The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Rosa Castellano. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, October 25th, from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/poetryxfit.
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 October’s Xfit is Hauntings. Give yourself time to search for and interrogate the creatures that have been occupying your world. Feel free to question whether they scare or comfort you, how long they’ve been lingering, and if you want them to stay or to drive them out through writing.
Originally from Tampa, Fl, Rosa Castellano is the co-founder of the Richmond Poetry Festival and one of two Poet Laureates currently working on poetry projects for the City of Richmond VA. Her writing appears in Poetry Northwest, Guernica, Bomb, Write or Die, and Lit Hub among others. Her debut poetry collection, All is the Telling, is available now from Diode editions.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Ghosting the Self: Writing Through What We Avoid,” a workshop led by Jason Masino on Wednesday, October 14th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/Fhz7yX3CT6eztriZuGw9Gg
Every writer has subjects they circle but never quite touch. Sometimes it’s a memory, a contradiction, an obsession, or a version of themselves that doesn’t fit the story they’re trying to tell. In this generative workshop, we’ll explore the gaps, omissions, and recurring patterns that shape our work from the margins. Through discussion, close reflection, and writing exercises, participants will identify what they tend to avoid on the page and experiment with new approaches to writing through resistance rather than around it. Writers of all genres and experience levels are welcome.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly Jason Masino via Venmo: @Jason-Masino-5, PayPal: jason.masino@gmail.com or Cash App: $JasonMasino1987
Jason Masino is a poet and program builder whose work explores identity, belonging, contradiction, and the uneasy process of living with the parts of ourselves we are taught to reject. He holds a BA from the University of California, Davis and an MFA in Creative Writing from Regis University. His work has appeared in publications including Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora and South Florida Poetry Journal. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and also works across higher education, public service, and community engagement.
This event is made possible by a generous grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission.
When I was a child, my mom used to have me write short stories like I was training for a marathon, running endless miles around the figurative track.
Here is how it went: she would tell me to go write something, I would run off with some paper, and return with a sloppy fable about talking bears, to which she would give some vague praise and prompt me to go write another. I’m still not quite sure if her intent was to help me become a better writer, or to get me to stop pestering her for 15 minute intervals. It was probably both, but it’s something that I remain grateful for. Though that manuscript of Aesop knock-offs is now lost to time.
I’ve been deemed a “writer” for my whole life. It’s the first thing I mention when people ask me to “tell them a little bit about myself.” It’s the crux of my identity, but to be honest, I’ve never been completely assured of its meaning. A writer is not something you can finish becoming, like a runner practicing to win that one race. It’s also not something you can evaluate very easily skill-wise. I can’t track my speed or agility, and I can never really be sure if I am a “good writer.” Sure, I got high accolades from my parents and my teachers, but it was practically their jobs to be encouraging. So, really, how can you ever tell if what you’re putting down is worth anything? This question built an imprisoning sort of headspace that I caged myself into for much of my existence as a writer. I was constantly wondering the value of my work, and if it amounted at all to what the people around me were creating. Everything I made felt too derived, too underdeveloped, too forgettable.
I don’t know when exactly I started letting go of this (frankly, quite ridiculous) mentality, but I can say that my Introduction to Poetry Writing class I took two semesters ago certainly helped swing the door open. I was deeply enamored with this class; the opportunity to write poetry for critique from a group of fellow writers was incredibly valuable to me. I spent months crafting long-form narrative poems, inspired by the fairytale essence of Wilde’s The Star-Child, and brought them to class eager for feedback. But in the middle of that excitement, I felt that familiar fear crawling back: is what I’m writing good enough? Then, one of the other students in my class brought in his own narrative poem, similar in style to mine, and immediately, my brain broke out in questions like hives: Are our poems too similar? Is his better? Does mine amount to his at all?
