About Foglifter

Edward Gunawan’s The Way Back was recently awarded the Silver Medal for “Collections” at the NCPA 29th Book Awards.

Megan Ellis’s essay “I Like My Body More When It Is Bruised” in Volume 4 Issue 2 was an honorable mention for Best American Essays 2020.

Foglifter Journal is honored to have won a Whiting Foundation Literary Magazine Prize thanks to our contributors’ powerful writing and readers’ generous support! This recognition of our dedication to uplifting the LGBTQ+ literary community’s essential, powerful voices and stories means so much—we’re tremendously grateful to The Whiting Foundation and thrilled to continue serving our community.

Foglifter was a finalist for the 2020 CLMP Firecracker Award for Magazines: General Excellence.

TC Tolbert won a 2021 Pushcart Prize for the poem “untitled” in Volume 4 issue 2. 

Greg Marshall’s essay “Secksi” in Volume 3 Issue 1 was an honorable mention for Best American Essays 2019.

Foglifter was a 2019 Lambda Literary Award Best Anthology finalist for Volume 3 Issue 1.

Foglifter was a 2020 Lambda Literary Award Best Anthology finalist for Volume 4 Issue 2.

Damitri Martinez’s story “Bat Outta Hell” from Volume 4 Issue 1 won the 2020 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.

Chen Chen won a 2020 Pushcart Prize for his poem, “four short essays personifying a future in which white supremacy has ended” in Volume 3 Issue 2.

Foglifter—created by and for LGBTQ+ writers and readers—continues the San Francisco Bay Area’s tradition of groundbreaking queer and trans writing, with an emphasis on publishing those multi-marginalized (BIPOC, youth, elders, and people with disabilities). Our biannual journal features the widest possible range of forms, with an emphasis on transgressive, risky, challenging subject matter, innovative formal choices, and work that pushes the boundaries of what writing can do. By putting extraordinary queer and trans writers into conversation, we uplift a growing community of LGBTQ+ readers and writers and carve out space in the larger literary community for voices that have historically been silenced.

What we do

We currently publish a biannual literary journal, chapbooks by dynamic emerging writers, and anthologies through partnerships with Bay Area QTBIPOC literary organizations like RADAR Productions, Still Here San Fransisco, and Queer Ancestors Project. We host free, accessible release parties for each journal issue at Strut, a community center in the Castro District of San Francisco, as well as other free readings around the Bay and beyond, in addition to events we co-produce with other community organizations. We actively promote authors by nominating their work for yearly Best Of anthologies, as well as providing opportunities for readings, interviews, and collaborative community discussions. The success of queer and trans writers is the driving force behind everything we do.

Why we do it

Our commitment to underserved queer and trans writers and readers is deeply rooted in the editorial staff and Board of Directors individual identities as marginalized LGBTQ+ writers and readers. Holding the space for freedom and possibility within the pages of our journal and at our events is a direct response to our ongoing experiences of minimization and tokenization within the broader writing community.

The Board

Arisa White

Board Chair

William Johnson

Board Vice-Chair

Alicia Mountain

Board Treasurer

Natalia Vigil

Board Secretary

The Staff

Michal "MJ" Jones

Editor-in-Chief

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

Managing Editor
gender neutral graphic of a person

Milo Todd

Managing Fiction Editor
Kanika Agrawal

Kanika Agrawal

Managing Hybrid/Nonfiction Editor

Dior J. Stephens

Managing Poetry Editor

Chad Koch

Cofounder, Finance Officer & Distribution Manager

Irwan Iskak

Web Coordinator

Misha Ponnuraju

Community Manager
Alice Lee

Alice Lee

Print Production Manager
Cass Lintz

Cass Lintz

Digital Production Manager

Charlie Neer

Accessibility Coordinator & Assistant Poetry Editor

Rob Colgate

Assistant Poetry Editor

N/A Oparah

Assistant Fiction Editor

Joanna Acevedo

Assistant Fiction Editor

Maria Picone

Assistant Fiction Editor
Tauheed Zaman

Tauheed Zaman

Assistant Hybrid/Nonfiction Editor

Miah Jeffra

Cofounder, Assistant Nonfiction & Hybrid Editor

Yunkyo Moon-Kim

Development Assistant

Rowena DeSilva

Art Consultant

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Guest Fiction Editor
Photo of Briana Grogan with a headscarf and brown outfit posing down in a park

Saúl Hernández

Guest Poetry Editor
Photo of Briana Grogan with a headscarf and brown outfit posing down in a park

