Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) and the forthcoming, Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He writes, edits, and teaches in Southeast Los Angeles.

John Allen Taylor is the author of the chapbook Unmonstrous (YesYes Books, 2019). His poems appear in DIAGRAM, Nashville Review, The Common, Pleiades, and other places. He directs the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program and coordinates the writing center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. For more, visit johnallentaylor.com.

A. E. Wynter is a Black writer and editor from New York. She currently lives in St. Paul, MN, where she has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, was a fiction fellow in the 2021-2022 Loft Mentor Series, and most recently, participated in a regional Cave Canem workshop. Her in-progress novel Far Cry From A Woman was a finalist in the 2021 Miami Fellowship for Emerging Writers and her fiction has appeared in Tulip Tree Review. Wynter won first place in the 53rd New Millennium Award for Poetry and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in West Trade Review and Water~Stone Review. She is an Editor at Copper Canyon Press.

Devon Walker-Figueroa is the author of Philomath, selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Sally Keith, shortlisted for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and awarded the 2022 Levis Reading Prize. She grew up in Kings Valley, a ghost town in the Oregon Coast Range, and received her education from Cornell University; Bennington College; the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; and New York University, where she was the Jill Davis Fellow. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, POETRY, the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere.

Justin Boening is the author of Not on the Last Day, but on the Very Last, a winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series, as well as Self-Portrait as Missing Person, which was awarded a Poetry Society of America National Chapbook Fellowship. He is a recipient of the “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, a work-study scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, a Stadler Fellowship from Bucknell University, and a Henry David Thoreau Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. His poetry and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in publications such as Denver Quarterly, Kenyon Review Online, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Narrative, and TYPO, among others. A graduate of Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Boening is currently a senior editor at Poetry Northwest, and is cofounding editor at Horsethief Books.

Meghana Mysore, from Portland, Oregon, is an Indian American writer. A 2022-2023 Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing, her work appears in Apogee, Passages North, The Yale Review, The Rumpus, Indiana Review, Roxane Gay’s The Audacity, Pleiades, McNeese Review, wildness, Boston Review, The Margins, and the anthology A World Out of Reach (Yale University Press). A Tin House, Bread Loaf, and Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference Scholar, she has also received recognition from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and The de Groot Foundation. She holds a B.A. in English from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Hollins University. She is working on a novel exploring loss, desire, and joy in three generations of a South Indian American family.

Mason Martinez (they/them) is a Latinx, queer writer from NYC. Recipient of the Ginny Wray Senior Prize and the ‘23 SAFTA Fall Residency, their work explores today and tomorrow’s environmental issues. After graduating from Purchase College with a BA in Creative Writing, Mason is now a freelance writer and Managing Fiction Editor of Chaotic Merge Magazine. Their work has been featured in Defunkt Magazine, The institutionalized Review, Yuzu Press, and more.

Brendan Constantine is a poet based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in many standards, including Poetry, The Nation, Best American Poetry and Poem A Day. He currently teaches at the windward school and, for the last six years, has been developing workshops for writers living with Aphasia and Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI).

Armin Tolentino earned an MFA at Rutgers University, Newark. He’s a former Literary Arts Oregon Fellow and currently serves as poet laureate for Clark County, WA (2021-2024). His debut poetry collection, We Meant to Bring It Home Alive, was a finalist for the Red Hen Press and Kundiman prizes and was published by Alternating Current Press in 2019. Outside of writing, he works for Multnomah County supporting social service programs in education, domestic violence prevention, and housing stability.

Celeste Chan is an artist and writer, schooled by Do-It-Yourself culture and immigrant parents from Malaysia and the Bronx, NY. For ten years, Celeste co-directed Queer Rebels, a queer and trans people of color arts project. She served as long-standing guest curator for MIX NYC Experimental Film Festival and OUTsider Festival (2012-2018), and screened work at film festivals in Montreal, Tijuana, Korea, and beyond. Celeste toured the West Coast with Sister Spit. With support from CA Arts Council and SFAC Writers Corps, she launched QTPOC Free School, and facilitated LGBTQ history workshops for youth through Queer Ancestors Project. She’s published in AWAY, Alta, cream city review, and elsewhere. Celeste is now focused on writing her family memoir, examining intergenerational trauma and resistance. She’s an alumna of Seattle Central Community College.

