We Call Upon the Author to Explain—Jackie Domenus

For this month’s installment of We Call Upon the Author to Explain, our editorial intern, Reina Maiden-Navarro, interviews author Jackie Domenus about their first book, No Offense: A Memoir in Essays (ELJ Editions, 2025). The memoir blends anecdote with sociopolitical fact to take a critical lens to the microaggressions that persist from an individual adolescence to adulthood, reflective of a larger experience in the LGBTQ+ community since the turn of the century. Domenus is honest, confessional, and passionate, crafting a book that is both relatable and educational. 

Reina Maiden-Navarro: Can you explain your decision to organize your memoir non-chronologically? How did you look at structure and flow in terms of craft?

Jackie Domenus: When it comes to queer and trans memoirs (and really any memoir for that matter), I believe in the structure matching the content. My understanding of myself, of my sexuality, and my gender, was/is not linear. As is the case for more “traditional” memoirs, I didn’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end with a neat resolution, so the essays in No Offense came out non-chronologically naturally. In order to determine what order I’d put them in, I took post-it notes and wrote the ages that were mentioned in each essay. From there, I arranged and re-arranged the post-its to follow a loose arc from my earliest, formative moments and microaggressive conversations, to the latest. So ultimately, the order of the essays is somewhat chronological, but the threads in each individual essay jump around in time and surround a central theme or idea.

RMN: How do you believe outside anecdotes, facts, and statistics contribute to the telling of such a personal story? What did your research process look like?

JD: For me, incorporating anecdotes, facts, and statistics into this book was a means of zooming out of my own personal experience and proving that the issues I am addressing exist in a larger context, meaning they affect others beyond just me. For instance, in the essay “Blind Spots,” I include statistics about women in the automotive business as a means of supporting my own experience of being ignored at a car dealership. Or in the essay “Thoughts and Prayers,” I include quotes from politicians reacting to the Pulse Nightclub massacre, to demonstrate that their words cause direct harm to the LGBTQ+ community at large. My research process is not very organized—it’s a lot of searching for a bunch of supporting evidence on the Internet, copying and pasting links into random documents, and deciding later which sources to actually incorporate.

RMN: The year before you published this book, you were a resident at the Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA). How did stepping away from your day-to-day life help you write about it?

JD: Spending time at the Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) was so refreshing for my creative process. Having dedicated time away from day-to-day life gave me the opportunity to catch up on some reading, to start drafting some new material outside of the book, and perhaps most importantly, to rest. Writing-wise, I started scratching the surface of some different themes like grief and mental illness, which I hope will be an early step toward a new, full-length project. I also had no experience with farm life before Sundress, so feeding the goats and collecting eggs from the chicken coop was a first for me and an added bonus!

RMN: You’re both a writer and a former English teacher. Yet, you also speak at length about the films that shaped your understanding of your sexuality, particularly in the chapter “Queer or Crazy.” Do you think there is a unique power in visual visibility? How do you think written forms compare?

JD: I think visibility in any artistic medium is equally powerful. If I had access to books with the same sort of sapphic representation that films like the ones I write about in “Queer or Crazy” offered, I might have written about those instead. In my opinion, it’s less about comparing the forms and more about making sure representation is offered in every medium, so folks have easily accessible options, no matter their preference for books versus music versus on screen, etc.

RMN: Can you speak to the separation of past and present self when it comes to your personal perception of your gender identity? How did your evolution of identity impact the editing of the book?

JD: My perception of my gender and the evolution of my identity was perhaps what made for the trickiest part of editing the book. I had written some of the earliest essays when I was still very femme-presenting and adhering to cis norms, so the perspective of the voice in those pieces was very different from my perspective now. I struggled with deciding whether to leave those early essays as-is, to revise them from my current point of view, or to remove them from the manuscript completely. Ultimately, I ended up keeping most of them as-is, but adding a foreword at the beginning of the book to explain my decision and make that differentiation.

RMN: How do you approach writing your story with authenticity, even when it comes to divulging your own missteps?

JD: The missteps are what make us human. Personally, I would not enjoy reading a memoir where the narrator speaks as if they are perfect, or as if everyone else they’ve ever encountered is a villain in their story. I think maybe the best example of writing with authenticity and truth in No Offense is in the essay “Burden of Proof,” where I talk about my first year teaching high school and had a trans student who was mistreated by the school and his peers. My lack of understanding of transness at that point, mixed with my naivety and non-tenured status as a new teacher, ultimately led to some missteps in how I interacted with that student and failure to advocate for him properly. To write myself as some queer savior would have been inauthentic and false, and no one wants to read inauthentic, false creative nonfiction.

RMN: As an educator, what is the value of exposing students to diverse lived experiences, particularly through literature? How do you hope your own writing contributes to that purpose?

JD: When I was teaching high school English, students who got their hands on books where they could see their own experiences reflected back at them were always the most enthusiastic to read or to talk about what they read, as were students who read about a character that led them to a new realization about themselves. Again, in the same way they might have access to Netflix shows or new movies, having the opportunity to pick up a book with diverse representation or lived experiences can open up a whole new world of understanding. As far as No Offense goes, my main audience priority has always been other LGBTQ+ folks who can relate, but I also hope it can reach people who are not a part of the community and offer them a new perspective or make them think twice the next time they go to say or ask something potentially harmful.

RMN: Finally, do you have any new projects you’d like to tell us about?

JD: The project I’m super focused on and very excited about at the moment is The QT (Queer & Trans) Nonfiction Podcast! It’s a weekly show I’m hosting that explores the best of today’s memoirs, essay collections, journalism, and more by LGBTQ+ authors. Folks can listen in on discussions of nonfiction forms, craft, language, publication, and beyond. Some fiction and poetry QTs, as well as supportive allies, will even be sprinkled in throughout! Reading and sharing true stories from queer and trans perspectives feels more important now than ever. Our words are proof of our existence, which is now, in and of itself, a form of resistance. I’ve had some incredible writers and friends on so far, such as KB Brookins, Zoë Bossiere, and Edgar Gomez, to name a few. It’s available on Podbean, Spotify, and Apple.

