Issue 2 Contributors

KENDRA ALLENBY is a cartoonist for the New Yorker and other magazines, and she teaches drawing and creative practice to adults. Her work has appeared in several books and anthologies and she often draws cartoons for the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations where she uses humor to make difficult topics approachable. If she’s not drawing, she’s probably outside. More work can be found on her website and on Instagram.

JULIA LEE BARCLAY-MORTON, PhD, is an award-winning writer/director, based in NYC, whose writing has been produced and published internationally; hybrid collection The Mortality Shot published by Liquid Cat Books; writing in Autism in Adulthood, Oldster, Prairie Schooner, [PANK], Heavy Feather Review. She founded Apocryphal Theatre when in London—which work was the basis of her practice-as-research PhD; 20 years of her stage-texts were streamed, commissioned by Radio Art Zone. Recipient of a Disability Visibility Fellowship funded by Alice Wong to work on a researched memoir about being diagnosed autistic at 57. More at Songs for the Unadapted Ones and TheUnadaptedOnes.com.

DONNA BARR is an American comic book creator. She is best known for The Desert Peach and Stinz. She has been recognized as a pioneer in creating books in the comics art for that are intelligent, mature, and amusing. Her website is donnabarr.com.

KRISTIN M. BECK is a writer, artist, and native Floridian, this setting provides colorful characters along with the intense humidity. Influenced by the area’s vibrant culture, her work relies on crustacean-hued memories and is imbued with the sound of wild parrots set free by Hurricane Andrew. Follow her work at Kristinbeck.com. 

MARNI BIHLMEYER is a self made artist (with a wicked sense of humor that slips in somehow?) who enjoys working in a variety of mediums.

ERIC BLAND writes poetry and theatre; he currently lives in northern New England and used to live in New York City. A touch of his previous work can be seen in the short-lived online pamphlet Works and Days Quarterly.

JOHN BROADLEY is a London based illustrator who rose to prominence after creating a series of hand-made books in the mid to late 1990s. He has been the in-house illustrator for the London restaurant Quo Vadis since 2012 and has since worked with other companies in the food and hospitality sector including Fortnum & Mason, Zuni, Berry Bros, Sketch restaurant and Fine Cheese Co. His work appears regularly in publications such as The Spectator, Noble Rot magazine and The New York Review. He has also illustrated several children’s books, including While You're Sleeping (Pavilion 2020), which was a New York Times Best Children's Book winner in 2021. john-broadley.squarespace.com

LYNNE BURNS is a photographer who is writing her memoirs. She divides her time between the East Village, Cape Cod, St. Augustine, and the Endless Mountains of PA. For over 20 years, she ad her husband, Herb Atkins, had an old-fashioned country auction down the Jersey shore—see concepts1auction.com for a link to a film all about it. They also had a store and art gallery in the East Village: CameoAppearances.com.

ROBERT MICHAEL BURNSIDE is an American living in Italy. His career has focused on enhancing how adult human beings learn and develop. With the explosion of artificial intelligence, the challenge is at hand: How can we use AI to enhance human learning and development? How can we avoid the potential downsides of AI reducing human learning and creativity? He’s writing about this at roborobert.substack.com. As the saying goes, “Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral.” As soon as a human being touches it, it has moral quality and consequences. Let’s work together to see that the brilliance of AI is used only for the good.

SEAN CAPTAIN is a writer based in New York City. He's worked as a journalist for decades, covering technology, business, politics, the environment, and culture, among other topics. Sean hails from Scranton, PA and studied international relations at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He has also lived in San Francisco, LA, Asheville, Boston, and Munich. Sean has dabbled in photography and wrote fiction in the past. He is thrilled to return to creative writing in slips slips.

RUBEN CARBAJAL writes for stage, screens, and beyond. Published plays include The Gifted Program (DPS), Some Assembly Required, A Place to Rest Your Head, and The Law of the Instrument (Stage Partners). He also appears in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues of 2024, 105 Five Minute Plays, One Minute Plays, The Covid Monologues, and several other best-of anthologies.

HOPE CARTELLI enjoys lots of things.

