Contributors’ Notes, Shō No. 9

Conal Abatangelo is a poet from Chicago, currently residing in Baltimore, where he’s an MFA candidate in poetry at Johns Hopkins University.

Jessica Ballen, MFA, is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet whose work can be found in SWWIM Every Day, RHINO, and Okay Donkey (among others). Catch them compulsively posting on their Instagram stories @jeez_ballen, listening to dream pop with their four cats, and dancing in the Willamette River with their writer husband, Steven H. Turrill.

Anne Barngrover is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Everwhen, which was published with University of Akron Press in 2023 and won the bronze medal in Poetry for the 2023 Florida Book Awards. She is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Saint Leo University, where she directs the low-residency MA in Creative Writing program, and lives in Tampa, FL.

Madeleine Bazil is an artist and writer based in Cape Town, South Africa. Her poetry and criticism appears in West Branch, The Seventh Wave, New Contrast, Identity Theory, Pleiades, Sonora Review, Stanzas, Split Lip, and elsewhere. She was long listed for Palette Poetry’s 2023 Rising Poet Prize.

Finnegan Bly is a queer, Korean-American writer from the rural Northern California. They are a Tin House workshop alum and an MFA candidate in Poetry at Louisiana State University.

Jackson Burgess is the author of Atrophy (Write Bloody Publishing, 2018) and Pocket Full of Glass (Tebot Bach, 2017). A recovering alcoholic and the first-ever poetry/fiction dual-admit to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he’s placed poems and stories in The Los Angeles Review, The Cimarron Review, Willow Springs, Fugue, and elsewhere.

Isha Camara is a Gambian-American poet and visual artist from South Minneapolis, Minnesota. She earned her Masters at Randolph College in Creative Writing. Her work has been featured in Poets.org, MUZZLE Magazine, The Mahalat Review, and Torch Literary. Isha’s is about her myths, historical lore and the ancestral gossip that breathes within poetry.

Piera Chen (pierachen.com) is an anglophone writer from Hong Kong, living in Taipei. She has (co-)authored some 20 travel guides for Lonely Planet, and published poems in Narrative, Driftwood Press, Wild Roof Journal, Pinhole Poetry and elsewhere. Piera is also a literary translator whose work was one of three Highly Commended entries for the 2024 Stephen Spender Prize. Piera has a BA in literature from Pomona College and an MA in literary and cultural studies from the University of Hong Kong. 

Shelbi Church is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama, where she is an assistant editor for Black Warrior Review. Her work has been supported by McCormack Writing Center and can be found or is forthcoming in AGNI, Tahoma Literary Review, Southeast Review, The Journal, and elsewhere. She lives and writes in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Jordan Cobb (she/her) is a queer American poet. Based in NYC, she completed her MSc in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. Her work has appeared in The Shore, jmww, The Storms Journal, Rise Up Review, Jet Fuel Review, Camas, & Outskirts. She is @on_the_cobb on Instagram. 

David Eileen lives in the mountains of Virginia and has published poems in The Atlantic, Diagram, Painted Bride Quarterly, and others. To see more, visit www.david-eileen.com. They would love to talk to you.

Liv Evans is a Midwestern poet, currently an MFA Candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Allison Field Bell is a multi-genre writer from California. She is the author of two forthcoming collections: Bodies of Other Women (fiction, Red Hen Press) and All That Blue (poetry, Finishing Line Press). She is also the author of three chapbooks: Stitch (flash fiction, forthcoming from Chestnut Review Books), Without Woman or Body (Poetry, Finishing Line Press), and Edge of the Sea (Nonfiction, CutBank Books). Find her at allisonfieldbell.com

Emily Harman is a queer Minnesotan poet currently based in the coastal and inland Northwest. The recipient of the 2026 Merriam-Frontier Award, Emily holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana, where she taught creative writing and served as Poetry Editor for CutBank. Her work can be found in Fugue, Bellingham Review, The Shore, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. 

Rebecca Hawkes is a queer painter-poet from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her first book, Meat Lovers, was a Lambda finalist and Laurel Prize winner. She edits the journal Sweet Mammalian, and co-edited the Antipodean ecopoetics anthology No Other Place to Stand. Her next collection Fool’s Spring is forthcoming with Yes Yes Books and Auckland University Press.