No Offense: A Memoir in Essays is available through ELJ Editions

[A white person is standing in front of a row of wooden bookshelves, brimming with colorful books. They have white skin, cropped brown hair, and brown eyes. They are wearing a blue and white jean jacket over a black shirt and a silver chain, their hands in the pockets of the jacket.]

Jackie Domenus (they/she) is a queer, gender nonconforming writer from South Jersey. Their first book, No Offense: A Memoir in Essays (ELJ Editions), was named a finalist for a 2025 Publishing Triangle Award and a Notable Small Press Book of 2025 by Literary Hub. A former Sundress Academy for the Arts resident and Tin House Workshop graduate, Jackie’s work has appeared in HuffPost, The Normal School, Foglifter Journal, and elsewhere. They are the host of the new Queer & Trans Nonfiction Podcast.

[A white woman is standing in front of a tree in a grove. She has short, dark red hair. She is wearing a black dress with white trim and a blue graduation stole with the words "UC Irvine" embroidered on it with gold thread.]


Reina Maiden-Navarro is an editor, writer, and photographer. She recently graduated from UC Irvine with a degree in Film & Media Studies and a minor in Creative Writing, cum laude. She also works as an Editor at Prompt and an Outreach Coordinator at Bookstr. If she is not reading or writing, she can be found traveling, painting, or baking cookies.

An Interview with Abigail Raley, Author of Wet Specimen

Following the release of her first full-length collection, Wet Specimen, Abigail Raley spoke with Sundress Publications editorial intern Franchesca Nicole Lazaro. Here, they discussed the materiality and spectacle of the body in death, illness, and eroticism, the need for resistance against rigid gender, domestic, and ecological hierarchies, and the power of embracing our natural, “feral” selves.

Franchesca Nicole Lazaro: In “Ode to Fetal Deer,” the speaker observes: “your small body cold beneath the jar’s collapsed glass womb, your brine, mine too.” In “Flying Fox,” she writes: “Make my mouth the warehouse for your cherub’s thunder, I think, and semen trickles down my thin red jowl.” How does the body function as both a specimen and a beast in its own right?

Abigail Raley: I wrote Wet Specimen during my MFA at the University of Montana, and my professor Sean Hill took us to the zoological museum. I was taken with the way creatures are made into observable specimens. I’m also taken with the idea of spectacle, what it means to be observed or watched. The wet specimen doubles what the creature actually is—meaning it is itself, but it’s also a tool for observation. When I was at the zoological museum, I was looking at this fetal bighorn sheep, and I was thinking about how the hospital is like that too. I have cystic fibrosis, which means when I’m hospitalized, I have to be kept in a sterile environment, much like that of the specimen jar. The same doubling happens in the hospital. I am me, but I’m also a medical object under observation. That doubling also happens in eroticism, as in I am me, but I am also the erotic object you’re observing. I think that specimen/beast duality you’re tracking has to do with those divisions/replications.

FNL: In “M.A.S.H.,” the speaker tells herself: “Men’s fingers are just fingers, not bullets.” What does dissociation during intimacy or within desire reveal about the humans and animals in this collection?

AR: I’m interested in how you track dissociation throughout the work because, for me, it’s less about dissociation and more about hope. “M.A.S.H.” is a poem full of violence and grief, but the speaker of that poem is futilely hoping/trusting that those violences won’t happen. I think there’s a use in that hope, even if it is futile. I don’t think “M.A.S.H.” is a poem particularly tracking dissociation or intimacy at all. I think “M.A.S.H.” is my little utopia, where I get to be a girl forever. Of course, I don’t get to be a girl forever, and I have experienced violence, so the poem doesn’t get to live in that necessarily. I want it to, though.

FNL: In “Beast,” the speaker reflects: “Maybe it is the edge of your esophagus. In every iteration, I am touching your soft inside. There is blood in my mouth.” How does hunting function as consumption in this collection?

AR: Again, I’m so excited by your read of this section, because I haven’t had hunting on the mind, but this book is hunting quite a bit throughout. Certainly, I’m interested in consumption. Erotic experience as consumption is a pretty common trope, but I’m also interested in how it occurs naturally in non-human animals. The poems “Flying Fox” and “Anglerfish” do this most explicitly, I think, and they are some of my hungriest poems. A lot of the book is just me finding cool animal facts and writing about them. Hunting is inherently a consumptive process, so it makes sense to me that those two things would be bound together.

FNL: In “Ripe,” the speaker recalls: “a man I loved once said, I’m only waiting for you to die.” Later: “by mature, he meant your body has so much to hold, your silence.” How does physical presence in relationships aggravate domesticity for the speaker in this collection?

AR: There was a time where I was into the idea that the domestic environment was a physically entrapping space. I wrote a poem that didn’t make it into the book about the process of making a roux. I don’t know if you’ve ever made roux, but it requires a lot of standing in one place and stirring. If you stop for even a second, it could burn. The task of making it, then, is a sort of trap, if a bit low stakes. I’m curious as to how physical positions of the body govern behavior. Domesticity creates situations where bodies are coming up against each other in really animal ways. Maybe I just think that domesticity is inherently aggravated and aggravating.

FNL: In “Aubade with Cystic Fibrosis,” the speaker writes: “there was once a creature that emerged from my coffin of a throat and said, feed me” and closes with “that didn’t shake me down bright air, that didn’t consist of my body just waking up.” How does domination become intentional submission in this collection?