SUSAN M. CLARKE’s resume is seven pages long (single spaced), but the gist of it is she’s an Emmy-nominated comedy writer who’s created a lot of funny stuff for kids/high adults watching kids TV. susanclarke.net

JAMES COMTOIS is an award-winning author and journalist who co-founded Nosedive Productions, a New York-based theater company where he wrote more than 20 plays over 14 years. His work has been compared to Conor McPherson and Tracy Letts by The New York Times, while Time Out NY noted his writing “mines in Gogol’s vein.” His published plays include The Adventures of Nervous Boy, Infectious Opportunity, Suburban Peepshow, and A Room with No View. His latest audio drama, an adaptation of Poe’s The Mystery of Marie Roget, is available on NPR. He lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Simone.

SARAH CONGRESS is a playwright and script doctor for film. Her play "Last Sunrise" was produced by Nylon Fusion for their Gilded Age/Cage Festival at TADA Theatre (June, 2025). "Last Sunrise" was presented with writers John Patrick Shanley, Lyle Kessler, and Migdalia Cruz. Congress’s play “Delulu” is currently a semi-finalist for Centre Stage's 23rd Annual New Play Festival (one of 40 plays from 800 submissions). She co-wrote the screenplay "I Can't Hear You!" which won BEST COMEDY in the 2024 Jersey Shore Film Festival. Her play “Overdose” won second place for BEST SHORT in the 2023 Downtown Urban Arts Festival at Playwrights Horizons.

DAVID COTE is a theater critic, playwright, and opera librettist based in New York City. Plays include Saint Joe and Aristotle Punches Down (National Playwrights Conference semifinalist). Operas include Lucidity (Seattle Opera), Blind Injustice (Cincinnati Opera), Three Way (Nashville Opera and BAM), and The Scarlet Ibis (Prototype). David’s theater writing appears in Observer, 4 Columns, American Theatre and elsewhere. He was the longest serving theater editor and chief drama critic of Time Out New York and is the author of popular companion books about the Broadway hits Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Wicked, Jersey Boys and Spring Awakening.

Born a river rat, raised a beach brat, ERICA DAWN rebelled against it all. Inspired by nature, she enjoys birdwatching, catnapping, and standing underneath tall trees. As a poet, she is striving to witness the best of humanity and describe its impact on the worst of us.  

TIJANNA O. EATON (Tə-zha-na; she/her) is a Black butch writer whose work appears in Panorama Journal, Honey Literary, Noyo Review, slips slips, and Yellow Arrow Vignette. She was a 2025 judge for the Money for Women contest, a 2024 Soros Justice Fellow, the nonfiction judge for the 2024 Best of the Net contest, a 2023 Rooted & Written Fellow, and received the 2021 Unicorn Authors Club Alumni award. Tijanna is Board Chair of Five Keys Schools and Programs and also served on the board of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project. Please visit bolt-cutters.com for more information.

JULIA FALCINELLI is a poet from Savannah, Georgia, currently living in Red Hook, Brooklyn. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Hunter College.

LISA FERBER is an award-winning satirist whose festive paintings and comedies of manners celebrate glamorous eccentrics. Lisa is the creator, writer, and star of the film The Sisters Plotz, which was featured on Amazon Prime and screened at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and New York City’s Anthology. She starred in the final film of underground icon Doris Wishman, Each Time I Kill, featuring cameos by filmmaker John Waters and B-52s frontman Fred Schneider. She is a lyricist alumna of the Tony-honored BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. Her paintings are held by collectors in New York, Paris and London.

KELLY JEAN FITZSIMMONS is a Queens-based writer, college essay writing instructor, and storyteller. Her nonfiction work has appeared in HILOBROW, Marie Claire, Hippocampus Magazine, and numerous anthologies. She is the creator and producer of No, YOU Tell It! (noyoutellit.com), a nonfiction series that brings storytellers together to trade tales, speak each other’s words, and empower voices on the page and stage. Kelly Jean is also the editor of the No, YOU Tell It! Ten-Year Anthology, available from Palm Circle Press. Visit kellyjeanfitzsimmons.com and follow @kjfitzsimmons for more.

