SAND 22 Contributor Bios

Image from the Midas series by Wojciech Feć, featured in SAND 22

 

Grace Adeyemi is a London-based poet, of Nigerian heritage, who shares stories about loss, identity, and love. She is an alumna of RE-WRITE London and working on a poetry pamphlet which explores growing up British Nigerian. Her poem “Saturdays” was shortlisted for The A3 Review and Press July contest.

Katrina Agbayani is currently studying English Literature. Her work appears in the UC Review, Trinity Review, and has been awarded the OECTA Young Authors Prize. When not writing, she can be found biking by unnamed fields.

Alex Aldred (he/him) lives and writes in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he is currently studying towards his PhD in creative writing. You can find out more about his work by visiting his site, alexaldred.co.uk, finding him on twitter @itsmealexaldred, or by summoning him to speak with you in person, provided you have access to the necessary runes.

Rosaire Appel’s work explores intercon- nections among reading, looking and listening. The vehicle for her exploration is drawing. She creates graphic novellas, abstract comics, asemic writing and asemic music. Her work has been included in many international publications and is featured in Peter Schwenger’s scholarly study Asemic: The Art of Writing (2019). She lives in New York and takes many pictures.

Frankie Barnet is the author of An Indoor Kind of Girl (Metatron Press, 2016). Her stories have been published in places such as PRISM International, Event Magazine, Wash- ington Square Review, and the Best Canadian Stories Anthology of both 2016 and 2019 (Oberon Press).

Julie Beugin is a Canadian artist, based in Berlin since 2009, who works in abstract painting as well as photographic collage. In her photo- graphic collages, which are also a source for her abstract paintings, she transforms the routine pathways and quotidian architecture of Berlin into unexpected alignments. She completed her MFA in 2008 at Concordia University in Montréal, and her BFA at Emily Carr University in Vancouver in 2004. She has exhibited across Canada as well as in Berlin, and is represented by VivianeArt in Calgary and Paul Petro Contemporary Art in Toronto.

Lena Blackmon (they/she) is a scientist and a poet. With writing featured in The Offing, Rookie, and The Visible Poetry Project, their work is also part of the anthology, Rookie on Love (Penguin Random House, 2018). They were named a 2018 VONA/Voices fellow and have previously performed with the Stanford Spoken Word Collective.

Micheal Chang (they/them) was awarded the Kundiman Scholarship at the Miami Writers Institute in addition to fellowships from Lambda Literary, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Brooklyn Poets, and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Their writing has appeared in The Cincinnati Review,  The  Summerset Review, Vassar Review, the minnesota review, Santa Clara Review, Ninth Letter, Hobart, Harpur Palate, Poet Lore, The Nervous Breakdown, and more. A finalist in contests at BOMB, Night-Block, and many others, their poems have been nominated for Best of the Net. Their collection <golden fleece> was a finalist for the Iowa Review Award in Poetry.

Carol Claassen‘s prose has been noted in The Best American Essays 2011, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, nominated for Best of the Net, awarded The Forge Flash Nonfiction Competition Prize, and is published or forthcoming in The Pinch, The Normal School, Fourth Genre, The Forge Literary Magazine, Pidgeonholes, and 3Elements Review. She is working on a memoir about her relationship with her father while riding out the pandemic in her mother’s basement in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Elisa Crawley is an immigrant, teacher, poet, and writer. She was selected both in 2019 and 2020 to be a part of the Boston Mayor’s Poetry Program by Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola. Her work can be found in Fathom, Sojourners, and Boston City Hall.

Kat Dixon-Ward is a poet and mental healthcare assistant based in London. She has written for various platforms including TORCH, The Wilfred Owen Association Journal and Indus- try Magazine. Her plays have been performed in Oxford at the BT Studio and North Wall Thea- tre, and in Edinburgh at Bedlam Theatre.

Claire Dodd‘s work has been published in The Rumpus and Columbia Journal (online) and awarded an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s 2019 Short Story Award for New Writers contest. She received a BA in English from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She currently lives in San Francisco with her partner and son.

Wojciech Feć is a London-based interdisci- plinary artist working across photography and new media. His work is investigative and research-driven, dealing with the parascientific, unexplained, and magical.

R.M. Fradkin studied writing with Amy Hempel and Bret Johnston at Harvard and has had short fiction published in Cherry Tree, Theak- er’s Quarterly, Cleaver Magazine, and Tincture Journal, among others. She is also Affiliate Editor of the Alaska Quarterly Review. She is beginning an MFA at the University of Idaho in the fall.

