 Shelley Wong is the author of As She Appears (YesYes Books, 2022), winner of the 2019 Pamet River Prize, and the chapbook RARE BIRDS (Diode Editions). She is an affiliate artist at Headlands Center for the Arts and has received fellowships from MacDowell, Kundiman, and Vermont Studio Center.
Why do you write? What compels you to write? I write to learn what I know and rethink, going further and taking off. Stanza is Italian for room, so poems have doors, entrances and exits, and can be houses to build, dwell in, or move on from. As a young person, I felt lonely searching for poets and poems with the power to affirm who I was and wanted to become. Now, it is a joy to be part of a beautiful queer POC community of poets and discover our lineage. I write to recognize myself in my speakers and center queer women on their own terms, being of and not merely against. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? Due to the pandemic and its related stressors, my press is pushing my book publication to 2022, which gives me some time to breathe and self-care before going through the editorial process next year. For the remainder of 2020, I am focusing on a family history project in relation to the Bay Area, including site-specific meditations and explorations in the Headlands, where I have a precious writing studio at Headlands Center of the Arts. Describe your work in five words Gathering, leaping, breaking the silence.  My name’s Javier Kennedy Gutierrez and I’m a trans Chicanx man. Born and raised in California, I moved to the east coast at 18 and started my life as a serious artist. I’ve been living in San Francisco for 13 years now, continuing my passion to grow as a writer.
Why do you write? What compels you to write? I want to be heard. I think growing up in the Central Valley of California gives you this type of underdog attitude. So much is misunderstood about that part of the state and I really believe that translates into the people. That on top of being trans and queer has really driven me to be louder about my experiences. Writing helps me feel seen as a complex being even if the subject matter isn’t explicitly about myself. What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? Music and colors are my biggest influences. I’ll hear a song and a specific color palette will come to mind that invokes a feeling and I’ll just go from there. That’s how my fiction work comes to be. As for my poetry, Anne Sexton is by far my biggest influence. I discovered her in high school and instantly connected to her style. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? I’m currently working on a noir fiction piece that I’m really excited about! It’s set in San Francisco’s Chinatown during WW2 and is centered around a gay interracial love affair between a white homocide detective and a Chinese bartender. This project has been really satisfying for me not just in a creative way, but I’m also a huge history lover, so doing the research around queer Chinatown has been a lot of fun.  Lia Dun is a nonbinary chinese american writer living in San Francisco. Their writing explores the intersections of asian american and queer identities. Lia's work has appeared in The Rumpus, Catapult, Exposition Review, and Autostraddle.
Why do you write? What compels you to write? I usually give a smartass response to this, like "I write because I don't know how to have a real career" or "I enjoy being useless to humanity." It feels embarrassing to take myself seriously, but I'm trying harder now. These days, it's become even more obvious how art keeps us connected and helps us imagine new possibilities. Also, it makes me happy, another thing I'm making an effort to believe is important. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? I'm working on a few essays. About a year ago, I switched from writing mainly fiction to personal essays, and I'm still getting used to putting all these cringey things about myself on the page. What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? I'm so bad at picking people! I'm obsessed with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's writing. I hadn't heard of disability justice before I read her work, and it changed the way I think about basically everything. Also, her work is just so direct, angry, full of joy, and funny at the same time. Another writer whose work I really love is Kai Cheng Thom, especially her poem "trauma is not sacred." A few months ago, I read We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby, and I want to be hilarious while writing about deep shit like that. In middle school, I liked to read and write fanfiction, mostly for the anime Yu Yu Hakusho, which is about a teenage boy who saves the world from demons. Most of it was pretty awful, but it was also so gay and overflowing with feelings in a way that wasn't self-conscious at all. I think a lot of my writing practice as an adult has been trying to recapture that experience of writing because I wanted to and not knowing or caring if it was good or bad.  Headshot by Laila Bahman Celeste Chan is a writer and filmmaker schooled by Do-It-Yourself Culture and immigrant parents from Malaysia and the Bronx, NY. She co-directed Queer Rebels, created experimental film programs for OUTsider and MIX NYC, ran Writing Rainbow, and toured with Sister Spit. She serves as a board member for Foglifter Journal.
from the artist Why do you write? What compels you to write? So many reasons! I often feel I am trying to go back in time to excavate and heal my family’s history. I am trying to leave traces for others, to process what I could not otherwise process, to scare myself, to make an offering, to connect and be part of a greater conversation. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? I’m working on a memoir and a novel. That feels scary to say, so now I must do it. Make it real. Accountability! Describe your work in five words: Earnest, experimental, imagistic, QUEER, hybrid, and often documentary. What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? I will say that I love Moonlight (directed by Barry Jenkins and adapted from Tarell Alvin McCraney's semi-autobiographical play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue). I love Lynda Barry, always. I need to imprint that comic in my mind - art is “not something that you are good or bad at, it is just something that you do.” The first queer book I ever read was Randal Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits. It is a gorgeously crafted novel. As a young queer, I latched onto the story of a closeted young Black man who comes to understand himself through Einstein’s theory of relativity. I return to The Gangster We Are All Looking For for its form—fragmentary, impressionistic, nonlinear —and content: the melancholy of migration, filial love, how war embeds itself within a family, bodies of water, and the shape of loss. Seventeen years after that first encounter, lê thị diễm thúy’s words continue to haunt me.  antmen pimentel mendoza (he + she) is a writer based in Ohlone Land (the East San Francisco Bay Area) where he works and dreams alongside students at a university cultural center. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, Underblong, and Lantern Review. antmen is online as @antmenismagic.
Why do you write? What compels you to write? I'm compelled to write for a few reasons, I think. I write for fun, as play, for pleasure. I write to connect, to be in community. I write to process, to document, towards healing (I hope). Also, my tatay's favorite activity is kwentuhan and my nanay was a great storyteller, too. I think they definitely influence my writing. Describe your work in five words I watched too much VH1. What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? My families, reality television, Franny Choi's Soft Science, Robyn's music video for "Ever Again," Michael DeForge's Big Kids, Beyoncé's Super Bowl half time show and Lemonade, Alexander Chee's Edinburgh, Kate Bush's album Hounds of Love, Chen Chen's When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on my Switch.  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. |
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