This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako (Porkbelly Press 2025).
Content Warning: racism or racialized violence
Self-Talk
II.
I try to say something new, I say something wrong.
I put your words in my mouth, spit them out to you, still wrong.
Esinam Bediako (she/her) is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2025). You can find some of her recent work in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Esi lives in Claremont, CA with her family.
Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised. Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako (Porkbelly Press 2025).
Content Warning: racism or racialized violence
Body/Mind Braid
One night, I couldn’t get close enough to the earth. Spinning, I left my bed and pressed the length of my body to the rug, the shell of my ear to the ground.
The cat roused from her own bed and sauntered in my direction, only stopping when she stood so close that her fuzzy black paws were all that I could see.
I had a sense I’d never had before, a sense I’ve never had since. Vibration is one way to say it, flutter is another, but now I’m just throwing words at something for which I have no words. In my ear I heard a thrumming that I could feel in my bones, my body a conduit for some unnamed thing.
The next morning, I woke from the living room floor, bursting with knowledge. “I’m pregnant,” I told my husband, and his eyes crinkled the way they do when he doesn’t believe me, when he thinks I’m being unreasonable but doesn’t want to say it. He asked how I knew, but I didn’t have the language. I sputtered something about the middle of the night, dizziness, a strange feeling. “Even the cat could tell,” I said, “and you know animals have a sixth sense.” As if I’m not an animal myself, as if I shouldn’t trust my own instincts.
Esinam Bediako (she/her) is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2025). You can find some of her recent work in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Esi lives in Claremont, CA with her family.
Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised. Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako (Porkbelly Press 2025).
Content Warning: racism or racialized violence
Body/Mind Braid
In elementary school, some kids chased me down in the playground, calling me ugly and worse. I remember their names and their words, but I won’t speak or write them, except to point out that one of the things they called me was an ugly African. They themselves were African American, too, but more American than me, they figured, since their parents had been born in the US unlike mine. I said some know-it-all thing like, “You know you’re African, too, right?” This was an error. Don’t try to reason when bullies are driving you into the ground. Just run: that’s one thing, at least, for which your body is good.
Esinam Bediako (she/her) is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2025). You can find some of her recent work in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Esi lives in Claremont, CA with her family.
Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised. Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf was one of the first books I read that I physically could not put down. I felt like an archeologist that had just discovered something completely new. Here I was, sixteen, holding pure gold, from thousands of feet in the ground, in my own two hands. I felt like Woolf was writing to me, specifically. She seemed to know my secrets, my desires, my thoughts, from deep down in the depths of my soul. Reading A Room of One’s Own felt like a drug, I was now hooked, and I would now chase my way through every other book trying to get the high this one gave me.
I would like to accredit Virginia Woolf to my love of reading, but that would be a lie. While Virginia Woolf sparked my obsession with books, my love and hate relationship with goodreads, and my god-complex on Instagram, I was secretly a book junkie long before it was cool.
My mother read to me before I was even born. Sitting in the bottom of her belly, with no way to form a single thought, I somehow listened to my mother, sitting in a rocking chair, reading me books upon books. Although Pat the Bunny is a long ways away from A Room of One’s Own, these tiny stories entering my tiny developing mind paved the way for my imagination to grow.
I first picked up The Hunger Games in third grade. Somehow, overnight, I had graduated from Magic Tree House to dystopian fiction that may have been a bit too vulgar for my little brain to comprehend. Regardless, the book about a teenager defying the system created a tiny sliver of hope in myself, one that I at the time, I had not realized I already had inside of me.
I could not imagine my life without reading. I know this sounds cliche and stupid, books are everywhere, you read everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’re scrolling on tiktok, watching tv, or out in public, reading is everywhere. It surrounds us, consumes us. You, behind the screen, are reading right now. Yet I cling to this ability like I will lose it. Reading is so precious to me, and something I find myself overlooking the importance of.
