CONTENTS 2
“Decanting Honey”
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On Watching Bao “How to Do Magic And Or Make Spells As a Black Person”
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Rep Bumping Mixtape I’ve Seen that Movie Tough Girls of the Iditarod “For Future Use” Feminist Mixtape 2019 “The Bait”
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Workplace Discrimination “Standard of Beauty” “Three Times a Fool” Not a Gypsy ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Barbara Lawhorn Julia Vulcan Shiane D. Jacocks
poem
M. Catherine Jonet Ricky Araiza Melanie Sweeney Katy Stuckel Maggie Day
Essay/playlist
Lisa Marie Nohner Charles Rodriguez Katherine Chudy “ “
poem
comic poem
comic essay poem Essay/playlist
essay poem ink & watercolor essay
Decanting Honey Barbara Lawhorn
The hive was lost to winter, wind so bitter blown it froze the creek solid and thousands of Italian bees who had spent their lives pollinating sugar pears and twisted fist-sized apples. No pesticides, so their fruited shapes surprised and arrested, no perfect spheres, but sensuous, and weighted with sunlight so sometimes I sliced them with my pocketknife, then placed the wafer-thin reward right on my youngest son’s tongue— as close to communion as he’ll ever get although once I held him over the baptismal font—a different woman a decade ago. Now, happily divorced, I fold myself early each morning like a letter meant for the envelope of silence, and pay attention. I do so in my father’s basement as we honor the bees by caretaking their yield. From the rafters hangs a leather pouch I labored into a Christmas gift, 23 years ago. A thrifted leather jacket I loved, the beaded pendant from a necklace, a richly embroidered geranium from my hippie purse—all three came apart at the literal seams, and I reclaimed them, using my father’s leather tools, and startled myself with the combined result. I had forgotten the making of it, but the artifact brought back the winter night work, alone in my own apartment, how I poured myself like warm honey into the process. It is cool in the cellar room, bricked in by the home’s foundation. We spun the honey loose from comb yesterday. This morning, we warmed our reap
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by the wood stove. Patiently poured and sieved such thick amber into large Mason jars. Each one weighing three pounds of sunflower and buckwheat summer. What we reclaim, what we harvest from death came after, as I drove home. The ingathering itself was layered silence, and our rhythm felt part ritual. We bowed our heads in the work and I thought this is the prayer I want to live. My father asked if I had any interest in his hives upon his death, and upon leaving, I placed my hand on his shoulder in answer. In early autumn, my oldest child had chosen their own living name; explained his breasted, round hipped body is not the proper container for self, for who he is. I am not your daughter. Can you still love me? Words flowed from the part of me that is a universe I am still charting. What a joy to be with you in the becoming of who you already are. The vessel? Let it change to better hold all your incandescence, all your honeyed light. At home, I place the jar in February’s thin sunshine, and turn the prismed jar for both of my children, my sons, before calling for three spoons. My two ever-becomings clamor to reach me first, spoons held in triumph, as I loosen the lid.
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How to Do Magic And Or Make Spells As a Black Person Shiane D. Jacocks I am Black I am magic I do tricks No, it's a different kind of trick Because I look like I got my shit together, I give that good Black advice Need a point of reference? Ever seen Ghost? Whoopi Goldberg? Some people say we look alike so we must portray the same ideas, same values, same identity. We must be the same: that solo Black friend, that sassy and loud Black person on the bus, that wicked Black creature with voodoo powers, that quick-witted Black person almost smart enough to leave the haunted house early before realizing it's too late. Oh, we all give good Black advice--It's required, we are required to do magic, that unspoken, impossible hoop we can jump through, for your viewing pleasure, we make life more “colorful� I am Black I am magic I'll put a spell on you
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Rep Bumping Mixtape M. Catherine Jonet
scan to listen along: “I wanted to do something that was gonna go down fighting” --Anohni Tunes to keep time with the beating of your heart in pursuit of social change. Representation is more than fleshing out our whole selves; it is also learning to love who we are.
