Bahaar Ahsan is a writer, artist, and student of Persian language and literature, based in the Bay Area, with roots in the south of Iran. Grappling with ideas of memory, (dis)embodiment, fabulation, and mourning, Bahaar’s work aims to interrogate ontologies that separate the ideological from the somatic, the aural from the visual, rage from softness, homeland from host-land, past from present from future. Her work can be found in Tagvverk and in the anthology Tender (Foglifter Press, 2018).

Bani Amor is a queer travel writer who explores the relationships between race, place, and power. Their work has appeared in CNN Travel, Teen Vogue, Bitch Magazine, and in the anthologies Outside the XY: Queer Black and Brown Masculinity, and the upcoming Where We Stand: Brown and Black Voices Speak the Earth. You can follow them on Instagram @baniamor and on Twitter @bani_amor.

RBrown writes and teaches in Alabama, where they are grateful to be trans and alive. Recent work can be found in VIDA Review, Shabby Dollhouse Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, and others. They are the author of the microchapbook, Dear John, Love Letters to John Connor… (Ghost City Press, 2018). You can usually find them on twitter, @notalake.

Lauren Camp is the author of four books, including One Hundred Hungers, winner of the Dorset Prize and finalist for the Arab American Book Award. Her most recent collection is Turquoise Door. Camp’s poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Slice, South Dakota Review, Nashville Review, the Adroit Journal and elsewhere. A 2018 Visiting Scholar/Poet for the Mayo Clinic (MN) and a Senior Fellow for the Black Earth Institute, she lives and teaches in New Mexico. www.laurencamp.com.

Catherine Chen is the author of the chapbook Manifesto, or: Hysteria (Big Lucks), forthcoming June 2019. Their work has appeared in Slate, Hobart, Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Mask Magazine, among others. They’ve been awarded fellowships and residencies from Millay Colony, Lambda Literary, and Art Farm.

Lia Haley Clay is a transgender portrait and fashion photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Clay was born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, and graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a degree in photography. She went on to get her graduate degree in fashion photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work seeks to demystify the portrayal of transgender individuals within the media, photographing them from a place of honesty and respect. She often references growing up queer in the South and seeks the natural light in found spaces that, for her, evoke the places she first started photographing, in her grandmother’s backyard. In 2017, Clay exhibited at Milk Studios, Brooklyn’s Photoville, and in a group show alongside Nan Goldin and William Wegman at Colette. Her image featuring a trans woman standing on a New York beach was featured in Aperture magazine’s “Future Gender” issue, guest edited by Zackary Drucker and Kate Bornstein. She shot three consecutive covers of Luis Venegas’ Candy magazine, most recently featuring Fran Lebowitz, and photographed Hillary Clinton for Teen Vogue. In her published work, she pushes to pursue her ideals of portraiture in an industry oversaturated with cisgender perspectives, and to choose projects that push for diversity both in front of and behind the camera.

Shebana Coelho is a writer, director, and performer, originally from India, now living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received a fiction fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Fulbright award to Mongolia. Her current project is The Good Manners of Colonized Subject, a solo play. Her website is shebanacoelho.com.

Christian J. Collier is a 2015 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellow. He is an accomplished artist, public speaker, and educator who has shared the stage with members of HBO’s Def Poetry cast, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame members The Impressions, and Grammy-nominee Minton Sparks. His work has been featured in the Guardian, and published in the American Journal of Poetry, TAYO Literary Magazine, The Seven Hills Review, and Freeze Ray, to name a few.

Robin Gow is a graduate student at Adelphi University pursuing an MFA in creative writing. He runs two poetry blogs and has served as the production editor of the Lantern Literary Magazine and as a poetry intern for Oyster River Pages. He is an out and proud bisexual transgender man passionate about LGBT issues.  

Jon Henry is a visual artist born and raised in Queens, NY. His work investigates the familial relationship in the African American community in the wake of the murders of African American men due to police violence, starting with his own community and expanding across the country. His work also explores the various roles of athletes in a fine art context. His work has been exhibited nationally in galleries including Aperture Foundation, Smack Mellon, Rubber Factory, NURTUREArt, and BRIC, among others. His work has also been published internationally. His project, Stranger Fruit, won “Best in Show” at BRIC’s Open Call in December 2017.

Shanekia McIntosh is a writer, poet, programmer, and educator born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. McIntosh has performed her writing at the New Museum, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art’s TBA Festival, September Gallery, Powrplnt, and Basilica Hudson, among other places. Her writing has been exhibited in shows at the 511 Gallery in Portland, Basilica Hudson, and the New Museum. McIntosh has programmed for a variety of art spaces and educational institutions. She is based in Hudson, NY.