Long story short, or maybe short story long depending on your attention span, that’s how I ended up writing this and you ended up reading this. My basic story of, “I love books so I am going to go into publishing” might seem the same as everyone’s, but to me, my goal in life is to help others find the book they will become passionate about, consumed by, live by, and love by. I want to be able to help authors put their work, their heart, their soul out there. I want to help preserve them on paper, through pages, and sew them into history. And I can’t wait to get started.
Brianna “Bree” Eaton (she/her) is sophomore studying English with a concentration in Publishing and Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee, where she also serves on the Phoenix Magazine Staff. Born and raised in East Tennessee, she enjoys all things neo-applachian, cryptic, and feminist. When she isn’t doing school work, editing, writing, or running circles around campus, she can be found reading, re-watching episodes of the X-Files, or planning last minute trips to new (or familiar) cities.
Despite being a voracious reader as a child, I cannot pinpoint the exact moment in my teenage years when I began to view reading as a chore rather than a delight. My memories from my earlier years are a bit blurred, but I vividly remember my father taking me out to the local library every week after school. At our run-down library, I would pick as many books as I wanted and vow to myself that I would finish them before our next trip (I would go into tunnel vision as soon as I arrived home, and finish most books within a day or two).
When I entered secondary school, although I stopped visiting my town’s local library, I would almost religiously visit my school’s library after school and during lunchtime. In English class, we would start every lesson by sitting in silence and reading our own books for approximately 10 minutes; when I tell you that everyone hated these reading sessions, I mean that everyone hated it. However, while my peers were gladly shoving their books into their bags after our ‘silent reading time’, I was once scolded by my teacher for not putting my book down after the designated 10 minutes! Looking back, I can’t fault 12-year-old Nafisa. 10 minutes is an unreasonably short amount of time to read, especially when we are being encouraged to do so in the first place.
I do not know how old I was when I stopped reading for enjoyment, but I can say that years later, when I was 17 years old, I decided to finally pick up a book again. At first, I just downloaded the Kindle app on my phone and decided to read a couple of books to pass the time. However, within weeks, I had ordered so many books to my house, as if I was trying to catch up to the words that I had missed in those handful of years. My parents would (and still do) constantly tease me, saying that if I was going to spend all my money on something, it might as well be books rather than anything else. Soon, I left for university. Every year that I moved back to London to study after spending the summer with my family, there would be no less than three bags that were jam-packed with books following me to my flat, alongside the other bits and bobs necessary to live independently, of course. It was definitely an enormous struggle to fit everything into one small car, but somehow we made it work.
During my final year at university, I had zero clue regarding what I wanted to pursue as a career. My friends around me had solid goals and careers in mind. Yet, whenever I was asked what I planned to do with my degree, I would try to steer the conversation away from myself. During a careers consultation with my university, I vented all my frustrations. I recall the career advisor simply smiling at me and asking me what I enjoyed. And then the realisation hit me. I enjoy getting lost in a good book; I enjoy losing myself in the plot and connecting with the characters and their struggles; I enjoy getting into passionate discussions with my friends about the books we’re reading, almost as much as I enjoy recommending them books and vice versa. This was my light bulb moment.
I realised I wanted to contribute to the stories and words that were to be shared with the world. My books had provided me with so much, both as a child and as an adult: they provided joy and laughter, as well as escapism. Books teach us morals and lessons; they encourage us to open our minds to differing perspectives. I will forever be glad that I was so dreadfully bored at 17, that I finally picked up a book again.
Stories have given me plenty, and I would like to help other readers feel as I have. After my careers consultation, I wanted to support writers in any way I could, so they could share their works and ideas with the world. I cannot conjure a number to reflect how many stories have genuinely touched me, but I am sure the number is in the hundreds. I’m eager to support writers with their works, with the hope that readers will feel the same connection to the words on the page that I have felt time and again, and will undoubtedly continue to feel.
Nafisa Hussain holds a BSc in Anthropology and Sociology from Brunel University London, where she primarily focused her work on race issues in the UK. She has published articles, including a book review, for the Hillingdon Herald Newspaper, and volunteers for the Books2Africa charity.