1. Make Me Feel (EDX Dubai Skyline Remix) Janelle Monáe This remix captures the liberatory feel of Monáe’s original while upping its more playful elements. 2. Pa'lante Hurray for the Riff Raff Alynda Segarra’s amazing ode to Puerto Rico revisits histories of colonization and resistance while taking on the call to keep moving, to keep going onwards. 3. Wake up Everybody Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes This song gave the world Teddy Pendergrass in 1975 and it continues to sustain and inspire today. 4. Brujas Princess Nokia What can I say I love witches and Princess Nokia’s much beloved tune reclaims/makes known the power of Afro-Caribbean black girl magic and survival. 5. Ni Una Menos Rebeca Lane Guatemalan rapper Rebecca Lane’s “Ni Una Menos (Not one [woman] less)" takes on feminicide and violence against women. 6. Galvanize The Chemical Brothers It is time to galvanize. 7. I Want Your Love (feat. Lady Gaga) Nile Rodgers & Chic I love disco Gaga and this song makes me think about the importance of sexual liberation, especially queer (LGBTQ+) sexual liberation, in the fight for social justice.
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8. Zapata Se Queda Lila Downs, Celso Piña & Totó La Momposina A song I always return to because of the great women singing it and because of its powerful envisioning of Zapata. 9. Superpower (feat. Frank Ocean) Beyoncé Love, love, love Beyoncé and Frank Ocean is honestly the love of my life. Superpower is a divine song and it nurtures and inspires. 10. James Joint Rihanna Here I am again: love, love, love Rihanna and I wanted to include this song cause if I can dance (or fill in blank) I don’t want to join your revolution. Rihanna teaches us to maintain. 11. Standing In the Way of Control Gossip This is when Gossip learned that they can rock and inspire 12. Deathless (feat. Kamasi Washington) Ibeyi The fight in us will never end. 13. We the Common (For Valerie Bolden) Thao & The Get Down Stay Down Here Thao Nguyen reflects on race, gender, and the justice system by telling the story of Valerie Bolden, an African American woman serving time because she killed her abuser in self-defense. 14. Drone Bomb Me ANOHNI Trans musical goddess Anohni takes on drone warfare from the perspective of a person whose family was taken from her by these monstrous machines. 15. Two Men In Love The Irrepressibles Yes. 16. Working for the Government (2015 Mix) [feat. Buffy SainteMarie] A Tribe Called Red The amazing First Nations electronic/DJ crew takes legendary Buffy Sainte-Marie’s song to the next level.
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17. Paper Planes (DFA Remix) M.I.A. Satirically playing on bigoted perceptions in the US of immigrants and migration, this remix of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” pushes her vocals to the fore without the kaching meme. 18. Crystalline (Omar Souleyman Version) Björk Syrian musical iconoclast Souleyman joins Björk here to work their magic and chisel quartz. 19. I Get Out Lauryn Hill I will always love her. This song and the album it comes from (MTV Unplugged Vol. 2) is the only reason M.T.V. ever mattered. 20. Keep On Livin' Le Tigre We need this. We all need to hear this. It is especially directed toward LGBTQ+ folks. Let’s listen. 21. O-O-H Child (Nickodemus Remix) Nina Simone This remix of Simone’s cover of the Five Stairsteps’s classic balances the lyrics’ positive vision of the future with the gentle vulnerability evoked by Simone’s vocals. 22. Somos Sur (feat. Shadia Mansour) Ana Tijoux At a young age, Tijoux is already a legend. This song with Shadia Mansour says it all. In the words of Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, decolonization is not a metaphor. 23. Straight Boy Shamir Shamir vocalizes the thoughts that go through a queer person’s mind when they take stock of their experience. 24. Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) Marvin Gaye This was probably the first song that I remember hearing where popular music was about important things while also remaining relevant musically. The song’s yearning poetic vision and use of a Mellotron (a precursor of the sampler) remains ahead of its (and our) time. 25. Fire (Joshua James Remix) Beth Ditto Fire in your belly. Fire in your heart. We must maintain so we can continue. Cultivate an experience of living.
