilliance of Megan Thee Stallion. You can keep up with them on Instagram @blackpunningpoet, on Twitter (they will never call it X) @blkpunningpoet, or by keeping an eye out for the all-Indigenous summer issue they're co-editing over at Alocasia Journal!
Website: blackpunningpoet.wixsite.com/website
Yi Wei
Yi Wei
Poetry
Yi Wei is a writer unconditionally supportive of Palestinian resistance and liberation. Her work has been awarded the Frontier OPEN Prize, the Lois Morrell Poetry Prize, Sappho Prize for Women Poets, and the Writer in the Public Schools fellowship at NYU. You can find her at Radix Printing and Publishing Cooperative and Asian American Writers' Workshop.
Yi Wei is a writer unconditionally supportive of Palestinian resistance and liberation. Her work has been awarded the Frontier OPEN Prize, the Lois Morrell Poetry Prize, Sappho Prize for Women Poets, and the Writer in the Public Schools fellowship at NYU. You can find her at Radix Printing and Publishing Cooperative and Asian American Writers' Workshop.
Emdash (Emily Lu Gao)
Emdash (Emily Lu Gao)
Spoken Word
Emdash AKA Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) is a poet, educator, and the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She writes in order to heal, grow and decolonize in community. A multi-genre writer, her work proudly propagates from the worlds of Spoken Word Poetry & Ethnic Studies. Their favorite accomplishment is running and hosting The Word Open Mic Night with Emdash for two years. Her poetry and microfiction was nominated for Best of The Net 2023 and she has received funding from Jersey City Arts Council, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, and more. Prominent topics in their work are friendship, the ecosystem, bipolar disorder, Chinese Americanness, queer joy, intergenerational healing/harm, humor, and transnationalism . She has a MFA in Poetry from Rutgers-Newark University and resides on Tongva Land (“Los Angeles, CA”). When not writing, she is most likely telling one too many jokes.
Emdash AKA Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) is a poet, educator, and the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She writes in order to heal, grow and decolonize in community. A multi-genre writer, her work proudly propagates from the worlds of Spoken Word Poetry & Ethnic Studies. Their favorite accomplishment is running and hosting The Word Open Mic Night with Emdash for two years. Her poetry and microfiction was nominated for Best of The Net 2023 and she has received funding from Jersey City Arts Council, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, and more. Prominent topics in their work are friendship, the ecosystem, bipolar disorder, Chinese Americanness, queer joy, intergenerational healing/harm, humor, and transnationalism . She has a MFA in Poetry from Rutgers-Newark University and resides on Tongva Land (“Los Angeles, CA”). When not writing, she is most likely telling one too many jokes.
Shnayjaah Valentine
Shnayjaah Valentine
Spoken Word
Shnayjaah Valentine (she/her) is a Haitian and Jamaican writer, advocate, and aspiring public interest lawyer from South Florida, currently double-majoring in Creative Writing and Human Rights at Columbia University. She's a QuestBridge Scholar, the 2024 National Youth Poet Laureate of the South, a two-time Louder Than A Bomb winner (awarded one of their Top 10 Most Memorable Performances), a three-time YoungArts winner, a 2022 National Student Poet Nominee, and a 2023 Scholastic Art & Writing Gold Medal Portfolio Winner. She’s performed at places like the Kennedy Center, Bryant Park, Miami Dolphins events, and other venues. As the president-elect of Barnard Slam and an Adroit Summer Mentee, she’s fallen in love with creative nonfiction and is currently developing a series of personal essays. When not writing poems that scare stakeholders, she’s leading a scholarship reform campaign that exposed racial disparities in a program back home and successfully prompted a news investigation, or working with the National Domestic Violence Hotline. In her downtime, she spirals over Severance theories, defends Love Island hot takes with unnecessary passion, and trudges through 45-minute cardio sessions because pretending to enjoy exercise is better than admitting to not having hobbies.
Shnayjaah Valentine (she/her) is a Haitian and Jamaican writer, advocate, and aspiring public interest lawyer from South Florida, currently double-majoring in Creative Writing and Human Rights at Columbia University. She's a QuestBridge Scholar, the 2024 National Youth Poet Laureate of the South, a two-time Louder Than A Bomb winner (awarded one of their Top 10 Most Memorable Performances), a three-time YoungArts winner, a 2022 National Student Poet Nominee, and a 2023 Scholastic Art & Writing Gold Medal Portfolio Winner. She’s performed at places like the Kennedy Center, Bryant Park, Miami Dolphins events, and other venues. As the president-elect of Barnard Slam and an Adroit Summer Mentee, she’s fallen in love with creative nonfiction and is currently developing a series of personal essays. When not writing poems that scare stakeholders, she’s leading a scholarship reform campaign that exposed racial disparities in a program back home and successfully prompted a news investigation, or working with the National Domestic Violence Hotline. In her downtime, she spirals over Severance theories, defends Love Island hot takes with unnecessary passion, and trudges through 45-minute cardio sessions because pretending to enjoy exercise is better than admitting to not having hobbies.
