May 29, 2021
View the recording here at Zines & Things Crowdcast. Free to register and view. https://www.crowdcast.io/e/unchaste-may2021
MJ Jahntz enjoys telling stories that privilege the weird, deformed, and juicy moments of life. Their story, “Things I Don’t Want My Phone To Know,” was published in the 2020 anthology, “Places Like Home.” When not writing, MJ can be found collecting the shiniest of shiny ideas, hanging with trees, taking naps, and speaking truth to power, their dog, or their phone. On Twitter as @writer_one.
A lifelong lover of words, Abby Braithwaite is spending her 40’s finally finding time to get her words on paper and slowly out into the world. Her essays on parenting, escape, and disability have been published on The Manifest-Station and the Hip Mama blog. In 2019 she created Contained, a chapbook of her collected musings. She shares her home in Ridgefield, Washington with her husband and two children, three cats, and two dogs.
Roseminda Nabehet was born and raised in Portland. She used to do poetry and short story readings in the before time, in the long long ago at places like Literary Arts and Telltale. She's been featured in your dreams and at the Blackfish Gallery as part of a zine vending machine. Lately she's been working as a healthcare zero while working on a collection of short stories. You’ll find Roseminda at home with her cat, wondering when going outside more will feel okay.
Diana Forgione is a non-binary writer and workshop facilitator in the Northwest region. Diana uses poetry to examine the underlying nature of humanity as it’s experienced; attempting to discern the essence of love, suffering, lust and queerness. They are the Co-Founder of Death Rattle Writers Festival, Head Editor for OROBORO, and judge and workshop Instructor for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Their work can be found Reality Beach among other places.
Melanie Fey is a Diné (Navajo) writer that hails from a small town in northern Arizona. She holds a degree in Creative Writing from Arizona State University but currently resides in Portland, OR where she works as a book minion at the local library. When she is not shelving books or endlessly editing her poetry manuscript, she is obsessing over her cats or attempting to grow stuff in her garden. She has been published in the anthologies #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women and Red Rising Magazine. Find some of her work at: medium.com/@melanie.fey.
Laura Lucas (she/her) is a poet, fiction writer and essayist of Polish and African-American descent. She is a VONA/Voices fellow and has received financial support from Artist Trust. Her writing has appeared in Octavos, Black Imagination, Bards And Sages Quarterly, Supernatural Tales, Graffiti, Rigorous, Poplorish, Beat the Dust, Falling Star Magazine, Line Zero, Imaginaire, Six Hens, The Poetic Pinup Revue, Vapid Kitten, Dead Housekeeping, It Starts With Hope, the Two Hour Transport Anthology 2019, and the Unchaste Readers Anthology Volumes 1 and 3. Her short essay “Nine Kinds of Ice Cream” was a 2016 Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. She currently resides in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York.
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier's work has earned nods and awards from entities ranging from HBO to Zoetrope: All-Story; the Mississippi Review to Glimmer Train. You can find it in print journals including ZYZZYVA, and digital venues including the Arts & Culture section of Hyphen Magazine. Frazier is newly represented by Victoria Sanders & Associates, and looks forward to the day that her debut novel sells and her awkward headshot makes its way to VSA's website. Meanwhile, a new story is available now in the anthology Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, published this spring by Foglifter Press.
Asha Rajan is a Malayalee-Australian writer who lives and creates on Whadjuk, Noongar country (Perth, Western Australia), with deep respect for the traditional owners and elders. Asha knits, crochets or gardens when words won’t spill from her fingers, and sometimes having her hands encased in dirt or wool lures words onto the page. When she’s not yelling at her dogs to come back from the other side of the dog-park, or throwing a squeaky ball to distract them, she shouts about social justice. You can find more of her writing at https://asharajanwriter.com
Anna B Sutton is a poet and therapist living in Winston-Salem, NC, by way of Nashville, TN. Her work is guided by multicultural feminist theory, which acknowledged the ways in which our complex identities interact with our specific cultural contexts. Her first book, Savage Flower, out this July from Black Lawrence Press, explores female oppression and agency in the Bible Belt South.
Emily Kedar is a Jewish-Canadian poet, lyric essayist and psychotherapist of Czech descent. Her work has appeared widely in Mother Tongue Ink’s We’Moon, The Hart House Review, Acta Vicotriana and Living Hyphen. She writes on the subjects of intergenerational trauma, belonging and the natural world, and the vital impulse toward beauty. She lives in Toronto, Canada.