AR: “Aubade with Cystic Fibrosis” is about my experience with a chronically ill body. A good person to look at for this question, who has been a massive inspiration in my life, is Bob Flanagan. Flanagan had cystic fibrosis, and he did BDSM performance art and poetry. He found that submission to controlled pain was the only way to take control of the involuntary chronic pain caused by his cystic fibrosis. Submission was a necessary joy in his life. It is a gift to choose submission, because chronic illness takes that choice from you. I have no choice but to submit to illness. Maybe that poem takes on Flanagan’s choice more than I thought. To choose submission is a powerful thing.

FNL: In “But Heaven,” the speaker moves from “I was far from you and getting farther. The open air around me folded. I knew the earth would never be renewed” to closing on “I gazed, I thought of you, I smiled.” How does the collection move from feral energy to potential energy?

AR: I wonder about “feral” and “potential” as oppositional descriptors. Would feral energy be something indulgent, acted upon? And then potential energy the restrictive or repressed? Curious about your thoughts on this! I’m interested in blending death and love, but in a way that recognizes death as a banal happening. I’m obsessed with the materiality of the body, both in death and in eroticism. Maybe that’s where your feral/potential energy dichotomy is coming up.

FNL: In “Squall,” the speaker observes: “I watch the flock churn while he touches me, their nearly colliding bodies making use of all that space. His hand postures one thigh open, then the other, my stomach wide and flat as a saucer. The birds flurry, their high backs furrowing the air.” How does the speaker’s relationship with the beasts subvert the speaker’s interpersonal relationships in this collection?

AR: I love Donna Haraway’s book, Staying with the Trouble. In it, she talks about kinship in what she terms “the cthuluscene.” In the introduction to Staying with the Trouble, Haraway says, “The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present.” Disability theory also contends with this interconnectedness, but Haraway focuses on interspecies kinship, which I find to be profoundly resonant, important, and true. If human-to-human relationships are subverted in the collection, it’s because they are put on the same terrain as the animal-to-human and animal-to-animal relationships. I see Wet Specimen as a book that rejects hierarchies which place human relationships and behavior at the top, which is also connected to my perspective of bodies as pure material.

FNL: In “The New Sensation,” the speaker cries: “I have been thieved out of my body, elixered into an orgy of sensation” and closes with “Give me shape again. I am a blank field. Clarify my hill.” What role does grief play in the speaker’s relationship to her body?

AR: “The New Sensation” is that feeling you have when you’re sick and all you want is the emptiness of health. Sickness illuminates how empty the body can be because it is a state of fullness. That poem to me is grieving the senseless body, or maybe it’s grieving a mind unaware of the body. One of the blessings and curses of chronic illness is an incessant awareness of the body. On the one hand, the intimate awareness of the body is quite beautiful, but on the other hand, the pain of sensation is overwhelming.

FNL: In “Trapped in the Conga Line, I Ruminate on Intimacy,” the speaker reflects: “my hands on his body say, come home, say you’re tense, say let me move you… We will unfleetingly and without hesitation touch each other through the dark.” What does physical intimacy reveal about the expression of love in this collection?

AR: I just love community. Not that everyone should be going around touching strangers, but we’re offered so few moments to honestly engage with one another. Technology has only widened the gap between community members. Even in my small hometown, our community is deeply stratified. Most of the love throughout the book is romantic or erotic love. “Conga Line” is one of the few poems about platonic love. We’re all just creatures looking for connection to each other, so we make up these little excuses to create intimacy. The conga line is one such intimacy.

FNL: In “Landscape with Magpies Nesting in the Blizzard,” the speaker confesses: “I think I was bad in my life. I think I did something wrong” and closes with “I’m sorry. Can I begin again? I mean I looked out the window and saw the birds and I only thought of being loved.” What does the direct address of the source of pain solve for the speaker in this collection?

AR: I’m not sure that I get a lot solved in the collection at all! I’m not very interested in solutions. I don’t think they often actually exist in life, at least not permanent ones. Disability resists solution all the time. My illness is not solvable. I’ll live with it until I die, and it’s not just me. We’ve all got to die. There’s no solution to that. We can diagnose the source of pain all day long, but that doesn’t mean it’s solved. We are mostly unknown to ourselves and each other. I’m not sure the speaker solves much, either. The end of that poem is so odd. There’s a gap between the externality of the birds and the seemingly unrelated internal experience of the speaker. Why would one watch birds and only think of being loved? There’s a mismatch between the external world and the internal world, even if the speaker seems to feel that she’s figured something out about herself.

Wet Specimen is available to order now!

Abigail Raley (she/they) is a queer poet and library worker from Bowling Green, Kentucky. She is a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee and earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana and is a current PhD candidate at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Offing, Hanging Loose Magazine, HAD, The Stone Circle Review, and elsewhere, and feature themes of animalism, release, and the body as a grotesque vessel of sensuality and tenderness. Find her on Instagram @willyoubemyvalentine. Wet Specimen is Raley’s first full-length collection.

Franchesca Nicole Lazaro is an emerging editor with a passion for developmental editing and book production. She previously worked with Brink Literary Project and currently works with Tulipwood Press. Her editorial interests center on amplifying perspectives from women, asexual voices, and religious backgrounds, particularly in literary fiction, memoir, and nonfiction that explores feminism, history, technology, and media studies. She is learning Japanese and maintains a blog on women’s comics and reading. Franchesca is relocating from Seattle, Washington, to San Jose, California.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora edited by Holly Mason Badra

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is a selection from the anthology Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora edited by Holly Mason Badra (The University of Arkansas Press 2025).

To My Friend Who’s Older Than Me

When you were younger were you ever sad for a long time?

Are we the same height?