Lindsay Choi

Guest Hybrid & Nonfiction Editor

Contributing Editors

Tara Rose

Melton Cartes

Stacy Nathaniel Jackson

D. A. Powell

Sandhya Ramnan

Michal "MJ" Jones

Michal "MJ" Jones

Editor-in-Chief

Michal ‘MJ’ Jones (they/him) is a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet & parent in Oakland, CA. Their poems have appeared in Anomaly, Kissing Dynamite, TriQuarterly Review, & wildness. Often addressing the troubling and haunting aspects of life, violence, and identity, MJ’s work blends the lyrical, documentary, and confessional modes. They have received fellowships from Hurston/Wright Foundation, VONA/Voices, & Kearny Street Workshop. They received their MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry from Mills College, where they received the distinguished Community Engagement Fellowship. They founded & currently facilitate Litany!, a monthly workshop for a cohort of Black queer poets. Their debut poetry collection HOOD VACATIONS is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2023, and they are hard at work on their second collection! http://michal-jones.com

 
 
Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

Managing Editor

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (she/her) is the author of Borrowed Time (forthcoming from Northwestern University Press) and Look Alive (winner of the 2019 Cowles Poetry Book Prize from Southeast Missouri State University Press), along with eight chapbooks, most recently Familiar (forthcoming from Madhouse Press) and The Undead (winner of Sixth Finch Books’ 2020 Chapbook Contest). Her poetry can be found in Fugue, Five Points, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. Her critical work has appeared in Cleaver, Pleiades, The Adroit Journal, and other venues. Learn more at luizaflynngoodlett.com

Reach Luiza at info@foglifterpress.com

Milo Todd

Milo Todd

Managing Fiction Editor

Milo Todd’s (he/him) fiction focuses on trans and queer history, with additional works on the trans experience and the trans body. His fiction has appeared in SLICE Magazine, Foglifter Journal, Home is Where You Queer Your Heart (Foglifter Press), and Emerge: The 2019 Lambda Fellows Anthology (Lambda Literary Press). He was kindly selected as a 2021 Tin House attendee, a 2021 Monson Arts resident, and a 2020 Pitch Wars mentee. He was also named a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction for his novel DOWNHEAD (formerly SNUFF) and received a fellowship to attend the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. He is an alum of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator Program, where he received a Pechet Fellowship for his novel THE FALCON OF DOVES. Milo currently teaches writing at GrubStreet and he consults on fiction manuscripts and transgender inclusion in the classroom. He can be found on Twitter and Instagram @Todd_Milo. In fiction, he especially loves historical pieces, voice, and messy queers.

Kanika Agrawal

Kanika Agrawal

Managing Hybrid/Nonfiction Editor

Kanika Agrawal (she/her) is an Indian writer and mad diasporic hybrid developed across six countries on four continents. She holds a double BS in Biology and Writing from MIT, an MFA in Writing from Columbia University, and a PhD in English and Literary Arts from the University of Denver. She is Fiction Editor at khōréō, a quarterly magazine of immigrant and diaspora speculative fiction. Her own work appears or is forthcoming in Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Black Warrior Review, FOLDER, SAND, The Texas Review, and various SF&F publications. Kanika has received fellowships from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, MacDowell, and Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Denver, CO, with her senior toy fox terrier. You can also find her online at antiquarkic.com and twitter.com/antiquarkic.

Reach Kanika at hybrid@foglifterpress.com

Dior J. Stephens

Dior J. Stephens

Managing Poetry Editor

Dior J. Stephens (he/they) is a Midwestern pisces poet. He is the author of the chapbooks SCREAMS & lavender, 001, and CANNON!. His debut full-length collection, CRUEL/CRUEL, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books in 2023. Their most recent work appears in Peach Mag, Platform Review, and Marías at Sampaguitas Mag. Dior holds an MFA in Creative Writing from California College of the Arts and is pursuing his doctoral studies at the University of Cincinnati. Dior hopes to be a dolphin in his next life. Dior tweets at @dolphinneptune and Instagrams at @dolphinphotos

Chad Koch

Chad Koch

Cofounder, Finance Officer & Distribution Manager

Chad Koch (he/him) received his MFA from San Francisco State University, where he was editor-in-chief of Fourteen Hills. He’s the recipient of the 2010 Miriam Ylvisaker Fellowship and the Leo Litwak fiction award from Transfer Magazine. He was assistant editor on Lawfully Wedded Wives: Rethinking Marriage in 21st Century. He is a 2016 fellow at The Grotto in San Francisco. His most recent stories were published in The North American Review, The Madison Review, Eleven Eleven, The East Bay Review (for which he received a Pushcart nomination) and Into the Void.

