A Yell Adams
Acacia is a writer from Portland, OR, which suits her because sunshine gives her anxiety. She is currently completing an MFA, despite being recently told by Tom Spanbauer that to become a better writer, she needs to "unlearn all that grad school stuff." She listened, and it seems to be working. Acacia is working on a collection of personal essays that she really doesn't want to admit might be a memoir, and a memoir that she really doesn't want to admit might be a novel.
Alex Behr is a writer, teacher, bass player, and mom. She's loved her WITS creative writing residencies at Portland high schools as she’s watched her students explore and thrive. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in many publications, including Bitch, Propeller, Nailed, Salon, The Rumpus, Watershed Review, VoiceCatcher, The Manifest-Station, and Tin House. Her debut short story collection will be published in 2017 (L Books). She holds an MFA in creative writing from Portland State and a certificate in eLearning design and development.
Alexis Smith, Oregon Book Award Winner, published by Tin House
Alissa Hattman grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, but has lived in the Pacific Northwest for the last 20 years. In 2009, she received her MFA in Fiction from Pacific University, and, in 2011, she completed a MA in English Literature from Portland State University. Her fiction has appeared in Propeller, Prick of the Spindle, Work, and Voice Catcher, among other publications. She teaches writing at Chemeketa Community College in Salem.
Ally Harris is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Her Twin Was After Me (Slim Princess Holdings) and floor baby (dancing girl press), as well as poems in The Volta, Sink Review, Denver Quarterly, BOAAT Press, Entropy Magazine, and Bennington Review. She was a finalist for BOMBLOG’s Annual Poetry Contest, judged by Ben Lerner in 2012 and is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.
Ally Yancey
Amanda Cochran Helstom White is originally from Denver Colorado, She started writing poetry in the summer of 2014 after spending too much time in the company of poets. Her work has so far appeared in a Gobshite Quarterly and The Writing Knights Roundtable Squire Anthology. She's the author of Tattoos and Haiku. She is the host of New Poet Challenge, a reading dedicated to getting people to write poetry and read it aloud ; She is also Co-Host of Word Warriors reading series. She lives in Downtown Portland with her husband and two cats.
Ami Ramesh Patel is a queer brown poet. She’s written by herself, with VONA, APIA spoken worders, theater artists, queer youth, and online workshops. She’s new to Portland and excited to build creative community here. Her online handle is @amiagogo.
Amy Everhart
Amy Leona Havin is an Israeli poet based in Portland, Oregon. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington and is the author of SHAKTI, a book of poems and drawings. Havin has participated in local readings such as The Hour That Stretches and A Reading, and has been a featured reader on KBOO's Talking Earth. She is the host of Portland's women-centered reader series, It's Rhubarb, and has recently been published both online with Women's Spiritual Poetry and in print as part of the Goddess: When She Rises anthology. Havin is currently working on two new projects entitled The Liberation of Sister Geraldine and Things I Forgot To Tell You, and is the founder and Artistic Director of Portland dance company, The Holding Project.
Amy Temple Harper
Anca Szilagyl
Angela Braxton-Johnson was born in Alexandria, Virginia and has lived in Oregon for most of her life. She graduated from Jefferson High School of the Performing Arts (which was a school like the movie 'Fame') and attended Howard University and studied music therapy with the flute as her principal instrument. She is a spoken word artist, poet, and writer. She is the wife & lover of one, Alvin Johnson Sr., Mother of three humans, Aléa, Alvin Jr & Alexander & two mini-poodle canines, Pickles & Yochi.
Anna Doogan
ANNA MARCH’s work has appeared in a wide variety of publications including The New York Times Modern Love Column, New York Magazine, Tin House, VQR, Hip Mama and Bustle. She writes regularly for Salon and The Rumpus.
Anne Gudger
Anne Richardson grew up in Willamette Valley, breathing in dust and wafting pesticide sprays as tractors churned the soil between rows of filberts, peaches, prunes and other bountiful produce until she moved to the suburb of Tigard at sixteen, sulking and pouting as only a teenager can do. Anne received second place in the Willamette Writers Kay Snow Poetry Award in 2017. She looks forward (and is truthfully a wee bit nervous) to have an opportunity to share her (not often revealed) “Unchaste” voice.