On the last day of class, I got my answer in a way that humbled me. My professor told us about how he hoped we’d never see writing, or creating art, as a competition, and how it isn’t about being successful. As he was saying this, I almost felt embarrassed, because duh. The best part about writing is putting human experience into words, and somewhere along the line, all my anxiety had led me to have forgotten this; I had forgotten how much I enjoy just the act of writing itself, of running in laps around my mom with my fables. As long as I enjoyed the process, and if I was proud of my result, then really, that’s all that should matter. Not anyone else’s approval or anyone else’s work.
I can’t say that this epiphany has forever changed me. I still freak out over whether my metaphors are too clichéd, and I still sometimes panic over whether my work will be seen as “good” by others. But I’ve learned to stop letting those worries overtake the process, and to allow myself to enjoy what has always been one of my favorite parts of myself. So I’ll continue to write, and whether or not I’m eventually called a “good writer,” I’ll hopefully be proud of what I’ve created, and that will be enough.
Dia Manoj (she/her) is a lover of reading, writing, and coding. She is a junior at The University of Tennessee, double majoring in Computer Science and English with a concentration in Creative Writing. She has developed several software projects, including an iOS app, and loves finding ways to combine her passion for storytelling and technology. She explores this fusion through her self-built writing website, diamanoj.com. Outside of her creative endeavors, she enjoys London fogs, vampires, and pestering her loved ones.
In the Philippines, though not enshrined in the official constitution, you are required to pay your class treasurer—for whatever amount agreed upon—if you speak a sliver of Filipino. Slipping out even the smallest word of a particular thing you forgot to translate was unforgivable, even by accident. I can guarantee, maybe eighty-five percent, that most Filipinos who studied in either public or private schools had this odd and stifling rule of an “English only policy” in classrooms historically adapted from the legacy of American colonial education in the nation. It doesn’t begin in classrooms, of course. Often, I hear young children and my cousins speak perfect English—both in vocabulary and accent—yet fail to understand basic Filipino words. I wish I could say that it was the parents’ fault, but as the history of languages goes, it somehow always points toward colonization and its lingering afterlife in cultural and educational spaces.
When I told people I would be taking Comparative Literature in college, it was not a surprise to them. I sounded American and had no trace of a Filipino accent, I knew how to write creatively and academically in English and won awards for it, and I could converse seamlessly with anyone if need be. Sometimes, my friends and I would talk to each other in fake British and Irish accents, because it was fun and because it was practice. We even spoke English with botched French and Italian accents to see if we could pass as natives. When I decided to major in European Literature instead of Asian or Philippine, I was given nods of approval, leaving my decisions unquestioned.
Perhaps to them, Europe held a certain prestige that they didn’t see in the Philippines, that it could open doors for me to migrate abroad and become a permanent resident there. I wish I could say that it wasn’t for selfish reasons but parts of it were. I saw Europe as wider than where I was, that there was something deeper and richer to dig for. I was attracted to their literature more than I was to the books published in the Philippines. I knew many colleagues and professors who did their Masters and PhDs in the Americas or Europe and believed in the sophistication that foreign institutions could bring. I believed it through the decisions I made in college.
From the poems, plays, and fiction I write, English came easier. Forms felt looser, synonyms were instinctive, and creative imaginations seemed natural. In Filipino, writing is laborious, maybe even desire-laden. Words feel thicker, almost viscous, and fluid in a way that asks you to hold it solemnly. I am not twice divorced from the language when it’s Filipino I write and speak in. It’s intimate, private, something I return to when English exhausts or fails me. This was why, sometimes, when I was in class studying classical antiquities of Greece or Rome or modernism in Europe, shame and guilt would inevitably creep in. It would slither in the back of my head and ask me, “you know so much about the other side of the world. What about the one you’re currently in?” I reckon some of my friends felt the same feelings because when our thesis writing began, we would be asked: what is the relevance of your study to the Philippines? And we would answer with something else entirely in Polish, French, Irish, Norwegian, Spanish or Italian. Alienation, I learned, was sometimes self-inflicted.