Reach Chad at books@foglifterpress.com

Irwan Iskak

Irwan Iskak

Web Coordinator

Irwan (he/him) sporadically writes about being a gay agnostic muslim immigrant from Malaysia, dealing with issues of identity, memory and mothers who haunt their errant children regardless of where they go.

Misha Ponnuraju

Misha Ponnuraju

Community Manager

Misha Ponnuraju (she/her) is a Malaysian American writer from Loma Linda, California. She graduated from UC Irvine in 2019, where she studied literature, creative writing, and art history. Misha founded the Dirty Cowboys Café, an interdisciplinary writing workshop for writers of marginalized genders. During this workshop, Misha and her community of emerging memoirists and poets read and write their way towards a deeper understanding of desire, compassion, and rage. Misha is also the Finance, Operations, and Grants Assistant for Kundiman, a literary nonprofit that nurtures new generations of readers and writers of Asian American literature. Her writing explores conceptions of home, belonging, and love within the apocalypse.

Reach Misha at community@foglifterpress.com

Alice Lee

Alice Lee

Print Production Manager

Alice Lee (she/her) is a Korean-American born and raised in Orange County, CA. She received her degree in communications and economics at Santa Clara University in 2022. She was first introduced to the literary community through her work as a Production Editor at the Santa Clara Review and continues to grow her passion for graphic design. You can find some of her work at behance.com.

Reach Alice at  production@foglifterpress.com

Cass Lintz

Cass Lintz

Digital Production Manager

Cass Lintz (she/her/they/them) is a gay and restless Californian. Her poetry focuses on erasure, hyperbole, memory, and queer things. She’s currently a board member for Rooted Communities Alliance, a non-profit that provides diverse secular programming and peer mentorship to those who are currently incarcerated in California prisons. Cass holds a BA from Mills College and an MFA from University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her work is featured or is forthcoming in Rough Cut Press, Raleigh Review, and The Walrus Literary Journal. She rarely tweets @CassLintz.

Charlie Neer

Charlie Neer

Accessibility Coordinator & Assistant Poetry Editor

Charlie Neer (they/them) is a nonbinary queer writer from the Bay Area. Their work is featured or forthcoming in “Show Me Your Papers” by Main Street Rag, The Swamp Literary Magazine, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Vital Sparks, and Bridge: The Bluffton University Literary Journal.

Reach Charlie at accessibility@foglifterpress.com

 

Rob Colgate

Rob Colgate

Assistant Poetry Editor

Rob Colgate (he/she/they) is a Filipino-American poet from Evanston, IL. He holds a degree in psychology from Yale University and an MFA in poetry from the New Writers Project at UT Austin. A Pushcart nominee, his work appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, Washington Square Review, Muzzle, Prairie Schooner, and The Margins, among others. He is the winner of the 2022 Andrew Julius Gutow Poetry Prize, selected by Oliver Baez Bendorf and sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. His first chapbook, So Dark the Gap, was published by Tammy in 2020. Currently, he is a Fulbright scholar conducting research and writing poetry at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Disability Studies. 

N/A Oparah

N/A Oparah

Assistant Fiction Editor

N/A Oparah (she/her) is a queer, first-generation Nigerian-American writer. Her other work has appeared in Madwomen in the Attic, QXotc, Fictional International, ANMLY and other journals. N/A has received residencies in writing, art, and narrative media from Can Serrat in El Bruc, Spain and Proyecto Lingüistico Quetzalteco in Xela, Guatemala. N/A holds an MFA in Creative Writing from California College of the Arts and a B.S. in Neuroscience & Philosophy from Duke University. She is the Director of Community Programs at StoryCenter, a digital storytelling non-profit in Berkeley, CA. She is studying towards a PhD at Loughborough University in Creative Arts and Design in the UK. Her novella, Thick Skin, is forthcoming with KERNPUNKT Press (April 2021). More on her here.

