MEET THE CONTRIBUTORS for love is a drug and other dark poems
POETS
Allyson Darling
Allyson’s pantry would describe her as a lovely, ferocious, and always hungry writer. Her work has been published in The Nervous Breakdown, Oregon Home magazine, The Bold Italic, Red Light Lit, xoJane, Thought Catalog, and Writtalin.
Amber Flame
Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary artist and writer whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, The Watering Hole, Vermont Studio Center, and Yefe Nof. Flame’s original work has been published in diverse arenas, including Def Jam Poetry, Winter Tangerine, DIALOGIST, Split This Rock, Black Heart Magazine, Sundress Publications, FreezeRay, Redivider, and more. A 2016 and 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee and Jack Straw Writers Program alum, Amber Flame’s first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, was published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. Flame was a recipient of the CityArtist grant from Seattle’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs to write, produce, and perform her one-person play, Hands Above the Covers, a series of character monologues drawn from real-life interviews on spirituality and sexuality. Most recently, Flame co-curated the art installation Black Imagination at Core Gallery in Seattle, and is at work on a project entitled ::intrigue:: 13, a multimedia presentation that combines music made from 13 different poets with original video as well as text and audio from the original poems. As Hugo House’s writer-in-residence for poetry, she is working on her second book of poetry, titled apocrifa. www.theamberflame.com
Amos White
Amos White is a poet, author, producer, and civil rights activist. He is recognized for his vivid literary imagery and his artistic interpretations. Amos is published in several literary journals and international anthologies, is an active member of AfroSurreal Writers Workshop, producer of Beyond Words: Jazz + Poetry show, president of Bay Area Generations literary reading series, and author of the book The Sound of the Web.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Sound-Web-Facebook-Twitter/dp/1456581473/
B.B. Queen
B.B. Queen is a Portland-based author and performer. She grew up in a cult and spent most of her time as a child out in open fields riding horses, chasing butterflies, and acting out some strange Lord of the Flies–esque hierarchies with the other feral children. She is a prolific writer who often finds her pockets filled with torn pieces of paper with scribbled writing ideas yet to be grown into fully formed pieces. B.B. Queen has spent a majority of her life trying to disappear while simultaneously writing down everything she can to leave some traces behind for alien archaeologists to decipher. Her work focuses on love, relationships, life under capitalism, and existential mélange. You can find her work in buried in old boxes and follow her on Instagram @beebeequeen_poetry.
Baruch Porras-Hernandez
Baruch Porras Hernandez is a two-time winner of Literary Death Match, a Lambda Literary Poetry Fellow, a Lambda Literary Playwriting Fellow, and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee; and was named a Bay Area Writer to Watch! in 2016 by 7x7 magazine. He is the head organizer for ¿Donde Esta Mi Gente? Latinx performance series, a regular KQED Arts host, and the Voice of Shipwreck SF Erotic FanFiction Competition and podcast. His poems have been published in several anthologies and journals, both online and in print. He is originally from Mexico, and lives in San Francisco. https://baruchporrashernandez.wordpress.com/
Bradley Penner
Bradley Penner is a William Dickey Fellow in Poetry at San Francisco State University.
Cassandra Dallett
Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA, is a three-time Pushcart nominee, and has been published online and in many print magazines. Cassandra hosts the workshop OnTwoSix and co-hosts the reading series MoonDrop Productions. Look for her latest full-length collection Collapse (Nomadic Press). www.cassandradallett.me
Chris Mancari
Chris is a twenty-five-year-old emerging writer, recently based out of Baja Mexico and running a bar based on human interaction, storytelling, and empathy. Her writing ranges from poetry and creative nonfiction to an ongoing project of a science-fiction novel dealing with the future of the mental health industry. Her writing stems from introspection and world travel.
Christine No
Christine’s work has appeared at the Sundance Film Festival, in The Rumpus, sPARKLE & bLINK, Columbia Journal, Apogee, and others. She is a VONA Alum, Pushcart Prize nominee, and First Place Poetry Winner the 2016 Litquake Writing Contest.