MATTHEW FREEMAN is a playwright and theatermaker. He is a New Dramatists alum, MacDowell Colony Fellow, and was awarded the Kesselring Prize. His plays and monologues have been published by Samuel French, Playscripts, Applause, NYTE, Smith & Kraus. Work seen recently on New York Stages include Steve Burns Alive (La Mama) and Drama Desk Nominee The Ask (wild project). He and his spouse, magical author Pam Grossman, divide their time between Brooklyn and the Western Catskills. matthewfreemanwriter.com

TOR FREEMAN is an author and illustrator of picture books, chapter books and comics, and has been published in the UK and worldwide. Her books include the Digby Dog Delivers series, The Toucan Brothers and The Book that No One Wanted to Read by Richard Ayoade. She has had two all-ages comics published by Bog Eyed Books, Welcome to Oddleigh and Sister Clawdetta: Murder at the Monastery. Boss of the Underworld: Shirley Vs the Green Menace, the first in a graphic novel trilogy for readers age 7+,is out now with Hachette in the UK. Tor lives and works in London. torfreeman.com

SIOBHÁN GALLAGHER  is a Canadian visual storyteller illustrating the nuances of life through humor, pop culture references, and sly observations. She is the author of Full of Myself: A Graphic Memoir About Body Image (2024) and In a Daze Work: A Pick-Your-Path Journey Through the Daily Grind (2017). She has illustrated and overseen art direction for clients such as HarperCollins, The New York Times, Penguin Classics, New Yorker, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Netflix. She currently resides in Laguna Hills, California. Her work can be found here.

AHANA GANGULY writes about bodies and the stuff they touch. Read their writing in The Offing, The HTML Review, Tiny Molecules, and elsewhere. Ahana holds an MFA in writing from Pratt Institute. They are Managing Editor at Futurepoem Books and Program Coordinator at the School for Poetic Computation. Find them on Instagram at @what.a.blob.

PETER MILNE GREINER is a queer poet and science fiction writer, educator, and community water quality tester in NYC. He is the author of Lost City Hydrothermal Field. PMG's recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fence, Works & Days, ballast, Antiphony and The Ekphrastic Review. Selections from Lost City Hydrothermal Field have been anthologized in Beyond Earth's Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight (University of Arizona Press 2021), Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn (MCDxFSG 2022), and Resist Much Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil Press 2018). He’s on Instagram @qpmgp and @chimaeraflats.

MATTHEW HALL is a visual artist and reality theorist currently working and residing in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to works on canvas and murals he creates models and animations for an autonomous vehicle company. Also he plays bass guitar and cooks. Paintings can be viewed at hallpaintings.net

AYUN HALLIDAY  is the Chief Primatologist of the long-running, illustrated autobiographical East Village Inky zine and the author of ten books, including No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late; Creative, Not Famous: The Small Potato Manifesto; and, most recently, Panther City: Tales of a Gen X Grade 3 Class Project Run Amok. As co-founder of Theater of the Apes, Ayun acts, performs musical improv, and guerilla marketeers til her telomeres start dropping like flies. She lives in New York City with her husband, playwright Greg Kotis, and the Mailroom Böyz,  Phantomat and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

RICHARD HARRINGTON started programming computers at eight and acting at 11. He has also traveled the world as one half of the clown duo Harrington & Kauffman, whom you can see performing at the Comedy in Performance Fest on Martha's Vineyard, May 4-10, 2026. Richard lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter. They want a dog, but they're probably going to get a cat. His writing has appeared in slips slips, Points in Case, Little Old Lady Comedy, Greener Pastures, and the Washington Boast.

JESSICA HARVEY is an artist and writer exploring the fractures of bodies, place, and history. A Fulbright recipient to Iceland, she’s attended residencies at ACRE, Ox Bow, The Luminary, Wassaic, MASS MoCA, Anderson Ranch, LATITUDE, Byrdcliffe, Sala Diaz, Nordic Arts Center, Stove Works, and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been exhibited at Kunsthall Trondheim (Trondheim, NO), The Franklin (Chicago, IL), Coop Gallery (Nashville, TN), Camayuhs (Atlanta, GA), Heaven Gallery (Chicago, IL), The Luminary (St. Louis, MO), Good Weather (Little Rock, AR & Chicago, IL), and Sala Diaz (San Antonio, TX). Her chapbook lilies in flame / wax tomb was published with Walls Divide Press. thejessicaharvey.com

KATE HUSH is a New York City based artist whose work in light, print, and prose reimagines the myth of the femme fatale through satire and splendor. Her glowing figures, part icon and part mirror, reclaim the familiar fable of the dangerous woman, transforming cliché into comment. Drawing from the threadbare portrayals of the ungovernable female seen since the beginning of time. Hush’s practice spans from hand bent light sculptures, to printed graphic works, all the way to the written word; bringing her luminous and sharp narratives into the physical world. Whether rendered in lumen or ink, her women radiate control and complexity, they refuse to be defined, and instead author their own stories in a blaze of wit and defiance.