@MoonbonesOfficial, the Cosmic Child, is a negress witch yogi artist. Conceived the night her parents received their initiations on the path of Sant Mat from Satguru Maharaj Charan Singh, she is committed to seeing of the Guru in all things and learning to choose bliss from one moment to the next. She improvises spells to spread the germ of love. She is the writer, performer, director, and composer of #QuantumNegressTantras (QNT), which enfolds many wondrous collaborators along its paths.  

Nina Oteria is a poet living in Durham, North Carolina. She writes about nature, sight, perception, and being a black woman. Nina received her MFA in writing from Pratt Institute and is currently an editorial associate at Duke University Press. She paints, watches the clouds, and drinks tea.

Thomas J Price studied at Chelsea College of Art (2001–04) and received an MA at the Royal College of Art, Sculpture School (2004–06). Price lives and works in London. Price’s work across media, encompassing sculpture, film and photography, is engaged with issues of representation and perception, in society and in art. His works all share a fascination with the minutiae of body language, facial expression, and external presentation, and in turn, their ability to suggest a state of mind. In 2009, Thomas J Price was featured alongside Grayson Perry, Michael Landy, Sir Anthony Caro, and Cornelia Parker on the BBC 4 television documentary, Where is Modern Art Now?, presented by Gus Casely-Hayford. In 2010, he featured on BBC 4’s How to Get A Head in Sculpture, also featuring Marc Quinn and Sir Anthony Caro. In 2010, Price was included in 10 Magazine’s Ten Sculptors You Should Meet, and was an invited artist at the Royal Academy Summer Show. In 2013, during his second solo show with Hales Gallery, Price presented his first large scale sculpture, Network. The work subsequently was placed on display at the prestigious Yorkshire Sculpture Park, coinciding with Price’s solo display at the Park (2014), and was selected for the 2015 inauguration of London’s art walk, The Line. Selected solo exhibitions have been held at prestigious institutions including the National Portrait Gallery (London), Royal Academy of Arts (London), Mac Birmingham (UK), Royal College of Art (London), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (UK), Harewood House (UK) and Hales Gallery (London). Price’s work has also been included in shows in the US and Europe. Price’s work is included in a number of private and public collections including Derwent London (UK), Murderme (UK) and the Rennie Collection (Canada).

Jasmine Reid is a twice trans poet-child of flowers. A 2018 Poets House Fellow and MFA candidate at Cornell University, her work has been published or is forthcoming in Muzzle Magazine, Yemassee Journal, WUSGOOD?, and WATER. Also a finalist for the 2018 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Prize, Jasmine was born and raised in Baltimore, MD, and is currently based in Ithaca, NY. Find her at reidjasmine.com

Jehan Roberson is a writer, educator, and artist using text as the basis for her interdisciplinary art practice. Born and raised in Memphis, TN, Jehan’s work explores text as a site of liberation, place making, and historical intervention for Black peoples in the Americas. Her work has been published in MadameNoire, VICE, Public Books, emisférica, and Kalyani Magazine, among others. She is on the editorial board of Teachers & Writers Magazine and is a member of the editorial collective Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory. Jehan is a 2017 and 2018 Public Performance Art fellow with Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative and is the founder of Latitudes, an artistic organization exploring Black radical archives and literacy in the Americas.

Zak Salih lives in Washington, DC. His writing has appeared in the Millions, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Bright Lights Film Journal, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Anastamos, and other publications. His debut novel is forthcoming from Algonquin.

Janice Lobo Sapigao is a daughter of Filipina/o immigrants. She was named one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s 2017 Women to Watch by KQED Arts. She is the author of two books of poetry, Like a Solid to a Shadow (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2017) and microchips for millions (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2016), and three other chapbooks. She is a VONA/Voices and Kundiman Fellow, and the associate editor of TAYO Literary Magazine. She co-founded Sunday Jump open mic in L.A. She earned her MFA in writing from CalArts, and she has a BA in Ethnic Studies with Honors from UC San Diego.

Lou Spence is a young trans writer, artist, and therapist-in-training from Melbourne, Australia. Their work has appeared in Overland, the Lifted Brow, the Suburban Review, Voiceworks, the Big Issue, and more.

Elliott Turner’s writing has appeared in the Guardian, VICE, Fusion, Transect Mag, Vol. 1: Brooklyn, & countless others. He is a contributing editor at Latino Book Review. His debut novel, The Night of the Virgin, was a finalist for the Int’l Latino Book Award for First Fiction.