Contributors

GAROUS ABDOLMALEKIAN is an award-winning Iranian poet. His poetry has been translated into several languages, including Italian, French, and German, winning prestigious literary distinctions in Europe. His debut collection in translated English, Lean against This Late Hour, was published by Penguin Random House in 2020. Abdolmalekian is currently the Poetry Editor at Nashre- Cheshmeh Publishing House.

ALBERT ABONADO is the author of the poetry collection JAW (Sundress Publications) and the forthcoming Field Guide for Accidents (Beacon Press, 2024), a National Poetry Series selection. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. His writing has appeared in The Bennington Review, The Colorado Review, Poetry Northwest, Zone 3, and others. He lives and teaches in Rochester, New York.

Author of six Persian poetry books, ALI ASADOLLAHI is an Iranbased poet. His poems and translations have appeared in Bellingham Review, Denver Quarterly, Epoch, Hayden’s Ferry Review, etc.

JANÉE J. BAUGHER is the author of the only craft book of its kind, The Ekphrastic Writer: Creating Art-Influenced Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction (McFarland, 2020) and two full-length poetry collections. She’s an assistant editor at Boulevard Magazine, and she’s been featured on Seattle Channel TV and at the Library of Congress. The Seattle Office of Arts & Culture awarded her a 2024 CityArtist grant.

STEPHEN ERIC BERRY is a writer, filmmaker, composer, and a recipient of a Jule and Avery Hopwood Award. His poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in: Michigan Quarterly Review, Midwest Review, Los Angeles Review, Puerto del Sol, Tampa Review, Columbia Journal, Asymptote, The Mailer Review, Interim, and the Brazilian publications Belas Infíéis and Voz da Literatura. In 2017, he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to be a Amherst College visiting scholar. In 2023, he released The Children's Holiday, a film exploring Detroit-area artist John Elkerr’s artwork. He lives in Chelsea, Michigan.

SARA BORJAS is a self-identified Xicanx pocha and a Fresno poet. End settler colonialism. Her debut collection, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff (Noemi Press, 2019) received a 2020 American Book Award. Abolish the police. Sara was one of Poets & Writers’ 2019 Debut Poets. Palestine will be free. Her work can be found in Poem-a-Day, The Rumpus, World Literature Today, amongst others. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, Ragdale, CantoMundo, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Community of Writers. She believes that all Black lives matter and will resist white supremacy until Black liberation is realized. She teaches at California State University, East Bay and stays rooted in Fresno. C/S.

DANIEL BYRONSON is a translator from Spanish and a poet. He was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he now resides. His translations of poems by the Spanish writer Ana María Moix are forthcoming in the Massachusetts Review and his reviews can be found in Rain Taxi. By day, he works in immigration law.

MELISA CAHNMANN-TAYLOR, Meigs Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, is the co-editor of The Creative Ethnographer's Notebook (2024), the poetry book, Imperfect Tense (2016) and five other books on the arts of language and education. Recipient of six NEA Big Read Grants, a 2023 NEA Distinguished Fellowship, Hambidge Residency Award, and the Beckman award for Professors Who Inspire, she was appointed in 2020 as Fulbright Scholar Ambassador. Her poems, translations, and essays have appeared in Georgia Review, Lilith, American Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Mom Egg, Plume, Tupelo, Rattle, Hawaii Pacific Review, and elsewhere.

SHELLY S. CATO’s writing has appeared in Rattle, Red Wheelbarrow, Southeast Review, Poet Lore, Washington Square Review, New Ohio Review, and TriQuarterly. She lived in the Mississippi Delta for 25 years and now writes on Mulberry Fork in Walker County, Alabama. When she is on the river on her paddleboard, it is still—sometimes—and it is peace. And she can see things she would never have seen before. She is passionate about genre-bending and experimenting with form, long poems and refrains, and blurring lines between truth/imagination.

