Sundress Publications is pleased to announce that the readers for our 2024 AWP off-site journals reading, which include beestung, Rogue Agent, Doubleback Review, and The Wardrobe, include KB Brookins, Cat Ingrid Leeches, Crystal Odelle, Jess Sifa, Caitlin Cowan, Amy Haddad, Lenna Jawdat, Atia Sattar, Madeleine Barnes, Mary Hawley, Ania Payne, Remi Recchia, Asa Drake, and Jae Nichelle. The reading will take place on February 9th, 2024, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at Nimble Brewing Company 1735 Oak Street Kansas City, MO 64108.
beestung readers
KB Brookins is a writer, cultural worker, and artist from Texas. They are the author of How to Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press 2022), Freedom House (Deep Vellum 2023), and Pretty (Alfred A. Knopf 2024). How to Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize, the Writer’s League of Texas Discovery Prize, and a Stonewall Honor Book Award. Freedom House has received praise from Vogue, BookRiot, Autostraddle, and others. KB is a 2023 National Endowment of the Arts Fellow with writing published in Poets.org, Teen Vogue, Oxford American, and elsewhere. Follow them online at @earthtokb.
Cat Ingrid Leeches is a writer, editor, and adjunct. Their collection, I Wander the Earth, Hungry For Semen, is forthcoming from Carrion Bloom Books.
Crystal Odelle (they/she) is a queer trans storyteller and author of the chapbook Trans Studies (Gold Line Press, 2024). Their stories have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Split Lip Magazine, beestung, manywor(l)ds, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. Crystal was a Tin House Scholar and Lambda Literary Fellow, nominated for Best of the Net, and anthologized in We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction. She writes RPGs at Feverdream Games and serves as academic and administrative coordinator for the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.
Jess Silfa is an Afro-Latine writer from the South Bronx. They graduated with an MFA in Fiction from Vanderbilt University and are currently a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati as a Yates Fellow. Jess is President of the Disabled and D/deaf Writers Caucus and has been published or has work forthcoming in ANMLY, beestung, Transition Magazine, and others.
Rogue Agent readers
Caitlin Cowan is the author of Happy Everything (Cornerstone Press, 2024). She has taught writing at UNT, Texas Woman’s University, and Interlochen Center for the Arts. Caitlin works in arts nonprofit administration for Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, where she serves as Director of International Programs and as Chair of Creative Writing. Caitlin also serves as Poetry Co-Editor at Pleiades and writes PopPoetry, a weekly poetry and pop culture newsletter. She lives on Michigan’s west coast with her husband, their young daughter, and two mischievous cats. Find her at caitlincowan.com.
Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse, and Professor Emerita at Creighton University. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals, including Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, Oberon Poetry Magazine, and Rogue Agent. Her first chapbook, The Geography of Kitchens, was published by Finishing Line Press in August 2021. Her first poetry collection, An Otherwise Healthy Woman, was published by Backwaters Press in 2022. The collection won first place in the Creative Works category of the American Journal of Nursing 2022 Books of the Year Awards. You can learn more about her work at: www.amyhaddadpoetry.com.
Lenna Jawdat is a D.C.-based writer and psychotherapist. Her writing, which explores trauma, identity, and resilience, has appeared in Poet Lore, Passenger’s Journal, Rogue Agent, and Koukash Review, among others. She was a 2023 Sundress Academy for the Arts summer resident and 2021 Best of the Net nominee for her poem “Ode to the Psoas.” She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she is Poetry Co-Editor for Chapter House Journal. Lenna is currently working on a book-length visual documentary poem.
Atia Sattar is a Pakistani-born teacher, scholar, and meditator living in Los Angeles. Her writing explores the embodied intersections of gender, race, mindfulness, and motherhood. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Rogue Agent, Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, and The Cambridge Quarterly for Health Care Ethics. She is Associate Teaching Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California.
Doubleback Review readers
Madeleine Barnes is a writer, artist, and PhD candidate at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her debut full-length poetry collection, You Do Not Have To Be Good, was published by Trio House Press in 2020. She is also the author of four chapbooks, most recently The Memory Dictionary (Ethel Press) and Women’s Work (Tolsun Books). Her dissertation-in-progress explores how women use textile work to survive and respond to violence. She earned her MFA at New York University. madeleinebarnes.com.
Mary Hawley is a fiction writer, poet, and literary translator. Her short stories have appeared in magazines such as Hypertext, The Saturday Evening Post, and Doubleback Review, and she received an Illinois Literary Award for fiction. Her translations (Spanish to English) of poetry and prose have appeared in The Common, TriQuarterly, and Deinos, and she is currently translating a trilogy of novels by the Uruguayan writer Sergio Altesor Licandro. She lives in Evanston, Illinois.
Ania Payne lives in Manhattan, Kansas, with her husband, Great Dane, husky, two tiger cats, and two backyard chickens. She teaches in the English Department at Kansas State University and has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. She is the author of the chapbook Karma Animalia. She has previously been published in Bending Genres, The Rush, Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, Whiskey Island, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
Remi Recchia (he/him), PhD, is a trans poet, essayist, and editor from Kalamazoo, Michigan. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared in World Literature Today, Best New Poets 2021, and Prairie Schooner, among others. Works include Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021); Sober (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022); Little Lenny Gets His Horns (Querencia Press, 2023); From Gold, Ghosts: Alchemy Erasures (Gasher Press, 2023); and Transmasculine Poetics: Filling the Gap in Literature & the Silences Around Us (Sundress Publications, forthcoming). Remi has been a Tin House Scholar and Thomas Lux Scholar. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Bowling Green State University.
The Wardrobe readers
Asa Drake is a Filipina American poet and author of the chapbook One Way to Listen (Gold Line Press, 2023). She has received fellowships and awards from the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, Tin House, and Idyllwild Arts. Her poems have been published with The Slowdown Podcast, The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review Daily, and The Georgia Review.
Louisiana-born and Portland-based Jae Nichelle is the author of God Themselves and the poetry chapbook The Porch (As Sanctuary). She was the inaugural poetry winner of the John Lewis Writing Award from the Georgia Writers Association, and her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2020, The Washington Square Review, The Offing, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere. She is also a slam poetry champion, and her spoken word poems have been featured by Write About Now, Speak Up Poetry Series, and Button Poetry.
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