Annette Benedetti has been writing since she was old enough to hold a pen. As a freelance writer and photographer, Annette’s work appears in Bust, Domino, Parent.co, Almost Fearless and other publications. Her time away from the computer is spent traveling or on her yoga mat where she most recently earned her yoga teaching certification. She plans to use her writing and teaching skills to empower women in their efforts to heal, grow, and smash the patriarchy.
Ariel Gore is the founder of Hip Mama and author of many books, including How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead, by Three Rivers Press and Lambda Literary Award Finalist, 2015 for The End of Eve, published by Hawthorne Press,. Her essays have appeared in Psychology Today, The Sun, The Nervous Breakdown, Ms., Utne, Salon, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Rumpus.
Ashley Brittner Wells is a local writer, painter, and cackler. She organizes and hosts Get Nervous, a reading and performance series about anxiety and depression. Her work centers on those themes as well as feminism, gender, being queer, and worrying about feminism, gender, and being queer. Her work has been featured in Bitch Magazine, OutWords, Nailed Magazine, and on various independent radio stations. She is the Associate Producer and House Manager for Back Fence PDX and the Communications Director for Beefcake Swimwear, a local gender-neutral swimwear company. Everything she does has been influenced by Stevie, Corin, and Pat. Give her a shout (or a whisper) at getnervouspdx.com.
Asha Duré
Becca Yenser
Brittany Baldwin
Camille Perry
Cari Luna, Oregon Book Award Winner
Carol Fischbach is a writer who believes passionately in coming of age, no matter how long it takes. With a BA in Communications, she began nursing school at age sixty-two and graduated with her BSN at age sixty-five. She took a one year break before beginning her MFA in creative non-fiction. She has been published in Nailed Magazine, Oregon East, Tide Pools Literary Arts Magazine, and the Port Townsend Leader.
Carrie Seitzinger and Nailed Magazine
Celeste Gurevich
Chelsea Bieker’s work has been published in Catapult, Joyland, The Cincinnati Review, The Normal School, No Tokens, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Elephants, The Collagist, Pregnancy and Newborn Magazine, and others. She holds a BS in journalism from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and an MFA in creative writing from Portland State University. Her work has been supported by the MacDowell Colony and the Tin House Writer’s Workshop. She is at work on a novel set in California’s Central Valley, where she is from. Currently she lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter where she teaches writing and works as a professional online dating profile writer.
Portland native Claire Willett is a proud company member of the Oregon writers’ collective Playwrights West and a founding artist of the Fertile Ground Festival of New Work. She was a finalist for the 2015 Jerome Fellowship at The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, has received grants from the Oregon Arts Commission and Regional Arts & Culture Council, and was the 2011 Oregon Literary Fellow for Drama. In addition to Dear Galileo, which recently received its world premiere in Portland, produced by Playwrights West and CoHo Productions. Her first novel, The Rewind Files, a sci-fi time travel adventure about Watergate, was released in September 2015 by Retrofit Publishing in Los Angeles.
Cynthia Carmina Gómez was born in Camp 52, Litchfield Park, Arizona, a small migrant community in the outskirts of Phoenix. She was raised on the Mexican border speaking Spanish as her native language. Since moving to Oregon in 1993, her professional career has focused on civic engagement and leadership development. Today, Cynthia serves as the Executive Director of the Cultural Resource Centers and as affiliated faculty at Portland State University where is also a candidate in the MFA Creative Writing Nonfiction Program.
Darlene Solomon-Rogers aka Blacque Butterfly is a spoken word artist, singer, songwriter, entertainer and activist. Be it spoken word, motivational speaking, singing, theater or event planning or promoting she has allowed the Creator to use her ministry to inspire others to follow their calling. Her art crosses and closes cultural boundaries as she has shared stages with national recording artists from Dead Prez to Peter Yarrow. Blacque Butterfly is a native Oregonian, born and raised in NE Portland. She is the author of “Black girl can I comb your hair” and selected poetry. She released a spoken word CD entitled Collide -A - Scope that is available at Amazon, CD Baby, Rhapsody and other digital sites.
Dia Blake is not a fan of pictures of herself. She is a work in progress. She chose in February of this year to rewrite her future, and has been changing and growing since that fateful day. A recent transplant back home to Portland from Nevada, she is a recovering aircraft mechanic, ex-wife and devoted mother. She is humbled by the forces of Lidia Yuknavitch, Ariel Gore and Jenny Forrester, who have taught her how to best bring her voice forth in various workshops. She is filled with determination to find her true self-worth while shedding years of feeling slightly stepford, off-course and unseen. This is her time.
