Masthead

Executive Editor
Alexandra Watson

Managing Editors
Zavi Kang Engles, Minahil Akbar

Associate Editors
Snigdha Koirala

Editorial Assistants
Charlotte Atkins, Lakshmi Sunder


Poetry Editors
Joey De JesusMuriel Leung, Zefyr Lisowski, Crystal Yeung, Joselia Rebekah Hughes

Fiction Editors
Miriam Kumaradoss, Adrianne Bonilla

Nonfiction Editors
Anya Lewis-Meeks, Sasha Bonét, Adrianne Bonilla

Visual Arts Editor
Dana Robinson

Flash Editors
Kameel Mir, Deborah Germaine Augustin

Reviews & Interviews Editor
Jean Yoon

Outreach Editors
Mery Concepción Pacheco, Jasmine Butler

Readers
Chelsea Tokuno-Lynk

Contributing Editors
Mina Seçkin, Crystal Hana Kim, Brian Lin, Alejandro Varela, Victoria Cho, Legacy Russell


 

Digital Director
Ingrid Pangandoyon

Development Manager
Arnell Calderon

Communications Editor
Gray Agpalo

Events Coordinator
Nifath Chowdhury


 

Advisory Board
Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Victor LaValle, Roger Reeves, Gary Shteyngart, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Zinzi Clemmons

Board of Directors
Alexandra Watson (President), Alejandro Varela (Treasurer), Muriel Leung (Secretary)

Founders
Zinzi Clemmons, Melody Nixon, Jennifer Ohrstrom, Chris Prioleau, Aaron Shin


Adrianne Bonilla is a graduate of Columbia’s School of the Arts. In her second year, she received the Henfield Prize in Fiction for the opening pages of her novella, Astral Cemetery. An excerpt is available on Tin House Online. You can find more of her work on Apogee and The Acentos Review. She is originally from Queens, New York and lives in Buenos Aires, where she is working on a novel.

Alejandro Varela (he/him) is a New Yorker. His graduate studies were in public health, where he learned that hierarchies lead to poor health outcomes. He is the author of two books, The Town of Babylon (Astra House, 2022) and The People Who Report More Stress(Astra House, 2023). His writing has appeared in several places, including Harper’s, Boston Review, and The Point. Links to his published work can be found at alejandrovarela.work.

Alexandra Watson is a founding editor of Apogee Journal, where she has helped secure grant funding for community arts projects from the New York State Council on the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Brooklyn Arts Council. She is a full-time Lecturer in the First-Year Writing program at Barnard College. Her fiction, poetry, and interviews have appeared in Yes, Poetry, Nat. Brut., Breadcrumbs, Redivider, PANK, Lit Hub, and Apogee. Find her work at alexandrawatson.net.

Anya Lewis-Meeks is a writer from Kingston, Jamaica. She completed her MFA in Fiction at Columbia University in 2019. Currently, she is a PhD student in English at Duke University, where she balances her critical interests in Caribbean Folklore and speculative fiction with her creative projects. She is working on a novel called Sisterhood.

Arnell Calderon is a fiction writer from Harlem, NY, by way of Garifuna-Honduran immigrant parents. She currently works as a Grant Writer for The Opportunity Agenda and sometimes writes a newsletter on astrology, grief, and personal musings on essays, poems, and novels. You can find her cooking, reading, or indulging in a nap.

Brian Lin is a Ph.D. student in the creative writing and literature program at USC. He has participated in the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. He is a 2020 Ragdale resident and a Desert Nights, Rising Stars fellow. Fiction editor for Apogee Journal and community outreach coordinator for The Offing, Brian is also working on his first books of prose.

Charlotte Atkins is a senior from Florida studying English and Medieval Studies at Columbia University. She has previously conducted research as a Laidlaw Scholar and Making and Knowing Project intern, for which she researched depictions of labor in medieval English literature and tested crafting instructions from a Renaissance-era artisan handbook. She is currently working on a senior essay about medieval afterlives in the American South.

Chelsea Tokuno-Lynk is a fourth-generation Japanese American who grew up in Kane’ohe, Hawai’i. She graduated with degrees in Japanese and English from the University of Hawaiʻi. A 2015 and 2018 VONA/Voices Fellow, Chelsea is a short story writer with a passion for centering and elevating the stories of communities of color.