Is it a messianic burden? To mentor someone who could potentially be great,
or wind up young and dead.

Are you real for real?

I love you, Do I love you?

What do you feel, when you know you’ve taught me something?

What are you doing when you’re not realising you’re teaching me?

Have you had ancient visions too?

Beach holiday?

Or is it too soon?

Larena Amin (she/her) (b. 1999) is a London-raised poet and artist. Overarching themes in their works blend and amalgamate, bouncing off a clear foundation of ancient history, social cultures, and one’s inner-dialogue. A manual approach is pronounced in Amin’s expression and production, gently embedding her artistic contribution into the local tapestries she traverses. 

Holly Mason Badra (she/her) is the curator-editor of Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora. She received her MFA in poetry from George Mason University, where she is currently the associate director of the Women and Gender Studies program. Her poetry, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Meridian Magazine, The Arkansas International, The Adroit Journal, The Northern Virginia Review, Foothill Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, CALYX, So to Speak, Circumference Magazine, Asymptote Journal, and elsewhere. She has been a panelist for OutWrite, RAWIFest, and Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here as a Kurdish American poet. Mason Badra reads for Poetry Daily.

t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora edited by Holly Mason Badra

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is a selection from the anthology Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora edited by Holly Mason Badra (The University of Arkansas Press 2025).

Jin-Jiyan-Azadî

             With lyrics from Säada Bonaire

A man hangs scarves and bags on hooks to make a winter garden—

Or I suppose, a market

Past the white gleam of the new pediatrics on Nostrand a man says baby can I—

In a state of irritation, in a nation of emergency—

None of this, the source, but everything I see I claim and it claims me—

And I can’t really think without etymology

The more I push the language through the automated translator, the more it
       strips away

You are free becomes excuse me, then forgive me

Two German women sing flat English over the saz that the DJ “discovered” in
       a Communist-Kurdish Community Center

The lyrics bubble up above the melody: you have to face/the facts

Into Kurdish, back again, I am curious about myself becomes I’m proud

Subject becomes object, and object becomes everything—

I follow the thread to a state that is not





***

On the phone Carlos says Kurdistan is a blue ocean market

I say no, the sharks are feeding; the water is already red

And plus, I’m not interested in money

But he still tells me to snap up some property, in case it does become a
     country—

The face in the mirror/Talks to me

The mirror in the mirror/My speech

***

A girl says art is the last black market, that art is the quickest way to clean dirty
       money

What I know about value is that it rises over time

Like the sea

I propose to no one that even irritation could feel good to someone dead

But then: that’s not how the dead think

I’m born into the crush of the Uptown 4, held in place by the hot populace

We slide up Manhattan like public womb on a track




If prayer exists, I think, then this is it

In Union Square I shout JIN – JIYAN – AZADÎ into the bitter with the anarchists

A man asks who is Afrin?

And I recall that if you google Afrin, every image is of Afrin® Nasal Spray: No

Drip or Severe

City, I say, and it’s burning

And on YouTube, it’s Newroz and a man is playing saz on a chair amid the
     rubble

Singing Afrin, malomin—Afrin, my home

***

Of course the saz was just a backdrop for the DJ to play against, to overdub

For the club to taste, a carpet from faraway on which to wipe one’s feet

A single note can start to overtake a song

Posing the question, how much can a single vessel hold?

The more I try to press my irritation into joy, the more the language dries and
     turns another




Still I navigate to KurdChat.com, a room with no one in it

It isn’t that I want to feel sublime at every moment

But I just don’t feel things anymore the way I used to

Tracy Fuad (she/her) is a poet and writer based in Berlin. Her second collection of poetry, PORTAL, won the Phoenix Emerging Poets’ Prize and was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2024, and will be published in the UK this year by 87press. A recipient of a 2023 Berlin Senate working stipend and 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Fuad’s poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere, and have been translated into German, Kurdish, Turkish and Spanish. Currently at work on a novel, she also co-directs the Berlin Writers’ Workshop and teaches creative writing.

Holly Mason Badra (she/her) is the curator-editor of Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora. She received her MFA in poetry from George Mason University, where she is currently the associate director of the Women and Gender Studies program. Her poetry, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Meridian Magazine, The Arkansas International, The Adroit Journal, The Northern Virginia Review, Foothill Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, CALYX, So to Speak, Circumference Magazine, Asymptote Journal, and elsewhere. She has been a panelist for OutWrite, RAWIFest, and Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here as a Kurdish American poet. Mason Badra reads for Poetry Daily.

t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.


Project Bookshelf: Ruoyu Wang

One row of a bookshelf with several books lined up next to each other vertically and their spines visible, not organized by any particular color or author or genre.

I’m home for winter break from college right now, so the picture right here is actually of my bookshelf at college. I filled about ⅔ of one shelf with all the books I wanted to bring with me from home: a mixture of my favorites in addition to books that I’ve yet to read but thought would be pertinent for my first year away from home. 

My bookshelf is mostly poetry, some essays, two novellas, and two full-length novels. I like to think about my teenage years in terms of which poetry collection felt most formative for me at the time. In 2022, it was Hard Damage by Aria Aber, 2023’s was I Do Everything I’m Told by Megan Fernandes, and 2024’s was The Moon That Turns You Back by Hala Alyan. I know Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red is technically a novel written in verse, but I think of it as a poetry collection, so I’ll say that for 2025. There are other novels I love, too, of course, like James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room or Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (not on my shelf!), but I think I’m a writer who usually wants to talk more about poetry. 

