Editors working within, across, and between genres | Lila Bonow, Aya Burton, Jason Germaine Hawkins, Luke Koesters, David Hsu-Tai Lo 羅煦泰, T.C. Martin, Lissette Norman, Amari Onyx, Morgan Varnado

Undergraduate Editors | Joaquin Gotera, Erica Kuhlmann

Web + Internet | Jason Germaine Hawkins, Lissette Norman, Gaia Rajan, Morgan Varnado

Faculty Editor & Founder | Diana Khoi Nguyen

Biographies

Lila Bonow is a writer and artist from a counterculture family in Seattle, Washington. Her work can be found on Poets.org and forthcoming in Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora. She is a candidate for an MFA in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh.

Aya Burton writes poems and is currently working on a novel told in vignettes. She teaches and studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where she is pursuing an MFA in poetry.

Joaquin Gotera (he/him) is a Pittsburgh-native poet and scientist learning to balance artistic practice with ambition. He studied chemistry and creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh, and his most recent work is oh-so-closely guarded it will not see the light of day until (maybe) draft thirty-seven.

Jason Germaine Hawkins (he/him/his) is a Black queer poet and short fiction writer from Georgia. He is currently in the MFA program at the University of Pittsburgh. His work has appeared in Stillpoint Literary Magazine and is set to appear in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. He has attended the Community of Writers Poetry Workshop as a Maat scholar and the Tin House Summer Workshop. He loves RPGs, insects, watching movies very closely, and language learning. He is currently searching the archives for century-old entomology books.

Luke Koesters (he/they) is a writer of poetry and prose from Omaha, NE. He is pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh and his work examines self-identity, distance, and place. His most recent work can be found in Bear Review and he can be most recently found nearby a body of water.

Erica Kuhlmann is a multimedia artist and writer. Their work has been published by Bottlecap Press, Doghouse Press, Sunday Mornings at the River, and Mister Magazine. They are currently a student at the University of Pittsburgh.

David Hsu-Tai Lo 羅煦泰 is a poet, translator, and photographer from Taipei and raised in Ho Chi Minh City. He is currently attending the MFA program at the University of Pittsburgh and has attended residencies at Tin House and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. His work has appeared in The Margins. He is former managing editor of Aster(ix) Journal. He is currently dreaming of setting up a fish tank in his Pittsburgh home.

T.C. Martin (he/they) is a nonfiction writer and poet from Southern Maryland. His work has appeared in Soft Punk Mag, Longleaf Review, Poets.org, and Roxane Gay’s The Audacity newsletter. His memoir in progress is a coming-of-age story about growing up fat and gay. He lives and teaches in Pittsburgh.

Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Root Fractures and Ghost Of, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and her video work has been exhibited at ICA Pittsburgh. A Kundiman and MacDowell fellow, and member of the Vietnamese artist collective, She Who Has No Master(s), Nguyen teaches creative writing in the MFA programs at Randolph College and the University of Pittsburgh.

Lissette Norman is an Afro-Dominican poet and author of the picture books My Feet Are Laughing, Plátanos Go with Everything and Abuela’s Library. She was awarded the New York Foundation for the Arts-Artist Fellowship in Fiction, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Grant, and the Hedgebrook, Millay Arts and Martha’s Vineyard Writers residencies. Lissette is currently an MFA fiction student at the University of Pittsburgh.

Amari Onyx is a Black trans writer and artist pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh. Amari’s writing explores the intersection of Documentary Poetics, Ekphrasis, and trans embodiment. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review and Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. Amari was an inaugural fellow of the 2025 Public History Summer School by the Black Unicorn Library & Archives and Pittsburgh Queer History Project. Amari is the founder of meTamorphosis: a queer & trans led reading series. He is a proud trans man butch queen vogue femme.

Gaia Rajan is the author of the chapbooks Moth Funerals (Glass Poetry Press 2020) and Killing It (Black Lawrence Press 2022). His work is published in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Best New Poets, the 2022 Best of the Net anthology, The Kenyon Review, Post Road, AAWW, and elsewhere. He is a poetry reader for Poetry Northwest, intern at Copper Canyon Press, and former intern at Poets House. Gaia lives in New York, though he grew up in Ohio.

Morgan Varnado (he/them) is a writer, poet, and educator from Oak Park Illinois. He received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Brown University and is currently working towards achieving a Master’s of Fine Arts at the Pittsburgh University. His poem, “America Is Just a Negro in an Anthill” was published in December 2021 Issue of Poetry Magazine in conjunction with the poetry anthology Respect the Mic: Celebrating 20 Years of Poetry from a Chicagoland High School, published by Penguin Workshop.