Kiyanna Hill is Black poet from Virginia. Her writing has been featured or is forthcoming from JWMM, Honey Literary, The Maine Review, and Autofocus. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate at Georgia State University and is the poetry co-editor of Beyond Bars, a literary journal that publishes the work of those affected by the carceral system.

Xinyue Huang is an MFA graduate in poetry from New York University who writes in English and Chinese. Her work appears in The Georgia Review, Pigeon Pages, Electric Literature, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and The Kenyon Review, where she was the winner of the 2025 Kenyon Review Poetry Prize. She has received support from Tupelo Press and Fine Arts Work Center.

Lucas Jorgensen is a poet and educator originally from Cleveland, Ohio. He holds a PhD from the University of North Texas and an MFA from New York University. His work previously won the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest and has been published in Poetry, Literary Hub, the Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. He teaches at the University of South Alabama.

Sophie Kaiser Rojas is from Colorado. She is the recipient of a Fulbright award to Mexico. Her writing has received fellowships/support from The Kenyon Review, Brooklyn Poets, and The Porch. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Dialogist, Shō Poetry Journal, Salt Hill, Grist, wildness, Tupelo Quarterly, Thrush, and The Nashville Review, among others. As you read this, she is probably overcaffeinating, playing the word game ‘Q-Less,’ or on a walk in the greenway by her house. 

Sheema Kalbasi is an Iranian American poet and writer. A Pushcart Prize–winning author, she is also a recipient of a United Nations humanitarian award and a grantee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. Her books include Echoes in Exile (PRA Publishing, 2006), Spoon and Shrapnel (Daraja Press, 2024), and Jahan Malek Khatun: The Princess Poet of Fourteenth-Century Persia (Daraja Press, 2026).

Eli Karren is a poet and educator from Vermont. His work can be found in swamp pink, At Length, and the Harvard Review.

Elina Katrin is a Syrian-Russian immigrant writer. She’s the author of Overwintered, forthcoming from Trio House Press in 2027, and a poetry chapbook If My House Has a Voice (Newfound). She works and organizes with Mizna as an Assistant Editor and lives in Los Angeles with a dream and her cardigan.

Collin Kim is a rising senior from Los Angeles. An avid writer, surfer, and violist, he is a 2026 YoungArts Winner with Distinction in Poetry, a 21-time award recipient from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and a four-time national silver medalist. He has been recognized by The Adroit Journal, Pulitzer Center, Jacklyn Potter Poets Prize, Poetry Society of Virginia, National Council of Teachers in English, and more. His work appears in the Diode, The Louisville Review, West Trade Review, American High School Poets, DePaul’s BlueBook, and more. He will attend the Iowa Young Writers Studio this summer, and will be a mentee at The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship, where he also serves as a poetry reader.

Victoria Kornick’s first book, Relief, was selected by Diane Seuss as the winner of the 2025 Kathryn A. Morton Prize from Sarabande Books. Her poetry and creative nonfiction appear in The Best American Poetry series, 32 Poems, Copper Nickel, Electric Literature, and The Yale Review. She teaches creative writing at Emory University.

Carolene Kurien is a Malayali-American poet whose work has garnered support and recognition from MacDowell, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Key West Literary Seminar. Her poems have been published in Poetry London, Bennington Review, The Cincinnati Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. You can learn more at carolenekurien.com.

Ethan Kwak’s poetry is published in Puerto del Sol and Beaver Magazine. He is a volunteer screener for Ploughshares. He lives in Southern California.

Alice Liang is a poet based in Brooklyn by way of China and Michigan. Her work can be found in publications such as The Rumpus, The Margins, and The Seventh Wave. Winner of the 2025 Breakout! Prize selected by Victoria Chang, she received her MFA from New York University. Currently, she is the associate poetry editor at West Branch. 

Jenny Molberg’s third poetry collection, The Court of No Record (LSU Press, 2023), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her fourth book, The Medium, is forthcoming from LSU Press in 2027. She is Professor of Writing, Literature, and Publishing and Editor-in-Chief of Ploughshares at Emerson College. 

Ruby Hansen Murray is a columnist for the Osage News. She’s the winner of The Iowa Review and Montana Nonfiction Prizes, and a finalist for the Trio House Press Louise E. Bogan, Burnside Review Book Award, and Beloit’s Chad Walsh Chapbook prizes. Find more at www.rubyhansenmurray.com

Adeniyi Odukoya is a Nigerian writer from Ogun state. He currently studies for an MFA at Brown University. His works appear or are forthcoming in World Literature Today, The Guardian, Cincinnati Review, amongst others. 