Daniel Garcia
Daniel Garcia
Hybrid (Poetry, Creative
Nonfiction, Multimedia)
Daniel Garcia’s essays appear in Guernica, Michigan Quarterly Review, Passages North, Quarterly West, Shenandoah, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Poems appear in Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Ploughshares, swamp pink (formerly Crazyhorse), and others. Supported by scholarships, fellowships, and residencies from Lambda Literary, SmokeLong Quarterly, Carolyn Moore Writers House, Vermont Studio Center, and more, Daniel is the InteR/e/views Editor for Split Lip Magazine and the Micro Editor for The Offing. Daniel’s essays also appear as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays. An unapologetic tarot girlie, Daniel loves taking pictures of the moon and is obsessed with enjambment. Daniel dreams of a free Palestine in this lifetime. Find Daniel on Bluesky @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social.
Website: danielwritespoetry.com
Daniel Garcia’s essays appear in Guernica, Michigan Quarterly Review, Passages North, Quarterly West, Shenandoah, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Poems appear in Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Ploughshares, swamp pink (formerly Crazyhorse), and others. Supported by scholarships, fellowships, and residencies from Lambda Literary, SmokeLong Quarterly, Carolyn Moore Writers House, Vermont Studio Center, and more, Daniel is the InteR/e/views Editor for Split Lip Magazine and the Micro Editor for The Offing. Daniel’s essays also appear as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays. An unapologetic tarot girlie, Daniel loves taking pictures of the moon and is obsessed with enjambment. Daniel dreams of a free Palestine in this lifetime. Find Daniel on Bluesky @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social.
Website: danielwritespoetry.com
Image credits: Marquis Wright-Lee
Gabriel Ramirez
Gabriel Ramirez
Hybrid (Poetry + Spoken Word)
Hybrid (Poetry +
Spoken Word)
Gabriel Ramirez, author of the chapbook IF PIT BULLS HAD A GOD, IT’D BE A PIT BULL (The Head & The Hand Press) and the children’s book “We’re Community” is a Queer Afro-Caribbean writer, performer and educator. A 2023 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry at Adroit Journal and the 2024-2025 CantoMundo Poetry Coalition Fellow. Gabriel has received fellowships from the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Conversation Literary Arts Festival, CantoMundo, Miami Book Fair, a graduate fellow at The Watering Hole, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer’s Workshops. Gabriel has performed on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theatre, United Nations, Lincoln Center, Apollo Theatre, The National Museum of Romanian Literature, and other venues & universities around the nation. Gabriel was featured in Hungton Post, VIBE Magazine, Blavity, Upworthy, The Flama, and Remezcla. You can find their work in various spaces, including YouTube, and in publications like Poetry Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, Adroit Journal, Split This Rock’s The Quarry, BOMB, and others as well as Bettering American Poetry Anthology (Bettering Books 2017), What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (Northwestern University Press 2019), The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT (Haymarket Press 2020), and Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (Library of America 2024). Learn more about Gabriel Ramirez @RamirezPoet.
Website: RamirezPoet.com
Gabriel Ramirez, author of the chapbook IF PIT BULLS HAD A GOD, IT’D BE A PIT BULL (The Head & The Hand Press) and the children’s book “We’re Community” is a Queer Afro-Caribbean writer, performer and educator. A 2023 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry at Adroit Journal and the 2024-2025 CantoMundo Poetry Coalition Fellow. Gabriel has received fellowships from the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Conversation Literary Arts Festival, CantoMundo, Miami Book Fair, a graduate fellow at The Watering Hole, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer’s Workshops. Gabriel has performed on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theatre, United Nations, Lincoln Center, Apollo Theatre, The National Museum of Romanian Literature, and other venues & universities around the nation. Gabriel was featured in Hungton Post, VIBE Magazine, Blavity, Upworthy, The Flama, and Remezcla. You can find their work in various spaces, including YouTube, and in publications like Poetry Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, Adroit Journal, Split This Rock’s The Quarry, BOMB, and others as well as Bettering American Poetry Anthology (Bettering Books 2017), What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (Northwestern University Press 2019), The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT (Haymarket Press 2020), and Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (Library of America 2024). Learn more about Gabriel Ramirez @RamirezPoet.