LJ is an occasional illustrator and lapsed archeologist who lives in New York.

CASSIDY ROSE KLEIN  is a journalist, writer and editor based in Chicago. She reports on social justice, religion, and culture for Sojourners, U.S. Catholic, and other publications. Cassidy lives at Sophia community, an intentional community in an old Quaker meeting house. See more of her work at cassidyrklein.weebly.com.

AVRI KLEMER (he/him) is a New Yorker raised in England, with the honesty and attitude associated with one, and the love of chocolate and alcohol associated with the other.  A published board game designer, a novelist seeking representation, a workaholic, a soccer fan, a singer, a fidgeter, a husband and father.  Avri is never bored.  Described as "subtle and engaging" by Lawrence Block.

BOB LAINE is an actor, poet, and playwright. He has been performing in NY for three decades. CURRENT PROJECTS | Madkingbob

AMANDA LAPERGOLA is not your mother, but she did bring enough orange slices for the whole team. She's an actor and writer who has appeared in many productions at The Brick, including four productions with Gemini Collisionworks as well as Ti Adorro Herr Trump: A Fascist Cabaret, which she co-created and wrote with Andrianna Smela. She's a writer, as well as the voice of "Mrs. Frondrinax" on GC's sci-fi serial podcast Life With Althaar. For eleven years (!) Amanda has portrayed Miranda Linwood in the cult-hit theatrical soap opera It's Getting Tired Mildred. She lives in Astoria, NY with a husband, cat, and child. She wrote this on the train.

JORDAN LEE-TUNG is some sort of animatronic masquerading as human up in Toronto, Canada. His poetry series Broken Toes Heel Backwards was a handmade, handwritten endeavor that will never be printed again. 1,200 copies total were manufactured with increasingly sore hands. He also made a movie called Fraulein Cherie, in case reading isn’t really your thing.

KRISTEN LEIGH (b. 1976) is a multidisciplinary artist, whose principal discipline is literature. Focused in nonfiction and poetry, formal elements of classical music and dance, textiles and fiber craft inform her writing practices. Her arts-based research approach explores both the hostile and appreciative relationships humans have with the natural world. Although her current interest lies in the diverse landscapes and ecosystems of the North American continent, her work has found support in residencies and fellowships throughout South America and Western Europe. Her writing has appeared in The EcoTheo Review, The Los Angeles Review, Figure-1 Journal, among others, and she is cofounder of slips slips print journal of literature and art. She is represented by Susan Canavan at Waxman Literary Agency in New York City. kristenleigh.space

As one of the PR industry’s most beloved and successful creative forces (oh, for God’s sakes – would it kill you to humor me – just this once???), MARC LEVY has spent the last 30 years creating innovative integrated marketing programs for nearly every conceivable category and client, from Audi to Zyrtec. In addition to his innovative creative techniques and strategic planning, Marc is currently writing a book on creativity, Seriously Creative, which—let’s be honest here—he’ll never finish. You can endure Marc on his podcast, Ugly, Irresponsible & Childish.

JEFF LEWONCZYK bears some degree of responsibility for all of this. After many years focused on The Theatre, he now smothers himself in print. On top of his various creative endeavors, he is a professor in the MPS Data Visualization and Communication program at New York’s School of Visual Arts. You can find out more than you want to know about him at jeffisaweso.me and read his occasional ramblings at jeffisawesome.substack.com.

LAURENCE LILLVIK (Portland, OR) is the editor of Skullcrushing Hummingbird, an international arts and literature zine. He’s published several collections of poetry including Criterion on Greying Ghost Press (a featured small press at Powell’s Books.) Laurence is the founder of KalloHumina, a musical umbrella for solo work and live improvised collaborations. skullhum.com IG: @larstarts

NORA LOGAN is a writer, filmmaker, and host of the podcast So, Life Wants You Dead, which explores the intersection of illness and creativity. The first season of the podcast was made after she won the 2021 Soho Chance prize. Prior to becoming a writer, Nora worked in film and TV production in late-night comedy. Nora is currently developing the feature film script Literally Dying with Kat Mills Martin, a dark comedy about navigating sex, sobriety, and sanity after you’ve nearly died. She is also writing a pilot and a one-person play. She is based in New York City. Find her work at noraelogan.com and @noraelogan

RICHARD LOVEJOY is a writer/actor based in Brooklyn. On the stage, he wrote and starred in the solo show Lovejoy on Lovejoy about his ancestor, abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy. As an actor, he was recently in Lilith in Pisces and the film Come Clean starring Mojean Aria. Other film credits include The Widowers, a feature-length comedy about grief and the award-winning short Push Up. Among his accomplishments, Richard was a NY Theater dot com person of the year and got Lawrence Summers to block him on Twitter.