CONSTANTINE P. CAVAFY (1863-1933), lived most of his rather private life in Alexandria, Egypt. He wrote matter-of-factly about intense homoerotic desire, which were, in his day, daring, even dangerous. Cavafy set many poems in the obscure centuries of Greek culture in the Byzantine Empire. Never publishing a book, he gave his poems to friends in pamphlet, booklet, or pinned form. The first book of his collected work was published two years after his death.

NIANXI CHEN, born in 1970 at Danfeng, Shannxi Province, began writing poems in 1990. In 1999, he left his hometown and labored as a miner across China for 16 years. In 2015, he couldn’t continue as a miner due to the illness caused by his occupation: black lung disease. In 2016, he was awarded the Laureate Worker Poet Prize. His poetry and life were featured in a 2018 documentary, Demolition Work, about migrant worker poets in China. Chen’s poetry book, Records of Explosion (Taibai Wenyi Press), provides lyrical documentation of the hidden costs behind China's financial boom. Chen's poems have appeared in Poetry Periodical, Qinghai Lake, Chinese Poetry, Shandong Literature, and Wutai Mountain.

CONSTANTINE CONTOGENIS’s collection Ikaros (Word Press, 2004) won a First Prize Open Voice Poetry Award from Writer's Voice. He co-translated Songs of the Kisaeng: Courtesan Poetry of the Last Korean Dynasty (BOA Editions, 1997). His work is in Joining Music with Reason: 34 Poets, British and American: Oxford 2004-2009 (2011), and Pomegranate Seeds: An Anthology of Greek- American Poetry (2008). He’s been published widely, including in Whiskey Island, Paris Review, Pequod, TriQuarterly, Chicago Review, Cimarron Review, Crazyhorse, Literary Imagination, Lullwater Review, MacGuffin, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Western Humanities Review, Poetry East, New Orleans Review, New York Quarterly, Nimrod, Speakeasy, Water-Stone, Westview, Worcester Review, Grand Street, and Yale Review. His work was featured by Poetry Society of America’s Poetry in Motion. A fellow of Incite @ Columbia (University), he lives with his wife in Manhattan.

CHELSEA DINGMAN’s first book, Thaw, won the National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2017). Her second book, through a small ghost, won the Georgia Poetry Prize (University of Georgia Press, 2020). Her third collection is I, Divided (Louisiana State University Press, 2023). She is also the author of the chapbook, What Bodies Have I Moved (Madhouse Press, 2018). She is pursuing her PhD at the University of Alberta, and her current work draws on research supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada. Visit her website: chelseadingman.com.

GUY GOFFETTE, born in Jamoigne (Belgium) in 1947, is a poet, writer, and editor at Gallimard. He lives in Paris and has published over thirty books (poetry, novels, and essays). His work has been translated into over 25 languages, and includes Forever Nude in the UK (Vintage Books) and Charlestown Blues in the USA (University of Chicago Press). He has won numerous prizes, including the Prix Goncourt and the Grand prix de poésie de l’Académie française.

DAVI GRAY (they/she) is a queer, trans, nonbinary poet, writer, storyteller, artist, activist, and abolitionist. They live in North Minneapolis (Bde Óta Othúŋwe), on traditional homelands of the Dakota and Ojibwe. Davi has work published or forthcoming in Poetry, Rogue Agent, NonBinary Review, and elsewhere; received Honorable Mention in the 2023 Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest; has won prizes in PEN America Prison Writing Contests, and was nominated for an AWP Intro prize. They often perform their poetry at open mics around the Twin Cities.

ROY GU is Professor of English at Shanghai International Studies University, China. He has published poems and short stories in both English and Chinese. He has translated several books, including Love by Toni Morrison. He is also a singersongwriter and has released folk music albums.

FATEMA HAQUE is a Bangladeshi American writer, educator, and fiber artist based in Michigan. Her writing has appeared in Kajal Magazine, I Hope You'll Still Love me: An LGBTQIA+ South Asian Anthology, and To Us & Ours: An Asian American Feminist Collection. At various points in her life, she has considered Sylhet, Chittagong, and Michigan home.

