Form as Resistance, Legacy, and Code 2024

introducing the writers of the 2024 workshop with Anastacia-Reneé

Gloria Blizzard

Gloria Blizzard a Black Canadian woman of multiple heritages, is an award-winning writer and poet. Her writing explores spaces where music, dance, spirit, race and culture collide. Her work has received the Malahat Review Open Season Creative Non Fiction prize, has been nominated for the Queen Mary Wasafiri Life Writing prize, the Pushcart prize. Additional essays, poetry, reviews and poetry have published in World Literature Today, Wasafiri International Contemporary Writing, Musicworks, cbc.ca, byblacks.ca, and other publication. Gloria holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction from the University of King’s College, Canada. Her book of essays Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas is published by Dundurn Press.

Sher Ratnabalasuriar

Sher Ratnabalasuriar is a broad connector of ideas, contexts, theories, methods, anecdotes, hypotheticals, and lines of flight, pulled into new forms. As an educator, facilitator, and writer, she connects to the unique experiences of people, helping them develop new ways of seeing themselves, their communities, their institutions, and their changing world, by tapping into a spirit of curiosity.

She has written several chapters in edited volumes on the intersections between social theory and popular media. She is a contributor to several edited volumes, including a chapter on the Social Shaping of Technology in the Harry Potter Universe, and an entry on Video Games for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Criminology, as well as a chapter in Woke Gaming: Digital challenges to Oppression and Social Injustice.

Catalina Marie Cantú

Catalina Marie Cantú, (She/Ella) is an Indigenous Mexican/Madeiran poet/writer, arts instigator, Jack Straw Fellow, and Alum of VONA, Kweli, and The Mineral School. Her writing, infused with her unique blend of humor and cultural insight, has been featured in various publications and anthologies. Recognition for her work received from Artists’ Trust, Centrum, Hedgebrook, Hugo House, and The Tahoma Literary Review. With a B.A. in La Raza Studies, and a J.D. from the University of Washington, along with her co-founding of La Sala (www.lasalanw.org), her commitment to both creative expression and social justice is reflected. Her wit is often paired with her Pico de Gallo.

Tanya L. Young

Tanya L. Young (she/they) is a BIPOC writer and visual artist. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Western Washington University. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Amistad, Salt Hill, Santa Clara Review, New York Quarterly and others. She was the 2022-2023 Poetry Editor for Bellingham Review. She is a staff reader for TriQuarterly and The Maine Review. She has also read for publications such as Frontier Poetry and Tupelo Press.

Sebastian Ellios

A Black, queer poet out of Durham, NC, Sebastian (he/him) is constantly asking what it means to partake in the world and human ecosystems. He processes his existentialism by using words to summarize experiences which reach far beyond them. Raised by Black women, both literally & literarily, his writing is rooted in their many lessons & examples. His work has been published by Tabadul Collective, Beyond Words Magazine, Moonstone Press, Voicemail Poems, Fruitslice, and Carolina Muse. When he’s not writing, he’s likely listening to Tierra Whack & Waxahatchee on loop while walking around barefoot in the woods.

Megha Sood

Megha Sood( She/Her) is an award-winning Asian-American author, poet, editor, and literary activist. Literary Partner with “Life in Quarantine”, at Stanford University. Her four poetry collections include award-winning My Body Lives Like a Threat (FlowerSong Press, 2022). A 2020 National Level Winner for the Poetry Matters Project, and Four-Time State Level Winner for the NAMI NJ Poetry Award. Her 850+ works have been widely featured in journals, public exhibits, and anthologies including the PSNY, MS Magazine, NYPL, Pen Magazine, PBS American Portrait, NPR, WNYC Studio, etc. Her poetry has been selected to be sent to the moon in collaboration with NASA/SpaceX.

Hope Fa-Kaji

Hope Fa-Kaji (she/her/hers) is a third generation Chinese American and fourth generation Japanese American, and one of five sisters. Partially due to growing up in a big family, she didn't always feel a personal sense of urgency to learn her family history. However, after the passing of her grandparents, her parents became the primary family historians. Fa-Kaji's work attempts to think through the stories that are now passed down to her generation, alongside larger questions of identity and justice. She works as an equipment engineer and has been published in the Academy of the Heart and Mind and the archipelago.

Rachel Afi Quinn

Rachel Afi Quinn was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina but has made home in many other places since. She’s now an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies and the Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Houston. Some of her writings on identity can be found in Sinister Wisdom, Burlington Contemporary, Small Axe and in the edited collection Other Tongues: Mixed Race Women Speak Out (2010). Her transnational feminist ethnography, Being La Dominicana: Race and Gender in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo (2021), will soon be available in Spanish.

ori rue

你好嗎 / nei5 hou2 maa3, i am ori rue [mirror pronouns], they, [ask], [some are secrets], a poet, singer, & studier of herbalism who explores the queering of negative affects such as rage, grief, & fear. a childlike dreamer, i am interested by how community bonds form, develop, & deepen. i am particularly passionate about cooking as choreography, release, & mutual aid. often, i struggle to write, turning towards gestures, stretches, & hums. i consistently find my selfs yearning to play, cuddle, & melt with soils, breezes, flames, & streams. currently, i am learning to tend to my bodymindspirits & rely on others as they rely on me. it's so difficult to be alive right now. take the care you need.

Phuong Uyên Huỳnh Võ

Phương Uyên Huỳnh Võ is a poet from Anaheim, California and Sài Gòn, Việt Nam. Her work has been featured or forthcoming in Huizache, Two Hawks Quarterly, Rising Phoenix Lit, diaCritics, Acid Verse, and Loves Me Zine. She is an aluma of Roots. Wounds. Words, Kenyon Review Workshops, and Fulbright. In her free time, Phương likes to play piano, sing songs on repeat, and laugh with friends. She currently resides in Long Beach, CA, land of the Tongva and Kizh people.