JOE LYNCH is a relatively new writer, but has been around the field since majoring in English Literature at Fordham University. He has worked as a lawyer for the past 20 years and has tried to stretch his mundane legal writing to a more creative bend, hopefully making it more persuasive. He and his wife Amy own a house in Key West, the home of many literary greats, and being surrounded by the creative energy helped inspire him to expand on his own writing. Joe is also a musician (bass) and has played in a number of bands in the NYC area. This time he decided to skip the music and just tell a story. Originally from Brooklyn, he lives in New York City (and Key West) with Amy and two large cats.

CHRIS MACKAR: Guest blogger for USA Today Pop Candy, BBC America, The Ghoul Show, Mummy & Monkey Show, Swedefest 20 & 21, Sweded Film Fest-finalist. Cleveland Comedy Finalist. Husband to Maureen and Dogfather to a Shih Tzu, Emma. YouTube: therealBIGBIZ. Instagram: bigbusiness411

WHITNEY MATHESON is a Brooklyn-based writer whose work includes essays, comics, children's books, short films, plays, and the award-winning blog Pop Candy. Learn more and get her new book, The Feeling, at whitneymatheson.substack.com.

JUSTIN MAXWELL is a professor and Interim Chari of the Department of Language and Literature. Justin’s play Exhausted Paint: The Death of Van Goghran at theSapaceUK during this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, after three nights in NYC at 59E59 Theatre. It runs in New Orleans in October of 2025. He teaches playwriting in the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans and is the drama judge for the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival. His playwriting book The Playwright’s Toolbox is out from Applause Books / Bloomsbury. His play An Outopia for Pigeons is out from Original Works Publishing, and Your Lithopedion is out from Next Stage Press. His prose appears in numerous journals, including Theatre/Practice, Contemporary Theatre Review, American Theatre Magazine, and others.

ASHLEY KING is an artist, writer and performer based in Astoria, Queens. You can view her work and purchase her coloring books on Instagram @akingmccarty or hang out with her on @artstoriany for neighborhood art and performance updates all over Queens NYC. akingmccarty.weebly.com

Once when he was five years old, ADAM McGOVERN dreamed he was full grown, reeling down some labyrinthian nighttime city staying one step ahead of an unseen figure who meant him harm. Ducking into an all-night deli niched into the unending granite facade, he saw people sliding plastic cards into a small frame atop the cash-register where his waking self had only ever seen slots for metal coins. This was in 1969. Thirty years later when credit-card checkouts had appeared but his pursuer had not, he decided this wasn’t his future. But you can follow him at hilobrow.com/author/amcgovern/

DANIELLE MCMAHON is the author of four poetry chapbooks and two micro-chaps. Most recently, her micro-chap rowhouse song is part of the 2025 Ghost City Press Summer Series. Her chapbook irl is forthcoming from Stanchion Books in 2026. Author website: d-mcmahon-writes.net. Bluesky @dehm000.bsky.social.

EMILY MENEZ has written for The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, CBS, Funny or Die, and McSweeney’s, amongst others. She’s an editor at Slackjaw, a Medium publication with 149k+ followers that runs daily humor pieces from veteran and up-and-coming writers. She created, produces, and hosts the NYC comedy show Slackjaw: LIVE, which brings together writers for nights of readings and discussions with featured speakers on topics like “How To Collaborate When Writing A Humor Book,” “How to Write Topical Political Satire,” and “What Banned Books Teach Us About Writing Difficult Stories.”

RYAN MURRAY-RUDEGEAIR has a BA in Russian and Eurasian Studies from Bard College and an MS in Information Science from the University at Albany, State University of New York. He is the Children’s Lead at a little mom-and-pop bookstore in Minneapolis called Barnes & Noble, although he also appreciates books intended for grownups. His “writing” has previously been inflicted mainly upon friends, family, and classmates, but now sees its way to a wider world through slips slips.