I associate a lot of my favorites with loved ones in my life, so for example, I’ve come to associate I Do Everything I’m Told with my friends Mimi and Andrew, both of whom also love Megan Fernandes’s work. I first read her brilliant sonnet crown “The False Beloveds with One Exception (or, Repetition Compulsion)” online in The Kenyon Review a few summers ago, and I just couldn’t get it out of my head. When I read and reread her poems, I also become obsessed with the orbits of devotion, distance, and the sense of wonder and charm that can lend itself to the messiest, most transitional periods in life. 

The same bookshelf shown from a higher angle looking down, making visible the six Smiskis (small toy figurines that are green) placed decoratively on the top of the bookshelf, in addition to a potted plant.

One collection I always bring with me everywhere is The Year of Blue Water by Yanyi, which I first read in the fall of 2023 and have reread two or three times since then. It’s quite a short collection—being almost entirely untitled prose poems—but I recommend it to everyone I know and even pulled quotes from it for my Gender Studies project this semester. Dorothea Lasky’s Rome is one I read almost entirely in the waiting area of a Chinese restaurant in Richmond, Canada, and I read Hala Alyan’s The Twenty-Ninth Year in my favorite park, spread across a few days’ sunsets last June. 

I love my book(shelf) collection at school partially because it fits into such a small space, partially because it’s the first thing I see when I exit or enter my dorm room, and partially because on top of it, I can set the Smiski figurines my friends have gifted to me over time. I don’t plan on buying new books anytime soon because I’m trying to take full advantage of my college’s extensive library, but I’m so grateful to have my own bookshelf-library that gets to stay with me through the years.

An East Asian, non-binary individual standing on a walkway outside of a building in the evening and visible from the chest and elbows up. They have short brown hair and are wearing a white blouse under a black blazer.

Ruoyu Wang (they/them) is a writer from Seattle. Their poems appear in Sine Theta Magazine, COUNTERCLOCK, and The Shore, and have been recognized by YoungArts, The Adroit Journal, and Narrative Magazine, among others. Currently, they serve as the Founding Director of the SUNHOUSE Summer Writing Mentorship and study Critical Race and Political Economy at Mount Holyoke College. They love linguistics, postcards, live music, and jasmine milk tea.

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents June Poetry Xfit

Knoxville, TN — The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Shelby Hansen. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, June 28th, from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with the password “safta”.

Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!

The theme for June’s Xfit is “Celebration.” Celebration doesn’t have to be loud or explosive–it can look like appreciation for the sun rising in the morning, the warmth of hearing from an old friend, or stumbling upon wildflowers on your walk. Whether your current celebrations are momentous or simple, let them find a home in your next poem.

Shelby Hansen is a creative writer and self-proclaimed fantasy maestro hailing from the northern plains of Texas. She recently graduated from the University of Tennessee’s English program with a focus in Literature and Creative Writing, where she won several awards for her fiction. Her writing often focuses on womanhood, identity, and the reclamation of the self through a speculative lens. This is reflected in her debut novel, which she hopes to publish soon. When she is not writing or teaching today’s youth, she enjoys reading, crocheting, swimming, and spending time with her two cats, Stella and Gemma.

While this is a free event, donations can be made to the Sundress Academy for the Arts here.

This event is brought to you in part by grants provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission.

We Call Upon the Author to Explain—Angie Kang

For this installment of We Call Upon the Author to Explain, we had the pleasure of speaking with award-winning, author-illustrator Angie Kang about her children’s picture book Our Lake (Kokila, 2025). We dove deep into the nuances of her brilliant artistry and profound writing and got a sneak peek into her creative process. Our Lake redefines readers’ expectations of a picture book—with its heartfelt exploration of grief and impeccable symbolism, this is a book for readers of all ages.

Tassneem Abdulwahab: I wanted to start us off by talking about the color scheme. The contrast of the blue, yellow, and purple is spectacular—can you tell me more about why you chose these specific colors?

Angie Kang: First of all, I wanted to create a difference between the present and past. I wanted the past to feel like the sun is kind of beaming through Little Brother’s closed eyes as he’s remembering things—that’s the hot reds that you see there. Often the past is represented in sepia or muted colors, but in this story, the past is more vibrant because it’s literally full of more life. The colors in the past are a little more naturalistic and more comforting because their father is still there, whereas after he’s gone, the world is changed; the landscape looks stranger without him there. So in the present, the water is a little more purple, perhaps darker and a little less welcoming.

Also, I chose the colors of the brothers’ clothes deliberately: the Little Brother wears a red shirt, and Older Brother wears the same red hat that their father had—that red color becomes one that embodies the dad, so this way they both get to keep a part of him with them. There’s also a little red bird hidden in some of the pages, which I wanted to use to represent Father’s spirit. I chose his hat color first and the bird color second, though I recently learned a red cardinal is a sign of people’s loved ones returning to them after they’ve passed away, which was a very happy coincidence! Little Brother also carries this little teal-striped towel, which is the same teal as the water in the past, and that teal returns once more as a manifestation of Father’s laughter.

TA: You’re giving me great jumping points! The hat felt like such a central object in the narrative; it’s there with us throughout the journey, and on the last page, the perspective makes it seem like the hat is almost watching over them. Can you tell me more about its symbolism in the story?

AK: I’m so glad you noticed that! This hat is definitely a stand-in for Father, and I also wanted it to feel like an emblem of all the responsibilities of being someone who takes care of family. Because Father gives Older Brother his hat, he has also symbolically passed on his duties of care to him. Older Brother brings the younger brother to the lake, encourages him, and models the rituals of diving. I wanted Older Brother to seem as though he had everything handled in the beginning of the story while he has this hat on, but then when the brothers are both in the lake and Older Brother has shed the hat, he becomes more physically and emotionally vulnerable. There’s this moment at the end of the book where Little Brother recognizes Older Brother’s grief too, and we see them both being a little bit more emotionally open. Just two kids trying to figure it out together.

