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. 

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.
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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. 
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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. 

Corey Qureshi is a queer writer and musician based in Philadelphia. They work at an LGBTQ+ center and give drum lessons. When they aren't working or making things, they're busy being a young parent and loving it. They're Blue Stoop alumni and read flash fiction for Homology Lit. Find a list of published work at neutralspaces.co/q_boxo. Follow them on twitter @q_boxo.

from the artist

Why do you write? What compels you to write?

I've always loved books and've wanted to write one since I was a kid. Sometimes, I really want to talk about the thousands of small moments and things we feel but don't notice daily. Other times I write to bring awareness to the discomforts of working for unlivable wages. It's never easy being the only queer and/or nonwhite person in a space where you're forced to serve and please consumers (largely my experience). I want others in these circumstances to feel seen, cause most of the time we're just shamed for admitting it's a struggle. Also love, always love.

Why do you write? What compels you to write? 

I've always been drawn to storytelling and crafting with words; I still have my earliest poem from kindergarten tucked away with every notebook and journal I've ever written in since. As someone with many different intersecting identities there's something soothing and powerful about not only being able to articulate my own narrative clearly, but finding threads that bind what can feel like disparate parts together. I also possess a deeply sensitive and intense personality (shout out to strong Scorpio placements), so I find that poetry in particular has been helpful in communicating my emotions without having to fear hyperbole. As far as compulsion, I've recently been relearning how to center myself as a motivator instead of outside sources (the need for representation, competitive deadlines, living up to an imagined ideal, etc). It's a slower process, but I think it's been necessary in forming a healthy relationship to my art in a hypercapitalist system that emphasizes production for production's sake. I want to be moved by a flow, not caught by a current. 

Thea Matthews is a poet / scholar / activist born and raised in San Francisco, CA. She earned her BA in Sociology where she studied and taught June Jordan’s Poetry for the People. She writes on the complexities of humanity, grief, and resiliency. She has work in the Acentos Review, Atlanta Review, For Women Who Roar magazine, and others. She is a Tin House scholar; and has delivered her poetry at various festivals including Litquake, Lit Crawl, the National Queer Arts Festival, and the Sonido Music Fest. Her first collection of poetry, Unearth [The Flowers], will be published by Red Light Lit Press spring 2020. Find her IG/Twitter/FB: theamatthews_ and www.theamatthews.com

from the artist

As summer winds down, we start to rev up into another academic year. After you stock up on pencils and notebooks, check out our August GLOW! For August, we're featuring poet and writer  stewart shaw

stewart shaw is a poetry and fiction writer who has attended writing conferences in various African nations. His poems have been published in African American Review, Temenos Literary Journal, Serendipity and others, as well as short stories in Mighty Real: An Anthology of African American Same Gender Loving Writing and African Voices. He is a Cave Canem Poetry Fellow. He has a chapbook titled The House of Men from Glass Lyre Press.