MEL NELSON (MN) is visual and auditory artist exploring echoes of the analog realm. Weaving with film, fabric, watercolor, voice and strings, her she explores the liminality of sound/light and travel via song/image. To capture the texture of story-in-space, Mel’s sonic works utilize sparse recording set ups, cavernous spaces and field recordings ranging from Iceland’s fjörds to the Andes mountains. As an appreciator or the printed word, Mel is pleased to appear on sweet slips slips pages. mel-nelson.bandcamp.com

nelson g nelson (they/them) is a queer poet based on unceded Lisjan-Ohlone land in Oakland, California. They are a hydra-headed artist who works in poems, plays the harp and Lakota flute, writes songs, paints, makes film photographs and teaches music. nelson’s work is inspired by oddballs, transness, Indigenous philosophy, and the wisdom of the natural world. nelson has performed at the Monterey Bay Poetry Festival as a featured poet and their work has appeared in The Berkeley Times and Milvia St Magazine. you can find their music at nelsongnelson.bandcamp.com or wherever you stream.

RYLEY O’BYRNE is a Canadian artist and writer. Through text, image, video, and object, her work explores relational dynamics, intimacy, and the process of meaning-making—often as influenced by technology. She was a resident of the Critical Art Writing Ensemble III at the Banff Centre and attended The Mountain School of Art in Los Angeles. ryleyd.com

DUNCAN PFLASTER is a multi-award-winning New York indie playwright, who was a finalist in 2024 for the inaugural Everett Quinton Award with the NYIT Awards. He is best known for his Beckettian romp The Underpants Godot. His plays Suckers, A Touch of Cinema, Harmony Hall, and 1460 Sketches of Your Left Hand are published by Next Stage Press. He has written around 50 full-length plays and a plethora of one-acts. His plays vary widely, from science fiction to Shakespearean verse drama to contemporary work. His two Strapped for Danger films are available streaming. duncanpflaster.com or New Play Exchange for more.

SANIKA PHAWDE (She/Her/They) is an illustrator, educator, cartoonist and reportage artist, born and raised in India, and based in Boston. Her comic series Wedding Juice and Other Melodramas won the 2025 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Series. Through autobiographical comics, drawings on location, and illustrated interviews their work strives to capture and communicate instances of emotional connection, queer immigrant culture, familial tension and the deeper sentiments hiding in the heart of it.

NAOMI RAE is a Queens native and emerging writer exploring the ups and downs of her twenties. Her writings help her navigate the complexities of early adulthood and she hopes to one day share those musings with the world. You can find more about her here.

CAROLYN RASHIP draws pictures and writes stories. linktr.ee/Caviglia_jr

Based in Brooklyn, KARAN RATHOD is a writer, poet and works on putting people’s stories and expression into the hands of others. He enjoys writing historical fiction, poetry and often follows a research-based approach to many of his creative projects. Karan is the founder of Alfaaz, a literary and art organization focused on helping writers, artists and creative organizations get their creative work into the world. His artistic ethos revolves around helping people tell stories, whether through words, or any other form of art. alfaazcollective.com

TIMOTHY MCCOWN REYNOLDS is a multidisciplinary artist working as an actor, director, designer, poet, playwright, essayist, illustrator, painter, sculptor, and table-top roleplaying game creator and enthusiast. He works on and around the planet Earth. He can be found at timothymccownreynolds.com and on Bluesky (@timothymagick.bsky.social). Empathy is Strength.

HEATHER LEE ROGERS compulsively tells stories as a poet and an actor in Queens, NYC. Her poems have appeared in the following printed and online publications: Chill Mag, slips slips, The Rat’s Ass Review, Harbinger Asylum, Here Comes Everyone (UK), Leopardskin & Limes, Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight, El Portal,  S/Tick (CA), Adanna Literary Journal, Jersey Devil Press, Mobius Magazine, Eunoia Review, Bombfire Lit, Indolent Books, io Literary Journal, etc. More of her work can be read at heatherleerogerspoetry.com.

MAC ROGERS is an award-winning playwright, audio dramatist, and screenwriter. His sci-fi thriller podcast series Give Me Away is available wherever you get podcasts, and you can watch his film First Time Caller on Tubi. For more of Mac's stuff, go to gideon-media.com.