Devin Copland
Devin has been reading her poetry on stage for Red Light Lit since 2014 and has had several pieces featured in their publications, including 3 poems in Red Light Lit’s first journal in 2013. She has a degree in creative writing from the University of Colorado; owned her own copywriting shop, Word Refuge, for 8 years; performed with the Poetry Brothel of Los Angeles; and was an active member of the Poetry Society of Los Angeles. Devin enjoys writing poems on demand at events with her 100-year-old typewriter, as well as writing poems in private that no one ever sees. Visit her website: devincopeland.com and follow her on Instagram @wordrefuge
Emily Pinkerton
Raised in the shadow of Houston refineries, Emily Pinkerton currently lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds an MFA and MA from San Francisco State University, and her writing has previously appeared in ZYZZYVA, Juked, BlazeVOX, Pith, Hobart, and LEVELER, among others. Emily is the author of Natural Disasters (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2016), Bloom (Alley Cat Press, 2018), and Adaptations (Nomadic Press, forthcoming Fall 2018). She is currently a 2017–2018 Writer in Residence at Alley Cat Books in San Francisco. More of Emily’s publications can be found at thisisemilypinkerton.tumblr.com, and she tweets as @neongolden. Her favorite color is fog.
Fisayo Adeyeye
Fisayo Adeyeye is the former poetry editor of Fourteen Hills and a former co-curator of the VelRo Graduate Reading Series. His chapbook Blackfish was a finalist for the 2015 Best Prize Chapbook Contest (Big Lucks). He is the author of Cradles (Nomadic Press). He has poems published in Noble / Gas Qtrly, Nailed Magazine, Print Oriented Bastards, This Magazine, and others. Find him at fisayoadeyeye.com
Hollie Hardy
Hollie Hardy is the author of How to Take a Bullet: And Other Survival Poems, winner of the 2016 Annual Poetry Center Book Award. She teaches writing classes at the SF Creative Writing Institute and Berkeley City College; hosts Saturday Night Special, a monthly Open Mic; and last Saturdays at Nick’s Lounge in Berkeley; and is a core producer of the Beast Crawl Literary Festival. Her work has been published in numerous journals. More at holliehardy.com
Jessie Carver
Jessie Carver is a writer and editor who lives in Portland, Oregon, but grew up on a farm in the borderlands of New Mexico. Her fiction can be found in Entropy and Watershed Review, and she co-authored the 2011 nonfiction book Rethinking Paper & Ink: The Sustainable Publishing Revolution. She has edited many books and magazines, including Bitch magazine (2010 to the present); What About the Rest of Your Life by Sung Yim (2018 Lambda Literary Award finalist); The End of My Career by Martha Grover (2016 Oregon Book Awards finalist); and Life Begins at Incorporation by Pulitzer Prize finalist Matt Bors. She’s also an adjunct professor of writing and editing at Portland State University. She tweets @Jessie__Paige and posts pictures @jessie_paige.
JiaJing Liu
JiaJing is a poet and fiction writer by choice, and translator by trade. She has contributed writing and reporting to LEAP, The Art Newspaper, Caijing, Libération, AFP, CCTV-8, and the Washington Post. She is an alumna of VONA and Lit Camp. You can find her writing about art at: news.joincivil.com/hmm-daily
Josey Rose Duncan
Josey Rose Duncan’s writing has been featured in publications such as Jellyfish Review, Unbroken Journal, and The Huffington Post. She’s read her poetry and fiction at many series including Litquake, Red Light Lit, Literary Speakeasy, and Bay Area Generations, and served six years on Quiet Lightning’s board. Josey grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and now lives in Los Angeles. www.joseyduncan.com
Kar Johnson
Kar Johnson is a writer, educator, and bookseller in San Francisco. Their writing has been featured in Northridge Review, sPARKLE & bLINK, and Transfer, among others. Kar received their MFA from San Francisco State University. They co-host the podcast Queers in Space.
Kelsey Kundera
Kelsey Kundera is a spoken word poet who spreads her life and heart between Seattle and Portland, where she manages bands and nonprofits. Her surrealist poetry leads readers and audience members down a trail of insanity to show the tenderness and vulnerability of our shared reality. She has been consistently writing since a small child and has been performing her poetry in public since she 13 years old, when she first read a poem about a talking house.
Her chapbook, titled Fever Dreams, was release in 2017.
kiki nicole
kiki nicole is a multimedia artist/writer born & raised primarily in Baltimore, MD, & on the move ever since. They are a 2016 Pink Door Fellow, a 2017 Queer Emerging Artist Residency cohort in Oakland, CA, & a 2018 Winter Tangerine Fellow. In 2017, they wrote for the Trans Day of Resilience campaign spearheaded by the non-profit organization Forward Together. They work to explore a Black, queer, femme & genderless universe that un/bodies, un/genders, & re/news, with a focus on identity & mental illness. They are a co-curator & collaborator of Portland-based experimental film & new media arts project, the first & the last, which seeks to archive, uplift, & nourish new media & experimental work from black women, femmes, & non-men through film screenings & skillshares. kiki hopes to lend a voice for the void in which Black Queer femmes not only exist in plain view, but thrive. Find them at kikinicole.com.
Kimberly Reyes
Kimberly Reyes has received fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Columbia University, and San Francisco State University. Her poetry is available widely online and in print. Her chapbook, Warning Coloration (Dancing Girl Press), was released in 2018 and her full-length manuscript, Running to Stand Still, is forthcoming from Omnidawn in 2019.
Kristina Ten
Kristina Ten is a Russian-American writer of short stories and poetry. Her work can be found in b(OINK), Jellyfish Review, The Awl, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, Pantheon Magazine, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Kristina lives in Oakland, California, with her dog, Shapka. See more at kristinaten.com.
Lara Coley
Lara Lazo Coley is a Bay Area writer and educator. She holds an MFA in Poetry from SFSU and has taught ESL and creative writing in universities, juvenile detention centers and mental health support organizations. Lara is a fellow at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts and the recipient of awards from organizations including San Francisco State University, American Academy of Poets, and the Browning Society. Her work appears in Rogue Agent, New American Writing, and others.
www.rogueagentjournal.com/issue27
Lisa Alden
Lisa Alden is a 20-year vegan and can be found online at lisaalden.com
Loria Mendoza
Loria Mendoza is a writer, curator, musician, and performance artist. She hails from Austin, Texas, where she learned to keep it weird. Seeking the constancy of the bizarre, she moved to San Francisco, where she earned her MFA in the Creative Writing program at San Francisco State University. Her work has been published in The Acentos Review, Mobius, Subprimal, Fourteen Hills Magazine, Red Light Lit, The Walrus Literary Journal, and was an Honorable Mention for the Leo Litwak Award from Transfer Magazine. Her book, Life’s Too Short (Fourteen Hills Press, 2017) won the Michael Rubin Book Award. Her stories and poetry have been performed at Red Light Lit (San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Austin), Bay Area Generations, Voz Sin Tinta, MFA Mixer 2.0, Velro, Oakland’s Beast Crawl, and San Francisco’s Litquake. She lives in Austin again.
Miah Jeffra
Miah Jeffra is author of the essay collection The First Church of What’s Happening (Nomadic Press 2017). They have been awarded the New Millennium Prize for Fiction, the Sidney Lanier Fiction Prize, the Oregon Writers Colony Award for nonfiction, the Clark-Gross Novel Award, and a Lambda Literary Fellowship for nonfiction. Other fellowships and residencies include Ragdale, Hub City Writers Project, Arteles, and Red Gate. Miah is editor of queer literary collaborative, Foglifter Press.
Monique Mero
Monique Mero is an East Bay native. She graduated from San Francisco State University with an MA in creative writing, was the editor in chief of Fourteen Hills: The San Francisco Review, and a contributing editor at Foglifter. Monique is also a full-time English instructor at Chabot College, where she has the honor of working with the Daraja Program, which focuses on the African Diaspora.
Nick Jaina
Nick Jaina is an itinerant writer, musician, and teacher from the West Coast. His memoir, Get It While You Can, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in 2016. His first novel, Hitomi, is forthcoming. www.nickjaina.com
Philip Harris
Philip Harris was born in Hollywood, California. In Spring, 2017, he received his MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University. He currently lives in the Bay Area, where he tells stories with words, illustrations, and photographs, all while continuing his search for the perfect burrito. His first chapbook, The Flowers in my Mothers’ Name, was recently published by
NomadicP. His second chapbook, Rocks, was recently published by Alley Cat Books. His work has appeared in Vogue UK, The Los Angeles Review, The Atticus Review, and Transfer. Philip is also the co-host and co-creator of the weekly podcast Queers in Space.
Riss Rosado
Riss is bad with names but still wants to know yours. They write poetry, prose, short stories, and hand-written letters. They have featured at Quiet Lightning, Red Light Lit, Get Lit, You’re Going to Die, and more. You can enjoy some of their published work in sPARKLE & bLINK, Buddy, Rag, Be About It, and the East Bay Review. They have a new zine available based on their open-ended breakup letter, “Fuck You,” available for $1 via Venmo @RissRosado.
Sarah Bethe Nelson
Sarah Bethe Nelson is a Northern California songwriter and poet living in San Francisco. She holds an MA in creative writing from San Francisco State University. Her newest collection of poetry, Illuminate the Ruins, is out in summer 2018 and her third solo album on Burger Records will be released in spring 2019.
