We’re over the moon to welcome eleven new readers to our global staff of emerging writers! Learn more about Tolu, Colin, Destiny, Lisa, Will, Hannah, Kinsale, Dan, Kathryn, Heidi, and Emily below.
Tolu Agbelusi is a Nigerian British poet, playwright, performer and lawyer. A Callaloo Fellow, she was longlisted for the inaugural Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship and recognised by Speaking Volumes as one of the Best British Writers of Colour. Her work has appeared in Brittle Paper, After Ferguson, and In Solidarity, an anthology by Mourning Glory, and is forthcoming from the Pittsburgh Poetry Review. Tolu is working on her first poetry collection.
Colin Bailes is a recent graduate of the University of Central Florida, where he received a nomination for the AWP Intro Journals Project and published poems in Cypress Dome. He was a semifinalist for the 2017 Adroit Prize for Poetry, and has had work appear in Rust + Moth. Originally from Orlando, Florida, he currently lives in Richmond, Virginia.
Destiny O. Birdsong is a poet and essayist whose poems have either appeared in or are forthcoming from the Adroit Journal, the African American Review, the Indiana Review, Bettering American Poetry, and elsewhere. Her critical work recently appeared in the African American Review and the Cambridge Companion to Transnational American Literature. Destiny is a recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and Jack Jones Literary Arts, and residencies from the Ragdale Foundation and the MacDowell Colony. She earned both her MFA and PhD from Vanderbilt University. Read more of her work at http://www.destinybirdsong.com.
Lisa Favicchia is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Bowling Green State University, where she served as managing editor of Mid-American Review. Her work has appeared in Smeuse Poetry, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, and Wordpool Press, and is forthcoming from Rubbertop Review, the Airgonaut, and Adelaide Literary Magazine.
Will Frazier lives in Brooklyn, where he is co-founder and coordinator of the Franklin Electric Reading Series. His writing appears in or is forthcoming from Washington Square Review, Kenyon Review Online, No Tokens, and Cosmonauts Avenue. He is a graduate of the Area Program in Poetry Writing at the University of Virginia.
Hannah Goldstein is an experiential educator and full-time volunteer. She is a recent graduate of Colgate University, where she studied English and Political Science. Her work has been published in the Colgate Portfolio, and in the summer of 2015, she was selected for a poetry workshop and residency facilitated by Carolyn Forché through Writing Workshops in Greece. She currently lives in Washington, D.C.
Kinsale Hueston is a 2017 National Student Poet, and a senior in high school from Southern California. An enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, Kinsale’s work seeks to contemporize Native American culture and address modern issues facing her tribe. Kinsale is also the recipient of the Yale Young Native Storytellers Award for Spoken Word/Storytelling, and two National Scholastic Gold Medals for Poetry and Dramatic Script.
Dan Kraines teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology and City Tech. You can find his poems in the Journal, Phantom, Two Peach, the Carolina Quarterly, Salamander, and Queen Mob’s Tea House, among many other publications. He is a Ph.D. candidate in Poetry at the University of Rochester. In June, he was a resident at the Betsy Writer’s Room in Miami.
Kathryn McMahon is a queer American writer living abroad. Her prose has appeared in or is forthcoming from Syntax and Salt, Cease, Cows, the Baltimore Review, Split Lip, and Necessary Fiction. She is a nominee for the 2017 Best of the Net Anthology.
After taking a 40-year hiatus, Heidi Seaborn starting writing poetry in 2016. Her work has appeared in Timberline, Gravel, West Trade Review, American Journal of Poetry, and Nimrod International Journal, as a semi-finalist for the 2017 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Her work has also appeared in five anthologies, as the political pamphlet Body Politic (Mount Analogue Press), on a Seattle bus, and in the forthcoming chapbook Finding My Way Home (Finishing Line Press). She lives in Seattle.
Emily Tian is a high school junior from Rockville, Maryland. Her work has previously been honored by the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Gigantic Sequins, and John Hopkins University, among others. She is an alumna of the 2017 Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program.
