volume one, issue four
October 2021
MAYA ALEXANDRIA is a biracial African American writer, painter, poet, and filmmaker in California. She graduated from the University of California, Davis in 2020 with a degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. She is the Chief Marketing Officer and Producer of Mad Mouth Poetry Inc., a poetry coalition based in California that focuses on uplifting the voices of underrepresented poets. She has been published in a variety of magazines from The Parklander Magazine to RiskPress, and has had her poetry taught in the classroom at San Mateo Community College. Maya is currently studying film at NYU while working on poetry and prose projects. She looks for ways to dismantle the patriarchy in her spare time by painting outdoors, listening to jazz with her cat, and slaying dragons via video games. [Read: Dreams of My Foremothers]
URIAH HOWARD ALLIS, a queer twenty-one-year-old poet and nursing student from rural Western New York, has found pieces of his heart, mind, and soul escaping to the blank page ever since he could hold a pencil. He is the winner of the Alfred C. O’Connell Library’s 20th Student Poetry Content (2021). His poetry has been published by or is forthcoming from Active Muse, Ice Lolly Review, Eclipse Magazine, Moss Puppy Magazine, and Intangible Magazine. You can follow his journey on Instagram @uriahallis or https://uriahallis.wixsite.com/my-site. [Read: heartbr[ache] and the day i washed you out of my sweater]
SLOANE ANGELOU is a storyteller & writer of West African origin; passionate about learning of human existence by interrogating human experiences. They exist in liminal spaces. [Read: things i would like to try for a day]
ALISON CALVA (Mexico City, 1995) is a poet, artist and translator. Her poem "Habibi" was published in Revista Fusado and her short story "Martillos al doblar la esquina" was published in Revista Plástico. She endeavors in textile art with embroidered pieces and is currently exploring analogue photography.
[Read: Fire Hazard]
ELLEN CLAYTON is from Suffolk, England where she lives with her husband and three young children. She’s recently been published in Delicate Friend, Corporeal and Honeyfire, amongst others. She has poems forthcoming in various publications including Nightingale and Sparrow, Gutslut Press and Cauldron Anthology. Her poetry can be found on Instagram @ellen_writes_poems and she’s on Twitter @el_clayton. [Read: What to Bring to My Grave]
TAM EASTLEY (she/her) is a writer and web developer based in Berlin. She is currently editing her way through her first novel, and has recently been published in Fusion Fragment, CP Quarterly, Drunk Monkeys, Visual Verse, and The Wild Word. Together with her sister, she runs ongoing, a prompt journal for music and prose. When she's not writing, you can find her cross stitching, reading on the balcony, or going for various hikes around Berlin. She can be found online here: tamwrites.space.
[Read: Every Day I Panic]
ILYSSA GOLDSMITH graduated from Arizona State University with a bachelor’s in communication. She enjoys writing poetry, which sounds out the space where the muse, myth, and female desire reside. Ilyssa is passionate about exploring the nature of the repressed female psyche within her poetry. She believes language can be utilized as a tool for discovery, healing, and recovery. Ilyssa keeps a dog-eared copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass close to her bed and is known to recite her favorite lines to anyone who will listen on a daily basis. Goodbye (Hello) is her first poetry collection. [Read: Letting Go]
MELISSA GREENWOOD, who writes both CNF and poetry, has an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She has been published—both under her real and pen name—in Brevity; Lunch Ticket; Annotation Nation; The Los Angeles Review; the Los Angeles Review of Books; Meow Meow Pow Pow, where her flash piece was nominated for a best small fiction award; the Pup Pup Blog; The Manifest-Station; Poke; Neuro Logical; The Erozine, Moment Mag; Sledgehammer Lit; Screenshot Lit; Pink Plastic House; and forthcoming in HOOT’s Cookbook Anthology and Potato Soup Journal. She lives in LA with her Canadian husband and—when she's not reading, writing, or singing—teaches and practices Pilates. Fun fact: Her semi-retired caterer mother (the subject of the above poem) is sometimes even a student in her classes, working off the chocolate chip pancakes of yore. [Read: What is it About Two Little Ears—]
JADE HIDLE (she/her/hers) is the proud Vietnamese-Irish-Norwegian daughter of a refugee. Her travel memoir, The Return to Viet Nam, was published by Transcurrent Press in 2016, and her work has also been featured in Michigan Quarterly Review: Mixtape, Southern Humanities Review, Poetry Northwest, Witness Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, The West Trade Review, Bangalore Review, Columbia Journal, New Delta Review, and the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network’s diacritics.org. You can follow her work at www.jadehidle.com or on Instagram @jadethidle. [Read: I First Dated a Boy Who and I Dated Another Guy Who]
J.A. HOLM is a poet from small-town Pennsylvania. He earned his A.A. from the Community College of Philadelphia and is currently a senior studying Creative Writing at Bucknell University. His writing appears in Toho Journal as well as in his debut chapbook Self Self published by Toho Publishing. He currently lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. [Read: Shakespeare]
EVA JASPER lives and writes in the north of England, where old and wonderfully strange things live.
[Read: Mary]
ALISAN KEESEE is a 24-year-old Seattle-based writer who lives alone with her cat. Originally from a small, unincorporated Washington town, she has a penchant for boybands, black coffee, and true crime. A graduate of Western Washington University, Alisan works in an office like many college graduates in their twenties. [Read: Manifestation]
R. SKYE LAMBERT is a social worker at a hospital in New England, serving clientele with pervasive mental health diagnoses. Skye is also a musician and songwriter. You can find her on Twitter at @rskyelambert. She is probably weirder than you. [Read: And I Would]
FRANCESCO LEVATO is a poet, a literary translator, and a new media artist. Recent books include Arsenal/Sin Documentos; Endless, Beautiful, Exact; Elegy for Dead Languages; War Rug; Creaturing (as translator); and the chapbooks A Continuum of Force and jettison/collapse. He has collaborated and performed with various composers, including Philip Glass, and his cinépoetry has been exhibited in galleries and featured at film festivals in Berlin, Chicago, New York, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Poetry, a PhD in English Studies, and is currently an Associate Professor of Literature & Writing Studies at California State University San Marcos. [Read: Excerpts from SCARLET: Cabinet with Hand Sanitizer & Alcohol Wipes and Refrigerator with Cup, Near Empty]
KELLY MCCAY lives in the philly area. she is a painter and a poet, and a proud member of the proletariat. You can find her work in Voicemail Poems and Ariadne Mag. [Read: wet mouth]
EUGENE O'HARE is an author based in London. His plays are published by Methuen. [Read: A CHILD DECIDES HE WANTS TO BE KING]
DANIELLE ESTELLE RAMSAY (she/her) is a poet from the Pacific Northwest. She is a feminist, an anime fan, and a lover of books. She lives in Walla Walla, Washington with her spouse, daughter, and their array of pets. She works as a United Methodist pastor, and can usually be found drinking tea, embroidering, or walking her dog. [Read: Larry Calls Me A Teenager for the Third Time This Morning]
JEN SCHNEIDER is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She is a Best of the Net nominee, with stories, poems, and essays published in a wide variety of literary and scholarly journals. She is the author of Invisible Ink (order at Toho Publishing), On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility (forthcoming, Moonstone Press), and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups (forthcoming, Atmosphere Press). [Read: 14 ways to play hide & seek sleep (& avoid nightmares)]
CYRINE SINTI is a Writer and Dancer. She loves sharing her German and Gypsy cultures through fiction. Cyrine has been published in Crepe & Penn, Periwinkle Lit Mag, Analogies & Allegories Lit Mag, Poetically Magazine, Walled City Journal, Small Leaf Press, and others. She can be found under any full moon, or online @CyrineSinti. [Read: Coming Home to You]
MANTAS STOCKUS is a Malta-based Lithuanian. He has MA in Modern-and-Contemporary Literature and Criticism and is particularly interested in thought-provoking writing and poetry. His writing has appeared in various print and digital publications. [Read: The Dig]
RACHEL TANNER is a queer, disabled writer from Alabama whose work has recently appeared in Tenderness Lit, Wine Cellar Press, and elsewhere. She has a monthly videogame writing column in Videodame and she tweets @rickit. [Read: I Don't Know]
BRITTNEY UECKER lives in rural Montana. Her work has been published by HAD, Taco Bell Quarterly, Fever Dream Magazine, and others, and she is a Best of the Net nominee for fiction. She is @bonesandbeer on Twitter and Instagram. [Read: Candied Violence]
BEN WALKER lives in Southampton and is an enthusiastic amateur poet. They're working through some stuff, but they're going to be ok. Find them on Instagram at @benhaspictures, or on Twitter at @BenHasOpinions. They do not currently have any published collections, but are working frantically to remedy this. [Read: Telling it Like it Is]