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Tough Girls of the Iditarod Melanie Sweeney
The Iditarod is an approximately1,000-mile dog-sledding race through the vast Alaskan wilderness. In 2019, 52 teams – fourteen dogs and one human musher – entered the annual race. Nearly one-third of these mushers were women, the largest percentage of female mushers in Iditarod’s history. I started following the Iditarod this year because of Blair Braverman, a rookie whose Twitter feed features pictures and stories of her dozens of huskies. In her memoir, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, she conjures a constant but murky back-burner threat of physical and sexual danger and explains flinging herself into the more tangible dangers of the Arctic and dog-sledding — to prove herself a tough girl: “To be a girl, an inherently vulnerable position. And yet, unafraid.” There may be none tougher than Aliy Zirkle, a nineteentime Iditarod finisher and three-time runner up. According to lore, once, after reaching the race endpoint of Nome, while arm-wrestling, she accidentally broke a woman’s arm. She’s also known for her extraordinary dog care, the winner of this year's Humanitarian award, which is chosen by veterinarians who monitor the dogs’ health during the race. When a drunken snowmobile driver crashed into her team during the 2016 Iditarod, and he turned back to run into them again, she leaped in front of her dogs to protect them with her own body. * With difficult terrain and unpredictable weather, mushers face many dangers, including broken bones, broken sleds, hallucinations, frostbite, losing the trail, and more. They trek alone, seeing people only when approaching
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another team or arriving at the distantly-spaced checkpoints. Between checkpoints, teams camp on the trail or sometimes find shelter in a basic cabin – no beds, heat, or electricity, simply walls and a roof to escape the elements. The mushers pack straw for their dogs to sleep in and enough food and supplies to survive if they get stuck somewhere. Aside from a GPS tracker and a rescue beacon, they have no access to outside help or communication. Other than Alaskans and a small population of mushing enthusiasts, most people are totally unaware of these human and canine athletes’ staggering efforts, performed mostly out of sight. But while it’s a shame Iditarod stories don’t make the front page everywhere, its lack of exposure fits with the race’s roots. In 1925, dog teams relay-raced across Alaska carrying a diphtheria antitoxin serum to Nome to stop a deadly outbreak there. Nome’s remoteness made other modes of transportation impossible; the outside world couldn’t get there, only Alaskans and their dogs. The first Iditarod paid homage to this history and was intended to help preserve the dying indigenous legacy of mushing. Coverage of the race is primarily limited to local Alaskan papers, the Iditarod website, and an Iditarod-centric podcast. You won’t see mainstream TV coverage with computer-generated graphics of infamous trail sections and veteran mushers lending their expertise. Most spectating involves refreshing GPS trackers on Iditarod.com, following word of mouth reports on #mushertwitter, and guessing. With limited access and sparse and delayed updates, race followers meticulously analyze every sporadic detail.