Website: RamirezPoet.com
Ayotola Tehingbola
Ayotola Tehingbola
Fiction
Ayotola Tehingbola (she/her) is a lawyer, photographer, writer, and translator. She is currently in the English doctoral program at the University of Missouri, Columbia.
Her writing has appeared in The Common, CRAFT, Witness, Washington Square Review, etc., and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net Anthology. She was a finalist for the 2023 Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize for Debut Novel and the 2024 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. She is also a three-time recipient of a Glenn Bach Award for Fiction.
When she is not writing, you can find her theorizing about the apocalypse, starting miniature builds she will never finish, and arguing with her TV about how and why Ahsoka Tano is the greatest Jedi who ever lived.
Website: ayotola.com
Ayotola Tehingbola (she/her) is a lawyer, photographer, writer, and translator. She is currently in the English doctoral program at the University of Missouri, Columbia.
Her writing has appeared in The Common, CRAFT, Witness, Washington Square Review, etc., and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net Anthology. She was a finalist for the 2023 Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize for Debut Novel and the 2024 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. She is also a three-time recipient of a Glenn Bach Award for Fiction.
When she is not writing, you can find her theorizing about the apocalypse, starting miniature builds she will never finish, and arguing with her TV about how and why Ahsoka Tano is the greatest Jedi who ever lived.
Website: ayotola.com
Chi S. Tsu
Chi S. Tsu
Fiction
Chi S. Tsu is a mixed Chinese Californian writer who lives in London. She was a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Tennessee S. Williams Scholar for 2024, as well as a Lambda Literary Fellow in 2023. Her short fiction has been named runner-up in the American Literary Review's fiction contest and as a Semifinalist for the American Short Fiction Halifax Ranch Prize. Her work can also be found in Best Small Fictions 2024, Car Crash Anthology Vol. 1, the New Ohio Review, the Margins, and more. She co-founded sinθ magazine, a print creative arts magazine by and for the Sino diaspora in 2016, as well as a local UK QT/POC-oriented writing workshop group Salon Quince. She is represented in the literary world by Isabel Kaufman at Fox Literary. Outside of creative writing, she enjoys casual birdwatching, cats, countryside walks with pals, and weirdly intricate board games.
Website: chiwrites.carrd.co
Chi S. Tsu is a mixed Chinese Californian writer who lives in London. She was a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Tennessee S. Williams Scholar for 2024, as well as a Lambda Literary Fellow in 2023. Her short fiction has been named runner-up in the American Literary Review's fiction contest and as a Semifinalist for the American Short Fiction Halifax Ranch Prize. Her work can also be found in Best Small Fictions 2024, Car Crash Anthology Vol. 1, the New Ohio Review, the Margins, and more. She co-founded sinθ magazine, a print creative arts magazine by and for the Sino diaspora in 2016, as well as a local UK QT/POC-oriented writing workshop group Salon Quince. She is represented in the literary world by Isabel Kaufman at Fox Literary. Outside of creative writing, she enjoys casual birdwatching, cats, countryside walks with pals, and weirdly intricate board games.
Website: chiwrites.carrd.co
Image credits: Kenzi Crash
Eshani Surya
Eshani Surya
Fiction
Eshani Surya is the author of RAVISHING, forthcoming from Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, [PANK], Catapult, and Joyland, among others. Eshani was a 2022 Asian Women Writer’s Workshop mentee, a 2022 Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop scholarship recipient, and a 2021 Mae Fellowship recipient. She also holds an MFA from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Find her online at @eshanisurya.
Website: eshani-surya.com
Eshani Surya is the author of RAVISHING, forthcoming from Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, [PANK], Catapult, and Joyland, among others. Eshani was a 2022 Asian Women Writer’s Workshop mentee, a 2022 Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop scholarship recipient, and a 2021 Mae Fellowship recipient. She also holds an MFA from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Find her online at @eshanisurya.
Website: eshani-surya.com
Jiaqi Kang
Jiaqi Kang
Fiction
Jiaqi Kang is an editor, writer, and art historian originally from Geneva, Switzerland and currently based in Oxford, UK. They are the founding editor-in-chief of Sine Theta Magazine, an international, print-based creative arts publication for the Sino diaspora, as well as the winner of the 2022 White Review Short Story Prize, a 2023 Lambda Literary Fellow, and a 2024-25 Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Jiaqi is bad at the drums and good at making breakfast. They know that Palestine will be free in our lifetimes, from the river to the sea.