JOHN T. HOWARD is a Colombian American writer, translator, and educator. He has served as Writer-in-Residence at Wellspring House Retreat and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University. His poetry can be found at Salamander, Notre Dame Review, PANK Magazine, Exit 7, The Worcester Review, Posit, The South Carolina Review, and elsewhere. He resides in the greater Boston area with his partner and their daughter, and he teaches Creative Writing at Hampshire College and Analytical Writing at Tufts University.

ROBERTO JAMORA is a Filipino artist based in Richmond, Virginia. He holds an MFA from the State University of New York at Purchase and a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. He is an Assistant Professor at VCU School of the Arts and the Asian Centennial Distinguished Fine Arts Fellow at William & Mary. He has done residencies at Jentel, VCCA-France Moulin à Nef, Hambidge, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Joan Mitchell Center, and Ragdale. His art has been exhibited widely, including at the Virginia MOCA, Frost Art Museum, Antenna, Page Bond Gallery, ADA Gallery, Topaz Arts, and Norte Maar. His art is in collections including the Atlanta Hawks NBA Team, Capital One, Harvard Kennedy School, Muscarelle Museum of Art, and private collections in North America, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom.

SUSAN K received her BA in English Literature and Linguistics at the University of Toronto. After completing the Literature Translation fellowship and the Media Translation fellowship programs at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea), she currently works as a full-time freelance translator of Korean literature, web comics, films, and cultural contents into English. She has translated the poetry collections I’ll Give You All My Promenade (Asia Publishers, 2022) by Jeong Woo-shin and Rock Is Thunder (Asia Publishers, 2023) by Lee Jae Hoon, and co-translated Kim Haengsook’s Human Time (Black Ocean, 2023). She also received two grants from LTI Korea to translate Korean poetry into English: Soran Park’s One Person’s Closed Door and Joon Park’s We Could See the Monsoon Together.

MILAD KAMYABIAN (born 1984), holder of an MA in Persian language, is the head director of the Iranian publication, Khaneh. He has published two Persian poetry books and in 2015 won the Persian Avant-Garde Poetry Award.

KATHRYN KIMBALL grew up in Alabama, has a PhD in English Literature, and has taught writing and nineteenth-century literature. Her publications include a 2021 chapbook, a book of poetry accepted for publication in 2025, and inclusion in various journals. She has published translations of several poets' writing in French, including Goffette. She is a yoga practitioner and lives in New York City.

LAURA KRAFTOWITZ’s writing appears in The Kenyon Review, NPR, The Evergreen Review, The Forward, and elsewhere. She is an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace and the co-founder of City of Asylum/Detroit, a nonprofit that provides safe-haven fellowships to writers and artists who are in exile under threat of persecution. She is completing work on a manuscript about her activism in Gaza.

MARIANNE KUNKEL is the author of Hillary, Made Up (Stephen F. Austin State University Press) and The Laughing Game (Finishing Line Press), two anthologies, and poems that have appeared in The Missouri Review, Notre Dame Review, The Threepenny Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Johnson County Community College. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Florida and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she was managing editor of Prairie Schooner and the African Poetry Book Fund. She is the co-editor-in-chief of Kansas City Voices and Kansas City Voices Youth. She loves making poems and baking pies, and she posts images of both on Instagram at @asliceofpoetry.

DIANA KEREN LEE’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, The New Republic, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. A finalist for the Sarabande Books Kathryn A. Morton Prize, she has received awards from the Fine Arts Work Center, MacDowell, and New York University.

ALEJANDRO LUCERO’s chapbook, Sapello Son, was named the Editors’ Selection for the 2022 Frost Place Competition and is forthcoming with Bull City Press. His latest work appears/is forthcoming in Best New Poets, The Cincinnati Review, The Florida Review, RHINO, and The Southern Review. He lives in Baltimore, where he teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and is an assistant editor for The Hopkins Review.