Sherese Francis is a NYC-based, Afro- Caribbean-American poet, editor, interdisciplinary artist, workshop facilitator, and literary curator of the project, J. Expressions. She has published work in various publications including Furious Flower, Obsidian Lit, The Operating System, Apex Magazine, and African Voices. Additionally, she has published two chapbooks, Lucy’s Bone Scrolls and Variations on Sett/ling Seed/ling, and has another one on the way from DoubleCross Press titled Recycling a Why That Rules Over My Sacred Sight. futuristicallyancient.com

Joanna Garmon is an emerging artist from Boston, Massachusetts, currently living and working in Berlin. She has completed programs at the New York Academy of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and received her BFA at the Lesley University College of Art and Design. Upon her relocation to Berlin in 2019, her practice has shifted from a basis of painting to a broader range of mediums, including performative sculpture and installation. Her work centers around the body, obsession, labor, language, and futility. Joanna has exhibited at various galleries in Boston and Berlin.

Fee Griffin studied Creative Writing at the University of Lincoln, where she continues to serve as a Senior Poetry Editor for The Lincoln Review. She is the winner of the inaugural Amsterdam Open Book Prize and her first collec- tion, For Work/For TV, was published by Versal Editions in late 2020. Fee has poetry and other writing published or forthcoming in Poetry London, Hotel, Streetcake, The Abandoned Playground, Channel, and in anthology with Dunlin Press (Port, 2019).

David Hanes (b. 1987) is a Canadian/American visual artist who is living and working in Berlin, Germany. Often working in series, Hanes works with a mixture of enthusiasm and unease as he confronts questions of technological and spiritual consequence in the present moment. The digital age has radically altered how we consume and learn about art, and Hanes negotiates and empathizes with these issues of digital dualism.

Melanie Hoffert is the author of Prairie Silence (Beacon Press, 2014), recipient of the Minnesota Book Award in Memoir and Creative Non-Fiction. She has been published in several literary journals, including Orion, Ascent, Fugue, and The UTNE Reader. The Baltimore Re- view and New Millennium Writings each selected her work as the recipient of their CNF Writing Award. Melanie currently splits her time between her home in Minneapolis and her cabin in rural Minnesota, where she is finishing a memoir called Water Land. melaniehoffert.com

Erin Honeycutt writes poetry, exhibition reviews, and a variety of texts in collaboration with artists. She has read text at Kadett (Amster- dam, 2019), IÐNO Theater (Reykjavik, 2019), FotoTallinn (Tallinn, 2019), Dzialdov Gallery (Berlin, 2019), Reykjavik Arts Festival (2018), DA Space (Heraklion, 2018), Beyond Human Impulses (Athens, 2018), and Pólar Festival (Stöðvarfjörður, 2017). She has an MA in Art History from the University of Iceland and one in Religion from the University of Amsterdam, and now lives in Berlin.

Birhan Keskin was born in Kırklareli, Turkey. She graduated from Istanbul University in 1986 with a degree in sociology. From 1995 to 1998 she was joint editor of the small magazine Göçebe. She has since worked as an editor for a number of prominent publishing houses in Istanbul. Her books include: Delilirikler (1991), Bakarsın Üzgün Dönerim (1994), Cinayet Kısı + Iki Mektup (1996), Yirmi Lak Tablet + Yolcunun Siyah Bavulu (1999), and Yeryüzü Halleri (2002). These five books were collected by Metis Publish- ing into Kim Bagıslayacak Beni (2005). Metis published four further collections, Ba (2005), Y’ol (2006), Soguk Kazı (2010), and Fakir Kene (2016). Birhan Keskin was the 2005 winner of Turkey’s prestigious Golden Orange Award for Ba. Soguk Kazı won the Metin Altıok poetry prize in 2016.

Yongjae Kim is a Brooklyn-based artist. His works have been exhibited at Volta NY 2017, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, George Billis Gallery in NY, Muriel Guépin Gallery in NY, Galerie Mokum, Netherland; and Attleboro Arts Museum among others. His paintings were selected for First Place Award at the international art exhibition “City” in Art Room gallery in 2018, and Best Color Work Award from Korea Society of Color Studies in 2014. Kim attended Joshua Tree Highland Artists Residency Program in 2013. He is currently a member of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program in New York.

Neysa King is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared in Chaleur Magazine, Slippery Elm, San Antonio Review and others. She was a finalist for the 2019 Princemere Prize in Poetry and the recipient of the 2020 San Antonio Writers Guild Prize in Poetry.