PAMELA SABAUGH is a legally blind actor, playwright, singer-songwriter, director, and teacher. Her stage work has taken her from Off-Broadway in New York to regional theaters and international festivals. On screen, she has appeared in independent films, shorts, and television. As a writer, she uses the word poet, in the ancient bardic tradition of song and storytelling—where language and music meet to explore and honor what’s not always seen. Her playwriting and music composition include her solo rock cabaret Immaculate Degeneration (published in Indie Theater Now). Pamela lives in Astoria, Queens, with her husband, daughter, and black cat. More at imdb.me/pamelasabaugh or @pamelasabaugh on Instagram.

Trav S.D. has been presenting crazy monologues, songs, vaudeville productions, and plays in public for over four decades at venues like Joe's Pub, La Mama, The Brick, Theater for the New City, Coney Island USA, and many others. These days he is best known as the workaholic behind the blog Travalanche, and the author of the books No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (2005), Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to YouTube (2013), Rose's Royal Midgets and Other Little People of Vaudeville (2020), The Marx Brothers Miscellany: A Subjective Appreciation of the World's Greatest Comedy Team (2024) and the upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.

Kawai Shen is a writer based in Canada. kawaishen.com

ALIAKSANDRA SHYMANSKAYA is a working-class data consultant dabbling in data visualisations, trying to make art (and data cool and accessible). She’s applied data storytelling to everything and created charts for history, healthcare, and journalism (more to be found at ashymanskaya.github.io).

BRIAN SILLIMAN is an actor and writer who is in the middle of revising his first book. Television and film credits include High Fidelity, The Better Sister, Orange in the New Black, The Baker and the Beauty, Blue Bloods, Men in Black: International, and more. He received the NY Fringe Festival Award for Overall Excellence in Performance for his role in The Particulars. He lives in New York City.

While working as The Denver Private Investigator Blogger and Chief Content Officer for Ross Investigators, SUSANNA SPEIER covered science, aerospace, technology, arts, and culture on a freelance basis. She wrote home page and cover stories for Daily Beast, SpaceDOTcom, The Poynter Institute and Scientific American. She has also published feature stories in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), Colorado Public Radio, Westword, The Denver Post, Colorado Biz, Earth911, Nature.com, Search Engine Journal, AppGrooves and AARP.org and writes, records, illustrates and publishes Immunocompromised Times on Substack. You can read clips on her Authory portfolio. Two of her plays have had full productions at HERE Arts Center, an off-off Broadway theater in New York and her writing has been performed at Tenri Cultural Institute, Galapagos Art Space, and the Jean Cocteau Repertory Theater. Her poetry credits include Le Petit Zine, The Atticus Review, and an honorable mention in New Millennium Writings' 2014 poetry competition. Acting credits can be found on her IMDb page.

ADAM SPIELBERG is the founder of NY-based Filament Productions, which produces narrative features, documentaries, commercials, stop motion animation, and content for clients including Disney, Target, and Condé Nast. Select producing credits include Arcadia, which won the Crystal Bear at the Berlinale; Fan Girl starring Meg Ryan and Kiernan Shipka; the documentaries True Conviction and Informant, the latter of which won DocNYC; the Independent Spirit nominated The Last Season by Academy Award nominee Sara Dosa. Adam got his start at Gigantic Pictures working on Night Catches Us starring Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington, Ramin Bahrani's Goodbye Solo, and award-winning short Plastic Bag narrated by Werner Herzog. Adam has done voiceovers for The New York Times, IBM, and Marvel.  A very long time ago he worked on Chappelle’s Show and won’t stop bringing it up.

ELIZA STAMPS is a visual artist and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her artistic practice ranges from drawing to sculpture to performance, all with an interest in facilitating introspection and discovery for the viewer. She has exhibited and performed both nationally and internationally, including Von Lintel Gallery and Tiger Strikes Asteroid in the U.S., The Wand in Berlin, Germany, and the 1961 in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

L. SZE is a writer, cultural organizer, and caregiver who lives in New York City/Lenapehoking. Past poems are findable in issues of The Asian Pacific AmericanJournal and The Brooklyn Review.