Brittany Micka-Foos’s debut short story collection, It’s No Fun Anymore (Apprentice House Press, 2025), is a necessary culmination of raw characters and stories that stare directly into the face of womanhood and the weight of quiet tragedies we’re forced to carry along the way. Across eight stories spanning just over one hundred pages, Micka-Foos effortlessly captures the anger, loss, yearning, and envy that so often accompany adulthood in an unforgiving society.
Have you ever heard someone admit an unpopular feeling you thought only you experienced? Reading this collection felt full of those moments, like the feeling of no longer recognizing yourself in the mirror and wondering when that shift happened. Micka-Foos’s intimate honesty illustrates moments that are painful to read but resonate so deeply
This feeling is illustrated so beautifully in the title story “It’s No Fun Anymore,” which follows a new mother attending a comic convention with her husband and newborn baby for the first time since giving birth. She recounts how different, how powerful, she felt the last time she attended:
“I remember the soccer mom with the severe bob from my last time here, and how quickly she’d covered her son’s eyes when I stepped into the elevator as Red Sonja. The feeling of her gaze boring into me, that silent accusation, the hot molten core of her stare. I fixed my gaze straight ahead at the elevator doors, smiling at myself all the way down. What else could I do?” (Micka-Foos 34)
Reclaiming a sense of womanhood and individuality after they’ve been swallowed by motherhood is one of many complex themes in this collection. Micka-Foos crafts a commentary on how society views motherhood, and women more broadly, as a thankless job. Similarly, in “Border Crossings,” if you are “just” a mother, you’re not doing enough, but conversely, if you are a mother, the naïve and innocent beauty of the girl you once were has been forever tainted. Now you have saggy skin, or you can be neurotic and paranoid; you lose your confidence and innate sexiness.
This theme weaves directly into others: feeling lost, invisible, or vindictive in a marriage; recognizing the complicated resentment toward younger women, the one catching a married man’s eye in a coffee shop or wearing an outfit that proudly accentuates the tight skin of her stomach, the way yours once did. There’s also the yearning to go back to the way things were, or maybe that the truth, the reality you now live, became evident much sooner. Would you do things the same way? Would you cherish one last glance in the mirror before leaving for the night?
Other stories take these interwoven ideas of beauty and womanhood one step further, exploring how the physical body, and threats to this sanctuary through reproductive health or outside harm, can completely morph our sense of self. In “From the Waist Down,” the story opens: “We’re in the hospital again, me and my wayward womb,” (Micka-Foos 39). As the main character waits to go into surgery, forcing a smile for her four-year-old daughter, she recalls the day she left the hospital after giving birth: “I knew then, my body didn’t belong to me anymore. Something had been taken from me” (Micka-Foos 45).
Being a woman, Micka-Foos reminds us, means living with an innate fear every day. A fear of being harmed, of being sexualized, of not being sexualized when we want to be, of taking on the burden of aging parents and infantile babies, of forcing smiles in hospital waiting rooms while we prepare to have our uteruses mutilated or removed or examined by gloved hands and cold metal. We’re forced to feel like we must reinvent ourselves, make ourselves a new, more appealing version that can appeal to the masses, so others remember how they used to look at us, and how we even used to look at ourselves. We could spend forever trying to resurrect versions of ourselves that no longer exist, trying to remember the taut muscles in our thighs before they grew ornery and prickled with cellulite.
Micka-Foos has a natural ability to transform the most personal details into a universal work of art. And while reading this collection was like holding a cracked mirror up to all my most vulnerable imperfections, I never wanted it to end. With each of the eight stories, I felt like I could follow each character on an insurmountable journey for another 300 pages. I understood their motivations, their hunger and desires, their fears and loneliness, all within the confines of the ten pages they have to tell us their story. If you struggle with wanting to be remembered for the greatness you once held, the greatness you once felt, this is the collection for you.
It’s No Fun Anymore was published by Apprentice House Press and is available at Bookshop.org.
