SAND 21 Contributor Bios

Ivan Akhmetyev is a native and resident of Moscow. He is the author of five poetry collections, and his work has been translated into thirteen languages. Since the early 1990s, he has been engaged in publishing classics of underground literature from the Soviet era. He has also co-edited anthologies of modern Russian poetry. He is curator of the Anthologies of Informal Poetry network, and in 2013 was awarded the Andrei Bely Prize.

Megan Archer was born in Dunedin, New Zealand and is currently based in Auckland. After gaining her BFA in 2010, she spent seven years exhibiting abroad in London and Berlin. Her current practice includes oil painting, collage, and illustration. Archer has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in cities such as Auckland, Berlin, and Melbourne. She is currently represented by {Suite} Gallery in Wellington.

Larry Brown lives in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. His story collection TALK was published by Oberon Press, and he recently completed his new story collection KURTIN. He teaches writing workshops throughout Ontario.

Sinejan Kiliç Buchina earned an MA from City University and a BFA from Marmara University and has received the Connor Fellowship, the Light Space & Time award, and a P.E.O. Education Grant. She has exhibited her work throughout the US and in Europe, including Walter Meade Gallery, NY (2020), Amos Eno Gallery, NY (2019), The Every Women Biennial, NY (2019), Artist Depot, London (2019). She currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

Casper Cammeraat has been into photography for over forty-five years. Of his work, he says: “I am inspired by landscapes, people, structures, abstractions, that are beautiful, exciting or moving. Those images I want to keep and share with other people: because they help to remember the magnificent miracle to be human on earth. Not as a missionary, but as a witness.”

billy cancel is a Brooklyn based poet/performer. His collection MOCK TROUGH RASPING CROW (BlazeVOX Books) was published in 2018. His poetry has been published in Boston Review, PEN America, and Bombay Gin, amongst many others. With Thursday Fernworthy (Lauds) he makes up the noise/pop band Tidal Channel. Links aplenty at billycancelpoetry.com.

Becky L. Crook is a writer and literary translator with works appearing in Freeman’s, Granta, Guernica and others. She has degrees in linguistics and theology. In 2010, she founded SAND in Berlin. She currently lives with her family on Bainbridge Island. She has just finished writing her first novel.

Natalie Crick has poems published or forthcoming in Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Orbis, The Moth, Banshee and elsewhere. She is studying for an MPhil in creative writing at Newcastle University. Her poems have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize twice, shortlisted for The Anthony Cronin International Poetry Award 2018, commended in the 2019 Hippocrates Open Awards for Poetry and Medicine and the Verve Poetry Festival Competition 2020, and chosen as a runner-up in the PBS & Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition 2018. 

Carrie Crow is a fine-art photographer whose work has been exhibited internationally at the Queens Museum of Art, Newspace Center for Photography, Curious Matter, Streit House Space, FIDM a Paris Mairie IX, Kunst Altonale Hamburg, and Galleria Perela during the 54th and 56th Venice Biennales. Her work has also appeared in literary and arts publications such as 3:AM Magazine, Upstairs at Duroc, and Versal 12. Her first zine The Quiet Zoo was published by Streit House Editions in 2017.

Uttaran Das Gupta is a New Delhi-based journalist and writer. He has published a book of poems, Visceral Metropolis (i write imprint, 2017), and a novel, Ritual (Pan Macmillan India, 2020). He teaches journalism.

Allison A. deFreese has previously translated works by Luis Chitarroni, Amado Nervo, and other Latin American writers. Her writing and literary translations have appeared in 60 magazines and journals, including: Asymptote; Solstice; The New York Quarterly, Quick Fiction and Southwestern American Literature. An English translation of Maria Negroni’s book Elegía Joseph Cornell/Elegy for Joseph Cornell is forthcoming in 2020 from Dalkey Archive Press.