KATIE TANDY is an interdisciplinary essayist, editor, and playwright whose work examines the body as a battleground for politics, reproductive technology, and art's power to interrogate systems of power. She has co-founded three feminist digital media publications including The Establishment, which reached over a million readers monthly. A veteran alt-weekly journalist, Katie has reported for newspapers across New York and the Bay Area on topics ranging from architecture to what it means to "sound white." Her theatrical adaptations of classics have been staged at Berkeley Art Museum and CounterPulse in SF. She holds an M.A. in 20th-century literature from Brooklyn College and lives in Los Angeles. catherinetandy.com

HOLLY TROY hails from an illustrious lineage of fortune tellers, yogis, folk healers, troubadours and poets of the fine and mystical arts. She plays with words, paint, music, and cats. Holly can also read your future. holly-troy.com

YELENA TYLKINA is a uniquely creative woman free from all restrictions. Yelena-tylkina.pixels.com

HAN VANDERHART is a queer writer living in Durham, NC. They are the author of Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025), winner of the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, the chapbook Hawk & Moon (Bottlecap Press, 2025), and What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021), and have essays and poetry published in Poetry Daily, The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, Poetry Foundation, Poetry Northwest, Poet Lore, AGNI, and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and, alongside Amorak Huey, co-edits River River Books.

JOSHUA WALKER, known as The Last Bard, is an independent poet whose work blends raw vulnerability with mythic imagery. Published widely, his poetry appears in journals including Soflopojo, Solarpunk Magazine, and Libre. With over 310,000 followers worldwide, Walker is dedicated to reviving timeless poetic traditions for the modern age. His work confronts the beauty and darkness of human experience with uncompromising truth.

SARAH WALLOCK is a storyteller, adventurer, and dancer whose voice is raw, witty, and unfiltered. Through her travel blog where’s wallock and memoir Chasing A Feeling, she warmly welcomes you along on journeys across countries and into life’s most intimate moments, including surviving a brain tumor at 25. Her work invites you to experience life through her fearless, funny and inspiring lens.

L. L. WALTER (she/her) is a queer, ethically nonmonogamous poet living in New Orleans on Chitimacha and Choctaw land. Her poetry has appeared in Peauxdunque Review, Ellipsis, On a Wednesday Night, and The Chariton Review. She has served as a reader for the Tennessee Williams Festival Writing Contest since 2013 and received her MFA in poetry from the University of New Orleans in 2016. Originally from Wisconsin and Illinois, she has lived in New Orleans since 2011 and works as the Search & Content Director of a digital marketing agency. 

ERIC WINICK hails from Marblehead, Massachusetts, birthplace of the American Navy. After 25+ years working as a Director of Marketing and CMO at major NY nonprofits, Eric is now a marketing consultant who writes in his spare time about the intersection of politics, culture, design, and marketing.

SAARET E. YOSEPH is a writer and artist from Washington, D.C., who blends poetry, documentary and narrative storytelling. She connects personal questions to intersectional themes, exploring art and culture across the African diaspora, and centering the voices and experiences of Black women, in particular. Saaret’s work has been featured on CNN, HuffPost, Voice of America, The Rumpus, The Root, and The Ethiopian Reporter. She has also received honors and funding support from the National Endowment for the Arts, HumanitiesDC, the Poetry Foundation, and the Muses & Melanin Fellowship for BIPOC Creative Writers. A member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Saaret also serves as the social media liaison for the online writing community at Louis Place. Her visual docupoem, JOURNEY(S), which is currently on tour, combines oral history, poetry, animation and archival imagery to honor Ethiopian women in America. The featured poem "direct address (with some bass in it)" is from her debut poetry chapbook a beginner’s guide to endings, which is now on sale via Lulu: bit.ly/4b0iviS

MICAH ZEVIN is a librarian poet living in Jackson Heights, Queens, N.Y. with his wife and guinea pigs. He has published articles and poems most recently at the Heavy Feather Review, Big Other, The Bowery Gothic, The Poets of Queens Anthology, Narrative Northeast, Pine Hills Review, Spoke Journal, Fence, First Literary Review East, Brevitas 20-2023 and 2024 Anthology of the Short Poem, Queensbound poetry project, and OddBall Magazine. His first book of poems, Metal, Heavy was published December 1, 2020 from Olena Jennings and Poets of Queens Press. He has created/curated an open mic/poetry prompt workshop called The Risk of Discovery Reading Series, now on hiatus.