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Jessica is a trans writer based in the Twin Cities. She writes stories about change and challenge, usually featuring characters that are sapphic and strong. When not working or writing, she fills her time with her dogs, RPGs, and reading from her hoard of queer SFF books.

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Beatrice Ogeh is a scaredy-cat, hopeful skeptic, and writer and musician based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her stories investigate difficult and personally relevant subjects, such as depression, race, and alienation, through a humorous lens. Her work has appeared in Runestone Literary Journal and Flash Fiction Magazine, and she is a recent fellow in the Tofte Lake Center BIPOC Artist Residency. When she's not writing, you can find her playing shows around the Twin Cities with her alt-rock band Not Your Baby, in which sings and plays electric guitar.

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Yonci is a Cultural Curator, DJ, Musician, and Writer born/raised/based in Minneapolis. Yonci’s practice is an intricate exploration, experimentation, and expansion into the past, present, and future of Black Queer traditions. With more than a decade of experience in traditional West African percussion and jazz instrumentation, radio programming, and arts education and community organizing, Yonci employs performance, the pen & page, bread breaking, and a love ethic in solidarity with marginalized communities and in efforts to create a future free of anti-Blackness and queerphobia. You can hear Yonci on "Mostly Jazz" every Saturday from 9-11am CST on KFAI Radio.

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Pedra is based in Minneapolis via Venezuela. Pedra is a performance maker working through overlapping values of queer and latinx lenses: melodrama, passion, decadence and sensuality. Movement, like water, is life. They observe movement in how we relate with one another, with nature, with the world around us. A Jerome fellow for Dance ('19-'21) and McKnight for choreography Fellowship ('22) recipient, their latest solo work, TRANSUBSTAN (2023), emerges from an embodied practice developed in natural settings - Armila, Guna Yala, 2022. Pedra is a teaching artist working with Upstream Arts, with and alongside the disability community, supporting programming for social and communication skills, self advocacy skills, and sexual abuse prevention/sex ed. They also teach movement and expression to pre-schoolers at the Pillsbury house theater. As a co-director of Drag Story Hour, theatrical productions, Pedra’s proud to announce a 3 episode show series this Spring - LOVE RISES. Through their life and work, they’ve been surrounded by stellar writers. They look forward to working on their own voice as a writer! 

he/him

Keng Xiong is a Hmong American storyteller who grew up in Andover, Minnesota. He recently graduated from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, with a BA in English, creative writing, and Asian American studies. He loves writing poetry and performance-based texts, including spoken word poetry and short plays. He is passionate about telling Hmong stories with a focus on language, family, and queerness. He is also interested in arts advocacy and education. On his own time, he enjoys reading, attending local theater shows, exploring book shops and museums, and playing volleyball with family and friends. His favorite food is his mom’s khao poon. You can follow him on his IG @keejnx. 

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Josina Manu Maltzman is a writer, carpenter, and rabble rouser. Josina is published in the anthologies Queer Voices: Poetry, Prose, and Pride (2019) and That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies on Resisting Assimilation (2004) and has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Loft Literary Center. For more about Josina’s writing and how it is informed by being in the trades for over twenty years and their organizing work as an antizionist Jew, visit www.josinamanumaltzman.com.

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구렌 Ren Koo is a half-Korean literary artist and organizer in the Twin Cities. They write poetry to relish in the sweet spots of life, examine vulnerable truths in their non-fiction, and dream of post-humanist fictional worlds rooted in love. Ren writes to heal and cultivate abolitionist and community-centered futures through storytelling. They spend their most joyful moments laughing loudly with loved ones, snuggling up with their royal Nebelung and a book, eating good, immersing themselves in their once-lost Korean culture, and often, scrawling at their roll-top desk late into the night.

Follow 구렌 Ren Koo on Threads and Instagram! @renmariekoo on all platforms.

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Adrienne Doyle is an artist, curator, and writer based in Minneapolis, MN. Their work centers the connective and intimate aspects of identity, memory, place, and power. Adrienne is dedicated to supporting the agency of Black queer artists. They are a co-founder of Burn Something Collective, which creates curation, publishing, and peer mentorship opportunities to support the technical and creative development Black and POCI femme, nonbinary, and trans artists.

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Kira is a multi-genre writer, theorist, filmmaker, singer-songwriter, and organizer from Saint Paul, MN. Their multidisciplinary work explores love, revolution, spiritual transformation, and collective healing, guided by the question: Why am I here? Rooted in personal and political storytelling, Kira’s artistic practice draws from Black feminist writers who emphasize truth-telling, community, ethics of care, and our interconnectedness with each other and the earth. Their work is a continuous negotiation of these relationships and a confrontation with self. Kira has performed throughout the Twin Cities, led poetry workshops, facilitated discussions on disability justice and creativity, and supported grassroots artists through grant writing. Their work has been published in Salty Magazine and other platforms. Kira is currently a fellow with More Than A Single Story's Go Back and Fetch It cohort for emerging Black writers.

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Isavela Lopez is a descendant from the Zapotec people, in Oaxaca, MX. Born in Chicago and raised in Minnesota. She is a spoken word artist, writer, photographer, Mexica Aztec dancer, and storyteller. Lopez has collaborated locally with Indigenous Roots Cultural Art center, Native Youth Art Collective as well as globally participated at the United Nations Indigenous Perminate form and COP Climate Conference. She writes about her communal experiences while having immigrant and indigenous roots and how the land is the fabric that connects our stories and our experiences.