Tishani Doshi is a poet, writer, and dancer born in Madras, India. She currently performs internationally with the Chandralekha group. A freelance journalist, her work has appeared in newspapers such as the Guardian, the National, and the Hindu. She writes a regular column for New Indian Express and was a finalist in the Outlook/ Picador India Non-Fiction Competition. Her first book of poetry, Countries of the Body (2006), won a Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Doshi’s first novel, The Pleasure Seekers (2010), was shortlisted for the Hindu Best Fiction Award and has been translated into several languages. Her latest novel is Small Days and Nights (W. W. Norton, 2020). Her honours and awards include an Eric Gregory Award and an All-India Poetry Prize.

Mikaël Fälke’s work is about pure lines, contrast, and aesthetics. In colours or in black and white, he searches for motives in the most common places. Mikael lived in Berlin a few years ago and captured the city in all its (architectural) aspects. In former East Berlin, he pictured the strong visual identity of Plattenbauten, an unfairly despised form of habitat.

Ari Feld has returned to northern Minnesota after living on the east and west coasts of North America and in cities in Western Europe. He teaches writing studies and literature classes at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.

David Felix is a youthful septuagenarian English visual poet who lives in Denmark. For more than half a century his writing has taken on a variety of forms, in collage, three dimensions, in galleries, anthologies, festival performances, video, and in over fifty publications worldwide, both in print and online. Born into a family of artists, magicians, and tailors he is no stranger to a still life with apples, the dollar bill inside a lemon, and a fruit cocktail dress.

SJ Fowler works in poetry, fiction, theatre, film, photography, visual art, sound art, and performance. He has published seven collections of poetry, four of artworks, and five of collaborative poetry, plus volumes of selected essays and collaborations. He has been commissioned by the Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, the Whitechapel Gallery, the Tate Britain, the London Sinfonietta, the Wellcome Collection, and the Liverpool Biennial.

Brad Garber has degrees in biology, chemistry, and law. He writes, paints, draws, photographs, and hunts for mushrooms and snakes in the Great Northwest of the US. Since 1991 he has published poetry, magazine articles, essays and weird stuff in such publications as EDGE, Pure Slush, On the Rusk, Sugar Mule, Third Wednesday, Barrow Street, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Barzakh, Five:2:One, Ginosko, Vine Leaves Press, Riverfeet Press, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, Aji Magazine, and other quality publications. He is a 2011, 2013, and 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee.

Courtney Garvey is a poet and fiction writer from Massachusetts, where she studied creative writing, history, and European cultural studies at Brandeis University. Her work has appeared in Peach, The Emerson Review, Blacklist, and Laurel Moon.

Kyriaki Goni is an Athens-born and-based artist and educator. Working across media, she creates expanded and multi-layered installations. She connects the local and the global by critically touching on subjects such as privacy, networks, ecosystems and infrastructures, and the human-machine relationship. She presents work in solo and group shows, and is a Delfina Foundation alumna (2019).

Robin Gow is a queer poet and young adult author. They are the author of Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy (Tolsun Books, 2020) and the chapbook Honeysuckle (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Their poetry has recently appeared in Poetry, Washington Square Review, and Bellevue Literary Magazine.

Jeff Gu is from Toronto but now lives in the UK. He studied Spanish, Arabic, and cultural studies in his undergrad before his current master’s in musicology. When he isn’t playing rugby, ukulele, or video games, he’s either napping or trying to convince the world that it’s better than sleep.

Ellen Joan Harris has a MA in creative and life writing from Goldsmiths College, London. She’s currently working on her first novel.

Kiên Hoàng Lê is a freelance photographer living in Berlin, working for major publications in Germany and abroad. He has a BA in Advanced Visual Storytelling at the Danish School of Media and Journalism and studied photography at the University of Applied Sciences, Hannover. He is a founding member of CARTEL COLLECTIVE.

Lucy Jones translates literary fiction, art texts, plays, and journalism from German, including Ronald Schernikau, Silke Scheuermann, Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Brigitte Reimann, and Theresia Enzensberger. Forthcoming is her translation of Anke Stelling’s Schäfchen im Trockenen for Scribe Books. She lives in Berlin where she founded the collective Transfiction GbR and the Fiction Canteen reading series for LGBTQ* and PoC writers. Her own writing has been published in SAND #15, Visual Verse, Pigeon Papers, and 3:AM Magazine.