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This year, such speculation on Musher Twitter intensified when, with only one-third of the race left, the solid frontrunner stopped mysteriously for an entire day and ultimately ended his race. They noticed, too, when Blair Braverman’s tracker showed her at rest for nearly twenty hours after doubling back several miles to a shelter cabin. And when Sarah Stokey’s tracker speed slowed from the usual 6-8mph to 1mph, then stopped and started on and off toward the end of the race, Iditarod followers on Twitter deduced that, for reasons unknown, she was walking her team. * There’s a saying that goes, “Alaska: where men are men, and women win the Iditarod.” The first woman to finish the Iditarod did so in 1974, the race’s second year. The first female champion, Libby Riddles, won in 1985, starting a string of female wins. Susan Butcher won four times in the next five years and shares the title for second-most total wins with five other men. This year, for the first time ever, three women finished in the top ten. Twelve of the overall 52 teams scratched, but all four female rookies finished. My favorite tradition of the Iditarod is the Red Lantern award, given to the final finisher of the race. It may sound mean-spirited, but the Red Lantern honors the perseverance of the final team and celebrates all finishers' tremendous grit, whether they make it to Nome in nine days or, in the case of this year’s Red Lantern, rookie Victoria Hardwick, just under fifteen. * Four days after the winner finished, Sarah Stokey was stopped about mid-way between the last checkpoint of Safety and Nome, a distance of 21 miles. Other teams averaged a three-hour run from Safety, but Stokey’s run
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had already taken about thirteen. Marked as resting, she was having some kind of trouble, and it wasn’t clear if she would continue on, turn back to scratch at Safety, or activate her beacon for rescue. But her tracker began to move. Slowly. For the final dozen miles, after being out on the trail most of the night with her dogs, Stokey marched her team into Nome. The first sign of them through the darkness was her headlight, and the announcer called with emotion over the speakers, “Sarah, I can see your light. You're almost here.” Stokey’s partner called her dogs by name. And after a nearly seventeenhour run at the end of her thirteen-day race, she finished, not in the sled, but jogging alongside her team. Her dogs, she explained later, wanted to run, just not in lead. Intermittently, for the last 150 miles, she had to be her own lead dog. She admitted feeling defeated, unsure if they'd make it the last short stretch. “It was ten miles back to Safety or twelve miles to Nome,” she said. “We chose to go forward.” * After finishing 36th, Blair Braverman addressed her long cabin stay, which temporarily bumped her to dead last. Someone had warned her of a coming storm, so she'd sought shelter, but the long, unplanned stay left her without enough dog food to make it to the next checkpoint. Thinking her race was over, she spoke to the race judge. He told her that a few teams were not far ahead. If she could get to them, Iditarod rules allowed another musher to help her. Her race was saved by the gift of someone’s extra dog food. That generous musher? The woman who would ultimately finish last, the Red Lantern, Victoria Hardwick.
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For Future Use Katy Stuckel
No one can own all the words. There are words that haven’t been invented yet. If their meanings burn your tongue, write poems with them, bundle them and bury them face down. The future will find them and make puns with them and make prayers with them. Create laws from them. And replace them with new words. That will burn and be bundled and buried face down. For future use.
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Feminist Mixtape 2019 Maggie Day
As an artist, I am driven to make work about things that I feel I need to communicate. Most of what drives my work is about my societal expectations of my gender. I have three children and am recently separated from my partner of 15 years. Within our relationship I felt pressures of my expectations, but I also felt those expectations from his family and others around me who have a different expectation of gender roles. My mother never spoke outwardly of feminism to me as a child but there was a lot breaking rules for the time that I didn’t realize were there. Not until I was a mother and a partner did I feel the expectations of my gender that I had never really experienced before. As a mother and wife, I felt bombarded by my expectations, and have always been compelled to make work about that. I see that there are so many others who feel these same expectations in so many ways, and I think that it’s important to point out moments where that expectation is not fulfilled. It’s been almost two years since SZA’s CTRL was released, and it started my nearly two year obsession with this album. As soon as it starts it’s as if she is speaking about all the feelings I have felt in the same and different ways. I feel her pain. She is strong and boosts confidence, but also addresses her flaws and it humanizes her. Flaws are rarely addressed in pop culture. SZA points to them and moves on, and still never gives up her power even when she says she is weak. She has no societal filter to tell her, “girls shouldn’t say that.” Without further ado, here is my mixtape, tentatively called Maggie’s Feminist I’ll #fuckmarrykillyou Mixtape of 2019.