I think the beautiful thing about a hat is that it keeps the shape of a human head. It shows a lack. Even when it’s on the ground, we sense that Father is truly looking over them. At one point, his hat was so intimately molded to him that now the shape of it preserves his presence, even in his absence.

TA: Your writing is wonderfully authentic with lines like, “His smile is crooked, as if half of him is happy and half of him is not.” Can you tell me more about the way you’ve approached writing about grief for such a young audience?

AK: It’s interesting because this book initially began as a poem I had written while looking at a painting by Milton Avery, as a part of an ekphrasis practice. I think the important thing was that I wasn’t writing for children, at least initially. I’ve always been interested in children’s literature, but I think there’s a switch that can happen when I sit down to write for kids: I’m often trying to write what I think a children’s book sounds like. I’ve written many failed manuscripts that way, but because I started the first draft of Our Lake in a place for myself and for adults, I stayed in this register where I was able to meet kids where they’re at. They’re so much more brilliant than folks give them credit for. There’s this Maurice Sendak quote where he says: “I don’t write for children. I write and someone says it’s for children.” I feel a real kinship to that. I also try to make emotions felt with familiar language used unfamiliarly as opposed to what might be unfamiliar language to kids used correctly.

TA: Do you write with the parents also in mind, seeing as they’re the first consumer of your books?

AK: Honestly, not really. If I have them in mind, it’s only because I think that picture books are for everyone, and I hope that it reaches both children and adults. I feel like in many ways I’m writing for myself as an adult but then also writing for the child nestled within myself. I also deliberately try not to think about how people might read two young boys going off to this dangerous location by themselves because I think there’s a different logic to picture book narratives where children are allowed more freedom. Here, the ordinarily dangerous situation might allow for processing and understanding the real emotional impact of grief as opposed to a literal portrayal of two kids diving off a high point by themselves. I always try to prioritize the children’s emotional landscape over a literal one.

TA: Speaking of landscapes, why did you choose the lake as the setting? Is there a significance to the setting being a body of water?

AK: I have to admit that I just love painting water! I think there’s so many different ways that you can approach the surface of it and what goes underneath. And water just has so many symbolic qualities—there’s the literary idea of rebirth, and catharsis through tears. And water holds onto things—literally, through surface tension. When you exit the water, it almost feels like it doesn’t want to let you go, which also plays into themes of grief and comfort. It’s very powerful to me to imagine all the memories held in the basin of a lake. Also, the climax of the story is when Little Brother sees the reflection of Father in the lake. I love that you can both look at water as a surface but then enter within, so in that way, Little Brother was diving into his father’s embrace after he “sees” him.

TA: Going back to details, I noticed this beautiful Polaroid of Father, Little Brother, and Older Brother on the imprint page. Was that a detail you simply wanted to add or does it have a particular significance?

AK: I actually added that in the end because I felt like I wanted to see the three of them all together in another image. We see the three of them when they’re younger in a memory, but I think there’s something charming and real about the Polaroid feeling awkward and cut off in the way that happens sometimes when children are taking pictures. I loved that the art director Jasmin Rubero placed the Polaroid across from the previous page, where Father isn’t there (only his hat is), but the text says they’re all in the lake together.

TA: Seeing as this is a picture book, do you ever find yourself deciding to convey a portion in illustration instead of writing and vice versa, and how do you achieve that balance?

AK: That’s a question that’s at the heart of picture book making! People tend to think that the illustrations just repeat what the words are saying, but the art is essential in telling another part of the story. I am definitely always trying to consider what goes in the words vs. what goes in the images. Sometimes I’ll consider the words finalized, but then as I’m sketching, I realize that  actually I want to paint it. Then I have to change the text, so it’s not redundant.

I also think of choosing the moment to illustrate as finding the right freeze frame. If the words are describing a moment that’s ten seconds long, you can drag an imaginary slider across those ten seconds and find which moment is the best. For instance, in the spread where Little Brother is diving into a lake, I had sketched out Little Brother hitting the water because I was responding to the part of my text which says he slips neatly into the lake. But then I decided to save the contact of the water for Little Brother’s climax of the story so that we get to experience catharsis along with the character whose interiority we’re following. Since we’re in Little Brother’s point of view, I also wanted us to see him watching Older Brother.

The nice thing you can do when you’re the author-illustrator is the flexibility of choosing what parts to illustrate vs. write. 

TA: “Now, I’ve become an arrow the way Father taught me” really grabbed my attention. Why did you use the arrow in particular as a metaphor for the moment Little Brother dives?

AK: I just like the idea that arrows fly, and because when he dives, he becomes sharp and targeted, like an arrow finding its mark.

TA: Even though this is very much a 2D medium, illustrations like the one where Little Brother is standing on the edge of the cliff feel very visceral. How did you achieve that effect?

AK: I’m really glad you responded to that one! Even though the text says, “I inch forward until my toes meet the edge,” I needed to negotiate what was literally shown and what wasn’t. I was trying to draw him literally at the edge of the cliff at first until I realized that feels really dangerous to me as a viewer. Instead, I chose to represent his headspace—he feels like his toes are at the edge even though he’s really not that close to it. How he feels is what’s important, and the dramatic perspective adds to that psychology of him feeling like it’s super far away from the water, even if maybe in reality it’s not so distant after all.

TA: I’m opening the floor to you—is there anything you really want to to speak about that I may have not noticed?

AK: You’ve noticed so many thoughtful details, and I’m so grateful that you spent so much time with the book and read it so closely. It’s like that quote in the movie Ladybird, where when you pay attention to something, that’s a form of love. I feel like you showed a lot of love and attention to this book, so I really appreciate it!

TA: Are there any upcoming projects we should be on the lookout for?

