Contributors David Connor David Connor is a writer based in Los Angeles, California, recently graduated from the California Institute of the Arts with an MFA in Writing. His work has appeared in Potluck Magazine, Running Moon, and his story “The Tornado is in a Seltzer Bottle in the Kitchen” was named as a finalist for the Robert and Adele Schiff Award in Prose at The Cincinnati Review. In his free time, David develops new languages for communicating with his neighbor’s dog. He is working on a novel, Oh God, the Sun Goes, which he hopes to complete soon.
Aurielle Marie Aurielle Marie is a Black, Atlanta-born, Queer hip-hop scholar and a cultural worker. Through her work as a poet and an activist, she explores the uses of intimacy and ritual in the practice of Black resistance. Aurielle is a Roddenberry Fellow Finalist, a Voices of Our Nation Fellow-Alum, and a current Queer Emerging ArtistIn-Residence at Destiny Art Center. Both her activism and artistry ground themselves in the afro-indigenous legacy of storytelling in the Deep South. She was a 2016 Kopkind Fellow and has been featured as a social-political pundit on CNN. Her essays and poems have been published in Selfish Magazine, in Scalawag, on For Harriett, ESSENCE Mag, Allure, NBC Blk, and Huffington Post. Her inaugural collection, Gumbo Ya Ya, is forthcoming from Write Bloody Press. Her work has been featured on a global host of stages, most importantly in her grandmother’s kitchen. Follow her on Twitter & Instagram: @ElleOfTwoCities.
Reyes Ramirez Reyes Ramirez is a Houstonian. In addition to having an MFA in Fiction, Reyes received the 2014 riverSedge Poetry Prize, the 2012 Sylvan Karchmer Fiction Prize, and has poems, stories, essays, and reviews (and/or forthcoming) in: Houston Noir, Southwestern American Literature, Glass Poetry Press, Gulf Coast Journal, Origins Journal, The Acentos Review, Cimarron Review, riverSedge: A Journal of Art and Literature, Front Porch Journal, the anthology pariahs: writing from outside the margins from SFASU Press, and elsewhere. You can read more of his work at www.reyesvramirez.com. Blue Mesa Review | 50