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ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

 

Eleanor Leonne Bennett is an internationally award winning artist of over fifty awards. She is an art editor for multiple publications around the world. Eleanor's photography has been published in British Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. Her work has been displayed around the world consistently for six years since the age of thirteen. last year (2015) she had provided the anthology cover for the incredibly popular Austin International Poetry Festival. She is also featured in Schiffer's "Contemporary Wildlife Art" published last spring. She is also a published writer and poet.
 

Ryan Black has published previously in AGNI, CURA, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and elsewhere, and has received fellowships from the Adirondack Center for Writing, The Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Queens Council on the Arts. He was a finalist for the 2016 Alice James Award. He teaches in the English Department at Queens College/CUNY.

 

Crystal Boson is a Southern, specifically Texan writer, no matter where in the US she is currently paying rent. She is a Cave Canem fellow, former academic and perpetual reader. She has published poems in Callaloo, Pank, The Black Bottom, and Parcel and has two chapbooks: the queer texas prayerbook and the icarus series with Seven Kitchens Press. In 2014, she was awarded the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award and her poem, Kansas up south, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2015. She is currently working on her first full collection, bitter map. You can see her other writing and performances at: crystalboson.com.

 

Bonnie Chau is from Southern California, where she studied art history and English literature at UCLA, and ran writing programs for young students at the nonprofit 826LA. She received her MFA in fiction and translation from Columbia University. She is a Kundiman fellow, and her short stories have appeared in Flaunt, The Margins, Timber, Drunken Boat, and other publications. She works at Poets & Writers, and at an independent bookstore in Brooklyn.

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Jess X Chen is a multi-disciplinary artist/activist, filmmaker and poet.  Her work exposes narratives of diasporic time travel, intimacy and collective protest by connecting the traumas between the queer and colored body and the body of the Earth. Her first full-length book of poems, Sing Me A Time Machine, is forthcoming. She holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and her artwork has appeared in the The LA Times, The UN Human Rights Council and on indoor and outdoor walls throughout the US. Her poetry has appeared in journals like The Offing, Nepantla: A Journal for Queer Poets of Color and on stages, TEDx conferences, backyards and rooftops nationwide. Through film, mural-making, poetry and youth art education, she is working toward a future where migrant and indigenous youth of color see themselves whole and heroic, on the big screen and the city walls & then grow up to create their own. (www.jessxchen.com)

 

Michelle Chen is a poet, writer, and artist who takes inspiration for her writing from the events that occur in and around her home, New York City, though she was born in Singapore and hopes to return and visit someday. She is the first-prize winner of the 2015 Knopf Poetry prize and the Norm Strung Youth Writing Competition, the recipient of The Critical Junior Poet's Award, was commended as a Foyle Young Poet of the Year, and has performed at Lincoln Center. Her work has been honored both regionally and nationally in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and has appeared or will appear in Prairie Schooner, the Sharkpack Poetry Review, The Critical Pass Review, Across the Margin, Transcendence, Alexandria Quarterly, Ember, On Spec, Polyphony HS, Pif Magazine, and elsewhere. She has attended summer writing workshops at Amherst and the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, and in the fall she will be a senior at Hunter College High School in New York City. 

 

Hayun Cho was born in Seoul, Korea and currently lives near Chicago. Hayun calls both Seoul and Chicago home. She is a rising senior at Yale majoring in Literature and just spent her summer in Seoul doing research on Kim Aeran’s short stories. Hayun’s work has been published in The Margins and The Kenyon Review.  Three of her poems will be published in As[I]Am’s forthcoming summer issue “Our Greatest Resource.”

 

Tiana Clark is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Equilibrium, selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition sponsored by Bull City Press. She is the winner of the 2016 Academy of American Poets Prize and 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. Tiana is currently an MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University where she serves as Poetry Editor for Nashville Review. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from Rattle, Best New Poets 2015, Crab Orchard Review, Southern Indiana Review, The Adroit Journal, Muzzle Magazine, Thrush Poetry Journal, The Offing, and elsewhere. Additionally, Tiana graduated from Tennessee State University where she studied Africana and Women's studies. She has received scholarships to The Sewanee Writers' Workshop, The Frost Place Poetry Seminar, and The New Harmony Writers Workshop. Tiana has recently been awarded funding from the Nashville Metropolitan Arts Commission for her community project, Writing as Resistance, which provides creative writing workshops for trans youth.

 

Ajanae Dawkins is a Michigan and New York Native, currently receiving a dual degree in English Creative Writing, and Communication arts from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She is on a full tuition scholarship with the OMAI First Wave, Hip-hop and Urban Arts scholarship for her poetry. She has performed and featured at venues across the country including the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. She has opened for the United Nations Secretary of Sexual Violence in Conflict. She is a two time indi finalist for the Rustbelt regional slam. In 2015, she debuted her one woman show, Atlantic, directed by Tony award winning, Karen Olivo. Recently, she has been published in undr_scr review and has work forthcoming in Word Riot.