Diana Salier
Domi Shoemaker
Edee Lemonier
Edie Rylander
Elizabeth Hart
Elle Nash
Elva Redwood
Emily Bingham
Emily Kendal Frey, Oregon Book Award Winner for Poetry, 2015
Emily Newberry
Erin Gurley
Eve Connell
Evelyn Sharenov
Flávia Rocha
Galadriel Mozee Galadriel Mozee is a fat black queer stemme writer plant whisperer and artist who walks supported by and in honor of their Wolayta, Gullah, Jamaican and Missourian ancestors. They believe in a benevolent universe that holds them tenderly in the cradle of its heart. You can find their writing published in Kalyani and Curve Magazines, Alembic Literary Journal, and the PDX based Women of Color zine How to Live in the City of Roses and Avoid the Pricks. They write at mypronounisjockey.wordpress.com
George Marie
Gigi Rosenberg’s writing has been published by Psychology Today, Seal Press and Poets & Writers. She's been a guest commentator on Oregon Public Radio and performed at Seattle's On The Boards. She's Editor of Professional Artist magazine and a board member at the Independent Publishing Resource Center. Her reading tonight is excerpted from My Secret Father: a memoir. For the latest, visit gigirosenberg.com.
Gloria Harrison
Golda Dwass recently turned 65 after working as a midwife for over thirty years until her job disappeared in the economic downturn. She then became disabled due to numerous health problems. Dwass started taking writing classes-which were a help with the depression that followed losing her job. After writing stories about her mother’s battle with Alzheimer's she got into writing about aging and sexuality. She's been published in Unshod Quills, Perceptions and The People’s Apocalypse but is currently in a writing slump with a stack of rejections on her desk.
Harper Quinn
Haili Jones Graff is a writer, editor, and performer living in Portland, Oregon. She works primarily in the genres of poetry and creative nonfiction, and her writing has appeared in Bitch, The Notebook: A Progressive Journal for Women & Girls with Rural and Small-Town Roots, The Tishman Review, and online at LunaLuna, The Manifest-Station, and Hip Mama. She also performs with Mortified and facilitates writing workshops through Write Around Portland
Hannah Pass
Helena Contrisciani Squier is an activist, academic, author, and instructor. Her areas of focus are Health Communication, Latinos and popular culture, Transnational Feminism, Queer Theory, and Fourth Wave (digital) Feminism.
Hobie Bender
Imani Sims is a stilleto loving, chai tea guzzling Seattle native who spun her first performance poem at the age of fourteen. Since then, she has developed an infinitely rippling love for poetry in all of its forms. She believes in the healing power of words and the transformational nuance of the human story. Imani works to empower youth and adults through various writing courses and interdisciplinary shows all over Washington. She is a 2016 Kore Biters curator and Gay City Arts Fellow. Her book (A)live Heart is forthcoming on Sibling Rivalry Press this Fall.
Irene Doukas Behrman studies creative writing at Portland State University and coedits a literary journal called Pom Pom at https://www.pompomlit.com. She's a graduate of the IPRC's Certificate Program and has been published by Gaze and Peach Mag. Her nonfiction piece "A Woman Named M" was awarded an honorable mention in the 84th Annual Writer's Digest Writing Competition, and her short story "Permission" won 2nd place in Glimmer Train's November/December 2017 Very Short Fiction Contest. She's working on a novel, EFFECTIVE LISTENING.
Jackie Graves is an educator, language lover, and word warrior. Her work has appeared in African Voices, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, and she has performed onstage with the Guerrilla Jazz Collective, Mixed Writes, and Strong Current Dance Company.
Jackie Shannon Hollis grew up on a ranch on the east side of Oregon, where the view was wheat fields, cattle, and combines. Now she lives in Portland where the view is cedars, raised bed gardens and the mail truck coming up the street. Her work has appeared in various literary magazines, including The Sun, Rosebud, Inkwell, VoiceCatcher, High Desert Journal, and Slice Magazine. She’s completed a memoir that she hopes will see the light of publication. But let’s not talk too much about that, lest we jinx it, publication being a magical kind of thing. Her story here is part of that memoir.