Rukmini Kalamangalam is a first-gen American page and performance poet from Houston, Texas, USA. She is a current sophomore at Emory University. In 2018, she was named Youth Poet Laureate of the Southwest as well as Houston Youth Poet Laureate. Her poem, “After Harvey,” was set to music by the Houston Grand Opera. She has been published by Jet Fuel Review, Blue Marble Review, Da Camera Museum, GASHER, and Tilde, among others.

Rachel Karyo’s short stories have appeared in Deep Cuts, Noctua Review, Liars’ League, Lumina Online, RipRap, Silent Auctions, Cease, Cows, Monster Mashup, and Belletrist. Rachel lives in Seattle, Washington, USA.

J. Kates is a poet and literary translator who lives in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire.

Célestin Krier is an illustrator and graphic designer. He has studied at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. In his works, he combines archaic illustrations with predefined shapes and contours. Celestin is from France and currently lives in Berlin.

Nic Lachance is a cloud of effort approaching their Saturn return. queer, floating, femme baby, in love with loving, and believes whatever Oprah says. into what is gayest, what is god-est.

Fabrice Le Nézet is a French director and designer based in London. He creates series of sculptural forms inspired by architecture and childhood. Recognisable in his work is a pure, clean and graphical aesthetic, combined with playful qualities. His work is organised in collections, where each piece is designed as a standalone structure, as well as an element of a wider aesthetic family, following predefined rules and sharing common attributes. In his research, Fabrice tries to synthesize concepts to create some sort of visual writing that can be developed into sculptures, films, prints and installations.

Liang Yujing grew up in China and is currently a PhD candidate at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His recent books of translation include Zero Distance: New Poetry from China (Tinfish Press, 2017) and Dai Weina’s Loving You at the Speed of a Snail Traveling around the World (Cold Hub Press, 2018).

Ba Ling, pen name of Yang Fei, is a Chinese poet born in 1980. His poems and short stories have appeared in a number of Chinese magazines and anthologies. He is the recipient of the third Breakthrough Poetry Award and works as a high school teacher in Suzhou, Anhui Province, China.

Laia Llobera i Serra is a Catalan poet, translator and literary critic. She is the author of the collections Cicles (Publicacions de la UAB, 2009), Més enllà dels grills (La Comarcal Edicions, 2011), Certesa de la llum (LaBreu Edicions, 2014), Boscana (Lleonard Muntaner Editor, 2018) and Llibre de revelacions (LaBreu Edicions, 2020). In recognition of her work, she has received various awards including the Pare Colom Mediterranian Poetry Prize and the Maria Oleart Prize. Her poems have been featured in several anthologies, including Mig segle de poesia catalana: del Maig del 68 al 2018 (Proa, 2018) and has been translated into Italian, English and Spanish.

Javier Lozano’s work focuses mostly on comics, music, and painting. As a musician, he has been part of Nix Neues, Arctic Drilling, and Remanso. As a painter, he has participated in several exhibitions, having compiled some of them in the book “DEMONS” (Frac de Medusas, 2017). As a comic creator, he has selfpublished many zines with comics or drawings and two big books: Welcome (Belleza Infinita, 2016) and Ser Amado (Fulgencio Pimentel, 2019).

Inger Wold Lund is a writer and artist based in Berlin. Lund is educated at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts; Konstfack, Stockholm; and Staatliche Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste, Frankfurt am Main. She is the writer of two books in her native Norwegian, published by Cappelen Damm and Flamme Forlag. A collection of her stories in English has been published by Ugly Duckling Presse. Recent exhibitions include Leviathan at Kunsthal Aarhus; The 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art and The 9th Norwegian Sculpture Biennial, Oslo.

Zophia McDougal is Petunia Meat; the Midwestern non-binary queer waving to you from behind the wheel of their Ford-F150 with a painted tailgate, and a sticker reading “Bernie2020.”. McDougal grew up in Missouri, surrounded by small towns and big-ish towns, cattle, corn, and interstate-70 commuters. They currently live and work in residency at the Osage Artists Community, as well as for the Maries-R2 School district as an artist, writer, open mic host, and paraprofessional.