AK: I illustrated a book called Navigating Night (Anne Schwartz Books, 2026) that just came out. It’s written by Julie Leung and it’s about a girl and her father who deliver takeout food together at night. The girl is her father’s translator and navigator, and she gets frustrated at not being able to be a “normal kid.” Throughout the night, the father tells the girl a bit more about his past, and they eventually reach an understanding. It was a really fun book to work on, and I got to experiment with table-salt in my illustration process!

I also have my next author-illustrated title coming out next spring called My Grandma the Stranger (Kokila, 2027)! This one is very personal to me, and I’m excited (and nervous) to see how it’s received by the world and readers!

Our Lake is available from Kokila

Angie Kang's headshot against a natural backdrop. She's a Chinese-American woman with short brown hair, wearing a beige knitted sweater.

Angie Kang makes art in LA. She is the author/illustrator of OUR LAKE (Kokila) which received a Caldecott Honor, the Charlotte Zolotow Award, the Dilys Evans Founder’s Award, and was featured on “Best of” lists by NPR, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, School Library Journal, Horn Book, and more. She is also the illustrator of NAVIGATING NIGHT, written by Julie Leung (Anne Schwartz Books). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Believer, Best Small Fictions, and elsewhere. She is a 2026 Sendak Fellow, the 2024 Ezra Jack Keats Fellow at MacDowell, and was shortlisted for the 2023 Cartoonist Studio Prize. Find her at angiekang.net or on Instagram @anqiekanq.

Tassneem Abdulwahab's headshot against a bluish-lavender background. She's a North African woman, wearing a greyish-navy headscarf, silver earrings, and a white jacket with silver buttons.

Tassneem Abdulwahab is a writer, editor, and book reviewer. With a strong interest in culture, history, and psychology and a love for fiction, her writing often draws on one or more of these threads to tell character-centric stories. She earned her BA (Hons) Creative and Professional Writing from UWE Bristol and has been in love with publishing ever since. As an artist, she’s most fond of oil painting and has sold several pieces over the last few years. In her free time, you can find her experimenting with new artistic mediums, researching for her next painting, or going down historical rabbit holes. You can read some of her writing on her Substack.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora edited by Holly Mason Badra

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is a selection from the anthology Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora edited by Holly Mason Badra (The University of Arkansas Press 2025).

Family Rashomon

A personal narrative on the difference between two members of a family who experienced migration to the US differently, based on intergenerational and linguistic gaps. The first-generation American experience and the immigrant parent experience is explored by Meryem Rabia Uzumcu.

Meryem: Hibiscus flowers with bright fuchsia stamens, my brother’s eyes glued
to Crash Bandicoot on his PlayStation 1, and Assad’s treacherous deployment of
rainbow BB pellets on the Al-Maroosh compound paint my first childhood
memories. And in the backdrop is probably my sister singing along to Christina
Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle.” Long days of playing in the hot Saudi sunshine
were never interrupted by snow or rain. The compound walls gated the out-
side world from our meadowy utopia equipped with a pool. What more could
I ask for? But life in Saudi Arabia was different for my mother.

Mother: Saudi Arabia was hard for me. I feel that I [was] kind of in prison.

Meryem: Granted, being a child is very different from being a grown woman in
Saudi. But sometimes, it feels like this apple (me) fell in a completely differ-
ent country from its tree.

Mother: I [was] born in Diyarbakır, Turkey . . .

Meryem: For first-gens like my siblings and I, there’s not only a generational gap,
but a cultural difference from our parents. After Saudi, when we moved to
Washington, these girls on the bus gave me these Britney Spears cards, and
her belly was showing, and then I showed them to you, and you made me rip
them up and said, “You’re not like those girls.”

Mother: Yeah I don’t remember, but probably I did it.

Meryem: My mom always tried to insert her values into our upbringing, and
sometimes we really saw the world differently than one another.


Mother: You have your own culture, you have your own saturations, you have your
own beliefs. You just wanna keep it. [Arabic music plays in the background]

Meryem: To do this interview with my mom, we went to Rutgers gardens at our
alma mater’s campus. She graduated in 2006 when she was forty-six, and I
almost ten years later in 2017. Every spring, we smell our way through this
flowery passageway formed by the lilac trees’ first bloom in mid-April.

Mother: This is, little corner of the heaven, kind of. It’s so beautiful.

Meryem: The hum of Highway Route 18 is in the background. And even if it
smells like heaven, we’re still in New Jersey.

Mother: Ah, it smells strong too. I’m speechless.

Meryem: She’s speechless, which is the opposite effect I want the interview to have.
So we move away from the magical waft of pink and purple lilacs and toward
the gazebo. [Her mother sits and sighs] It took me a long time to understand
her reasoning that told me to rip up the Britney Spears cards.

Mother: Maybe you understand now, but maybe not that time.

Meryem: For a long time I thought she was doing it because she didn’t get America.
Most immigrants relate to America through the cliché of the American dream.
I wondered what my mom thought of her own immigrant experience. Why
did you move to the United States?

Mother: My husband got a scholarship to come to the US to do his PhD. And we
moved. So I stopped working, I stopped my education to come to the United
States. When I came here with a baby, I didn’t have any language skills.

Meryem: My mom took an almost ten-year break from school to learn a new
language and raise three children. Meanwhile, she was following her hus-
band’s career around the world, which is how we ended up in Saudi Arabia in
the first place. When we moved to New Jersey, my mom enrolled at Rutgers.

Mother: My journey started in college with the three kids. If there is a will,
there’s a way. I believe in that, and I never underestimated the small things
that I achieved. I go forward and that’s it. I just think what I am going to
do in my life.

Reynolds: Your mother is very goal oriented. That’s the impression I got, she has
a sense of direction and she’s going in that direction, and she is very serious.