Jamalieh Haley
Jamondria Harris
Jen Glantz is the brains behind the business, Bridesmaid for Hire, the heart behind the blog, The Things I Learned From, and the main character inside of the Amazon-best selling book, All My Friends are Engaged. Her new book, Always a Bridesmaid for Hire, published by Simon and Schuster, is available now. Jen's work can be read in Refinery29, Women's Health Magazine, Glamour Magazine, and other places that women turn for stories and advice.
Jen Violi is the author of Putting Makeup on Dead People, a BCCB Blue Ribbon Book, and finalist for the Oregon Book Awards. As a mentor, editor, and facilitator, Jen helps writers unleash the stories they’re meant to tell, from blogs to websites to award-winning books. Find sanctuary for your story at www.jenvioli.com.
Jenny Drai’s newest book: http://www.blacklawrence.com/the-new-sorrow-is-less-than-the-old-sorrow/
Jenna Marie Fletcher is a writer, talker, and chronic dabbler living in Portland, Oregon. She's mostly interested in one-hit wonders (and how to make them), vaguely romantic experiences, and learning how to sharpen her words into knives worth carrying. She is learning how to take up space. You can find her hiding in various corners of the world wide web and also at http://tinyletter.com/thisisyrs where she dispatches things into yr inbox once (or twice) a month.
Jenna Zine
Jennifer Robin
Jenny Yang is a Los Angeles-based writer and stand up comedian who produces the first-ever, mostly female, Asian American standup comedy tour, Dis/orient/ed Comedy, and The Comedy Comedy Festival: A Comedy Festival, a comedy festival showcasing the best in Asian American comedic talent.
Jessica Mehta is the recipient of a 40 Under 40 Award from the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development (NCAIED), received a Barbara Deming Award in Poetry, and was a Top 10 Pick from Portland Story Theatre for “Indian Burns.” She’s received several writer-in-residency posts around the world, including the Hosking Houses Trust with an appointment at The Shakespeare Birthplace (Stratford-Upon-Avon, UK). She's the author of over ten books, including several forthcoming: Savagery by Airlie Press (poetry), Drag Me Through the Mess by Unsolicited Press (poetry), and You Look Something by Wyatt MacKenzie Publishing (literary fiction). She was born in Oregon and is a member of the Cherokee Nation. Find her work here: https://jessicamehta.com/
Jessica Starr
Jessica Wadleigh is a creative non-fiction author. Originally from a small town in upstate New York, Jessica moved to Portland eight years ago. This summer, she is self-publishing her first volume of creative non-fiction, Sunshine, and recently released the first chapter in an on-going comic series, Robird Segal. She is an organizer with the Portland Zine Symposium and will be tabling her work at PZS' 18th annual show this July 28th-29th. She is an avid fan of the Portland Trail Blazers, thinks Laurelhurst Park is the best park in the whole wide city and is the proud mom of her wonderful fur baby, Baby.
Jewels is a New York born, Atlanta bred transplant to the Pacific Northwest. Jewels is a proud member of theUnchaste, and her writing has been featured in Just Out and the “Unchaste Anthology Vol 1”. She has been seen and heard at Burnt Tongue, Unchaste, and Nailed Magazine’s Organized Resistance reading. Jewels aspires to give up the doldrums of the 9-5 life and pursue this writing hustle full time, so look for her stories and musings to be published here, there and everywhere.
Jill Greenseth
JM Reed
Joli St. Patrick is a queer poet, parent, demigirl and witch living in Portland, Oregon. Joli's life is revolves around seeking chosen family, healing from abuse and religious trauma, loving girls fervently, and unpacking her trans experience through writing and performance. In 2014 she self-published her first chapbook, Learning Curves, and her writing has been featured on The Body is Not an Apology website and in the anthology Poems for the Queer Revolution. Joli releases spoken word performance as Gently Press Poetry on Soundcloud and Youtube, and publishes zines via her website gentlypress.com.
Judith Pulman
Judy Ossello
Julia Laxer
Julia Wohlstetter is a poet living in Portland, OR. Her work has appeared in Metatron-OMEGA, Bodega Magazine, Pom Pom, The SILO, The Chapess Zine, and My Scorpio Best Friend. She is a graduate of The Independent Publishing Resource Center's Poetry Program and holds a BA in French and Photography from Bennington College.