Inna Krasnoper is an artist and poet born in Ufa, Russia. She has lived in Berlin since 2011. Inna received a BA in Dance, Context, Choreography at the Inter-University Centre for Dance (UdK Berlin). Inna is part of the fol- lowing collectives and projects: “Space-in-g”, “[In]exhaustible resource”, “On transitions”, “Seven States of Matter”, “Three Julietttes”, “in other words”. She works with text and transla- tion in between Russian and English languages. Inna has published in stadtsprachen magazin, This Container 07, Slanted House, and Bridge. Poems in Russian were published in [Translit] Journal, F-writing, Articulation project, almanac- fire, and Nosorog Journal.

Jennifer Kronovet is the author of two books of poetry, most recently The Wug Test (Ecco, 2016). She is also the co-translator of two books, including Empty Chairs (Graywolf Press, 2015), the selected poems of Chinese art- ist Liu Xia. She edits Circumference Books, a new press for poetry in translation.

Nathaniel LaCelle-Peterson is a reader and writer living in Berlin. He is an editor at the FU Review and at Eachother Journal.

Minjung Lee is a South Korean artist, cur- rently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Trained as a sculptor, she employs drawn surface as a sculp- tural medium to measure the distance between the mind and the physical world. Lee received her MFA in Sculpture from Slade School of Fine Art in London, and her BFA in Sculpture from Seoul National University in Seoul. Her works have been shown at venues including Alternative Space Noon, CICA Museum, Cube Space and Space Mass in South Korea; Joshua Tree Gallery, CA and Attleboro Arts Museum, MA, USA, among others.

Jess Mc Kinney is a writer from Inishowen, Co. Donegal in Ireland. She is currently studying her MA in Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast. Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Ban- shee, Abridged, and Poethead. She was awarded the Irish Chair of Poetry Student Award 2020.

Siofra McSherry was born in Newry, Northern Ireland. She completed her PhD in American Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin and previously studied at UCL and Oxford. Síofra has published poems in anthologies including Birds: An Anthology (Bodleian Library, 2020), Sylvia is Missing (Flarestack, 2012), The Salt Book of Younger Poets (Salt, 2011), and journals including Poetry Wales, Poems in Which, Foam:e, Abraxas, and Hysteria. Her pamphlet Requiem (The Emma Press, 2019) was the Poetry Book Society 2020 Spring Pamphlet choice.

Londeka Mdluli is from the Mpumalanga province in South Africa, and is of dual national- ity – born in South Africa, she does not shy away from her Zimbabwean heritage. She incredibly enjoys the act of writing.

Neha Mulay is an Australian-Indian writer and a current MFA candidate in poetry at New York University. Her poems have appeared/ are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, The Maine Review, and Coffin Bell Journal, among other publications. Her essays have appeared in Overland Literary Journal (online) and Feminartsy. She is the Managing Editor of Honeysuckle Magazine.

Stella N’Djoku is a Swiss poet, journalist, and educator of Italian and Congolese heritage. Poems from her first collection, Il tempo di una cometa (Ensemble, 2019), have been published in online literary journals and in the anthology Abitare la parola: Poeti nati negli anni Novanta (Ladolfi, 2019). In the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak, she contributed two new poems to the anthology Dal sottovuoto: Poesie assetate d’aria (Samuele, 2020), forthcoming in English translation in Heart of Hearts Journal.

Nora Nadjarian is an award-winning poet and writer from Cyprus. She has had poetry and short fiction published internationally. Her work was included in various anthologies, among others, in Best European Fiction 2011 (Dalkey Archive Press), Being Human (Bloodaxe Books, 2011) and Europa 28 (Comma Press, 2020). Her latest book is the collection of short stories Selfie (Roman Books, 2017).

Tariro Ndoro is a Zimbabwean writer. Her short fiction has appeared on various literary platforms, including Moving On and Other Zimba- bwean Stories (amabooks, 2017), La Shamba, New Contrast, Fireside Fiction, and Hotel Africa: New Short Fiction from Africa (New International- ist Publications, 2020). Her award-winning debut poetry collection, Agringada: Like a gringa, like a foreigner was published in 2019 by ModjajiBooks. Tariro resides in Harare, where she is currently working on a collection of short stories.

Viva Padilla is a bilingual poet and writer from South Central Los Angeles. She’s the founding editor in chief of Dryland, an independent and grassroots print literary journal. Viva’s work has been featured or is forthcoming in the L.A. Times, The Acentos Review, Cultural Weekly, wearemitú, and Every. Thing. Changes., an art exhibition by the L.A. Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. Viva is a first-generation Chicana. She dedicates her work to the memory of her father and the sacrifice made by both of her parents.

