Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Jessica Lynne is a writer and art critic. She is a founding editor of ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Artforum, The Believer, Frieze, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and Oxford American. She is the recipient of a 2020 Research and Development award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, a 2020 Arts Writer Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation, and she is the inaugural recipient of the Beverley Art Writers Travel Grant awarded in 2022 by the American Australian Association. Jessica is currently an associate editor at Momus and host of the limited series podcast, Harlem is Everywhere. She holds an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College

Madeline ffitch is the author of the story collection VALPARAISO, ROUND THE HORN, and the novel STAY AND FIGHT, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award, the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Fiction, the LA Times Book Award, and the Washington State Book Award. She has received an O. Henry Award and is included in the 2024 edition of Best American Short Stories. Her new novel, about kitchen table antifascism in Appalachia, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Madeline writes and organizes in Appalachian Ohio.

Emilly Prado is an award-winning writer, educator, and community organizer based in Portland, Oregon. Her debut essay collection, Funeral for Flaca, has been called, “Utterly vulnerable, bold, and unique,” by Ms. Magazine and is a winner of a 2022 Pacific Northwest Book Award, amongst other prizes. She has taught creative writing at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and Williams College, and moonlights as DJ Mami Miami with Noche Libre, the Latiné DJ collective she co-founded in 2017. Learn more on social media @emillygprado.

Gris Muñoz is an Indigenous Chicana poet and storyteller. She is the author of the bilingual poetry and short-story collection Coatlicue Girl, named a finalist for the John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry by the Texas Institute of Letters. Her poetry and essays have been published by The Rumpus, Huizache, Tasteful Rude and The Smithsonian Latino Center among others and she has been featured by The Texas Book Festival, The Big Read New Mexico alongside Joy Harjo, and the Latino Collection & Resource Center at San Antonio Public Library in collaboration with Texas Public Radio. Gris was born and raised in El Paso, Texas and writes about the border, the politicized body and Indigenous Mexican and Folk Curanderismo. She is of Northern Chihuahuan Apache and Yaqui descent.

Alexa Luborsky is a writer and multimedia artist of Western Armenian and Eastern European Jewish descent. She is the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) Creative Writing 2023 Grant Recipient for poetry collection in progress on diaspora and genocidal aftermaths. She is an Master of Fine Arts candidate in poetry, an H. Kruger Kaprielian Scholar, and a Rachel Winer Manin Jewish Studies Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow at the University of Virginia. Her poems and hybrid works have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Bennington Review, Black Warrior Review, Guernica, Hayden’s Ferry Review, among others. She is the interviews editor for Poetry Northwest and reads for Meridian. Born in Toronto and raised in Rhode Island, she currently resides in Charlottesville, VA.

A.M. Sosa is a queer Mexican-American writer born and raised in Stockton, CA. They hold a BA in English from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Fiction from UC Irvine, where they won the 2022 Henfield Prize. They have fiction in Zyzzyva and the Santa Monica Review. And have been supported with scholarships to Tin House and the Community of Writers. Their first novel, And I Will Take Out Your Eyes, will be published in late 2025 by Algonquin.

Daniel Garcia’s essays appear in Guernica, Michigan Quarterly Review, Passages North, Quarterly West, Shenandoah, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Poems appear in Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Ploughshares, swamp pink (formerly Crazyhorse), and others. A recipient of scholarships and fellowships from Lambda Literary, SmokeLong Quarterly, Vermont Studio Center, and more, Daniel is the InteR/e/views Editor for Split Lip Magazine and the Micro Editor for The Offing. Daniel’s essays also appear as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays. 

Kayla Heisler is a literary nonfiction writer and poet who earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing and was awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship from Columbia University. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Cleveland Review of Books, Columbia Journal, Witch Craft Magazine, Some Kind of Opening, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Two Cities Review. Her poetry was included in two editions of New York’s Best Emerging Poets anthology. She has judged entries for NYC Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, led a workshop with Writing on It All, corresponded with writers for the Incarcerated Writers Initiative, served on the Columbia Journal reading board, and spoke on an EdSnaps program writing panel. She holds a BA in Literary Studies with Institutional and Departmental Honors from Eugene Lang College at The New School where she served as a Lang Academic Fellow and editor of Eleven and a Half.

Steve Chang is a Taiwanese writer and educator from the San Gabriel Valley, California. His work appears in Epiphany, Guernica, North American Review, and The Southampton Review, and has been commended by The Iron Horse Prize, the Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize, the Ploughshares Emerging Writers Contest, and even by (some of) his friends. He is thankful for the support of the KHN Center for the Arts, The Kerouac Project, the Carolyn Moore Writers House, and MacDowell. He edits fiction at Okay Donkey and holds an MFA from Cornell.