Karen Walasek
Karla Corderohas been published in Word Riot, The Acentos Review, Toe Good Poetry and elsewhere. Cordero's first chapbook titled, Grasshoppers Before Gods, was just released by Dancing Girl Press.
Kate Carroll de Gutes is the author of Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. You can learn more about Kate and signup for her critically acclaimed blog, “The Authenticity Experiment,” by texting the word "authentic" to 66-866.
Kate Dreyfus
Kate Gray
Kate Ristau is an author and folklorist who writes young adult and middle grade fiction. In her ideal world, magic and myth combine to create memorable stories with unforgettable characters. Until she finds that world, she'll live in a house in Oregon where she found a sword behind the water heater and fairies in the backyard.
Kate Ristau / Folklorist, Essays at the Washington Post, Books at My Favorite Indie Bookstore.
Katie Kaput
Kela Parker
Kelli Grinich is a fifth generation Oregonian and is finishing a memoir about motherhood, love, food poisoning, and the American West. She's recently completed a residency at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. Her work has appeared in The Timberline Review, Oregon Humanities, VoiceCatchers, Points West Magazine, and others.
Kelly Jeske
Keri Wilborn is a mixed-ethnic native of the Portland area. She grew up in Northeast Portland and still holds onto her roots there as best as she can. She became a mom her last year of high school and put her higher education on hold till her early 30's when she completed her degree in Social Work. She has always had a love for writing and is trying to rekindle it when/if she has time these days.
Kiki Nicole is an agender Black femme poet from Baltimore, Maryland. Their work has been featured on sites such as Voicemail Poems, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, Words Dance, and Bitchtopia, as well as anthologies such as Poems for the Queer Revolution and After Ferguson, In Solidarity from Mourning Glory Press. They curate a blog at kikinicolepoetry.tumblr.com.
Kimberly Dark is a writer, professor and raconteur. In addition to contributing essays and poetry to a variety of publications, she helps audiences remember their power to create culture.
Kirsten Larson
KMA Sullivan is the author of Necessary Fire, winner of the St Lawrence Book Award. Her poems and essays have appeared in Boston Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown, diode, and elsewhere. She is the Coeditor in Chief of Vinyl and the publisher at YesYes Books.
Kristi Wallace Knight was the founding Fiction Editor for Stealing Time Magazine. She is previously published in Stealing Time Magazine, Brave on the Page: Oregon Writers on Craft and the Creative Life, IPSA 2003, and Far Enough East. She writes about women's and children's mental health. She is on Facebook at KWallaceKnightEditor and may someday post on Medium at KWallaceKnight.
Lady Rose
Leah Middleton was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest but she's not like, you know, an asshole about it. She recently earned her BA in English Literature and Writing at Marylhurst University. Leah writes poetry and creative non-fiction about modern domestic life and how it collides with family history; themes include home birth, mental illness, parenthood, sexual trauma, the joys of divorce and red wine. She is patiently working on a memoir about how those all relate in her particular circumstance. Leah is trying to figure out what it means to be a late-blooming queer femme so she can write about that, too. Her work has appeared in M Review and Powder Keg (as Leah Perlingieri).
Leigh Anne Kranz is a Portland writer, by way of the Bay Area, born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her short story, Orca Culture, appears in the new anthology, City of Weird: 30 Otherworldly Portland Tales, published by local, woman-powered, Forest Avenue Press, edited by Unchaste reader, Gigi Little.
Laura Green
Lavinia Magliocco
Lou Woods
Laura Lucas has work in Line Zero, Imaginaire, Vapid Kitten, Falling Star Magazine, Beat the Dust, and the Poetic Pinup Revue, and is forthcoming in the Ghosts of Seattle Past anthology and Dead Housekeeping. Twitter is @LinesOfForce, website is www.lauralucas.net
Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/A412VCA
Laurel Hermanson
Leah Rainer
Leanne Grabel
Lisa Galloway, Lambda Literary Fellow, 2014
Lidia Yuknavitch, Oregon Book Award Finalist and author of many books including The Chronology of Water and Dora: A Headcase and most recently, The Small Backs of Children. Published by Hawthorne Books
Linda Rand
Lindsey Allison Ruoff
Lisa Loving
Lisa Wells, published by PerfectDay Publishing
Lithopedion/Shenyah Klaras
Liz Fouther-Branch
Lydia Charlotte
Mae Kinglove
Magdalen Powers
Maggie Foree
Margaret Elysia Garcia is the author of the short story collection Sad Girls & Other Stories published by Solstice Literary Press. Her new collection Mary of the Chance Encounters is out this May 2016 on Nocturnicorn Press.