Meryem: That’s Rebecca Reynolds, she’s a dean at Rutgers University.

Reynolds: And she wanted to figure out how she could register for classes.

Meryem: With her help, my mother was able to graduate with a bachelor’s degree
in public health, and it didn’t stop there.

Mother: I want to become a physical therapist, I don’t know why. Maybe because
I have personal injury in the back, but the operational therapy suited me
more. I was searching what school fits me more, and I found that Columbia
is a good option. I said, you know, “I’m going to apply to this school and see
what happens.”

Meryem: Considering all of her challenges along the way, my mother completed
her second degree in occupational therapy at an Ivy League school. I still wonder if she related to the ultimate cultural cliché. Do you feel like you have
achieved the American dream?

Mother: People come to the United States for opportunity, but I had everything
in my country. My story is a very opposite one. I left my dreams. I received
support later on, you know, people like me around me, and from Turkey people
sending me letters all the time. When I went to check my mailbox I found
five letters, so I was happy that day.

Meryem: The truth is, it’s hard to pin anyone down to simple clichés. Turkey
was this faraway place that was still intimate and important for us to recognize in terms of language, culture, and most of all, values.

Mother: I never think that I can totally erase my culture. This country is a
totally different cultures, combinations, everyone in their home, they’re living their own culture.

Meryem: To my mom, American culture was not about assimilation but establishing her own values here, and having the freedom to do that.

Mother: Being different is not too bad that I made the space, sometimes it’s a
positive thing actually for society. I think it takes time until you get your confidence and you know what you’re doing, and then you say, “Oh okay, it can
be like this way too.”

Meryem: And at home, she enforced that being different—our culture—was
the norm.


Mother: When everyone else is against you, I feel stronger. [laughter from both]

Meryem: Growing up, I thought my mom’s values were a little overbearing. Until
I went to college and entered the real world, and unless you actually stand up
for yourself, life is hard. My mom was standing up for her way of thinking and
doing things while raising us. American or Turkish, her values reflected a life
striving for self-actualization.

Meryem: Do you think we understand each other now?

Mother: I think so. How about you?

Meryem: I think I understand you.

Mother: You understand me?

Meryem: I think, I don’t know.

Mother: You think I understand you?

Meryem: Do you think you understand me?

Mother: No, do you feel that way? [laughs]

Meryem: I’m just asking you.

Mother: Yeah, I feel that way, yeah I understand you. [both laugh] Now I’m asking you questions.

Meryem: In that moment, we were like two kids bashfully asking each other if
the other would be her friend.

Meryem R. Uzumcu’s (she/her) practice of oratory storytelling undergirds her approach to feminist knowledge production between New Jersey and Diyarbakir. These sites remain particularly integral to her sensibility regarding Kurdish neural networks and archives. Currently her research and work receive support from the doctoral program for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University, the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers, and the Mellon Foundation.

Holly Mason Badra (she/her) is the curator-editor of Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora. She received her MFA in poetry from George Mason University, where she is currently the associate director of the Women and Gender Studies program. Her poetry, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Meridian Magazine, The Arkansas International, The Adroit Journal, The Northern Virginia Review, Foothill Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, CALYX, So to Speak, Circumference Magazine, Asymptote Journal, and elsewhere. She has been a panelist for OutWrite, RAWIFest, and Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here as a Kurdish American poet. Mason Badra reads for Poetry Daily.

t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.


Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents Look / Mira: Latinx/e Ways of Looking in Poetry & Prose

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Look / Mira: Latinx/e Ways of Looking in Poetry & Prose” a workshop led by José Angel Araguz on Wednesday, June 10th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can register for the event for free here!

This 90-minute generative workshop invites participants to explore the act of looking at both cultural inheritance and creative practice. Drawing on Latinx/e writers who re-frame the gaze, we’ll examine how looking and being looked at are shaped by language, place, power, and memory. We’ll read short excerpts from poetry, creative nonfiction, and hybrid works that re-imagine observation as resistance, remembrance, and recognition.

Through guided discussion and low-stakes writing prompts, we’ll experiment with how our own ways of looking (familial, spiritual, political) can become generative ground for new work. Open to writers of all levels, the workshop encourages a porous approach to genre and centers communal reflection and craft curiosity. Participants will have the option to share aloud and will leave with drafts and revision pathways.

While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to José Angel Araguz via Venmo at @Jose-Araguz-1.

Register today!

José Angel Araguz is the author most recently of the lyric memoir Ruin & Want (Sundress Publications) and the poetry collection Rotura (Black Lawrence Press). He is an Associate Professor at Suffolk University as well as a faculty member at large for the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program. He blogs and reviews books at The Influence.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora edited by Holly Mason Badra

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is a selection from the anthology Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora edited by Holly Mason Badra (The University of Arkansas Press 2025).

Object Exercise

—Tracy Fuad

First you must gather the objects.
Open the polish and polish each object
until every object is coated in polish,
a thin film that takes on the shape
of the object. Then dissect every
object with a circumstantial blade.
When the object is fully dissected,
remake it, but more in your image.
Then use concise scissors to prune
the object, removing what wilts
or yellows. Turn up the object
sound. Then, dissect again. Hold
each piece to check for resistance:
if it withers, it’s an object.
If it shudders, it’s a subject.

Holly Mason Badra (she/her) is the curator-editor of Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora. She received her MFA in poetry from George Mason University, where she is currently the associate director of the Women and Gender Studies program. Her poetry, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Meridian Magazine, The Arkansas International, The Adroit Journal, The Northern Virginia Review, Foothill Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, CALYX, So to Speak, Circumference Magazine, Asymptote Journal, and elsewhere. She has been a panelist for OutWrite, RAWIFest, and Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here as a Kurdish American poet. Mason Badra reads for Poetry Daily.

t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.