SUMMER 2025 CONTRIBUTORS

Abubakar Ibrahim, known popularly by the moniker Imam of Poets, is a Nigerian poet and abstract artist. His work explores identity, memory, grief, displacement, and heritage. He reflects on how individuals perceive themselves, how they are perceived by others, and how these dynamics shape everyday life. His poetry often engages with communal histories, imagination, and sometimes love, navigating the space between the personal and the historical.

Aluu Prosper Chigozie is a contemporary Nigerian artist known for developing Abfillage, a unique technique that merges abstraction, figuration, and collage. His work explores layered narratives of identity, memory, and culture, using materials like newspapers and photography to preserve overlooked histories. Prosper’s pieces have been showcased in solo and group exhibitions across Nigeria and internationally, revealing a deep engagement with the shifting landscapes of personal and collective experience.

Ana W. Migwan is an Ojibwe poet and beadwork artist. She is an enrolled member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She attends Michigan Technological University as a graduate student. Her work has been nominated for Best New Poets 2025 and can be read in West Trestle Review, Yellow Medicine Review, Liminal Spaces, and Indigenous Food Sovereignty Zine.

Ayoneceli Rodriguez Segura is a queer mixed media artist originally from Mexico Tenochtitlan, or present day Mexico City. Their work often focuses on remembrance, belonging, identity, and grief. They use a variety of materials such as paint, fabric, beads, and other recycled materials, and continue to focus on reusing and finding a second purpose to items. They take inspiration from growing up undocumented and from the curanderismo culture in Mexico. Throughout their process, Segura comes face to face with many emotional and mental challenges due to the forced migration they had to face with their family. Through their work, they give their memories a physical body, bringing forth all the pain that comes with not being able to return. They are currently focused on working along side their queer migrant community. They currently reside in South Phoenix where they are part of the art and media team at Trans Queer Pueblo, an autonomous organization focused on aiding queer, trans, migrant people of color.

Cheyenne Dakota Williams is a Diné poet from Virginia. She is Bit’ahnii, born for Naahiłii. Her work has been featured in Yellow Medicine Review, Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art, and Poetry Magazine. She is a Tin House scholar, an AWP Tribal Colleges & Universities Fellow, and an undergraduate at Fort Lewis College majoring in writing.

Danielle Shandiin Emerson is a Diné writer from Shiprock, New Mexico on the Navajo Nation. Her clans are Tłaashchi’i (Red Cheek People Clan), born for Ta’neezaahníí (Tangled People Clan). Her maternal grandfather is Ashííhí (Salt People Clan) and her paternal grandfather is Táchii’nii (Red Running into the Water People Clan). She has a B.A. in Education Studies and a B.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University. She has work published from swamp pink, Academy of American Poets, Yellow Medicine Review, Poetry Magazine, Thin Air Magazine, Chapter House, Poetry Northwest, and others. She is an incoming MFA Fiction graduate student at Vanderbilt University.

Hilary Pohl is currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in Tribal Administration and Governance at the University of Minnesota Duluth. With a passion for tribal law and a vision to serve my community, she plans to attend law school and one day become a tribal judge. She is also a licensed massage therapist, working toward opening her own wellness studio in Duluth. As a proud mother, she balances her academic, professional, and personal life with determination and heart. In her free time, she enjoys running, biking, and spending quality time with her son in the outdoors.

Jennifer Gouge is an Anishinaabe and Taíno transmedia artist who builds worlds through photography, illustration, installation, beads, and short fiction. Enrolled in the Lac Courte Oreilles band of Lake Superior Chippewa and Taíno of the Higuayagua Taíno of the Caribbean, she draws deeply from personal and relational experience, regarding art as a toolkit for hope, resistance, and medicine. Her current work includes an evolving multifaceted series—spanning across written, visual, and sound art—rooted in Indigenous Futurism and tackling the interface between tribal and national/international structures. Running throughout her work blooms a centering of resurgence and a crumbling of colonialism.