DONNA MANCUSI-UNGARO HART received her PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University. Her field of interest is Italian Studies. She was awarded the Dante Prize of the Dante Society of America and published Dante and the Empire (American University Studies, 1987). She taught Italian at Rutgers University and since 2005, has been a tutor and translator of Italian through the University of Michigan. Her translations have appeared in: Michigan Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review, Columbia Journal, Belas Infíéis (Brazil), Interim, and Asymptote. In 2023, she shared a poetry prize sponsored by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Born and brought up in Kolkata, RUDRA KISHORE MANDAL finished schooling and joined Art College in Hyderabad. They worked as a graphic designer for six years before they resumed creating independent works in painting, digital graphics, and art installations in 2008. They freelance as an illustrator, graphic designer, and resource person for creative projects varying from product design to awareness campaigns for gender and sexuality issues. They have exhibited in group shows nationally and internationally in collaboration with Alliance Francaise De Hyderabad, British Council, Goethe Institute, Consulate General of Italy, Italian Ministry of Culture, Eurasia, Danshauspiu, UNESCO, Queer Asia, Burning Man Festival, Amnesty International, Blackwall, British Museum, Kolkata Centre for Creativity, and Indian Council for Cultural Relations, among others.

ANAYA MAREI finds herself overthinking (supposedly) basic questions, such as “What's your favorite color?” “Where are you from?” and “Is this bio long enough?” If her work is forthcoming elsewhere, she has yet to be told.

LATANYA MCQUEEN is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment of the Arts (2022 Fellowship in Prose) and the Elizabeth George Foundation. She is the author of two books—the essay collection And It Begins Like This (Black Lawrence Press, 2017) and the novel When The Reckoning Comes (Harper Perennial, 2021).

ORLANDO MONDRAGÓN is a doctor and poet from Mexico. He received the Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas fellowship program in 2019. For his debut poetry collection, Epicedio al padre, Mondragón won the IV Premio de Poesía Joven Alejandro Aura. He won the III Premio Internacional de Poesía Ciudad de Estepona for his collection, Paisaje nevado con patinadores y trampa para pájaros. In 2021, Mondragón was the first poet under thirty years old to win the Premio Internacional de Poesía Fundación Loewe for Cuadernos de patología humana, his most recent poetry collection. In 2022, he was selected by Forbes Magazine as one of the 100 most creative Mexicans in the world.

DANIELLE BATALION OLA is a Filipina storyteller who was born and raised on the island of Kaua’i. Her work has been featured in New Ohio Review, The Common, Epiphany, and elsewhere. She is a 2020 Tin House Scholar and 2019 Kundiman Mentorship Lab Fellow. When she’s not fussing over her own writing, she helps refine the work of others as a creative nonfiction editor at No Tokens.

ADRIANA ONIȚĂ is a multilingual poet, artist, educator, researcher, publisher, and translator who works between English, Romanian, Spanish, French, and Italian. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Misremembered Proverbs (above/ground press, 2023) and Conjugated Light (Glass Buffalo, 2019). As founding editor of The Polyglot, Adriana is proud to have published more than 220 writers and artists working in over 60 languages. Adriana works as editorial director for the Griffin Poetry Prize and lives between Edmonton, Canada, and Marsala, Italy. Discover her poems, translations, and PhD research at adrianaonita.com.

PATTY PAINE is the author of Grief & Other Animals, The Sounding Machine, and three chapbooks. Her writing and visual work have appeared in Blackbird, Adroit, Gulf Stream, Denver Quarterly, Thrush, Lomography, South Dakota Review, and other publications. She is the founding editor of Diode Poetry Journal and Diode Editions, and is Director of Liberal Arts & Sciences at VCUarts Qatar.