Karla Marrufo Huchim holds a Doctorate in Hispanic-American literature from la Universidad Veracruzana. Her work has been recognized through several prestigious literary awards, including: the 2005-2007 National Wilberto Canton Award in playwriting, the XVI Jose Diaz Bolio Poetry Prize, and the 2014 National Dolores Castro in narration for her novel Mayo/May (Ayuntamiento de Aguascalientes, 2014). She received a fellowship from the Programa de Estímulo a la Creación y al Desarrollo Artístico en Yucatán, which resulted in the publication of her book Mérida lo invisible/Mérida the Invisible (published under the title Arquitecturas de lo invisible/Architecture of the Invisible in its second printing).

Ben McNutt is an artist from Kentucky who uses wrestling as subject matter for his work. For the past six years he has made photographs, billboards, drawings, videos, and most recently an illustrated colouring book. benmcnutt.com

Mateja Meded is an Alien from Mercury who was send to hack the system of the white western patriarchal world. She lives with her assistaent Hercule Poirot, who never pays rent and whose hair r all over Mateja‘’s flat in Berlin.

Momtaza Mehri is a poet, essayist and independent researcher. She is the winner of the 2019 Manchester Poetry Prize. Her work has been widely published in Granta, Artforum, Berkeley Poetry Review, and BOMB Magazine, amongst others. Her latest pamphlet, Doing the Most with the Least, was published by Goldsmiths Press in 2019.

Cole Meyer is pursuing an MFA in fiction at Florida State University. He is the managing editor at The Masters Review, and studied creative writing and classical humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His writing has been included in the Best Small Fictions anthology series and The Florida Review Online, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. He lives in Tallahassee with his wife Emily and their dog and cat. More can be found at cole-meyer.com.

Thomas Mixon was a featured writer at Mass Poetry’s U35 reading series in Boston. His work has appeared in Rogue Agent, Plainsongs, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere.

Gboyega Odubanjo is a British- Nigerian writer born and raised in East London. His pamphlet, While I Yet Live, was published by Bad Betty Press in 2019. He is a Roundhouse Resident Artist.

J.M. Parker’s fiction has appeared in Callisto, Chelsea Station, Foglifter, Frank, Gertrude, ISLE, and Segue, among other journals, been reprinted in Best Gay Stories 2015, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His first novel, A Budget Traveler’s Guide to the Museums of Europe, was published in 2017 by Lethe Press. His volume of translated poetry, Blossoms in Snow: Austrian Refugee Poets in Manhattan, is forthcoming with the University of New Orleans Press. He lives in Salzburg, Austria, where he teaches creative writing and American studies.

Vikram Ramakrishnan is a Tamil- American writer who was born in Bangalore, India and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied physics, mathematics, and computer science. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Newfound, Atlas and Alice, and AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review. He lives in New York City.

Jessica Anne Robinson is a Toronto writer. She has published poetry with Hart House Review, The Anti-Languorous Project, and Room Magazine, among others. She loves virtual farming and making collages. You can find her anywhere @hey_jeska.

Stefanie F. Scholz was born in 1983 in Japan, grew up in Australia, and now lives and works in Berlin. She studied drawing and printmaking at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin as well as the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna and received her diploma in 2012. After completing her studies, she illustrated several books, worked for newspapers and magazines, and began a series of computer cut-outs. The textures and rich colour palette she uses in her work are vibrant with modernist and architectural touches.

Fakoyede Seun is a Nigerian writer and teacher. He received a MSc in Functional Analysis from the University Of Ibadan, Nigeria in 2015. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Stoneboat Literary Journal, Five2One Magazine Online, and The Borfski Press. He is @ seunfax on Twitter.

Kyle Snyder is a technical writer living in Cleveland, Ohio, USA with his partner and four cats. He studied English, creative writing, and TEFL at Kent State University. His poetry has been featured in The Bastard’s Review and the tiny journal and will be published in an upcoming issue of The Westchester Review.

Waverly SM is a writer living in Oxford, England. They write about apocalypses, impossible questions, ambivalent universes, fraught queer romances, and the ambient trauma of living in the world. They’re a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow by way of the Writers’ Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, where they were mentored by Benjamin Alire Saenz. Their preferred non-literary pursuits include contemplating the ocean, gazing enigmatically into the middle distance, and single-player gaming. Find them on Twitter @waverly_sm, or via their website waverlysm.com.