Website: jiaqikang.co.uk
Jiaqi Kang is an editor, writer, and art historian originally from Geneva, Switzerland and currently based in Oxford, UK. They are the founding editor-in-chief of Sine Theta Magazine, an international, print-based creative arts publication for the Sino diaspora, as well as the winner of the 2022 White Review Short Story Prize, a 2023 Lambda Literary Fellow, and a 2024-25 Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Jiaqi is bad at the drums and good at making breakfast. They know that Palestine will be free in our lifetimes, from the river to the sea.
Website: jiaqikang.co.uk
N.S. Ahmed
N.S. Ahmed
Fiction
N.S. Ahmed is an Egyptian-American writer based in New York City. His writings have been featured or are forthcoming in publications such as BOMB, Adroit Journal, Joyland, Waxwing, Passages North, The Margins (AAWW), and The Offing. Currently, he is a CLS Scholar, a TEDx speaker, a Periplus Collective Fellow, a Shenandoah Editorial Fellow, and a recent graduate and Hertog Research Fellow at Hunter College’s MFA for fiction. He is presently working on a novel and short story collection.
N.S. Ahmed is an Egyptian-American writer based in New York City. His writings have been featured or are forthcoming in publications such as BOMB, Adroit Journal, Joyland, Waxwing, Passages North, The Margins (AAWW), and The Offing. Currently, he is a CLS Scholar, a TEDx speaker, a Periplus Collective Fellow, a Shenandoah Editorial Fellow, and a recent graduate and Hertog Research Fellow at Hunter College’s MFA for fiction. He is presently working on a novel and short story collection.
Nora Sun
Nora Sun
Fiction
Nora Y. Sun (she/her) is an undergraduate student at Harvard University. Her favorite anatomical landmark is the iliac crest, and you can find her retweeting illustrations of wintry landscapes @sunyanyii.
Nora Y. Sun (she/her) is an undergraduate student at Harvard University. Her favorite anatomical landmark is the iliac crest, and you can find her retweeting illustrations of wintry landscapes @sunyanyii.
Shraya Singh
Shraya Singh
Fiction
Shraya Singh is an ex-engineer, writer, and teacher from India and loves frogs, Lord of the Rings memes, and epic fantasy (in no particular order). She got her MFA in Fiction from Eastern Washington University in Spokane where she first learned that bagels should be toasted and pepper spray should be handled very carefully. You can find some of her work in The Southern Review, Write or Die magazine, and The Spokesman-Review, amongst others. She is currently teaching at EWU and is the one of the founders for a small frog-themed literary magazine called Croak!
Shraya Singh is an ex-engineer, writer, and teacher from India and loves frogs, Lord of the Rings memes, and epic fantasy (in no particular order). She got her MFA in Fiction from Eastern Washington University in Spokane where she first learned that bagels should be toasted and pepper spray should be handled very carefully. You can find some of her work in The Southern Review, Write or Die magazine, and The Spokesman-Review, amongst others. She is currently teaching at EWU and is the one of the founders for a small frog-themed literary magazine called Croak!
We are no longer recruiting new mentors for our 2025 season, but we’d still love to hear from you. Check back early 2026 for future opportunities!
Guest Workshops
Guest Workshops
(2025)
(2025)
Guest
Workshops
(2025)
Annelyse Gelman
Annelyse Gelman
BIO
Annelyse Gelman has exhibited photographs of suburbanites reading in public, performed a duet with a neon sculpture, appropriated an obscene novel, and screened a collaborative exquisite-corpse animation in a Tucson microcinema. Her text score Vexations (University of Chicago Press, 2023)—part ambient poem, part glitchy, surreal narrative—received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her work has been published widely, including in The New Yorker, Best New Zealand Poetry, BOMB Magazine, and American Poetry Review, and her poetry-films have been exhibited internationally. Gelman is also the founder and director of Midst—a platform showcasing the writing processes of contemporary poets—and the author of the poetry collection Everyone I Love Is a Stranger to Someone (Write Bloody, 2014), the experimental pop EP About Repulsion (Fonograf Editions, 2019), and the artist’s book POOL (NECK, 2020).