SORAN PARK is a South Korean poet. She made her debut with Moonhak Soochup (2009) and won the Sin Dong-yup Prize for Literature for her first poetry collection, Words Close to Heart (Changbi, 2015). In 2016 she won the Tomorrow’s Korean Writer Award by the Writers Association of Korea. One Person’s Closed Door (Changbi, 2019), her second poetry collection, won her the Nojak Literature Prize. In 2021 she published her third poetry collection, There Is (Hyundae Munhak).

BLEAH PATTERSON (she/her) is a Southern queer writer born and raised in Texas. A current MFA candidate, writing professor, and TRP publishing fellow, she was a winter 2024 SAFTA Resident. She is a Pushcart nominee and her various genres of work are featured in Brazos River Review, Write or Die, Texas Review, Across the Margins, Queerlings, Fifth Wheel Press, Beaver Magazine, and elsewhere.

CRISTINA PERI ROSSI is one of Uruguay’s major contemporary writers and the recipient of the 2021 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the most important Spanish-language literary award. She has written poems, short stories, novels, and essays, in addition to her work as a translator and journalist. Among her nineteen books of poetry is a moving collection on the experience of exile, Estado de exilio, which is available in English as State of Exile. She left Uruguay in 1972 and eventually settled in Barcelona, where she has resided for many years.

PAMELA PROIETTI’s first book of poetry, il nome bianco, was published by Gattomerlino Edizioni (Rome, Italy) in 2021. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in: Michigan Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review, Asymptote, Columbia Journal, Belas Infíeis (Brazil), Interim, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, La nuova carne poetica, Vol.1 - della femmina intelligenza (PesaNerviPress, 2008), and Il mare è poesia (Edizioni Progetto Cultura, 2015). She has served as an editorial director at Metropolis Zero magazine where she oversaw the “Letters to the Director” section and wrote on the “Mind the Gap” page. Proietti has collaborated with NiedernGasse magazine and the cultural association “House of Ink.” She lives in Rome, Italy.

SHALINI RANA is a poet, translator, and essayist from Northern Virginia. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Aleph Review, Copihue Poetry, Salt Hill, Rappahannock Review, wildness, and elsewhere. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Arkansas, where she won the James T. Whitehead Award for Poetry (judged by Kayleb Rae Candrilli) and the Carolyn Walton Cole Endowed Fund in Creative Writing. Shalini received her BA degrees from Virginia Tech, where she won third place in the Steger Poetry Prize judged by Nikki Giovanni.

ESTEBAN RODRÍGUEZ is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Lotería (Texas Review Press, 2023), and the essay collection Before the Earth Devours Us (Split/Lip Press, 2021). He is the interviews editor for the EcoTheo Review, senior book reviews editor for Tupelo Quarterly, and associate poetry editor for AGNI. He lives with his family in south Texas.'

SIAVASH SAADLOU is is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer and literary translator whose work has been noted in the 2023 Best American Essays series. His short stories and essays can be found in Malahat Review, Southeast Review, and Plenitude Magazine. His poems have appeared in Collateral, CIRQUE, Saint Katherine Review, and Scoundrel Time, among other journals. They have also been anthologized in Odes to Our Undoing: Writers Reflecting on Crisis (2022) and Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora (2021). Saadlou is the winner of the 2023 Constance Rooke Nonfiction Prize and the 55th Cole Swensen Prize for Translation.

PETER SAGNELLA, a Pushcart nominee and Edwin Way Teale Writer-in-Residence, lives in Connecticut and teaches Composition, Poetry, and Environmental Literature. His work has appeared in many journals, most recently Cagibi, New Limestone Review, Shō, and Poet Lore. In 2023 Cathexis Northwest Press published his chapbook, Coming to Terms.

NATALIA SANDOVAL is a Mexican writer and economist, and her previous career was in finance. Her debut short story, “Deliverista,” was a finalist for Witness Magazine’s 2022 Literary Awards in Fiction and her fiction also appears in Prairie Schooner (Winter 2023). She has received support from Guernica and the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop 2023. She’s currently at work on a novel and a collection of short stories. She lives in New York City with her husband and two kids.