Now, after graduating from college and continuing to hold tension between two languages, I open myself to the world I know and the world I study. English was a way to become-center, to meld with the majority. However, the margins, the minority, and the peripheral from which I come from is just as important, if not more. I admire the difficulty it takes for craft to take shape in Filipino, the sensibility and humor that rarely translates to English, and the porousness and permeability of language to sink, be swallowed, and bend, and still remain as potent as who speaks it. What emerges when you peel back the rinds are fragments of transition and mutability. In Sundress where marginalized voices are celebrated, I am honored to be part of these very fluctuations that metamorphose the sense beneath and beyond the text.
Zie Madayag (she/her) is a writer and academic from Metro Manila. She is a recent graduate of a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature: European Literature at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. She has worked and volunteered at non-profit organizations and cultural institutions promoting artistic and literary production. Both critical and creative, her research interests include corporeality and materiality, spatio-temporal entanglements, ecologies, and the rhizomatic potentiality of the periphery.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH and Managing Editor Merrick Sloane, is from Lone Yellow Flower by Erika Gill (Querencia Press 2025).
Field Log: Denver, 10 May
By the tenth of May the Denver trees have begun to bloom and leaf and it is green. So green I laugh, elated. Some things I have seen: flowers of six shades, an alien—poppy in bloom, translucent hairs cover the stalk and pod, its neighboring flower a violent red, a swarm of black flies, bearded irises proud spikes thrust into the air, a beetle on its back. Someone (I dislike) has written “fuck earth” on the pavement and had it been me it would have said “fuck, Earth” reverently, the way lovers do.
Erika Gill (they/them) lives on unceded Tséstho’e (Cheyenne), Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, hinono’eino’ biito’owu’ (Arapaho), and Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute) land in Denver. Erika is Editor in Chief of Alternative Milk Magazine. Their poetry appears in Rigorous, MORIA, beestung and others. Their debut collection of poetry, Lone Yellow Flower, is available now from Querencia Press.
Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza
EMDASH a.k.a Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) (she/they) is a poet-who-also-writes-fiction, educator, and daughter of Chinese immigrants. She writes to heal, grow, and decolonize. They’ve received support from LAMBDA, McCormack Writing Center, Sundress Publications, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, The Chinese American Museum of LA, Jersey City Arts Council and more. She has learned as much from community organizing and open mics as she did from her Rutgers-Newark MFA in Poetry. They’re published in Poetry Northwest, ANMLY, Alocasia, Underblong and elsewhere. She proudly hosted, produced, and curated The Word Bookstore Open Mic for two years.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. A 2026 Best of the Net and 2025 AWP Intro Journal Awards winner, Merrick’s poetry appears in citizen trans* {project}, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. When they are not writing or editing, Merrick loves to serve as a pillow for their cat, Kitten, while getting lost in new worlds written by other dreamers. Merrick is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH and Managing Editor Merrick Sloane, is from Lone Yellow Flower by Erika Gill (Querencia Press 2025).
When we are all drowning
When we are all drowning these tasks will cease to matter submerged dissolved into acidic slurry and I will miss sliding my fingers along your hair and the clean sky.
When we are all asphyxiated I will no longer care to look in mirrors your empty pockets immaterial I’ll have plucked the final leaf from the last wilting plant as it returns to the earth.
She is calling us ringing a dinner bell, a klaxon inaudible if they have their way our bodies will never stop moving never to alight gently one last petal, to rest.
Erika Gill (they/them) lives on unceded Tséstho’e (Cheyenne), Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, hinono’eino’ biito’owu’ (Arapaho), and Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute) land in Denver. Erika is Editor in Chief of Alternative Milk Magazine. Their poetry appears in Rigorous, MORIA, beestung and others. Their debut collection of poetry, Lone Yellow Flower, is available now from Querencia Press.
Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza
EMDASH a.k.a Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) (she/they) is a poet-who-also-writes-fiction, educator, and daughter of Chinese immigrants. She writes to heal, grow, and decolonize. They’ve received support from LAMBDA, McCormack Writing Center, Sundress Publications, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, The Chinese American Museum of LA, Jersey City Arts Council and more. She has learned as much from community organizing and open mics as she did from her Rutgers-Newark MFA in Poetry. They’re published in Poetry Northwest, ANMLY, Alocasia, Underblong and elsewhere. She proudly hosted, produced, and curated The Word Bookstore Open Mic for two years.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. A 2026 Best of the Net and 2025 AWP Intro Journal Awards winner, Merrick’s poetry appears in citizen trans* {project}, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. When they are not writing or editing, Merrick loves to serve as a pillow for their cat, Kitten, while getting lost in new worlds written by other dreamers. Merrick is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
Looking at Hong Kong, what do you see? A city of neon lights and nightlife, one of the “Four Asian Tigers,” a place with over a century of history marked by colonial rule and war, or the birthplace of so-called Chinese culture and cinema? A jumble of terms has woven a dazzling cage around Hong Kong with language. In Xu Xi’s new book Horizon Hong Kong: Selected Stories (Gaudy Boy, 2026), she invites us to step beyond the confines of language and stereotypes, setting out from Hong Kong’s horizon to discover the real Hong Kong. This horizon does not draw on vast historical, geopolitical, or anthropological contexts; it begins with the world of real individuals, continually shifting according to who is looking, remembering, leaving, returning, or speaking–all to pose one ultimate question: Who are we, and where do we come from?
Published in 2026, Horizon Hong Kong is a collection of 22 short stories by Xu Xi, selected from five of her earlier collections. Echoing Xu Xi’s identity as an Indonesian Chinese raised in Hong Kong and writing in English, the book moves across colonial Hong Kong, the 1997 Handover, post-handover life, migration, and speculative futures, shifting major historical events toward the edges of the frame and letting private memory, family conflict, labor, desire, and loss occupy the center.
Xu Xi’s most persistent intervention is a change of scale: events that appear “historical” in retrospect are experienced by her characters through much smaller, personal dramas. Set against the 1966 Star Ferry protests, “Democracy” follows sixteen-year-old Patricia Chow through a contentious Girl Guides election, letting a schoolgirl vote echo the city’s larger uncertainties about representation and majority rule. In the story, the majority’s choice is emotional, personal, but legitimate, redefining the flat identification of “democracy.” Similarly, “Insignificant Moments in the History of Hong Kong” places the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong beside Lam Yam Kuen’s memories of his family; the fireworks marking the transfer of sovereignty occupy less narrative space than family memory, food, work, and the image of a rabbit on the moon. Interestingly, Patricia teaches 1997 in a seminar named “Significant Moments in the History of Hong Kong,” while Yam Kuen’s story is named “Insignificant Moments.” Together, they question “significant” and “history,” hollow words that appear at the horizon of the world but not at the horizon of individuals. Regimes still argue over how to write that history, but those who lived through it are captured in these “insignificant” moments, where a simple label for a piece of land was transformed into a real experience imbued with human warmth.
Horizon Hong Kong also interprets grand historical events through the eyes of the individual. Seen through nine-year-old Ai-Lin, the story “Chung King Mansion” turns Tsimshatsui and the history of the Vietnam War into a landscape of sailors, languages, family tensions, and half-understood adult sexuality. Ai-Lin is fascinated with an orange-haired sex worker but soon gives up when she encounters that woman without makeup, carrying groceries; she realizes the glamorous “lady” she imagined is no more than a girl herself. The power of her perspective lies in the gap between what she sees and what she understands; history reaches her before she possesses the language to call it history. Xu Xi employs concrete detail, those battleships, sailors’ uniforms, dyed hair, and translations between Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, to preserve Hong Kong beyond historical exposition as a sensory memory.
The final question Xu Xi addresses is how Hong Kongers view their history from their own horizon. “The 15th Annual Anniversary” follows Christopher Woo into a reunion with elite schoolmates whose successful lives contrast sharply with his own; the evening celebrates political and social succession, but Christopher’s thoughts return to the years he spent caring for his mother, turning a public anniversary into an account of private obligation, class decline, and grief. As Xu Xi writes, “It was succession, this life of the elite.” (225) Closing the collection, “TST” gives the final word to the ghost of a former bar girl from Tsimshatsu’s Seven Sisters Club, whose violent death was falsely recorded, representing a marginalized life never accepted into public history. As her world disappears, she continues telling the stories of women like herself. Storytelling does not merely supplement history; for some lives, it is the only history available.