Ann Pedone graduated from Bard College with a degree in English Literature and has a Master’s Degree in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. She is the author of the chapbooks The Bird Happened (Leave Books), perhaps there is a sky we don’t know: a re-imagining of sappho (Cup and Dagger Press), DREAM/WORK and Everywhere You Put Your Mouth (Halas Press). Her work is featured in Narrative Magazine, Abramelin, Big City Lit, Con- temporary Verse 2, The Phare, West Trade Re- view, The Open Page Literary Journal, Slipstream, The French Literary Review, and The Shore.

Julia Anastasia Pelosi-Thorpe translates into English and into XML (TEI). Her translations of Italian and Latin poetry are published/forthcoming in the Journal of Italian Translation, Griffith Review, Asymptote, the Los Angeles Review, Oberon Poetry, the Australian Multilingual Writing Project, and more. She can be found @jpelosithorpe

Ela Przybylo (she/her/ona) is a Polish-Canadian queer nonbinary writer. She is Assistant Professor in English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Illinois State University, the author of Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality (Ohio State University Press, 2019) and editor of On the Politics of Ugliness (Palgrave, 2018), as well as many other peer-reviewed publications including in such journals as Feminist Formations, GLQ, and Radical Teacher. Her creative writing has been published in Entropy as part of the “Name Tags” series, in Canadian Woman Studies, and is forth- coming with Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review. 

Ayesha Raees identifies herself as a hybrid creating hybrid poetry through hybrid forms. Raees currently serves as an Assistant Poetry Editor at AAWW’s The Margins and has received fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Brooklyn Poets, and Kundiman. From Lahore, Pakistan, Raees is a graduate of Ben- nington College, and currently lives in New York City. ayesharaees.com

henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words of con- flagration to awaken the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse illuminated by his affinity for disobedience, like a discharged bullet that commits a felony every day, the spontaneous combustion that blazes from his heart, phoenix-fluxed red and gold, exploding through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press, 2014) and the e-chapbook physiography of the fittest (Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2014). Additionally, he has self-published a chapbook entitled 13hirteen Levels of Resistance, and his collection The Book Of Blue(s): Tryin’ To Make A Dollar Outta’ Fifteen Cents, was a finalist for the 2018 Digging Press Chapbook Series. His work has also been nomi- nated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net.

Ella Schoefer-Wulf (MFA) is a writer and artist based in Berlin. Her work is a primarily linguistic inquiry into the relationship between language and the body through visual art, performance, and digital media. Specifically, she considers occurrences and their documentation, the visceral aspects of concepts, and parameters across media that direct or restrict gestures. She has lectured, performed and exhibited her work in the USA and Germany, and she has curated numerous exhibits in the San Francisco Bay Area and Berlin.

Dorsia Smith Silva is a Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Portland Review, Stoneboat, Storyscape, Pidg- eonholes, Eclectica Magazine, and elsewhere. She is also the editor of Latina/Chicana Mothering and the co-editor of six books. She is currently finishing her first poetry book.

Bayley Sprowl will get rid of your ghosts. Loosely based in Los Angeles, California, she’s a resident poet in that she’s always writing at your place. Her work appears in pioneertown and Frontier Poetry’s New Voices. Bayley believes in chemistry and favors the elements: soil, water, breath, and heat. Find Bayley at the closest ocean or your local farmers’ market where you’ll catch her making mountains out of molehills and vice versa. Rare bird. Plays the fool. Preoccupied with stars. Bayley’s got a lot of layers – don’t be surprised if her jacket ends up in your car.

Ilias Tsagas is a Greek poet living in London. He is a member of two poetry groups (Greenwich Stanza and Lowercase Poets) and writes poetry in English and in Greek.

Ojo Taiye is a young Nigerian who uses poetry as a handy tool to hide his frustration with society.

Öykü Tekten is a poet, translator, and editor living between Granada and New York. She is a founding member of Pinsapo, an art and publish- ing experience with a particular focus on work in and about translation. She also pursues a PhD degree in English at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

Rushika Wick is a poet with an interest in visual poetry and how social contracts im- pact the body. She has contributed to various magazines including Ambit, Datableed, and Tentacular as well as anthologies including SMEAR (Andrews McMeel, 2020) and MIR16. Her debut collection is being published by Verve next spring.

Jim Young is an old poet living in The Mumbles, Gower, Wales, UK. He does most of his writing in his beach hut at Rotherslade Bay, on the Gower.