PARISA SARANJ is a writer and translator. Her writings on contemporary Iranian politics and translations from Persian have been published in several publications, including West Branch, Ms. Magazine, Defunct, Two Lines, and Your Impossible Voice. She has also translated two books, Empty and Me (Lee & Low, 2023) by Azam Mahdavi and Women, Life, Freedom: Our Fight for Human Rights and Equality in Iran (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Nasrin Sotoudeh, and two documentaries, Nasrin (2020) and Sānsūr (2023), on women’s rights in Iran.

FERESHTEH SARI is a poet, writer, translator, and a member of the Iranian Writers’ Association. She won the 2004 Parvin Etesami Poetry Award, presented annually by Iran’s Institute of Culture, Art and Architecture. She is the author of eight books of poetry, six novels, and several children's and young adult books.

CHRISTIAN PHILIP SCOTT is a cartoonist from Providence, Rhode Island.

SHALINI SINGH is from India and lives in Iowa where she is an MFA candidate and the program assistant for Iowa State University. A lawyer before, she is now immersed in writing her hybrid prose poetry book, Lullaby into the microphone, which is excerpted in this issue of HFR. Shalini writes a newsletter when she can: belladonnaoflavender.substack.com. Find more of her works at https://linktr.ee/belladonnaoflavender. She cooks and moonlights as a traineewitch when she isn't reading or researching.

MICHAEL TORRES was born and brought up in Pomona, California, where he spent his adolescence as a graffiti artist. His debut collection of poems, An Incomplete List of Names (Beacon Press, 2020), was selected by Raquel Salas Rivera for the National Poetry Series and named one of NPR’s Books We Love 2020. Currently he’s an Associate Professor in the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and a teaching artist with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Visit him at: michaeltorreswriter.com

LILIANA URSU is an internationally acclaimed poet, prose writer, and translator born in Sibiu, Romania. Ursu has published over a dozen books in Romanian, the most recent of which is Cartea paşilor (Spandugino, 2023). Her work has been translated into many languages, including in English: Clay and Star (Etruscan Press, 2019), A Path to the Sea (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2011), and Lightwall (Zephyr Press, 2009), which won the 2009 PEN Southwest Book Award for Translation and was a finalist for the PEN USA 2010 Literary Award in Translation. Ursu, who has been awarded Romania’s rank of Knight of Arts and Literature, has received two Fulbright grants and taught creative writing at the University of Louisville and Bucknell University. She lives in Bucharest.

JORDAN WALKER is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio. They are currently an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington where they work as a teaching assistant and instructor of creative writing. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in Passages North and The Shore. Their essay, “Island of Misfits,” won Prairie Schooner’s 2023 Summer Nonfiction Essay Contest and will appear in the Spring 2024 issue.

JESSE WALLIS has been a finalist for the University of Wisconsin Press Poetry Series and the Zone 3 Press Book Award in Poetry. His poems have appeared in Bennington Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Image, Ploughshares, Southern Poetry Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He studied writing and film at the University of Iowa and, prior to that, art at Syracuse University and the California Institute of the Arts. He lives in the Phoenix metro area and works in human resources for a public school district.

ESZI WATERS is a poet, essayist, and visual artist pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University. Their work has been published by Shelia- Na-Gig, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Monster House Press. Eszi is also a parent.

KUO ZHANG is an Assistant Professor in Education at Siena College and received her PhD in TESOL & World Language Education at the University of Georgia. Her poem, “One Child Policy,” won second place in the 2012 Society for Humanistic Anthropology Poetry Competition (American Anthropological Association). Her poems have appeared in The Roadrunner Review, Lily Poetry Review, Bone Bouquet, K’in, DoveTales, North Dakota Quarterly, Literary Mama, Mom Egg Review, Adanna Literary Journal, Raising Mothers, MUTHA Magazine, Journal of Language and Literacy Education, and Anthropology and Humanism.