Dr. Adam Falkner (he/him) is a writer, performer & educator. His work focuses on intersectional themes of race, gender, queer life, and social justice education. He is the author of The Willies (Winner of the 2021 Midwestern Independent Book Award and a 2021 Foreword Reviews Gold Medal) and Adoption (Winner of the Diode Editions Chapbook Award), and his writing has been featured on programming for HBO, in The Guardian, The New York Times, and elsewhere. He has toured the United States as a guest artist, lecturer and trainer, and was the featured performer at President Obama’s Grassroots Ball at the 2009 Presidential Inauguration.

Mahogany L. Browne, a Kennedy Center’s Next 50 fellow, is a writer, playwright, organizer, & educator. Browne’s books include Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky, Black Girl Magic, and banned books Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby. Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne holds an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree awarded by Marymount Manhattan College and is the inaugural poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center.

Sangi Lama is from Hetauda, Nepal. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories that follows a cast of Nepali and Nepali American individuals as they navigate love, separation, and community. Her writing has been supported by Kundiman and Tin House. She is currently an MFA student in Fiction at the University of Pittsburgh.

Jenny Qi is the author of Focal Point, winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award. Her essays and poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, ZYZZYVA, San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, and elsewhere. She has received support from organizations such as Tin House, the San Francisco Foundation, and the Crested Butte Center for the Arts. As a Brown-Handler Resident in 2022-23, she translated her late mother’s memoirs of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and life in Las Vegas and is working on a hybrid collection titled Liminal Bodies and an untitled memoir in essays in conversation with this work. She holds a B.A. from Vanderbilt University and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Science from UCSF. A freelance writer, she also teaches community workshops via the SF Writers Grotto.

Born in the Gambia, Kweku Abimbola earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He is of Gambian, Ghanaian, Nigerian, and Sierra Leonean descent. Abimbola’s first full-length poetry collection, Saltwater Demands a Psalm, was published by Graywolf Press in 2023. In 2022, the début collection was selected by Tyehimba Jess to receive the Academy of American Poets’ First Book Award. His work has also received the “Indie Next Award” from the Association of American Booksellers. In 2024 Saltwater earned a Florida Book Award as well as the Nossrat Yassini First Book Award, selected by Camille Dungy. He has presented his research and creative work both nationally and internationally at venues such as the Lagos International Poetry Festival, Accra’s Afro Future Festival, and America-based AWP. Abimbola is presently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Loyola Marymount University. He began writing after many nights spent listening to the folktales his grandfather told of life in Gambia and Sierra Leone. His work strives to recreate the intimacy and urgency of West African oral poetry.

Henneh Kyereh Kwaku is from Drobo/Gonasua in the Bono Region of Ghana. His obsessions include Bono/Akan onomatology, semiotics, faith, movement, and shadows. He is an NCHEC Certified Health Education Specialist, and studies applied art in health communication. He is a Library of Africa and the African Diaspora (LOATAD) alum and has received fellowships from Chapman University.  He is the founder and co-host of the Church of Poetry. He’s the author of Revolution of the Scavengers (African Poetry Book Fund/Akashic Books, 2020) and his poems/essays have appeared or are forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets’ A-Poem-A-Day, Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, World Literature Today, Air/Light Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, Poetry Society of America, Lolwe, Agbowó, CGWS, Olongo Africa, 20:35 Africa & elsewhere. He shares memes on Twitter/Instagram at @kwaku_kyereh.

Anthony Hudson is a Grand Ronde / Siletz artist and writer also known as Portland’s premier drag clown Carla Rossi. Anthony’s performance work, from his award-winning solo show Looking for Tiger Lily to Queer Horror at the Hollywood Theatre, have earned him national fellowships, international engagements including the US Pavilion’s drag clown in residence at the 2024 Venice Biennale, features in Hyperallergic and Art in America, and sainthood from the Portland Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. A 2023 FSG Writer’s Fellowship finalist and 2024 Tin House resident, Anthony’s writing has appeared in American Theatre, BOMB Magazine, and Arts and International Affairs. He is currently adapting Looking for Tiger Lily into a book.

Kate Bredeson (she/her) is a theatre historian, a director, and a dramaturg. Her project as an artist-scholar is to research, write about, and practice the ways in which theatre can be a tool for radical activism and protest. She has three books with Northwestern University Press: Occupying the Stage: The Theater of May ’68 (2018; finalist, George Freedley Award), her translation with Thalia Wolff of the Théâtre de l’Aquarium’s 1968 play The Inheritor (2024), and her multi-volume book The Diaries of Judith Malina (forthcoming, 2026).