Leanne Dunic (she/her) is a biracial, bisexual woman who has spent her life navigating liminal spaces, inspiring her to produce trans-media projects such as To Love the Coming End (Book*hug/Chin Music Press 2017) and The Gift (Book*hug 2019). Her most recent book is a lyric memoir with music entitled One and Half of You (Talonbooks 2021). She is the fiction editor at Tahoma Literary Review, a mentor at SFU’s The Writer’s Studio, and the leader of the band The Deep Cove. Her verse-novel with photographs, Wet, is forthcoming Spring 2024. Leanne lives on the unceded and occupied Traditional Territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.

Louisiana born and Portland-based, Jae Nichelle is the author of the poetry collection God Themselves and the chapbook The Porch (As Sanctuary). She was the inaugural poetry winner of the John Lewis Writing Award from the Georgia Writers Association, and her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2020, The Washington Square Review, The Offing Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere. Her spoken word poems have been featured by Write About Now, Speak Up Poetry Series, and Button Poetry. She is a graduate of Tulane University.

Mariah Rigg is a Samoan-Haole settler who was born and raised on the illegally occupied island of O‘ahu. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and is currently pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Tennessee. Her work has received support from Oregon Literary Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and has been published or is forthcoming in Oxford American, The Cincinnati Review, Joyland, Catapult, and elsewhere. Next summer, Mariah’s first prose chapbook, All Hat, No Cattle, will be published as part of the Inch series at Bull City Press. Mariah has taught or will teach writing at the University of Oregon, Loft Literary, the Young Writers’ Institute, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at ASU. She is a fiction editor at TriQuarterly and is the nonfiction editor at Grist, A Journal of the Arts.

Chen Chen’s second book, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions), was a best book of 2022 according to the Boston Globe, Electric Lit, NPR, and others. It was also named a 2023 Notable Book by the American Library Association. His debut, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions), was long-listed for the 2017 National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. His work appears in many publications, including The New York Times and three editions of The Best American Poetry. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists. He teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast. With Sam Herschel Wein and a brilliant team, he edits Underblong.

Sam Herschel Wein (he/they) is a lollygagging plum of a poet who specializes in perpetual frolicking. They have an MFA from the University of Tennessee and were awarded a 2022 Pushcart Prize. Their third chapbook, Butt Stuff Flower Bush, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. He co-founded and edits Underblong. They have recent work in American Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, and Gulf Coast, among others.

The first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate, multidisciplinary artist Frank X Walker is Professor of English and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington where he founded pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. He is the author of the children’s book, A is for Affrilachia and eleven collections of poetry, including Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded an NAACP Image Award and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award. He is also the author of Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, winner of a Lillian Smith Book Award, and Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride. Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. A Cave Canem fellow, his honors also include a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. His most recent collection is Masked Man, Black: Pandemic & Protest Poems.

Shauna M. Morgan is a poet-scholar and Associate Professor of creative writing and Africana literature at the University of Kentucky. Her critical work has been published in Journal of Postcolonial Writing, South Atlantic Review, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, College Language Association Journal, and elsewhere. Her poetry has appeared in A Gathering Together, Interviewing the Caribbean, A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, ProudFlesh: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness, among other periodicals and anthologies. Her chapbook Fear of Dogs & Other Animals was published by Central Square Press. Shauna tends a small, hopeful provision ground at her home in the East End Artists’ Village in Lexington, and she remains intrigued by the environmental linkages between her rural Jamaican upbringing and her US-Kentucky life.

Arianne True (Choctaw, Chickasaw) is a queer poet and teaching artist from Seattle, and has taught everything from summer camps to university classes. She’s received fellowships and residencies from Jack Straw, the Hugo House, Artist Trust, and the Seattle Repertory Theater, and is a proud alum of Hedgebrook and of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She lives near the Salish Sea with her cat and is always looking for good dairy-free pastries. Arianne is the 2023-2025 Washington State Poet Laureate.

Corinne Manning’s debut story collection We Had No Rules, came out in April 2020 from Arsenal Pulp Press and was  selected by Poets & Writers for their First Fiction series. Tribes Magazine says Corinne is “very good at writing stories that [make] the reader feel very bad”, and BOMB Magazine named them “the love child of Monique Wittig and Jeanette Winterson”. Corinne’s essays and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Bomb Magazine, and The Baffler. A two time MacDowell fellow, Corinne is a teaching artist in Seattle where they’ve been working for Writers in the Schools and Hugo House since 2011.