SIDE A SZA, “Supermodel” The song starts with what sounds like a home audio recording of someone saying “That is my greatest fear…. That is, if I lost
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control, or did not have control, things would just, you know, be fatal.” I think this song is important to start with because it is very much exposing the ugly side of a relationship but finding a way to make it understandable based on her vulnerability. And I think there is satisfaction in that because we can excuse ourselves for some of the decisions or mistakes we make in relationships, and maybe be more honest with our own feelings of worth and need. SZA, “Drew Barrymore” “I get so lonely I forget what I’m worth, we get so lonely we pretend that it’s worse, I’m so ashamed, I think I need therapy.” She is addressing self-worth and stating that she needs therapy. Many feminist chants will be like “we run the world,” and well, I don’t feel like that at all. SZA is saying that not only is she not the fearless feminist leader, she is telling you that she might need therapy because life is rough. Then she lists all of these things that she is sorry for, “I’m sorry I don’t shave my legs at night.” Who would want to, SZA? Shaving sucks! All of the things she apologizes for are things that we are always told to be more of, attractive, ladylike, shave your legs at night. It just seems crazy when she says it out loud, someone told her these things. WHY??? Why can’t I go to bed with hairy legs? I’m tired! SZA, “Go Gina” It is hard to say that I have a favorite song on this album, it’s like asking which of my children I love the most, and I can’t answer that. But I can say that “Go Gina” always does her chores, and she gets extra allowance. This song can resonate with so many people. This song actually says it. “I belong to nobody, hope it don’t bother you, you can mind your business. I belong to nobody, try not to disturb, and mind my business.” I wish I had said this to people in my life. I wish that I believed this at so many times in my life. I listen to this over and over because I need to hear that people are flawed and they affect you, but you belong to nobody, baby!
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SIDE B SZA, “Normal Girl” This is a song that points out how hard it is to conform to societal expectations of women in a way that is disguised as this sexy, ‘let me love you’ song. The chorus backs up the reaction to this societal norm. “Wish I was the type of girl you take home to your momma, wish I was the type of girl my daddy he be proud of.” So, you see this is not just the outward force of expectation, she is even trying to make sure that her father agrees that she is normal and has worth. It is driving this pain to be normal because she wants to please someone but realizes how bad that is and recognizes that she needs to let it go. SZA, “Sweet November” In this earlier work, SZA’ starts off in the stance of a flawed woman but still manages to seem powerful. She says “Jesus called me collect last night, it took all of me not to answer. Daddy warned me the perils of play, hard to deal with God’s standards.” This shows the duality in this song of choosing to be ok with flaws. This song amplifies the idea of flaws and how it is ok to have these flaws because you are in process. There is such lack of woman in music that can point to flaws. Beyoncé, “Flawless” I chose “Flawless” because of the way that Beyoncé chose to incorporate the powerful words of someone else and put it into a platform that a lot of people would hear. The song includes the words of the author of the powerful words is Chimamanda Ygozi Adichie’s TEDX talk “We Should all be Feminists” and I encourage anyone to listen to it in entirety, as I did because I was curious about it after I heard it in this song. It’s also cool that Beyoncé also included the sound clip from when the girl group she was in as a child lost on Starsearch. She presents this attitude of being second best but rising above that.
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The Bait
Lisa Marie Nohner
Nights like this I get so lonely that I think I miss the moon— Or maybe, just the man inside it. Reel to reel, My belly aches whenever I’m reminded of life’s eternal chaos So I create order inside myself, eating only air popped corn and shooting vodkas like a gunslinger. When we were little, Otis and me, We thought TV was r e a l l i f e the disco balls, the feather boas, the 12ft puppets living on the street— Time froze in our crystal Zenith, I fixated on the stillness of a technicolor image: Perfect stasis inside the screen. When I was six, Daddy lit the house on fire and the flames ate my oldest brother’s face But only licked my hair. I had a bald spot for half a year and I was afraid that I would never be pretty, Until I was. And then, that’s all I was:
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A platinum-plated time bomb a bronzed rat trap, my bra overstuffed with Gouda cheese. Otis and me, we watched a movie once— Some big dumb guy with a chainsaw, Chasing a girl who wore white pants after Labor Day, her hair as long but only half as blonde as mine. Mama said, “Sit too close to the action, you’ll ruin your eyes,” and maybe she was right because I made a choice. After some years collected alongside the junked cars in our front yard, I found I felt only good when I was taking things apart Told Mama I was going to be a surgeon as I ripped Barbie’s arms off and with a lighter, cauterized the wounds. You know, I found the way to stillness Found myself the key to life inside of the TV She’s got Bette Davis eyes It’s my show, my song, and in the woodshed, I play it loud— So loud it makes the chainsaw quiet.