Ajanae has spent the past year living in Spain and Morocco, learning Spanish and Arabic, while conducting research, and perfecting the art of being a care free Black girl. The only thing she believes in more than poems is the transformative power of Christ.

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Annie Fan is a student residing in Warwickshire, England. Recently, she was a 2015 Foyle Young Poet commendation, and was named a runner-up and finalist in Warwickshire's Young Poet Laureate competition. Her work is published in Cadaverine.

 

Farah Ghafoor is a sixteen-year-old poet and a founding editor at Sugar Rascals, an online teen literary magazine. Her work is published or forthcoming in Ninth Letter, alien mouth, Words Dance, and Red Paint Hill among other places and has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Farah is the recipient of the 2016 Alexandria Quarterly Emerging Artists and Writers Award. She believes that she deserves a cat. Find her online at fghafoor.tumblr.com.

 

Thomas Gillaspy is a northern California photographer with an interest in urban minimalism. His photography has been featured in numerous magazines including the literary journals: Compose, Brooklyn Review and Citron Review. Further information and additional examples of his work are available at: http://www.thomasgillaspy.com

 

Dave Harris is spoken word poet and playwright from West Philly. As a playwright, his plays have been featured at Philadelphia Young Playwrights, New Haven Arts and Humanities Co-Op High School, Yale Playwrights Festival, the 24 Hour Plays: Nationals, UMASS Amherst and the Yale Repertory Theater. As a poet, his work has been published in The Huffington Post, Button Poetry, Upworthy, The Root, The New Journal, and The Misanthropy amongst others. When not writing, he is dancing blues or eating chocolate chip cookies. He graduated from Yale in May 2016. He loves all his mothers.

 

Angelo Hernandez-Sias is an eighteen-year-old writer who raps. His fiction has received a national gold medal from the Scholastic Art and Writing awards, two National Merit Awards in Writing/Selection from Novel from YoungArts, and a gold medal from the West Michigan Student Showcase. Born and raised in Muskegon, MI, he attends Columbia University and plans to study English literature. His work is available at angelosias.com.

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B.B.P. Hosmillo is the author of two poetry collections, The Essential Ruin (forthcoming) and Breed Me: a sentence without a subject (AJAR Press, 2016) with Vietnamese translation by Hanoi-based poets Nhã Thuyên & Hải Yến. A Pushcart Prize & three-time Best of the Net nominee, his writing is anthologized in Bettering American Poetry (2016) and has recently appeared or forthcoming in Palaver Journal, The Collapsar, minor literature[s], SAND: Berlin’s English Literary Journal, Transnational Literature (Australia), minor literature[s], and The Nottingham Review (UK), among others. He has received research fellowships/scholarships from The Japan Foundation, Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, and the Republic of Indonesia. He is a guest poetry editor at Cha: An Asian Literary Journal and co-edits Queer Southeast Asia: A Literary Journal of Transgressive Art with Cyril Wong, Hendri Yulius, J. Pilapil Jacobo, & Pang Khee Teik. [contact: bryphosmillo@yahoo.com]

 

Jennifer Huang lives in New York City by way of the DC suburbs and Pittsburgh. She is a publicity assistant for Riverhead Books by day and an artist, writer, and home-cook by night. She misses her dog terribly. You can find more of her work at www.huangjennifer.com, which will hopefully be updated some day.

 

Cheryl Julia Lee is the author of We Were Always Eating Expired Things (Math Paper Press, 2014), which was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2016. Her creative work can also be found in QLRS, Icarus, and Prick of the Spindle, among others. She is currently a PhD candidate at Durham University.

 

Cynthia Lee is a student currently studying at NYU, majoring in photography. She grew up in California, Bellevue, Beijing and Taiwan. Previously, she had her photos published in The Blueshift Journal as well as some school or local magazines. In December of 2014, she had her very first solo exhibition at a clinic in Taipei. She had begun taking photos since a very young age but started taking photography seriously in her freshman year of high school.

 

Henry Wei Leung is the author of a chapbook, Paradise Hunger (Swan Scythe, 2012), and the translator of Pei Pei the Monkey King (Tinfish, forthcoming). He is also the recipient of Kundiman, Soros, and Fulbright fellowships. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in such journals as Crab Orchard Review, The Offing, Spillway, and ZYZZYVA. He is currently the Managing Editor of the Hawai'i Review.

 

Momina Mela is a Pakistani poet from Lahore. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Horse Less Review, The Blueshift Journal and The Lighthouse Journal amongst others. She serves as the Poetry Editor for Papercuts, a publication run by Desi Writers’ Lounge. She holds a BA (Hons) degree in English Literature from Goldsmiths, University of London. She will begin her MFA in poetry at NYU in the fall of 2016 as a full scholarship recipient. 

 

Jonah Mixon-Webster is a poet, sound artist, and educator from Flint, MI. He is a Ph.D. candidate in English Studies at Illinois State University where he is currently writing the dissertation "Stereo(TYPE): A Paracolonial Approach to Racial Performativity in African American Poetry and Critical/Creative Race Pedagogy." A Callaloo Fellow, his poetry and hybrid writing are featured or forthcoming in Muzzle Magazine, Kinfolks: A Journal of Black Expression, Spoon River Poetry Review,Blueshift Journal, Assaracus, Callaloo, Voluble, and the anthology Zombie Variations. Along with jayy dodd and Casey Rocheteau, he is a founding member of the collective CTTNN Club (Can’t Take These Niggas Nowhere).

 

Xandria Phillips is a poet from rural Ohio. She is a Cave Canem and Callaloo fellow, and also serves at Winter Tangerine's associate poetry editor. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming at West Branch, Callaloo, Transition, The James Franco Review, and elsewhere. 

 

Christell Victoria Roach is a writer cultivated by the diverse hands of Miami, Florida. She loves jazz in its written, danced, and instrumental forms, and tries to emulate it experimentally in her performance and writing. Christell was a 2015 Young Arts Winner in Poetry, has been published in Figment Literary Magazine, Dog Eat Crow Magazine, Rattle Literary Magazine, the Postscript Journal, the Deltona Howl, and in The Lyric Literary Magazine. Christell travels as a spoken word artist, and has namely been to Chicago, Philadelphia, Kentucky, and Atlanta to share her work. She is currently a mentor to young writers, and a student. Studying to become a public speaker, Christell carries with her the words “always think of the world you carry within you” and “to whom much is given much is required.”

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Steven Sanchez is a CantoMundo Fellow, a Lambda Literary Fellow, and was selected by Mark Doty as the winner of Marsh Hawk Press’ 2016 Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award.  His poems have appeared in Nimrod, Crab Creek Review, Word Riot, The Cossack Review, and Rogue Agent, among other journals, and his chapbook, To My Body, is forthcoming from Glass Poetry Press.

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Saumya Shukla is a student of Fashion Communication at National Institute of Fashion Technology (Mumbai), India. She has been associated with quite a few NGOs and has done artworks for and designed their publications. She has been awarded National awards in Creative Art as well as in Writing. Painting is something that has always kept her going. While giving the viewer/reader a certain amount of freedom of interpretation, she also sometimes likes to tell them what she had in mind before thoughts took form.

 

Jake Skeets is Black-Streaked Wood, born for the Water's Edge clan. He is Diné from the Navajo Nation. He is pursuing his MFA in poetry at the Institute of American Indian Arts. His work has appeared in the James Franco Review, Red Ink Magazine, and elsewhere. Recently, he launched an online magazine dedicated to queer Indigenous and queer poets of color called Cloudthroat.  

 

Jordan Thompkins is a 19 year old photographer, and college student, living in Atlanta Georgia. Jordan has been previously featured in The Blueshift Journal and has also done work for DJ Kash of the popular Atlanta radio station, V103. Jordan can be found doing freelance photography in the Atlanta area and can be contacted at jay.thompkins365@gmail.com

 

Brad Trumpfheller is a writer from the South. His work can be found in the Nashville Review, Lambda Literary, decomP, Red Paint Hill, and elsewhere. He is an undergraduate literature student at Emerson College, and in what free time he has he reads poetry for Winter Tangerine and writes about music. 

 

Keith S. Wilson is an Affrilachian Poet, Cave Canem fellow, and graduate of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. He serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at Four Way Review and Digital Media Editor at Obsidian Journal. Keith has received three scholarships from Bread Loaf as well as scholarships from the Millay Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. His work has appeared or is appearing in the following journals: American Letters & Commentary, 32 Poems, Cider Press Review, Anti-, Muzzle, Mobius, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Additionally, he has had poems nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net award.

 

Oliver Yong is from Singapore. He will be attending university in the fall of 2017. This is his first publication. 

 

Jessica Yuan is a graduate student studying architecture at Harvard. She has work published or forthcoming in Whether Magazine, Ninth Letter, and various student publications. In 2015 she was a Connecticut Poetry Circuit student poet, and during her time at Yale college she was president of the Asian American spoken word group Jook Songs.

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Lily Zhou is a rising high school junior from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her writing has been recognized by the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Gannon University, and Columbia College Chicago, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Her work has appeared in Red Paint Hill Poetry Journal and Verse Daily. She reads for Polyphony HS.

 

Lisa Zou has been published in Burningword Literary Journal and reads for Winter Tangerine Review. She enjoys pondering philosophy, blogging, and reading political reviews. She studies at the University of Pennsylvania

 

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