Margaret Malone is the author of the story collection PEOPLE LIKE YOU, selected as one of the best books of 2015 by The Oregonian, Powell's, The Quivering Pen and the Portland Mercury. Her stories and essays can be found in The Missouri Review, Oregon Humanities, Swink, Propeller Quarterly and elsewhere. She lives with her husband, filmmaker Brian Padian, and their two children in Portland, Oregon where she is a co-host of the artist and literary gathering SHARE. Welcome a recent finalist for the PEN/Falkner Award…
As proud native Portlander, creative enthusiast and dream weaver, Mari Shepard-Glenn seeks to mix their personal experiences with the voices and tones of the Pacific NW, while still echoing sentiments held around the world. Besides language, they have a strong love of coffee, travel, antiques and the ocean. As a Sophomore reader at Unchaste, Mari is excited to bring new material to the table. They are currently working on a collection of published poems. You can find their poetry online atallseasonshalo.wordpress.com
Maria Teutsch’s (Toy-ch’s) collection, The Revolution Will Have its Sky, won the 2015 Minerva Rising chapbook competition, judge: Heather McHugh. She is a poet and editor. She has published over 20 journals of poetry as editor-in-chief of the Homestead Review, published by Hartnell College in Salinas, and Ping-Pong journal of art and literature, published by the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California. She teaches poetry and creative writing online. She serves as president of the board of the Henry Miller Memorial Library, and is the founder and EIC of Ping-Pong Free Press. www.marialoveswords.com.
Mariah Talicuran
Marina Callahan
Marissa Korbel writes a monthly essay column for The Rumpus. Her writing has been published by The Manifest Station, Nailed Magazine, Under the Gum Tree, and is forthcoming in Harper's Bazaar and Bitch Magazine. She grew up with a landline, and an Apple computer in Northern California.
Mary Leauna Christensen has lived in Phoenix, Arizona, Cullowhee, North Carolina, and Spokane, Washington. She is new to Portland and apparently avoids states in the middle of the country. She is currently a poetry editor for The Swamp Literary Magazine and is the Managing Editor of Poetry Wolf, a new chapbook press. Mary has an MFA in Creative Writing with her genre being poetry. She has a chapbook manuscript and is in the "process" of re-working her thesis/full-length manuscript. Her work can be found in Permafrost, Driftwood Press, Glass, and Nimrod, among others.
Mary Mandeville lives in Portland with her partner, son, and two rescued pitbulls. Her essays have appeared in Brain Child, Hip Mama, Nailed! and others. Her essay, ‘Giant Sequoia’ won Fugue Literary Journal’s 2016 annual prose contest. Two of her essays have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Mary is working on a book length memoir about living with and loving the son who killed himself. Good thing she didn’t know at the outset how hard it would be. Now, she’s doing it anyway.
Mary Slocum
Meg Weber can be found online at https://www.megweberwriter.com/
Megan Saint-Marie is a poet currently living in Portland, Oregon. She grew up the Northwest, and has returned from 15 months living in the heart of Mexico. Her recent work is inspired by experiences there, being a mother, artist, and courage lover. Her recent work can be found in “The Art of Being Human, Who Am I” an International Anthology, volume 15, 2015
Melanie Alldritt
Melanie Fey is a Diné (Navajo) writer, zinester and Indigenous feminist. She was spawned in the rez town Tuba City, AZ but currently resides in Portland, OR where she works as a public library minion. She puts her degree in Creative Writing from Arizona State University to use by co-editing the Native American feminist zines Empower Yoself Before You Wreck Yoself, The Nizhóní Beat and Shik’is ShiHeart. Her work seeks to explore Indigenous diaspora, celebrate the LGBTQ/two spirit community and question the sometimes conflicting dichotomy of being mixed race. Look for some of her other published works in Red Rising Magazine and As/Us: A Space for Women of the World.
Read. Write. Dance. Think. Repeat. If you're seeking, you'll find Melissa doing something along those lines. She is a Black, cisFemme, fat, petticoat wearing bippie and lesbian wife of an amazing genderbending human.