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Workplace Discrimination Charles Rodriguez
I was born in El Paso, TX to a father from Mexico and a mother from Germany. Diversity runs in the family in many ways, in my case including my self-identifying as gay. At my former job as a server (before I developed the strength to quit) I came to work ready to give it my all. After doing my work as usual, a group of people came in to sit at a table in my assigned section. Thinking nothing of it, I was preparing myself to greet them and begin my service for them and do an excellent job at that. Just as I began walking towards them, my manager stood in front of me, blocking me, and asked me to step aside so that she may speak with me privately. After notifying her that would mean I wouldn’t be greeting my new table in a timely way, as we are instructed to do, she told me another server would be trading tables so that it would be taken care of. Agreeing to her brief and semi-private meeting, she began to tell me that group of guests at the table I was supposed to serve included the owner of the restaurant and his colleagues. I then asked her what the significance of trading tables with a coworker meant when I assured her I would have provided the best service. She then detailed how “conventional” and conservative they all are and would have been uncomfortable with my “lifestyle.” I clarified, “my sexual identity of being gay?” and she answered yes. Being disallowed opportunities that others can access simply for your sexual identity is something that no one should have to put up with. Everyone deserves the same opportunities, no matter who they are or who they love. We are all human and I hope my experience can help fuel the fire of being out in the workplace.
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Standard of Beauty Katherine Chudy
I’m tired of the me(a)-sure-ing These calculations These unwritten rules Show me the Yardstick the Ruler the Tape that can tell me where thought ends. … and being begins Show me the Computer the Abacus the Numbers that can fit the rolling Beauty of the world Into empty squares empty squares hanging on empty walls of empty white halls Beauty bleeding in a frame the Devil’s price for fame Show me the Chasm the Border the bold black line that S E P A R A T E S the fading hues into individual colors
Where does yellow end red begin? Where does the rainbow end? divide the wheel particles and waves of light spectrum separated objectively overrated Art
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“Three Times a Fool”
Katherine Chudy
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Not a Gypsy
Katherine Chudy My ethnicity is not #trendy. The diaspora of 1,500 years is not a fashion for you to make Instagram or Facebook posts about traveling with. Every time a cute little boutique opens up in town with a name like “Gypsy Sage” or another person writes #gypsy because they are taking a road trip across the country, I get upset… It has become just another Halloween costume, another fashion trend, another forgotten history and culture for people to appropriate and not understand. The word “gypsy” is a racial slur, GADJO. Call me Kale. Call me Romani. Call me Traveler. Do not call me gypsy. We are scattered across the globe. We wander. We have a flag but no country. The word gypsy originated from the assumption that my people came from Egypt… we did not. The earliest traces of our oral history put us at 600 CE in India, with genetic analysis backing up these myths that we carry. My father told me stories about his mother and how she was taken from her tribe in Madrid when his father was in Spain during World War II. He fell in love with the darkhaired girl he met on tour and asked if she wanted to go home to the United States with him. She said yes and didn’t tell her family, knowing that they would not allow her to leave with an outsider. My father only ever had one picture of himself and his mother, an image of the two of them standing next to her red motorcycle with a sidecar – her long, black curly hair flowing down around her shoulders. He would tell me about how she played guitar and sang, how she told fortunes and read palms for extra money, knowingly feeding into stereotypes about her