Crystal Hana Kim’s debut novel If You Leave Me was named a best book of 2018 by multiple outlets, including The Washington Post, Booklist, Literary Hub, and Nylon. It was also longlisted for the Center for Fiction Novel Prize. Kim was a 2017 PEN America Dau Short Story Prize winner and has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Hedgebrook, and Jentel, among others. Her work has been published in Elle Magazine, The Paris Review, Guernica, and elsewhere. She teaches at Columbia University.

Crystal Yeung is a queer femme Asian American poet with an MFA in Poetry from the College of New Rochelle. She holds a BA in English literature and was a part of the CCNY Language & Literacy MA program. Her writing can be found in Rabbit Catastrophe Review, Poets & Writers, Perigee, TAYO, and descant. She is recipient of Poets & Writers Amy Award and descant Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award, serves as chairwoman for the PEN Prison Writing Program, and Poetry and Reviews Co-Editor at Apogee Journal. She is currently serving her AmeriCorps year at Asian Americans for Equality. 

Dana Robinson has exhibited at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Texas State University, Fuller Rosen Gallery, 92nd Street Y, Spellerberg Projects, Kates Ferri Projects, A.I.R. Gallery, Haul Gallery, and Regular Normal. She received the  NYFA City Artist Corps Grant to complete two murals in the Bronx as part of the Not A Monolith project. Robinson was a contributing illustrator for the New York Times Magazine and The Baffler, and her work has been written about in Artsy, It’s Nice That, Ain’t Bad magazine, and more. She has done many public speaking events, most recently at ArtNoir, Sonoma State University, and the 92Y. She is completing a fellowship at A.I.R. Gallery, will be an artist-in-residence at the Wassaic Project, and she has upcoming solo shows with Kates Ferri Projects and Turley Projects later in 2023.

Deborah Germaine Augustin is a writer born and raised in Malaysia. Her work has been published in Popula, Catapult, khōréō, Plural Art, and Arts Equator. She dreams of a world where everyone has freedom of movement.

Gray Agpalo is a Filipinx poet who lives in Pittsburgh, PA. An inaugural Roots Wounds Words Fellow, their recent work has appeared in Baest and TLDTD. They tweet at  ______gray__.

Jared Jackson is a writer, editor, educator, and arts administrator born in Hartford, CT. He received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where he was awarded a Chair’s Fellowship and Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship. His writing has received support from the Tin House Winter Workshop and has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Yale Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review, Catapult, and elsewhere. He has been awarded residencies and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Baldwin for the Arts, and the Center for Fiction. He is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University and the Program Director of Literary Programs and Emerging Voices at PEN America.

Jasmine Butler is a Black southern writer, political educator, and afrofuturist-abolitionist dedicated to telling stories of the Black South – past, present, and future. Jasmine’s fiction has appeared on Inherited Podcast and their nonfiction has appeared on Powershift Network Blog and Medium. Jasmine reads poetry for Chestnut Review Literary Magazine and has received support from Breadloaf Environmental Writers Conference, Young Black Climate Leaders, Writing As Ceremony, In Surreal Life, and Forge Journal. Jasmine is a full-time organizer and political educator working to skill up the youth climate justice movement. See their work at Jasmine-Butler.com.

Jean Yoon is a writer, editor, and artist based currently in Brooklyn with prior attachments to Seoul, Chicago, Portland, and Boston. She makes a living in books, nightlife, and teaching yoga.

Joey De Jesus is a recipient of the 2017 NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship in Poetry and lives in Queens. Poems have appeared recently in The Literary ReviewBrooklyn Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Beloit Poetry Journal, Guernica, and have been installed in The New Museum and Artists Space. Links to their work are available here

Joselia Rebekah Hughes is a writer, artist, and Caribbean-American living in the Bronx. She is a 2021 Art Matters Artist2Artist Fellow. Joselia’s work can be spotted in Apogee, Blackflash Magazine, Ocean State Review, The Poetry Project: Poems and Texts, ICA at VCU, MoMA, and elsewhere. Her book, Blackable: A Nopem, is forthcoming on Inpatient Press.

Kameel Mir is a Bangladeshi-American writer, educator, and bookseller hailing from Atlanta and now based in New York City. She received an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College and currently consults at Columbia University. She loves writing that is dense with thought but still fueled by blood and gut, and she is at work on a barely-autobiographical first novel.