Elizabeth “Lizzy” DiGrande is a graduate student in Emerson College’s Publishing and Writing program, where she also serves as a Transformational Leaders Fellow and Writing Assistant for the Emerson Grad Life Blog. She is on the board of Boston’s Women’s National Book Association and is passionate about amplifying women’s voices in publishing. Originally from New Jersey, she now resides in Boston and can often be found perusing the city’s public libraries or exploring new restaurants. She hopes to build a career as both a food writer and literary agent championing female-identifying authors.
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako (Porkbelly Press 2025).
Content Warning: racism or racialized violence
Black Hard Palate
Once upon a time, you had so much pigment in your skin, darkness pooling in your elbows, your knuckles, and especially your knees. You looked, some kid quipped, like you’d fallen on your knees in the blackest dirt on the rainiest day. Chocolate knees. Shit knees. These kids were black, like you, but they were the right kind, and you, wrong. They’re just kids being kids, your teacher said, like you weren’t a kid, too, like you should shoulder their cruelty, like you had to wait for them to grow out of it.
Later, when you were older but still young, you yawned too wide in science, and your lab partner gasped. Eww, he said, what is that? It looks like those pictures of skin cancer from our textbook. At home, in the mirror, you spotted a splotch on the roof of your mouth, like a prune had flattened itself against your hard palate. Your mother, a nurse who has seen everything, had never seen this. Your doctor called it hyperpigmentation, excess pigment that would likely fade along with the darkness on the skin of your joints. Not fade, really. Spread. You’d grow more skin, and the blackness would have someplace to go. How long, you asked, how soon, but all the doctor said was that you would grow out of it.
Esinam Bediako (she/her) is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2025). You can find some of her recent work in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Esi lives in Claremont, CA with her family.
Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised. Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz
It’s the first instalment of We Call Upon the Author to Explain for 2026, and we couldn’t pick a better way to start. This month we spoke to S.G. Huerta about their fantastic nonfiction collection GOOD GRIEF out from fifth wheel press. The collection explores issues of racism, queerphobia, assault, and yes, a good deal of grief. But through all the darkness, Huerta finds a way to write with wit and warmth. It’s a lovely and thoughtful collection and we’re so excited they agreed to answer some of our questions.
Ada Wofford: The writer Anne Lamott talks about writing as a way of understanding ourselves and helping us discover the truth within ourselves. How did writing this book help you better understand yourself?
S.G. Huerta: As I was writing the different pieces in GOOD GRIEF, I didn’t yet conceive of the whole thing as a cohesive manuscript. While workshopping the pieces at Roots Wounds Words, I realized there was a common thread of grief pulling the whole thing together. Writing this book helped me understand how integral grief had become in my life, for better or worse. I also realized how empowering writing about trauma can be.
AW: In children’s literature, books are often discussed as being either mirrors or windows; a way for a child to see themselves or for them to see and understand others. The confessional memoir form can function in the same way. In choosing to write and publish this work, were your expectations for it to serve as a mirror, a window, or both? Can you speak about the importance of that and if you could, say a bit about the type of response you’ve received?
SH: I’d say both. While writing, especially some of the more difficult experiences in my life, I was writing as proof of survival, of how far I’ve come. I hope my writing connects with others who have experienced trauma, complicated grief, bipolar disorder, or any of the other themes I write about.
AW: In “Crash & Burn” you use the phrase, “Disordered moods and processes and writings.” I took it to mean that there are processes for dealing with mental health and processes for writing, can you speak about how these processes are linked for you?
SH: I love your interpretation of that line! I spent a lot of time thinking about the different labels and terms for bipolar disorder, like mood disorder. On that same thread, I thought about how the way I process anything, and my process for doing most things, may seem disordered. My writing is very much a part of me, and if I have this disorder, surely my writing is disordered too.
AW: Can you talk about your use of blank space in the book, particularly in “I Text My Partner i love being beholden to the delicate feelings of white ppl! At Least Once A Week”?
SH: I have to shout out my Roots Wounds Words cohort for this suggestion again! I think having the different quotes on otherwise blank pages makes the reader sit with the words much like I did.