Sarah Kobrinsky
Sarah Kobrinsky was the 2013–2015 Poet Laureate of Emeryville, California. Her collection, Nighttime on the Other Side of Everything, is forthcoming from New Rivers Press (autumn 2019). Her poems and stories have appeared in Magma Poetry, Eleven Eleven, Monkeybicycle, 100 Word Story, and Fjords Review, among many others. She was born in Canada, raised in North Dakota, seasoned in England, and tempered in California. Sarah and her husband have a handmade dinnerware company called Jered’s Pottery.
Tara Rose
Tara Rose is a genderqueer poet living in the Bay Area. They are a Taurus who enjoys long walks on the beach, Internet cats, and clichés.
Tomas Moniz
Tomas Moniz edited Rad Dad and Rad Families. His novella Bellies and Buffalos is about friendship, family, and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. He’s the recipient of the SF Literary Arts Foundation’s 2016 Award, the 2016 Can Serrat Residency, the 2017 Caldera Residency, and others. He’s recently been published by Barrelhouse and was awarded the 2018 SPACE on Ryder Farm residency. His debut novel, King Pleasure, is looking for a home. He has stuff on the internet (www.tomasmoniz.weebly.com) but loves letters and pen pals: PO Box 3555, Berkeley CA 94703. He promises to write back.
ARTISTS
Anthony J. Hall
Anthony J. Hall is a photographer and web developer based in San Francisco. Originally from England, he has made the Bay Area home for a quarter of a century and has been involved in digital photography for almost as long. You can view and purchase his work here and here.
Aubrey Janelle
Hello, my name is Aubrey. I tell stories and unearth hidden moments. I believe earnestly in sharing each other’s personal histories and honoring the things that make us unique. I want to understand the ways in which we navigate through time and space. So I freeze it, in an attempt to make sense of it all. Chasing a fixed state of wonder. I’m sea salt and honey and Bay Area roots. 35 mm film, road trips, lunar phases, and green tea. Join me. aubreyjanelle.com and IG @aubrey.janelle
Hannah Burgos
Hannah Burgos is a Filipino-American filmmaker, visual artist, and writer based in San Francisco. Her personal work has been featured in contemporary arts and culture magazines such as Teeth Magazine (print), Adolescent Content, and The Wild Honey Pie. She is most known for her work on the short films A Period Drama by Kristine Gerolaga (2018 distribution by Hewes Pictures) and Birth Control Your Own Adventure by Sindha Agha (featured on The New York Times). Hannah currently works in Silicon Valley as a video post producer. @hannahburgos
Jackie Hancock
jackie Hancock is a photographer who grew up throughout Michigan, and was taught the balance between hard work, discipline, and play. she has a BFA and MFA in photography, and currently resides in San Francisco, California. jackie finds the beauty, sexiness, and power in her female subjects. she creates and produces jANKzine. jANK is a brand. a sexy tease. jANKzine consists of commercial and fine art photography. jackie has an enthusiasm for tattoos, asses, fashion, her hairless cat Kingston, mannequins, and tits and bits. she utilizes the artistic minds of her friends and collaborators to enhance jANK and embrace the jANKY lifestyle.
Lucille Lares-Kiwan
Lucille Lares-Kiwan is a photographer, artist, and fashion designer. Growing up in Los Angeles, she is deeply influenced by cinema and storytelling. Her use of both analogue and digital techniques allows freedom with color and texture, evoking mystery, mood, and nostalgia. Her work explores issues of self-reflection, isolation, dreams, and memory.
Shelbie Dimond
Shelbie Dimond (born in Lalamazoo, Michigan, 1992) is a photographer, print-maker, model, and actress based in Los Angeles. Her work seeks to evoke a potent nostalgia through the use of analog techniques and character-driven scenarios. Focusing on the power of self-portraiture and the female form, her photos reveal a deep sincerity and connection with the process of photography itself. www.shelbiedimond.com
Tod Brilliant
Tod Brilliant gives a damn. What’s more, he believes that you should, too. Where possible, he bends his work as a writer, photographer, creative director, and public provocateur toward topics of environmental, sexual and political literacy, and responsibility. He lives with his ideas in Santa Rosa, California, likes to refer to San Fran as “Frisco,” and spends his days developing film and television projects. Tod’s efforts have been published, reviewed, and fawned over in places you’ve heard of, but while listing achievements and accolades is de rigueur, he prefers to do so glancingly and somewhat obtusely. Mission accomplished. www.todbrilliant.com and www.superniceclub.com
Trever Hadley
Capturing something candid, a laugh, an awkward smile, or a casual loving embrace are the things Trever strives for. A photograph doesn’t have to be perfect or come from the most expensive camera. Just like a good joke, it’s all about timing. Never without a camera, and never without film. He is a self-taught photographer pulling inspiration from Robert Frank, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Pusha T. www.beforeitgetswild.com