Minal Hajratwala is author of the award-winning epic Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents (2009), which was called “incomparable” by Alice Walker and “searingly honest” by the Washington Post, and editor of Out!
Mo Daviau
Moe Boestern
Nadia Martinez-Chantry
Nancy Dear can be found online at http://hairpartypdx.com/ and Nancy Dear (@nancyellendear) on Twitter
Namita Gupta Wiggers
Naomi Jackson is the author of The Star Side of Bird Hill, and her many academic achievements include the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Fulbright scholarship. Her work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in the United States and abroad.
Nastashia Minto is the author of Naked, found here at Eldredge Books.
Nathalie Weinstein
Nicole Rosevear
Noel Franklin is a Seattle-based poet and cartoonist. She is the founder of the Seattle Poetry Festival, served on Seattle's national Poetry Slam team and was selected by Rebecca Brown to participate in the inaugural Jack Straw Writer's Program. Please very warmly welcome Noel.
Nora Robertson
Ophelia Darkly is a dream maker, shapeshifter, doll conjurer, piano romancer, silent film star, and faerie speaker. She began writing in the dusty corners of a peach coloured room at the age of 6 and hasn't stopped since. She enjoys the ocean under stars, talking with animals, finding treasures in antique shops, the sound of trains, and leaving pennies for people to wish upon. She attended The University of Iowa where she graduated with degrees in theatre and english and was among the first graduates of the creative writing track. She currently resides in a dollhouse full of dolls.
Los Angeles native, Pam Ward’s first novel, "WANT SOME GET SOME," Kensington, chronicles L.A. after the ’92 riots. Her second novel, "BAD GIRLS BURN SLOW," Kensington, is about a female serial killer working the 'funeral circuit'. A UCLA graduate and "California Arts Council Fellow," Pam operates a design studio, mentors at ART CENTER COLLEGE and produced "My Life, LA: The Los Angeles Legacy Project" documenting the impact of black Angelenos on the land. Recently, she wrote/produced the poetic theater piece, "I Didn't Survive Slavery for This!" Pam is currently compiling her poetry manuscript while working on her 1940s novel about her aunt, a real Black Dahlia suspect. www.pamwardwriter.com
Rachel McKibbens is a two-time New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow and author of two full-length books of poetry, Pink Elephant (Small Doggies Press) and Into the Dark & Emptying Field (Small Doggies Press), a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, as well as the chapbook, Mammoth (Organic Weapon Arts.)
Raina Croff
Ramiza Koya has a BA and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and has lived and taught in Spain, the Czech Republic, and Morocco. She has published both fiction and nonfiction in publications such as Lumina, Washington Square Review, and Catamaran, and has just finished a novel, The Royal Abduls, about the affects of 9/11 on an Indian-American family. She has been a fellow at both MacDowell Colony and Blue Mountain Center. Currently, she is an instructor in composition and creative writing at Portland Community College as well as a program specialist for Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools program.
Rashida Young
Rebecca is a writer based in Portland, OR transplanted in 2014 with a deep love for short story, poetry, snuggling and animals. She grew up on a dead end road in NH exploring drainage pipes and pond life. She uses the written word to help release a little of the intense darkness inside few understand. You can find her writing most recently in the Unchaste Anthology, Vol. 2, Nov 2017 and Mutha Magazine, Sept. 2017.
Reema Zaman is a writer, speaker, and actress and can be found here at her website.
Reyna Kohl
Rhiannon Dexter Flowers
Rios de la Luz is a xicana/chapina living in Oregon. She is brown and proud. She is always working on decolonizing her mind and being louder. She is in love with her bruja/activist communities in LA, San Antonio and El Paso. Her short story collection, "The Pulse Between Dimensions and The Desert" is out now via Ladybox Books. Her work has been featured in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Entropy, The Fem Lit Magazine, World Literature Today and St. Sucia.