Website: annelysegelman.com
Image credits: Riel Sturchio
BIO
Annelyse Gelman has exhibited photographs of suburbanites reading in public, performed a duet with a neon sculpture, appropriated an obscene novel, and screened a collaborative exquisite-corpse animation in a Tucson microcinema. Her text score Vexations (University of Chicago Press, 2023)—part ambient poem, part glitchy, surreal narrative—received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her work has been published widely, including in The New Yorker, Best New Zealand Poetry, BOMB Magazine, and American Poetry Review, and her poetry-films have been exhibited internationally. Gelman is also the founder and director of Midst—a platform showcasing the writing processes of contemporary poets—and the author of the poetry collection Everyone I Love Is a Stranger to Someone (Write Bloody, 2014), the experimental pop EP About Repulsion (Fonograf Editions, 2019), and the artist’s book POOL (NECK, 2020).
Website: annelysegelman.com
Image credits: Riel Sturchio
TITLE
Poetics of Theft
TITLE
Poetics of Theft
DESCRIPTION
This hands-on workshop explores creative restriction and the ethics and aesthetics of appropriation. We’ll look at examples of poets working creatively with other writers’ words, consider the generative possibilities of eavesdropping, collage, and automatic writing, and create new poems of our own using entirely found materials.
DESCRIPTION
This hands-on workshop explores creative restriction and the ethics and aesthetics of appropriation. We’ll look at examples of poets working creatively with other writers’ words, consider the generative possibilities of eavesdropping, collage, and automatic writing, and create new poems of our own using entirely found materials.
Maya Salameh
Maya Salameh
BIO
Maya Salameh is the author of MERMAID THEORY (Haymarket Books, 2026), HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE (University of Arkansas Press, 2022), winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and the chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, and the President’s Committee for the Arts and Humanities. Her work has appeared in The Offing, Poetry, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, AGNI, Mizna, and the LA Times, among others. She can be found @mayaslmh or mayasalameh.com.
BIO
Maya Salameh is the author of MERMAID THEORY (Haymarket Books, 2026), HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE (University of Arkansas Press, 2022), winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and the chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, and the President’s Committee for the Arts and Humanities. Her work has appeared in The Offing, Poetry, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, AGNI, Mizna, and the LA Times, among others. She can be found @mayaslmh or mayasalameh.com.
TITLE
On the Memory of Water
TITLE
On the Memory of Water
DESCRIPTION
This workshop explores the profound connections between water, memory, and resistance from the perspectives of poets of color. Water serves not only as sustenance but as a repository of our collective memory and cultural survival, witnessing and recording histories of colonization, resistance, and renewal across generations. We will analyze the craft of those the water remembers, including poets such as Ariana Benson, Banah el Ghadbanah, Camonghne Felix, and Sarette Morgan. From the protection of indigenous Filipino reservoirs to the militarized borders of the Mediterranean, this workshop invites you to listen to the stories that water has to tell.
DESCRIPTION
This workshop explores the profound connections between water, memory, and resistance from the perspectives of poets of color. Water serves not only as sustenance but as a repository of our collective memory and cultural survival, witnessing and recording histories of colonization, resistance, and renewal across generations. We will analyze the craft of those the water remembers, including poets such as Ariana Benson, Banah el Ghadbanah, Camonghne Felix, and Sarette Morgan. From the protection of indigenous Filipino reservoirs to the militarized borders of the Mediterranean, this workshop invites you to listen to the stories that water has to tell.
Yasmin Adele Majeed
Yasmin Adele Majeed
BIO
Yasmin Adele Majeed's stories appear in Narrative, Joyland, American Short Fiction, Guernica, and Best Debut Short Stories 2022, among other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is the recipient of fellowships and support from Tin House, Kundiman, the Periplus Collective, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa and lives in New York.
BIO
Yasmin Adele Majeed's stories appear in Narrative, Joyland, American Short Fiction, Guernica, and Best Debut Short Stories 2022, among other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is the recipient of fellowships and support from Tin House, Kundiman, the Periplus Collective, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa and lives in New York.
TITLE
The Cares of the Story Writer
TITLE
The Cares of the Story Writer
DESCRIPTION
One way of thinking of the short story form is as a rupture in the narrative of a character's life. In this workshop, we will examine short fiction that punctures reality and breaks down time--including a close examination of Franz Kafka's "The Cares of a Family Man." Through generative writing prompts, we will make our own attempts on the page to bend and warp the world around us.
DESCRIPTION
One way of thinking of the short story form is as a rupture in the narrative of a character's life. In this workshop, we will examine short fiction that punctures reality and breaks down time--including a close examination of Franz Kafka's "The Cares of a Family Man." Through generative writing prompts, we will make our own attempts on the page to bend and warp the world around us.
Past Mentors
Past Mentors
(2024)
(2024)
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.