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.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH, is an excerpt from All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo (Jaded Ibis Press 2023).
LEARNING TO SWIM
The water, All of the time
Tayali, Binti the waters whisper. Come,my daughter. I teach my children to respect the water; never fear it. One moment, you might be jumping waves in a comfortable
rhythm and in the next, a fierce wave could drag you under, take you off guard. “Don’t fear hitting the bottom,” I tell them. “It gives you something to propel from.”
…
Yalla, Tayali, Yafa’s waters call. I feel her urgent tugging in the tides of my body, my limbs inching toward the shore like a magnet. Soon, I tell her. I’ll be back soon.
Nada (she/her) is a multi-genre Palestinian writer, educator, and mother deeply attuned to her adopted land’s stories. A refugee English language learner, Nada grew up deeply impacted by family separation and state violence both in Palestine and on Narragansett land or so called Rhode Island. As a working class caretaker, Nada aims to create innovative, anti-imperialist works of literature that play at the intersections of the more than human world, expands imaginations, illuminates connections between land and body, and inspires joyful resistance. Her writing has appeared in Masters Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and others. All Water Has Perfect Memory, a multigenerational hybrid memoir, is her first book.
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.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH, is an excerpt from All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo (Jaded Ibis Press 2023).
NEW WORLD
Johnston, Rhode Island 2001
My fullname is Nada TayserMohamed-SamihJaber, I wanted to scream. Howmany white peoplehavea name like that? Later, I attended that professor’s office hours to hand in the final assignment. “Oh, I wanted to tell you,” she said excitedly, “I teach this same class at Providence College, and a group of students there said the same thing as you. They are from Egypt. I guess you’re not white after all,” she concluded, beaming with the arrogance of discovering land long settled.
Nada (she/her) is a multi-genre Palestinian writer, educator, and mother deeply attuned to her adopted land’s stories. A refugee English language learner, Nada grew up deeply impacted by family separation and state violence both in Palestine and on Narragansett land or so called Rhode Island. As a working class caretaker, Nada aims to create innovative, anti-imperialist works of literature that play at the intersections of the more than human world, expands imaginations, illuminates connections between land and body, and inspires joyful resistance. Her writing has appeared in Masters Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and others. All Water Has Perfect Memory, a multigenerational hybrid memoir, is her first book.
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.
The earliest stories I absorbed were variations of Korean folktales and myths from my parents. We don’t have heirlooms or gold, but we do have stories. There’s a story about a prankish frog who always does the opposite of what his mother tells him to do. When the mother frog falls ill, she asks her son to bury her body by the gloomy riverbank, hoping he will do the opposite by burying her by the sunny mountainside instead. But the son listens to her dying wish and buries her by the riverbank. This always made me teary-eyed, and I vowed not to disobey my parents, though I frequently did. There’s another story I remember about someone airing out all their dirty secrets into an empty forest where they think no one will hear, but really the trees are listening and catching the secrets like chlorophyll. I always laugh at the thought of that. But I suppose I’d be fine if all the trees in the world knew my secrets. I trust trees.
I don’t remember the first book I read, or the first story I wrote as a kid. I wish I could attest to some transformative narrative about my journey as a writer, something that sparked in me one day, but the truth is I was always writing. What I do remember is being weirdly competitive during elementary school book log competitions, and going through so much loose-leaf paper that my parents eventually bought me a mini laptop so I could type my stories. I’m drawn to various forms of storytelling, but especially writing that doesn’t take itself too seriously—the kind that’s playful, theatrical, campy, satirical, absurd, nonsensical. I’m propelled by inventive writing that experiments and isn’t afraid to break rules. I love this quote by Ray Bradbury that alludes to imagination and play as generative tools: “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
In high school, I came across Jenny Zhang’s “How It Feels,” which felt transformative and eye-opening for a teenage girl and a young poet who was a lot more dramatic and angsty than she would have liked in hindsight. There’s a line by Zhang that has since stuck with me: “Why are some people’s feelings so repellent and others so madly alluring?” It begs the question of why people care to write. Or why people care to express themselves. I think about this across other forms of art too—some songs and films about suicides or breakups or family divorces or growing up are considered earnest and romantic, while others are cringe, tacky, off-putting. I remember being so embarrassed to express myself or attempt anything, but then again, isn’t that how everyone feels about living? To me, language is living. Language is transformative.
One book I’m currently reading is White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link, a collection of short stories that retell classic fairy tales in contemporary and futuristic settings, with lots of spins on pop culture. I remember finding this book in my friend’s dorm about a year ago and flipping through the first story, which features an ostentatious billionaire who sends his sons on a series of goose chases and cats in lab coats who operate a cannabis farm. I thought it was so brilliant; Kelly Link is a writer who performs play well, and her writing is gritty and otherworldly. Other writers who perform play on the page and inspire me are Carmen Maria Machado, K-Ming Chang, Toni Morrison, and Franny Choi. I’m drawn to the funky stuff that reimagines and reinvents worlds. I love stories about mythical creatures, queer desire, ghosts, lineage, strange neighbors, annoying teenagers, bad breakups, altered states of consciousness, transformation, collective memory, and messy embodiments of women and girlhood.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to work alongside bright, compassionate, and inspiring people at Sundress Publications, a nonprofit press that platforms diverse, imaginative, and cutting-edge voices. Send me a DM on Instagram @corinayii if you’d like to talk about writing, swap book recommendations, or just chat!
Corina Yi (she/her) is a student at Pomona College studying English and Creative Writing. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Agave Review, the literary magazine at the Claremont Colleges consortium. She likes collecting postcards, painting, drinking tea, cafe hopping, and going on spontaneous adventures.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor EMDASH, is an excerpt from All Water Has Perfect Memory by Nada Samih-Rotondo (Jaded Ibis Press 2023).
COLORATURA
Johnston, Rhode Island 2002
Some of us need to parent ourselves, I’d often tell myself. I fixed my face into the picture of perfect composure, and pretended I didn’t know what I was capable of. A good actress.
Nada (she/her) is a multi-genre Palestinian writer, educator, and mother deeply attuned to her adopted land’s stories. A refugee English language learner, Nada grew up deeply impacted by family separation and state violence both in Palestine and on Narragansett land or so called Rhode Island. As a working class caretaker, Nada aims to create innovative, anti-imperialist works of literature that play at the intersections of the more than human world, expands imaginations, illuminates connections between land and body, and inspires joyful resistance. Her writing has appeared in Masters Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and others. All Water Has Perfect Memory, a multigenerational hybrid memoir, is her first book.
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.