Rebecca Hart Olander’s poetry has appeared recently in MER, On the Seawall, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Her books include the chapbook Dressing the Wounds (dgp, 2019), Uncertain Acrobats (CavanKerry, 2021), and Singing from the Deep End (CavanKerry, 2026). Rebecca has taught poetry widely, most recently as the James Merrill Visiting poet at Amherst College. She is the publisher at Perugia Press.

Misha Ponnuraju is a Malaysian American writer and photographer from San Bernardino, California. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Ohio State University, where she served as Managing Editor at The Journal. Find her work at Poets.org, the Haymarket Books anthology We the Gathered Heat, Shade Literary, and Poet Lore.

Jenny Sadre-Orafai is the author of Paper Cotton Leather, Malak, and Dear Outsiders, and co-author of Book of Levitations. Her poetry has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Cream City Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. Her prose has appeared in The Rumpus, Fourteen Hills, and The Los Angeles Review. She co-founded and co-edits Josephine Quarterly and teaches and mentors creative writers.

Brooke Sahni is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently In This Distance. Her debut collection, Before I Had the Word (Texas Review Press), won the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize and her chapbook, Divining, won the Orison Chapbook Prize. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review, Nimrod, The Cincinnati Review, Boulevard, Verse Daily, 32 Poems,and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook, Letters, Dreams is forthcoming in fall 2026.

Sloane Scott is a poet from Missouri and an incoming MFA student at Washington University in St. Louis. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Penn Review, Under a Warm Green Linden, and elsewhere. They are the founding editor of like a field, a seasonal journal of art and text.

Alia Shaukat is a Pakistani-American writer. She has an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and BA from McGill University. She is a 2025-2026 Teaching Artist for the Community-Word Project and Poetry Editor of Lumina Journal. She is the winner of the 2025 and 2026 Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival Writing Contest, selected by Rio Cortez and Joan Kwon Glass, respectively. Born and raised in Texas, Alia now lives, works, and writes in New York. 

Jacob Herrera Spears is a poet from Goleta, CA, who recently completed a B.A. in English after transferring from his local community college. His work has been recognized for awards by Rattle and Frontier Poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Anacapa Review, Rattle, and Plume. 

Nora Sullivan is a poet from Massachusetts and a Zell Fellow at the University of Michigan, Helen Zell Writers’ Program. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Chicago Review, Bat City Review, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere.

Aspen Taylor is a poet and visual artist based in New York. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at NYU, where she teaches and works as Poetry Editor for Washington Square Review. Her work is forthcoming in The Spectacle. 

Gordon Taylor is a queer, emerging poet who walks an ever-swaying, braided wire of technology and poetry. A 2022 Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems have appeared in Narrative, Cincinnati Review, Rattle’s Poet’s Respond, Poet Lore, Palette Poetry, and more. He writes to invite people into a world they may not have seen.

Preeti Vangani is the author of two poetry collections, Mother Tongue Apologize (2019) and Fifty Mothers (River River Books, 2026). Her work has appeared in AGNI, Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, among other places. She holds an MFA in Writing from University of San Francisco and teaches in the program.

Jeff Whitney’s most recent chapbook is Sixteen Stories (Flume Press, 2022). Recent poems can be found or found soon in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, and The Southern Review. A recipient of a 2025 NEA fellowship, he lives with his wife in Portland. For more info, visit www.jeffwhitneypoetry.com.

Andrew Chi Keong Yim was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. He received the 2024 New Voices Award in Poetry from Washington Square Review and is a 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist. His debut poetry collection, The Ninth Island, is forthcoming from University of Pittsburgh Press in Spring 2027. Andrew lives and jogs in Queens.

Hananah Zaheer is the author of Lovebirds (Bull City Press, 2021). Other recent work has appeared in Kenyon Review, The Cut, Best Small Fictions, AGNI, Virginia Quarterly Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. You can find her @hananahzaheer or at www.hananahzaheer.com.

Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer based in rural Michigan. They are the author of the chapbook Bliss Road (Seven Kitchens Press, 2025), and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Foglifter, Diode, Nimrod, and elsewhere.

ABOUT THE COVER ARTIST

Nara Allsop is a queer artist who has been painting deities from both the Hindu and Vajrayana Buddhist traditions for over thirty years. He studied with the British artist and writer Robert Beer for five years and currently resides in rural Arizona, where he manages Triveni Retreat Center.