Robyn Johnson
Rowan Beckett Grigsby is the less-censored less-palatable alter ego of an attorney who might want to work in this town again someday. Professional editor and graphic designer by day and professional knitter by night, she has been a contributor to Ask a Raging Feminist, a 2016 and 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee and one of BlogHer's 2017 Voices of the Year for "How to survive in intersectional feminist spaces 101." link to website: crossknit.wordpress.com
Sally K. Lehman
Samantha Leeonna is a writer, scholar, agitator. A recent Portland State University alum, she holds a BA in Liberal Studies with a double minor in Black Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. As a freelance writer, Samantha generates blog posts and press releases, ghostwrites articles, and provides other communications management for local and national clients. You can find her work on Black Girl Dangerous, For Harriet, in PQ Monthly, and in the anthology, Lightspeed: People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction! Samantha drinks copious amounts of tea to get through the days, and consumes a fair amount of sci-fi to get through the nights. Find her online at samanthaleeonna.com.
Sarah Gilbert
Sarah Polanksi Mura
Shannon Barber is an author from the Pacific Northwest. She is a genre and form surfing writer with a fondness for the complicated. See her work at The Establishment and the Big Click and elsewhere.
Shawn Aveningo
Sidony O’neal
Code by day, prose by night, Snigdha Roy tackles issues of feminism, gender roles, and minority / race in any medium, be it rap, essay, personal narrative, poetry, or fantasy and science fiction. She won first place at Carnegie Mellon’s Adamson’s Awards for her essay, Arranged Marriage: A Borderland’s Perspective. She also won an Honorable Mention for humorous travel article Dhaka in Transit, and has published several poems. She is currently (lonely) married to her master’s program (the beloved Goddard College MFA), and is excited to publish an article on Medium: How to Get Into a Writing MFA Program, with special tips for minorities.
Sossity Chiricuzio is a queer femme outlaw poet, a working class crip storyteller. What her friends parents often referred to as a bad influence, and possibly still do. A 2015 Lambda Fellow, she writes as activism, connection, and survival. She is currently working on multiple projects including a hybrid memoir, and is half of the performance duo Sparkle & truth. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Adrienne, Lunch Ticket, Porkbelly Press, and NANO fiction, as well as anthologies like The Remedy: Queer And Trans Voices On Health And Health Care, Glitter and Grit: Queer Performance from the Heels on Wheels Femme Galaxy, and Not My President.
Stacey Villalobos is a queer pocha originally from southern California who works and creates in Portland, Oregon. As a queer woman of color, a pocha (an Americanized Mexican) and a gemini, her self and way of life have always been doubted by those around her. Villalobos' fluidity frightens, her 3rd tongue(spanglish) makes her less 'authentic', and she has been defined as an antagonist due to her cultural upbringing. Her work is a celebration of the various movements she inhabits daily. Villalobos is content with the spaces she encounters and feels that she should not be pulled to those 'either/or' situations because there are wonders beyond that. In 2013 she formed Pochas Radicales, a queer Latina art collective that works towards community engagement through art & activism.
Stephanie Harper
Storm Blue is a trauma writer, a prose poet, a seeker of water, and a shapeshifter. Storm’s work explores the art of trauma and the trauma of art through the lenses of fragmentation and nature. Since they were a toddler in overalls they have enjoyed taking things apart and rearranging them into more expressive forms too large to be contained by their original shape. When not writing words into odd configurations, they can be found behind their camera, beneath the waves, or in front of a text book. Storm is currently in grad school studying trauma therapy, editing for multiple small press publications, writing their second memoir, and creating an anthology of queer sexual assault stories.
Suze Pierce
Tammy Lynne Stoner
Temple Lentz is a reader, writer and rabble rouser who lives and works in Vancouver Washington and plays wherever she can. She's been doing a lot of writing for other people lately, so was pleased to have the opportunity to make something just for her. And you.
Tessara Dudley is a poet and activist making art at the intersection of working class Black queer femme disabled life. Her hobbies include studying history, fighting oppression, building safer communities, and knitting. Tessara can be found at http://tessaradudley.com
Tracy Burkholder likes to be in a perpetual state of personal challenge. For the last year that challenge has played out on her blog, Not Until Now, in which she wrote a short essay each week about something new she’d never done before. For the remaining months of the year, her personal challenge is to complete her lyrical memoir, I Want More. Her non-fiction has appeared most recently in The Manifest-Station, Nailed, Vinyl and the Cincinnati Review.
Vanessa Veselka
Venus Thrash, Longlisted for the 2015 Pen Open Book Award
V.kali (born Venela Flagg), is a los angeles based poet-vegan Culinary artist-healing agent who dances, nurtures, and Administers healing with words.
Yasmine Elbaradie