Jessica Doe is an Aniyunwiya (Cherokee Nation) writer, artist, and scholar whose inter/multi/anti-disciplinary practice centers Indigenization and place. During her time as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in India and Visiting Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, her work spanned erasure poetry, installation, and visual art. Jessica’s writing has won multiple awards, and her exhibitions have been shown internationally. Her forthcoming monograph explores poetry and eating disorders through Indigenous lenses. Her poetry collection "sp[RED]," which Indigenizes the tarot, releases in 2026. Learn more at www.thischerokeerose.com.

Julianna Finch is a painter, sculptor, and illustrator exploring the inner world through recurring symbols, dreamlike landscapes, and a central female figure. Her work captures the tension between beauty and unease, clarity and mystery—revealing the emotional layers beneath the surface. Recently, she has expanded her practice into ceramics, creating sculptural forms that echo the raw, symbolic language of her paintings. With a background in psychology and an MFA from CIIS, Finch draws from the unconscious to craft an intimate, mythic visual world. Originally from California, she currently lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.

Lareina Abbott pens Métis themed speculative fiction, essays and memoir. Her stories have a tie to the spiritual or natural world, and to ancestry. She received the 2023 Alberta Literary Award for short story and the 2025 Alberta Literary Award for unpublished essay. She is an alumna of the Audible Indigenous Writers Circle. She is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta and her family names are Huppé, Desjarlais, and Cyr. She originates from a cattle ranch in northern British Columbia but currently lives and writes in Calgary/Mohkinstsis on MNA District 5 and Treaty 7 territory. She is on Instagram @boneblackstories.

Marie Anne Arreola is a bilingual poet and cultural editor whose work dissolves boundaries between language, form, and identity. Her creative practice explores digital femininity, altered states, memory, and identity through a poetic lens shaped by both the internet and introspective voices. Her work has appeared internationally in Torrey House Press, Meniscus Literary Journal, San Diego Poetry Annual, WILDSOUND International Poetry Festival, and elsewhere. She is a two-time finalist for the Francisco Ruiz Udiel Latin American Poetry Prize from Valparaíso Ediciones and a 2024 recipient of the Young Poets Scholarship from the Gutiérrez Lozano Foundation.

Oscar Mancinas is a Rarámuri-Chicano poet, scholar, and teacher. He was born, raised, and still resides in Mesa, Arizona’s Washington-Escobedo Neighborhood. His published works include the 2020 short story collection To Live and Die in El Valle and the 2022 collection of poetry des__: papeles, palabras, & poems from the desert. Find more of his work or contact him at oscarmancinas.wordpress.com

Samantha Gauer (she/her) is a Métis writer living in Canada, on the Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. She enjoys writing (and reading) speculative fiction and is working on her first novel.

Samatha Sage was born an Army brat in the Mexican border town of El Paso, TX. Sage is Navajo of the Waters Edge clan, born for the Bitterwater clan. Raised on and near the Navajo Reservation in Chinle, Arizona and Farmington, NM, Sage graduated from Navajo Preparatory School in Farmington, NM. She earned a BA in English from Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Currently Sage is mother to a 12-year-old Hoop Dancer son and a 1 year old rez dog name Beauford, residing in Phoenix, AZ.

Selene Mary Hofstetter is a second-year graduate student in Colorado State University’s MFA poetry program. She graduated from the University of California, Riverside, with a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. She is an enrolled Tribal Member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and is a lineal descendant of the Lummi Nation and Musqueam Indian Band. She currently resides in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné (Navajo), is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta'neeszahnii (Tangle People). Atsitty is a recipient of the Wisconsin Brittingham Prize for Poetry and other prizes. Her work has appeared in POETRY; EPOCH; Kenyon Review Online; Prairie Schooner; Leavings, and other publications. Her first book is Rain Scald (University of New Mexico Press, 2018), and her second book is (At) Wrist (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023). She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University and is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Beloit College in Wisconsin.

Tessema Meredith, a Samoan multimedia artist currently residing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who is pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Born in the town of St.George of Southern Utah. Meredith draws inspiration from her rich Polynesian ancestry and cultural values. These values include a deep connection to the land and ocean, the art of star navigation, and a strong sense of community. Through these forms of expression, she aims to convey her personal experiences and her deep-rooted ties to Samoan culture, all while presenting them through a contemporary lens.