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ethnicity. My father grew up in large family with many brothers and sisters – something traditional, even if it was geographically displaced. The chaos of that strange family and his father’s drinking drove my father to flee that house as soon as he was able, and he never looked back. His mother told him to leave and seek his worldly fortune with her blessing. My mother had always listened to my father as he related his stories and rolled her eyes… commenting that my father was “spinning another yarn” and not to take him too seriously. I started wondering about it after my father died and dug around Ancestry.com and found numerous records from his family. The first definitive one was his mother’s birth record, which even had her nickname on it, Chiquita. I emailed them to my mother and she was surprised. I dug more and found more-- more links to more Romani tribes, especially the northern Hayes, her surname. I became even more curious and ordered a genetic test, which backed up my father’s stories and revealed some other things that were surprises on my mother’s side. I try to learn something about my lost family and lost culture whenever I can. The language is dying, so I try to learn from other Romani on support groups online who are trying to keep the language alive. I want to travel to Madrid one day, so I can see where I came from and try to meet other Romani who are immersed in the culture on a daily basis. All I have are shadows and borrowed memories and ghosts given to me by my father, handed down in oral tradition as it had been done for over a thousand years. Everything changes yet stays the same. The next time you see someone posting something about being a gypsy,
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be wary. There are some that accept and use the term, but most of us that are Romani do not and are offended that the only way we can identify ourselves to others is by referring to the slur that others use. Understand that there is entire culture associated with that group of people, not to be boiled down to a set of simple traits easily reproducible in costume or animated Disney form.
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About the Contributors Ricky Araiza is an MA Literature student at New Mexico State University. When he’s not dabbling in prose, poetry, and the occasional digital painting, he’s either watching, reading, or playing something scary. Feel free to check out his IG @rickygoesrawr for more of his work! Raphael Benero is native to El Paso, TX. He received his BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas El Paso and is currently a Master’s Candidate in Sculpture at New Mexico State University. His work addresses themes of materialism, gender expectations, and identity. Katherine Chudy is a graduate student at NMSU pursuing an MFA in Studio Art and a certificate in Museum Studies. She makes art about invisible disability and the social ramifications of living with that identity. Maggie Day is an artist from Las Cruces, NM. She is an MFA candidate at NMSU, a mother to three children, and a ceramics instructor. Shiane D. Jacocks is an MFA student studying fiction. They are interested in feminism, queerness, and the weird. They are pretty sure Lars of the Stars from Steven Universe is based on them. You can follow them @shianejacocks on Twitter. M. Catherine Jonet is a scholar and a creative. She teaches Gender & Sexuality Studies at NMSU. Her areas of specialization are queer and LGBT+ representation in visual and print cultures. She is the founder and co-director of the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival. Barbara Lawhorn is an Assistant Professor at Western Illinois University. She's into literacy activism, walking her dog Banjo, running, baking and eating pie, and finding the wild places within herself and outside in the world. Her most recent work can be found at Poetry South, Flash Fiction Magazine, High
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Shelf Poetry, and White Wall Review. Her favorite creative endeavors are her sons, Mars and Jack. Lisa Marie Nohner is a scholar of horror films, a poet, and mother to a c h o n k named Loki (feline) and a princess named Tiggy (canine). She is an instructor at Louisiana State University, where she teaches movies about shower girls and bleeding prom queens. She writes poetry about crystal lakes and short stories about dead bodies. Her work is crumpled up beneath your bed. So is she. Don't turn on the light. Charles Rodriguez is a graduating senior in Gender & Sexuality Studies at NMSU. After graduation he will continue advocating for LGBTQ+ rights. Melanie Sweeney is the author of the nonfiction chapbook, Birds as Leaves (Lettered Streets Press, 2015). She holds an MFA in creative writing from NMSU, and her work has appeared in Foundling Review, Rougarou, Reunion: Dallas Review, Mom Egg Review, Babble, and more. She lives and writes in Spring, Texas. Katy Stuckel is an artist and poet who has been known to make things out of materials she sometimes finds out in the desert. Julia Vulcan (@jujuthevuvu), a gender and sexualities studies graduate from New Mexico State University, draws in their spare time.
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