Xu Xi’s writing technique also makes this book a richly layered reading experience. She employs a child narrator, second person, an unreliable narrator, and even a dead person, presenting a wide range of perspectives. No single voice can represent Hong Kong, so Xu Xi constantly shifts narrators, genres, registers, and settings. Hong Kong always resembles a horizon, constantly shifting, politically renamed, distanced by migration, and brought back by memory. It is never a fixed homeland nor merely a victim of colonialism or postcolonialism but is composed of many people who are contradictory and cannot even represent one another.
Reading this book as someone who is also from Asia, uses Chinese but works in English, Horizon Hong Kong helped me reconstruct a complete and authentic picture of Hong Kong, allowing me to truly see the people behind its vast history. It also enabled me to find an answer about selfhood amidst the complexities of history, personal memory, and marginalized narratives. This is a book of portraits as inclusive and multifaceted as a prism; in its pages, you can see both Hong Kong and yourself.
“Listen, it’s never too late. Just listen.” (281)
Ziyi Zhong (she/her) is a Sundress editorial intern with a BA from McGill University and an MA from the University of Alberta, both in East Asian Studies. With a background spanning Asia and Canada, she is interested in identity, belonging, and the ways literature helps us understand ourselves and one another. For her, reading and writing have long been tools of inquiry and repair, turning difficult experience into meaning, and of connecting with others who are searching, in words, for a light of their own.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH and Managing Editor Merrick Sloane, is from Lone Yellow Flower by Erika Gill (Querencia Press 2025).
The Rats of Notre Dame
Squeaks and scampers accompany the night music of the cathedral exhausted from the weekend trample of thousands of tourist feet
Gray bodies skitter sleek through the night and I try not to sigh again and contain in my chest the outburst forming like a storm cloud accumulates
He tells me in words accented that allure me that there are few stray cats in Paris but points out Jupiter (or maybe Saturn) and shows me how to tell by the steadiness of light if we are looking at a star or planet
I always assume they are airplanes, I say and sip from my bottle of water, not wine and wish we had spent each night of the past week wandering together along the Seine
the water a glossy satin ribbon in the dark beckons me to descend the stone steps in the quai and surrender my body to the embrace of an ancient city
the ache of three hours walking on cobbles didn’t diminish my desire to stay the petulant sadness of soon-coming departure dug claws into my chest and pricked my eyes
I looked so hard at the Haussmann architecture gilded softly in the mellow amber of streetlights I thought I might crack the stone and with each inhale I hoped my lungs would retain the mass of non-oxygen molecules and become heavy, immovable
He would probably point out that such a thing would be fatal and I would agree, inclined to be maudlin and absurd this final midnight in my own placid, unintelligible heaven
Paris loved me back, maybe he would not have and maybe it is best that I wasn’t impulsive and foolish and didn’t try to stay
but my pulse warmed my veins as he kissed me solemnly on each cheek and then was gone
Erika Gill (they/them) lives on unceded Tséstho’e (Cheyenne), Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, hinono’eino’ biito’owu’ (Arapaho), and Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute) land in Denver. Erika is Editor in Chief of Alternative Milk Magazine. Their poetry appears in Rigorous, MORIA, beestung and others. Their debut collection of poetry, Lone Yellow Flower, is available now from Querencia Press.
Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza
EMDASH a.k.a Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) (she/they) is a poet-who-also-writes-fiction, educator, and daughter of Chinese immigrants. She writes to heal, grow, and decolonize. They’ve received support from LAMBDA, McCormack Writing Center, Sundress Publications, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, The Chinese American Museum of LA, Jersey City Arts Council and more. She has learned as much from community organizing and open mics as she did from her Rutgers-Newark MFA in Poetry. They’re published in Poetry Northwest, ANMLY, Alocasia, Underblong and elsewhere. She proudly hosted, produced, and curated The Word Bookstore Open Mic for two years.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. A 2026 Best of the Net and 2025 AWP Intro Journal Awards winner, Merrick’s poetry appears in citizen trans* {project}, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. When they are not writing or editing, Merrick loves to serve as a pillow for their cat, Kitten, while getting lost in new worlds written by other dreamers. Merrick is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH and Managing Editor Merrick Sloane, is from Lone Yellow Flower by Erika Gill (Querencia Press 2025).
Romantic Notions
Funny, that it is considered romantic to declare that you would die for love. Living for love is much harder to do.
Erika Gill (they/them) lives on unceded Tséstho’e (Cheyenne), Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, hinono’eino’ biito’owu’ (Arapaho), and Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute) land in Denver. Erika is Editor in Chief of Alternative Milk Magazine. Their poetry appears in Rigorous, MORIA, beestung and others. Their debut collection of poetry, Lone Yellow Flower, is available now from Querencia Press.
Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza
EMDASH a.k.a Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) (she/they) is a poet-who-also-writes-fiction, educator, and daughter of Chinese immigrants. She writes to heal, grow, and decolonize. They’ve received support from LAMBDA, McCormack Writing Center, Sundress Publications, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, The Chinese American Museum of LA, Jersey City Arts Council and more. She has learned as much from community organizing and open mics as she did from her Rutgers-Newark MFA in Poetry. They’re published in Poetry Northwest, ANMLY, Alocasia, Underblong and elsewhere. She proudly hosted, produced, and curated The Word Bookstore Open Mic for two years.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. A 2026 Best of the Net and 2025 AWP Intro Journal Awards winner, Merrick’s poetry appears in citizen trans* {project}, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. When they are not writing or editing, Merrick loves to serve as a pillow for their cat, Kitten, while getting lost in new worlds written by other dreamers. Merrick is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH and Managing Editor Merrick Sloane, is from Lone Yellow Flower by Erika Gill (Querencia Press 2025).
Mouse Tea
My mother didn’t know how to love me with enough affection hugs too strong-armed infrequent
so I fortified myself maternally with dime store paperbacks by women who wrote boldly and pedantic
the women who wrote characters not insecurities magic but no nonsense
who taught me things crime scene etiquette (always wear the booties) that you can make a tea so strong a mouse might walk on it
that swords can be heavy how to curse and mean it
that there are men who will chase after smart and witty and brazen
that you can love so hard it’ll make you hurt that you can break things be broken and keep a straight face through any insult or wield your anger (and your tongue) like a weapon.
Erika Gill (they/them) lives on unceded Tséstho’e (Cheyenne), Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, hinono’eino’ biito’owu’ (Arapaho), and Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute) land in Denver. Erika is Editor in Chief of Alternative Milk Magazine. Their poetry appears in Rigorous, MORIA, beestung and others. Their debut collection of poetry, Lone Yellow Flower, is available now from Querencia Press.
Photo Credit: Juan Camillo Garza
EMDASH a.k.a Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) (she/they) is a poet-who-also-writes-fiction, educator, and daughter of Chinese immigrants. She writes to heal, grow, and decolonize. They’ve received support from LAMBDA, McCormack Writing Center, Sundress Publications, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, The Chinese American Museum of LA, Jersey City Arts Council and more. She has learned as much from community organizing and open mics as she did from her Rutgers-Newark MFA in Poetry. They’re published in Poetry Northwest, ANMLY, Alocasia, Underblong and elsewhere. She proudly hosted, produced, and curated The Word Bookstore Open Mic for two years.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. A 2026 Best of the Net and 2025 AWP Intro Journal Awards winner, Merrick’s poetry appears in citizen trans* {project}, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. When they are not writing or editing, Merrick loves to serve as a pillow for their cat, Kitten, while getting lost in new worlds written by other dreamers. Merrick is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