Marcus Speh is a German writer and professor. Born in 1963, he trained as a particle physicist, contributed to the development of the World Wide Web, and writes in English and German. Widely published, his stories have been nominated for a Micro Award, two Pushcart Prizes, two Best of the Net awards and two Million Writers Awards, and he was longlisted for the Paris Literary Prize. His collection of short fiction, Thank You For Your Sperm was published in 2013 by MadHat Press. His novel Gisela was published by Folded Word Press in 2017. Marcus lives in Berlin and blogs at marcusspeh.com.

Sasa Stanisić was born in Yugoslavia and lives in Germany. A writer of fictions, his latest novel, Herkunft (Luchterhand, 2019), was the winner of the German Book Award 2019.

Morgan Stokes is an artist from Australia based in Berlin and Sydney. He holds a Master of Design from the University of New South Wales.

Scott Strom is a poet and playwright from Chicago, Illinois, currently attending Columbia College Chicago. His work has been featured in the Columbia Poetry Review, Into the Void, streetcake magazine, and is forthcoming in peculiar: a queer literary journal.

Ambika Thompson is a writer, musician, and parent. Her favourite colour is rainbow and she has a black cat that is a witch. She has been published in several international publications including Electric Literature, Riddle Fence, Crab Fat Magazine, Fanzine, and has a story forthcoming in Joyland. She has been in several amazing bands that nobody’s heard of such as The Anna Thompsons, Tschikabumm, The Honky Twats, and Razor Cunts. She is the founder and managing editor of the literary journal Leopardskin & Limes, and has an MFA in creative writing from Guelph University. ambikathompson.com.

Hsien Min Toh has written four books of poetry, most recently Dans quel sens tombent les feuilles, a bilingual French-English selection published by Editions Caracteres in Paris in 2016. He lives in Singapore.

Dženana Vucic is a Bosnian-Australian writer, poet and editor. She has been published in Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, Going Down Swinging, Australian Poetry Journal, Plumwood Mountain, Scum, the Australian Multilingual Writing Project, Rabbit, Lip Magazine, and Junkee.com. Her work has been shortlisted for the 2019 Deakin Nonfiction Prize.

Amie Robin Weiss lives near Brescia, Italy, where she works as a classical violinist and translator. She holds an MA in translation studies from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) and works from Italian, Catalan, Spanish and French into English. She regularly collaborates with museums, art publishers, authors, music ensembles, performing artists, researchers, municipalities, and NGOs on translated texts. Previous poetry translations have been published by the Cordite Review.

Andrew Wells has been published with Fanzine, Poetry Wales, Minor Lit(s), 3:AM Magazine, and Amberflora, among others. His first pamphlet was J/W/U (PYRAMID Editions, 2016) and his next is SEALED (Hesterglock, 2020). He is co-editor of HVTN Press.

Siru Wen is a visual artist from Dalian, China. Her practice intersects between video installation, film, and photography. Siru’s video installation has received the Award of Excellence at the Larnaca Biennale and been exhibited at the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Her photography has been published internationally, including by the Aesthetica Art Prize. She was selected to participate in the Artists-in-Residence program in Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and MASS MoCA.

Elvia Wilk is a writer and editor living in New York. Her first novel, Oval, was published by Soft Skull Press in 2019. She is currently a contributing editor at e-flux journal and a 2020 fellow at the Berggruen Institute.

Charlotte Wührer is a Berlin-based writer and translator from the West Midlands, UK. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in Ellipsis Zine, Elsewhere: A Journal of Place, Leopardskin and Limes, Counter Service, and Former Cactus, among other publications. She has been shortlisted for the Cambridge Short Story Prize, the Mslexia Novel Award, and the Bristol Short Story Prize. She is currently working on a flash fiction novella.

Lizzy Yarwood is currently living in Berlin where she volunteers for Sea Watch, works in a restaurant and writes. She’s been making a zine about supermarkets and in her spare time likes sewing things, going for walks and swimming, and playing on her keyboard.