aegor ray is a writer, freak, and organizer for the decriminalization of sex work in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was a 2018-2019 Loft Mentor Series Fellow in poetry, a 2021 and 2022 Tin House Summer Workshop participant, and a 2022 Lambda Literary Scholar. aegor has received generous support from granters like the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Waterers, and residency opportunities from Tofte Lake Center and the Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota. aegor has been an arts writing fellow for MNArtists.com, a platform of the Walker Arts Museum, and is a cohort member of Red Eye Theater’s Isolated Acts 2025 showcase. His writing interests span queer and trans desire and terror, empire and its long-arching shadows, and the experiences of consuming and being consumed. aegor is writing his first novel. He is a Sagittarius. 

Halee Kirkwood is a bi, gender-and-genre-fluid writer from the western Gitchigami region, now living in Minneapolis. They were an inaugural and returning Indigenous Nations Poets (IN-NA-PO) fellow, a Tin House Summer Workshop alum, a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, and a 2022 Minnesota State Arts Board grant recipient. As part of their Minnesota State Arts Board grant, Kirkwood created the Twin Cities Service Workers Writing Workshop, a community writing space for people who worked in the service industries in the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kirkwood is the winner of the 2022 James Welch Poetry Prize, published with Poetry Northwest. Their poetry and prose can be found in Only Poems, Poem-A-Day, Ecotone, Poetry Magazine, and others. Kirkwood’s work centers on themes of queer ecologies, Anishinaabe histories and futures, retail labor, and reckoning with trauma, abuse, and addiction with a door open to the possibilities of healing. Kirkwood teaches at Hamline University, The Loft Literary Center, Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, Institute of American Indian Arts, and others. They are a first generation direct descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.

Rebecca Nichloson (She/Her) is a Black, queer, femme playwright, creative writer, and interdisciplinary artist. She’s the author of 50+ plays and creative works, including Submerged (An Opera); Dear America (libretto & vocals and vocal arrangement; Minnesota Opera); Hue and Cry; Hello, I’m Eve (winner of the Jane Chambers Award); Mara, Queen of the World; The Wild, Bold Enlightenment of Satine; and Cooking With Ellise; among others. She’s been published in About Journal: Geographies of Justice, The Star Tribune and anthologies; and holds an M.F.A in Playwriting from Columbia University, an M.A. in English Literature, and studied publishing at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Rebecca is the recipient of a commission from the Cedar Cultural Center for which she created Multicolored Musings: Jewels of Love, Loss, & Triumph and received an honorable mention from the McKnight Foundation (Spoken Word). She is the recipient of a Loft Literary Center Mentorship Series Fellowship, a Sesame Street Writer’s Room Fellowship, a Liberace Award, a Howard Stein Fellowship, a Matthew’s Fellowship, an America-in-Play Fellowship, and two Many Voices Fellowships from the Minneapolis Playwrights Center. Learn more about her work at www.RebeccaNichloson.com.

Sun Yung Shin (she/they) is a Korean-born award-winning multi-genre book author, freelance writer, cultural worker, consultant, and bodywork therapist living and working in Minneapolis, on the homelands and traditional territories of the Dakota, Anishinaabe, and other Native peoples. They are the author, co-author, editor, and co-editor of many books, and continue to participate in and collaborate on a wide variety of public art, civic, editorial, and educational projects and programs. With award-winning poet Su Hwang they are the co-founder of Poetry Asylum - follow them on IG! Currently Sun Yung is a finalist for a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship (to be announced in April ‘25); they have been a recipient of several Minnesota State Arts Board grants, a MacDowell residency, a McKnight Fellowship, and a Bush Fellowship. They teach with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and Loft Literary Center, and currently have a private bodywork practice in a space inside Sabathani Center which they share with Eiko Mizushima. Their formal education includes a B.A. in English from Macalester College, an MAT in Language Arts & Communication, and an MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics. Please visit sunyungshin.com or find them on IG, FB, and Bluesky.