AW: In “How to Survive a Depressive Episode in the Aftermath of Your Dad’s Suicide” you use the phrase “Only alive on the page” in a way that could mean both your father and you as a writer. This connects to the end of the final essay in which you write, “I recognize me pen in hand, scrawling anything and everything into another notebook. Creating signs of life.” This may connect to the first question a bit but in the context of these two moments in the book, can you speak a bit about how writing gives you life and allows you to create life?
SH: I love this question, it reminds me of the poem “Arte Poética” by Vicente Huidobro, where he says poets give and take life. Writing about my dad keeps him alive for me. It can also revive some memories that only he and I shared. It can be powerful, too, to omit some things and keep them from staying alive. Nonfiction writers are always discerning what does and doesn’t deserve space, or, to keep the metaphor going, life on the page.
AW: While the title GOOD GRIEF is a well-known idiom, in the context of the book it makes me think of the term much more literally; that there is some grief that is good for us. Is this how you intended the title to be understood and what are your thoughts on that concept, that some forms or causes of grief can be good for us?
SH: I wanted the title to be multifaceted in the ways you mentioned. I believe grief should be destigmatized and talked about more, especially complicated grief. I also wanted the title to feel a bit ironic, like a “laugh so you don’t cry” situation. I hope that the piñata on the wonderful cover nat raum designed achieves this too.
AW: And finally, is there anything else you’d like readers to know, either about this work or about a new or forthcoming work?
SH: My debut poetry collection Burns will be out in January with Sundress Publications!
SG Huerta is a queer Xicanx writer and organizer. They are a Roots Wounds Words Fellow and Tin House alum. They are the author of the nonfiction chapbook GOOD GRIEF (fifth wheel press 2025) and their debut poetry collection Burns is out with Sundress Publications as of January 2026. SG’s work has appeared in HoneyLiterary, The Offing, Infrarrealista Review, and elsewhere. Find them at sghuertawriting.com, or in Tejas with their partner and cats, working towards liberation for oppressed peoples everywhere. They encourage you to find tangible ways to support Palestinian liberation.
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Ada Wofford (they/them) holds advanced degrees in English and Library Studies. In addition to working at a rare book shop, they are an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications and the non-fiction editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection. Their writing has appeared in The Blue Nib, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Autostraddle, Capable Magazine, Sundress Reads, and more. Their chapbook, I Remember Learning How to Dive, was published in 2020, from which a selection earned them a Pushcart Prize nomination.
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes (Porkbelly Press 2024).
My Dead Sister Speaks to Me Through Wordle
When GRAVE follows DEATH within a few games, I decide it’s her.
Is that you? I ask. FALSE the day’s word. A day later: MAYBE.
Where are you? APART she answers. A week later: ALONE.
How is it where you are? For days, she’s silent. The game is just a game.
This morning: FLOWN.
The poems of B. Fulton Jennes have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Comstock Review, MER,Rust and Moth,SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is the winner of the 2025 Subnivean Award, the 2023 Millennium Award, the 2022 Lascaux Prize, as well as many other poetry competitions. Her collection Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. FLOWN—an elegy-in-verse to her late sister—was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook, Dirty Bird & Myrt, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer and hosts “Poems from Connecticut’s Four Corners,” a monthly online reading series.
Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised. Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Romy Ewing, is from FLOWN by B. Fulton Jennes (Porkbelly Press 2024).
While Picking Flowers for My Dead Sister
a sudden rain fuses my clothing to me—
an unbearable reminder of flesh.
The poems of B. Fulton Jennes have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Comstock Review, MER,Rust and Moth,SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is the winner of the 2025 Subnivean Award, the 2023 Millennium Award, the 2022 Lascaux Prize, as well as many other poetry competitions. Her collection Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. FLOWN—an elegy-in-verse to her late sister—was published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. A third chapbook, Dirty Bird & Myrt, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2026. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden festival each summer and hosts “Poems from Connecticut’s Four Corners,” a monthly online reading series.
Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/her) writes from Sacramento, CA, where she was born and raised. Her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. Her poetry chapbook please stay was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her hybrid zine, someday [everybody but] us will laugh about all of this, was briefly physically distributed at the 3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest and is available digitally. She also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE and runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. She can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz