 Photo Credit: Michelle Kilfeather Yeva Johnson, a poet whose work appears or is forthcoming in the Bellingham Review and Sinister Wisdom, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A past Artist-in-Residence for Show Us Your Spines, part of the Marin Poetry Center and QTPOC4SHO, an artists’ collective, Yeva explores interlocking caste systems and human connections. Artist Statement Yeva Johnson, a Black American Jewish queer Lesbian feminist pacifist Unitarian Universalist mother and musician, is an emerging poet who works as a family physician by day. Yeva’s poems are lyrical explorations of social hierarchies and interlocking caste-systems, the life cycle, nature and possibilities for interconnection. In a process she calls meta-ekphrastic, Yeva blends art, music, literature and other experiences to cross boundaries. Her poems engage the reader/listener on multiple levels and touch people at their soft centers either through the written page or in performance. Yeva believes that art can connect us to the present, past, and future. Some of Yeva’s favorite poets include Arisa White, Dawn McGuire, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eve L. Ewing, Lucille Clifton, Lynn Emanuel, Pat Parker, Patricia Smith, and Sappho. Yeva has been invited to be a reader at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco in August and September of 2020 (www.MOADsf.org).  Coming from Stockton, California, Anna Allen has always held a deep interest in poetry. All throughout elementary school, she looked forward to the month where the class was instructed to write stories. That interest will be there, she believes, forever.
Why do you write? What compels you to write? With the state of the world today and the past, I feel that the one of the things that I can do for myself, my community and my family is write. I love to write poetry because it is a dedicated art form for anyone to get involved in. I’m increasingly blown away by the talent and strength I hear and see from the people in the poetry community. It’s contagious. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? Right now, I am working on a small book of poetry. It is called, “Tweets From Birmingham Jail”. It examines the relationship between Black folks and the police and the trauma that Blacks are given. It examines the racial stress Black people have felt since birth. It’s highly emotional and it’s taking a lot out of me. It is taking a while to write it. But I will be done soon! Describe your work in five words Morose Black/Queer/Disabled Hopeful Strange Edgy What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? Everything by Gwendolyn Brooks has been a huge inspiration. Same with James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. Every time I look at Frida Kahlo’s work, I want to write. We're BACK with another rendition of RADAR's GLOW feature, where we spotlight QTPOC writers in the community. Did you miss us? We're very lucky to showcase Yodassa Williams! Her debut novel, The Goddess Twins, was released this past May and it's a fantastic magical adventure that takes the reader from Ohio to London. The novel follows identical twins, Arden and Aurora, as they develop their telepathic and telekinetic powers while uncovering ancestral secrets. You're not going to regret picking up this book!  Yodassa Williams is a Jamaican American writer, speaker, and award winning performing storyteller, passionate about using her curiosity to spark fires inside others. Yodassa is an alumna of the VONA/Voices Travel Writing program, the 2018 Fortify Writers Retreat, and a writing residency with Nefe Nof. She is a blogger for the 2020 Debutante Ball. In October of 2019, Yodassa launched ‘Writers Emerging’ a four day wilderness writing retreat for women of color and non-binary people of color, held at Fly Ranch. Her debut novel, a YA fantasy, details the adventure of seventeen year old Caribbean American twins discovering they are goddesses when their mother goes missing. The Goddess Twins, published by SparkPress in May 2020, is now available on Amazon and IndieBound. Yodassa grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and currently resides in the Bay Area.   RADAR Superstar is teaming up with THE STUD to take our writers virtual! Join us for a stellar show on June 2nd at 6:30pm! Featuring: Sister Spit 2020 Baruch Porras-Hernandez Yodassa Williams Special Guests: March Show Us Your Spines Residents View Here: https://m.twitch.tv/dragalive/profile ▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼ ▼ANANYA GARG▼ Ananya Garg is a young queer Indian poet and spoken word performance artist. She is slowly learning to heal and shine. She sees her QTPOC arts community as a central force in her healing process and hopes her words can be a part of your healing. She attended the the University of Washington where she studied Gender, Women, Sexuality Studies & Comparative History of Ideas, with minors in Anthropology & Diversity. You can find her working as an Educator with the Washington Building Leaders of Change Seattle Freedom Schools at Rainier Beach High School. She is also a poet/performance/teaching artist in the Seattle area. ▼BARUCH PORRAS HERNANDEZ▼ Baruch Porras Hernandez is a queer Mexican Immigrant from Toluca, Mexico. He is a writer, performer, storyteller, playwright and stand-up comedian, a two-time winner of Literary Death Match, a Lambda Literary Poetry Fellow, a Lambda Literary Playwriting Fellow, a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and was named a Bay Area Writer to Watch! in 2016 by 7×7 San Francisco Magazine. He is the founder and host of ¿Donde Esta Mi Gente? Latinx Literary Series, a regular KQED Arts host, and was the Voice of Shipwreck SF Erotic Fan Fiction Competition and podcast for four years and hosted the legendary SF Queer Open Mic for 7 years. His poems have been published in several anthologies and journals, both online and in print. Last summer he had the honor of being an artist in residence at the Ground Floor Summer Lab with Berkeley Repertory Theatre. He lives in San Francisco. ▼CREATRIX TIARA▼ Creatrix Tiara (pronouns: Tiara, or they/them) works with creative arts & media, technology, games, community cultural development, and education to explore ideas around community, identity, liminality, belonging, and social justice. Tiara is very interested in exploring the ways that various mediums can be used to convey and support experiences of transience and flux while also building empathy and understanding for experiences and stories outside one's own. In 2018 Creatrix Tiara wrote, produced, and performed in their first full-length theatre show, Queer Lady Magician, exploring stage magic through a queer, feminist, decolonial lens. Tiara also performs and produces for LGBTQIA+ disability arts collective Quippings, was a Dandy Minion and Burlesque Dancer in the 2017 Melbourne Festival production of Taylor Mac's 24 Decade History of Popular Music, produced and performed for San Francisco South Asian women's theatre program Yoni Ki Baat, and has made work across US, Australia, and elsewhere. ▼DENA ROD▼ Dena Rod is a writer, editor, and poet based in the Bay Area. A graduate of San Francisco State University, they have an M.A. in English Literature. They run the RADAR Productions weblog and are the Assistant Creative Nonfiction Editor at homology lit, and formerly the Managing Editor of Argot Literary Magazine. They were selected for RADAR Productions’ Show Us Your Spines Residency, Kearny Street Workshop’s Interdisciplinary Writer’s Lab, and Winter Tangerine’s Summer Writer’s Workshop. Through creative nonfiction essays and poetry, Dena works to illuminate their diasporic experiences of Iranian American heritage and queer identity, combating negative stereotypes of their intersecting identities in the mainstream media. ▼IMANI SIMS▼ Imani Sims is an alchemist and author. She believes in the healing power of community ritual and performance art. As Director for RADAR Productions she continues to elevate the narratives of QTPOC folk all over the nation. Her work illuminates the death and life living within the black femme. ▼JUNAUDA PETRUS-NASAH▼ Junauda Petrus is a writer, pleasure activist, filmmaker, runaway witch, cosmic bag lady and performance artist of Black-Caribbean descent, born on Dakota land. She creates performance and written work centering in wildness, queerness, Black-diasporic-futurism, ancestral healing, sweetness, shimmer and liberation. She is the co-founder with Erin Sharkey of Free Black Dirt, an experimental arts production company. She is currently writing and directing, "Sweetness of Wild" a poetic-episodic film series themed around Blackness, queerness, biking, resistance, love and coming of age in Minneapolis. Her first young adult novel, The Stars and The Blackness Between Them, debuts September 2019 on Dutton Children’s. It’s about queer, Black diasporic love, mass incarceration, astrology, ancestral magic, Whitney Houston, and trusting the sacredness of your existence despite oppression and heartbreak. She lives in Minneapolis with her wife and magically aquarian, bonus-daughter. ▼LIBRECHT BAKER▼ librecht baker is the author of vetiver (Finishing Line Press), an English Professor, and a Sundress Publications' Assistant Editor. She was part of The Vagrancy’s 2018-2019 Playwrights’ Group and Eastside Queer Stories Festival 2019 and 2017. baker has attended Ragdale, VONA/Voices, and Lambda Literary Writer’s Retreat. she has a MFA from Goddard College. Her poetry appears in Solace: Writing Refuge, & LGBTQ Women of Color, Bone Bouquet (Issue 8.1), Sinister Wisdom 107, and other publications. Baker's play, "Lineage Undone," was awarded Top Performance in the "Top Papers and Performances in Performance Studies" category at Western States Communication Association’s 89th Convention. ▼MIA WILLIS▼ Mia S. Willis is a Black performance poet from Charlotte, North Carolina. Their work has been featured by or is forthcoming in FreezeRay, Curating Alexandria, WORDPEACE, Peculiar, Foothill, Button Poetry, and Slamfind. Mia's poem "hecatomb." was nominated for a 2018 Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in Best New Poets 2018. They ranked fourth out of 96 femme poets at the 2018 Women of the World Poetry Slam, placed fifth out of 150 poets at the 2018 Southern Fried Poetry Slam, and recently became the first two-time Capturing Fire Slam Champion (2018, 2019). Mia was also named a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry as well as the 2019 Young Artist Fellow at ChaShaMa’s ChaNorth residency in Pine Plains, NY. Their debut poetry collection, monster house., was the 2018 winner of the Cave Canem Foundation’s Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize and is available now with Jai-Alai Books. ▼YODASSA WILLIAMS▼ A powerful conjurer of black girl magic, Yodassa Williams is a queer femme Jamaican American writer and performing storyteller. Her AfroCarribean YA fantasy, The Goddess Twins, will be published in May 2020. An alumna of VONA, she is writing a memoir of her adventures at Burning Man. In October, she launches a wilderness writing retreat exclusively for women and non binary persons of color in Fly Ranch, Nevada.  Can you believe Sister Spit is only 15 days away?! Us either! Rounding out our GLOW Sister Spit features is Dena Rod!
Dena Rod is a writer, editor, and poet based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dena works to illuminate their diasporic experiences of Iranian American heritage and queer identity, combating negative stereotypes of their intersections in the mainstream media. Their poetry and creative nonfiction essays have appeared in the newly released My Shadow is My Skin: Voices From the Iranian Diaspora anthology, Endangered Species, Enduring Values: An Anthology of San Francisco Area Writers and Artists of Color, Forum Literary Magazine, Beyond Bloodlines (funded in part by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts), Argot Magazine, and Imagoes: a Queer Anthology. Catch them on Twitter @alightningrod & at denarod.com Why do you write? What compels you to write? No matter how many times I've told myself I'm not a writer, despite my best attempts at resisting an artist's path somehow it always bubbles forth in the most unexpected ways. I've tried to ignore my creative instincts for too long and have decided to embrace the truths that are waiting to escape layers of my own suppression. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to my artistic practice but that's why it's called practice: you have to put in the minutes and hours on the page before going anywhere else. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? My project most close to completion is a poetry manuscript that writes into my imagined ancestry that has been lost to me as a result of migration called Scattered Arils. I also have a YA fantasy novel simmering on the back burner about a Iranian American girl named Asal who learns she can travel through time by walking through fire. Also on the horizon is a collection of creative nonfiction essays about my life growing up queer and Iranian American in the diaspora. Describe your work in five words: shimmering, decadent, lush, packed splendor What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? It's hard to make a definitive list of my influences, since there are so many. Tracing these threads I find the first inspiration is Audre Lorde; I wrote my MA thesis on her biomythography, Zami, and Homi Bhabha's theory of the "Third Space of Enunciation." Post-colonial theory was my first foray in disrupting Western narratives that are commonly prevalent in the English literary canon and this has molded my artistic perspective immensely in ways that I'm still discovering as a creative writer (rather than an academic one). I find myself inspired by lives and legacies of my Iranian poet foremothers, Simin Behbahani (touted as the lionness of Iran), and Forough Farrokhzad who wrote against blood spilled by their governments and revolutions. I'm also incredibly influenced by the magical girl genre in anime (like Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura), the fantastical stories I read as a child like Harry Potter and The Golden Compass; stories of extraordinary children who are thrust into a destiny they don't quite want but still forge ahead. I didn't necessarily see myself in these stories growing up but they were a comfort against the world I actually inhabited. I want to write the type of stories I needed when I was young.  Continuing our spotlight with our Sister Spit 2020 artists, we have Junauda Petrus!
Junauda Petrus is a writer, pleasure activist, filmmaker, runaway witch, cosmic bag lady and performance artist of Black-Caribbean descent, born on Dakota land. She creates performance and written work centering in wildness, queerness, Black-diasporic-futurism, ancestral healing, sweetness, shimmer and liberation. She is the co-founder with Erin Sharkey of Free Black Dirt, an experimental arts production company. She is currently writing and directing, "Sweetness of Wild" a poetic-episodic film series themed around Blackness, queerness, biking, resistance, love and coming of age in Minneapolis. Her first young adult novel, The Stars and The Blackness Between Them, debuts September 2019 on Dutton Children’s. It’s about queer, Black diasporic love, mass incarceration, astrology, ancestral magic, Whitney Houston, and trusting the sacredness of your existence despite oppression and heartbreak. She lives in Minneapolis with her wife and magically aquarian, bonus-daughter. Why do you write? What compels you to write? I write things to heal and to find myself and my existence on the page. From since I was young, writing has been my therapy and my place of magic. When I was young, I looked to books to help with feelings of loneliness and outsiderness, and as a writer I seek to put love and sweetness on the page for all of those who needed to see a reflection of their divine, sweet selves. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? I'm working on a new young adult book that I'm super excited about that takes place in the 90s and deals with Black intergenerational healing and feelings. I also am working on writing some film projects and completing a poetry collection. Describe your work in five words: Whimsical, Emo, Funny, Black, Sensuous. What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? I'm deeply inspired by the Black Feminist Canon of greats, Toni Morrison, Alexis DeVeaux, Sharon Bridgforth, Alice Walker, June Jordan, Lucille Clifton, Angela Davis, Assata Shakur and Octavia countless contemporaries who are continuing the magical healing through text. I'm inspired by the falsetto of Marvin Gaye, Bilal and D'Angelo, and the perfection of nature and the cosmos. I'm inspired by Black queerness and radicalism and how that has been a beacon of healing in an anti-Black reality for me. All of these energies, named and unnamed have helped me in re-imagining a world that is dipped in our creative expressions and limitless healing.  Rounding out January's features for GLOW's Sister Spit 2020 edition is librecht baker!
librecht baker is the author of vetiver (Finishing Line Press), an English Professor, and a Sundress Publications' Assistant Editor. She was part of The Vagrancy’s 2018-2019 Playwrights’ Group and Eastside Queer Stories Festival 2019 and 2017. baker has attended Ragdale, VONA/Voices, and Lambda Literary Writer’s Retreat. she has a MFA from Goddard College. Her poetry appears in Solace: Writing Refuge, & LGBTQ Women of Color, Bone Bouquet (Issue 8.1), Sinister Wisdom 107, and other publications. Baker's play, "Lineage Undone," was awarded Top Performance in the "Top Papers and Performances in Performance Studies" category at Western States Communication Association’s 89th Convention. What compels you to write? Writing is my path and life long practice. It’s the one way I contribute to our world and collective dialogues, focusing on the personal and communal. Beyond my personal drive, I feel compelled by my Egun and living lineage to add to what has been previously created and built to fortify it more. Too, I’m compelled by my Black culture and Diaspora, conversations, adding/balancing the grief seen and experienced, other folk's art, curiosity, blissful feelings, and other fantastical things. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? I'm collaborating on a couple projects, but there is no information that I'd like to share about them. Aside from those, my one act play, "Afterlife or Bust," will be produced in Q Youth Foundations' Eastside Queer Stories Festival 2020 at La Plaza de la Raza Theater in Los Angeles in May. Describe your work in five words. My writings are Black (as in people, culture, an experience, uplifting, matter, etc.), an altar/alter, celebratory, and an affirmation. What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? This is the worst and difficult question for me to answer because I'm always under the influence, and when I'm influenced, I effort to say a name and/or put a label on it to remember and/or acknowledge. Some influences include Noah Purifoy's artwork in Joshua Tree, West African drum and dance culture, too many writers' work, such as Adelia Prado's The Alphabet Park, Black Quantum Futurism: Theory & Practice by Rasheedah Phillips, Anastacia Renee's (v.), Harriet A. Washington's Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial time to the Present, Ching-in Chen's The Heart's Traffic's, and N.K. Jemisin The Broken Earth Trilogy for example, Karon Davis’ visuals, traditionalist and remixers, tricksters of language, "Hoodrat to Headwrap: A Decolonized Podcast," hummingbirds in the Ann Star Magnolia trees outside, spirit/spirituality, Marcia Jones' "Displaced Oshun Theory," the ocean, calathea lancifolia, coffee, and an ongoing oscillating list of stuff.  Kicking off 2020's GLOW Queer Artist feature is Ananya Garg!
Ananya Garg is a South Asian lesbian, poet, and spoken word performance artist. She sees her creative practice as a community practice whether she writes in a circle or alone with her pen. Ananya has performed in Tasveer's 2018 Yoni Ki Baat, directed by Uma Rao, Tasveer's Subcontinental Drift, and Yoni Ki Baat 2018 in San Francisco at the Tenderloin Museum. She has also appeared in the University of Washington's Womxn's Action Commission's "The ____ Monologues," Lavish: A QTPOC Arts Showcase hosted by the Q Center at the University of Washington, the Viva La Healing Conference at the Ethnic Cultural Theatre, and more. She has also read at Hugo House, Gay City, and featured with YouthSpeaks Seattle, Alchemy Poetry Series, and Amplifier. Ananya has taught poetry and art through the Asian Pacific Environmental Network in the Bay Area, and worked as an educator for the Seattle Freedom Schools. Why do you write? What compels you to write? I write for myself, my communities, and my ancestors. To quote Audre Lorde, "poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action." I write because I must. It is my survival. Describe your work in five words. Raw, longing, urgent, curious, still. Artistic influences/inspirations? My queer ancestors whose memories were erased by the violence of British colonialism but live on in my body. The brown queer elders in my life and the brown queer futures.  Turning the spotlight to our other Sister Spit artists, we have the magical Creatrix Tiara! You can help bring Tiara and other Sister Spitters on the road by donating to the Sister Spit fundraiser!
Creatrix Tiara works with creative arts & media, technology, games, community cultural development, and education to explore ideas around community, identity, liminality, belonging, and social justice. Tiara is very interested in exploring the ways that various mediums can be used to convey and support experiences of transience and flux while also building empathy and understanding for experiences and stories outside one's own. In 2018 Creatrix Tiara wrote, produced, and performed in their first full-length theatre show, Queer Lady Magician, exploring stage magic through a queer, feminist, decolonial lens. Tiara also performs and produces for LGBTQIA+ disability arts collective Quippings, was a Dandy Minion and Burlesque Dancer in the 2017 Melbourne Festival production of Taylor Mac's 24 Decade History of Popular Music, produced and performed for San Francisco South Asian women's theatre program Yoni Ki Baat, and has made work across US, Australia, and elsewhere. from the artist Describe your work in five words. Liminal, interdisciplinary, vulnerable, passionate, curious What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? I'm a big Darren Hayes (ex Savage Garden) fangirl and he's pretty much why I'm an artist nowadays. Mama Alto is an amazing queer transfeminine non-binary POC jazz cabaret diva who also does a TON of work supporting Melbourne's queer/PoC/gender-diverse/indie artist communities - she's made SUCH a difference to my artistic career. Blake Maxam is a Bay Area-based stage magician who also does a lot of community advocacy as a queer trans woman - she's the one who got me back into stage magic and is such a sweetheart!! I'm also very influenced by the Internet and online culture - I've practically lived online since I was about 9 (as an older Millenial this was actually uncommon) and I probably wouldn't be alive, let alone thriving, without it. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? A lot of my writing projects nowadays aren't necessarily the traditional-publishing kind: I do a lot of work in writing for stage, games, and online media, amongst others. Amongst them, I'm working on sequel for my stage magic + storytelling + social justice show Queer Lady Magician (I'll be performing versions of the original show during Sister Spit!), playing with ideas of charm and manipulation, with the aim to produce not just a stage show but also an Alternate Reality Game narrative component around it, multidisciplinary project (writing + performance + VR +++) with a group of others from Muslim backgrounds exploring our relationships to Islam, mysticism, diaspora, Indigeneity, and identity, using archetypes like the Djinn, the Witch, and the Faerie, and a YouTube series explaining the stage magic references in the Ace Attorney games!  This month we're shining our feature spotlight to our Sister Spit artists who will hit the road in SPRING 2020!
Mia S. Willis is a Black non-binary poet whose work has been featured by or is forthcoming in The New Southern Fugitives, FreezeRay, Narrative Northeast, Peculiar, Slamfind, and others. In 2019, Mia was named the first two-time Capturing Fire Slam Champion, a Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry, the Young Artist Fellow at Chashama’s ChaNorth residency, and a collaborator in Forward Together’s Transgender Day of Resilience Art Project (tdor.co). Their debut poetry collection, monster house., was the 2018 winner of the Cave Canem Foundation’s Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize and is available with Jai-Alai Books. Connect with Mia on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram: @poetinthehat. from the artist Why do you write? What compels you to write? I write because silence is antithetical to the survival of my kinfolk. Describe your work in five words. Block party in a graveyard. What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? The heady welcome of crab boil. A hallowed dancehall beat. Shit-talking across the spades table. Ashlee Haze. Imani Davis. Asia Bryant-Wilkerson. Ariana Brown. Lindsay Young. The metallic hum of hair clippers. A perfectly rolled blunt. My families, chosen and given. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? My first full-length poetry collection is nearing completion, so I am currently balancing its final revisions with background research for a new heroic crown of sonnets about my socio-cultural acquisition and embodiment of masculinity as a Black queer person. |
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