Lakshmi Sunder (she/her) is a senior at the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas, with a concentration in creative writing. Lakshmi enjoys writing poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction about intersectional identity, familial dynamics, and dystopias that reflect reality. She has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the Bennington Young Writers Awards, and The New York Times Learning Network. Outside of Apogee, Lakshmi works with #TeenWritersProject, Diversify Our Narrative, and Girl Up. 

Legacy Russell is a writer and curator. Born and raised in New York City, she is the Associate Curator of Exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Recent exhibitions include Projects 110 : Michael Armitage, organized with Thelma Golden and The Studio Museum in Harlem at MoMA (2019); Dozie Kanu : Function (2019), Chloë Bass : Wayfinding (2019), Radical Reading Room (2019) at The Studio Museum in Harlem; and MOOD : Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2018-19 (2019) at MoMA PS1. Russell’s ongoing academic work and research focuses on gender, performance, digital selfdom, internet idolatry, and new media ritual. She is the recipient of the Thoma Foundation 2019 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art and a 2020 Rauschenberg Residency Fellow. Her first book, Glitch Feminism, is forthcoming from Verso Books in Fall 2020.

Mery Concepción Pacheco (she/her) is an Afro-Caribbean immigrant, abolitionist, and writer building and thinking at the intersection of the literary arts, prison abolition, and creative storytelling. Her written work deals with themes of embodiment, familial unravelings, racial (un)becomings, and healing. Her poetry has been previously published by Newtown Literary and QA Poetry. She lives, dreams, and loves in the margins.

Mina Seçkin is a writer from New York City. Her debut novel, The Four Humors, is forthcoming from Catapult. Her work has been published in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, the Rumpus, the Adroit Journal, and elsewhere.

Minahil Akbar is an editor and organizer living in Brooklyn on occupied Lenape land. Raised in NYC, they have roots in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Iran, Afghanistan, and India/Pakistan, where she was born. They currently organize with the mutual aid booksharing collective Library of Study and PIC abolitionists Black & Pink NYC. Minahil has previously worked with Wendy’s Subway, The Yale Review, and n+1.

Miriam Kumaradoss‘s writing has been published in Apogee, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Literary Hub, among others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. They currently live with their family and several frogs and geckos in Tamil Nadu, India, where they are at work on their first novel.

Muriel Leung is the author of two poetry collections, Imagine Us, the Swarm (Nightboat Books) and Bone Confetti (Noemi Press). A Pushcart Prize nominated writer, her writing can be found or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Drunken Boat, The Collagist, Fairy Tale Review, and others. She is the co-host of The Blood-Jet Writing Hour podcast with Rachelle Cruz and MT Vallarta. Currently, she is a Dornsife Fellow in Creative Writing and Literature at University of Southern California. She is from Queens, NY.

Nifath Chowdhury is a writer, teacher and crochet artist from Bangladesh living in Queens, New York. She has an MFA from Columbia University and has been published in Unpublishable, Six Seasons Review and Disconnect: Collected Short Fiction. She is co-host and co-founder of Red Light Fiction reading series in Brooklyn. Follow her on instagram @nifathkarim.

Sasha Bonét is a writer, critic, curator educator living in New York City. Her work in storytelling explores the ways in which race, gender, and social norms influence art and the ways that we communicate our experiences. She is most interested in the contradictions of being. Bonét studied at Columbia University’s creative writing MFA program and currently teaches at The New School as part-time faculty in Parsons School of Design photography BFA department. She is at work on a collection of narrative essays on Memory + Motherhood in America.

Snigdha Koirala is a writer/poet based in London. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gutter Magazine, Wildness, Post 45: Contemporaries, and others. Her debut chapbook, Xenoglossia, is out with Wendy’s Subway.

Zavi Kang Engles is a writer with degrees in English and Environmental History from Pitzer College and the University of Chicago. Her writing has been published in Salon, The Rumpus, aaduna, and elsewhere.

Zefyr Lisowski is a Southern trans poet and the author of the short poetry collection Blood Box (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). She’s received support from Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Blue Mountain Center and elsewhere; her work has appeared in Muzzle, DIAGRAM, Literary Hub, Nat. Brut., and more. Zef’s the recipient of a 2020 Center for the Humanities Incubator Grant for Wolf Inventory, a collaborative film about ghost stories and sexual violence, and lives in Brooklyn.