Joanna Acevedo

Joanna Acevedo

Assistant Fiction Editor

Joanna Acevedo (she/they)  is a writer, educator, and editor from New York City. She was nominated for a Pushcart in 2021 for her poem “self portrait if the girl is on fire” and is the author of four books and chapbooks, including Unsaid Things (Flexible Press, 2021), List of Demands (Bottlecap Press, 2022), and Outtakes (WTAW Press, forthcoming 2023). Her work can be found across the web and in print, including or forthcoming in Litro USA, Hobart, and The Adroit Journal. She is a Guest Editor at Frontier Poetry and The Masters Review and a member of the Review Team at Gasher Journal, in addition to running interviews at Fauxmoir and The Great Lakes Review. As well as being a Goldwater Fellow at NYU, she was a Hospitalfield 2022 Interdisciplinary Resident. She received her MFA in Fiction from New York University in 2021, teaches writing and interviewing skills for both nonprofits and corporations, and is supported by Creatives Rebuild New York: Guaranteed Income For Artists. 

Maria Picone

Maria Picone

Assistant Fiction Editor

Maria S. Picone/수영 (she/her) is a queer Korean American adoptee who won Cream City Review’s 2020 Summer Poetry Prize. Her debut chapbook, Adoptee Song, will be published in spring 2023. She has been published in Tahoma Literary Review, The Seventh Wave, Fractured Lit and more including Best Small Fictions 2021. Her work has been supported by The Juniper Institute, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, GrubStreet, Kenyon Review, and Tin House. She is the managing editor at Chestnut Review, and also edits at Hanok Review, Uncharted Magazine, and Foglifter

Tauheed Zaman

Tauheed Zaman

Assistant Hybrid/Nonfiction Editor

Tauheed Zaman (he/him) is a Bengali-American immigrant, writer and physician who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was selected as a 2022 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices fellow for nonfiction. His non-medical writing has been featured in Salon, Foglifter Press, at LitQuake 2021, and Literary Death Match 2022. When not writing, you can find him singing with the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. IG: agentmowgli

Miah Jeffra

Miah Jeffra

Cofounder, Assistant Nonfiction & Hybrid Editor

Miah Jeffra (they/them/he/him) is author of The Fabulous Ekphrastic Fantastic!, The Violence Almanac, The First Church of What’s Happening, the forthcoming novel American Gospel, and co-editor of the anthology Home is Where You Queer Your Heart. Most recent work can be seen in StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, The North American Review, The Pinch, The Greensboro Review, DIAGRAM, jubilat and Barrelhouse. Miah teaches writing and antiracist studies at Santa Clara University.

Reach Miah at fabulous@foglifterpress.com.

Yunkyo Moon-Kim

Yunkyo Moon-Kim

Development Assistant

Yunkyo Moon-Kim (they/them) is a Korean lesbian poet. They graduated from Northwestern University in 2022 and is now a community worker in Chicago. Their poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Margins, Cosmonauts Avenue, Porkbelly Press, and more. They are a 2021 Tin House Workshop attendee and a participant of the Guggenheim summer college workshop. Currently, they are writing their first chapbook, which conceptualizes post-apocalyptic queerness and nonbinary futures. Reach Yunkyo at development@foglifterpress.com

Arisa White

Arisa White

Board Chair

Arisa White (she/her) is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College. Most recently, she is the author of Who’s Your Daddy, co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, the second book in the Fighting for Justice Series for young readers. Arisa’s work has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Book Award, California Book Award, and an NAACP Image Award. As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations that center queer BIPOC narratives. She is a Cave Canem fellow and serves on the board of directors for Foglifter and Nomadic Press and is a community advisory board member for MWPA. arisawhite.com

William Johnson

William Johnson

Board Vice-Chair

William Johnson (he/him) is the PEN Across America program director at PEN America. A longtime steward in the writing community, Johnson was the editor and publisher of Mary Literary, a literary magazine committed to showcasing work of artistic integrity. He also co-produced Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, the first major anthology for queer poets of color in the United States. In 2011, Johnson began his tenure at Lambda Literary, an organization dedicated to promoting LGBTQ literature. As the deputy director of Lambda Literary, Johnson oversaw many of the organization’s most dynamic programs and public events, including the Writer’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices and Lambda’s web magazine, the Lambda Literary Review.

In 2021, Johnson was awarded The Publishing Triangle’s Leadership Award, an award recognizing contributions to LGBTQ literature by those who are not primarily writers, such as editors, agents, librarians, and institutions.

Alicia Mountain

Alicia Mountain

Board Treasurer

Alicia Mountain’s (she/her) debut collection, High Ground Coward (Iowa, 2018), was selected by Brenda Shaughnessy to win the Iowa Poetry Prize. She is also the author of Four in Hand (BOA Editions, forthcoming early 2023). Her chapbook, Thin Fire (BOAAT Press), was selected by Natalie Diaz. Dr. Mountain was a Clemens Doctoral Fellow at the University of Denver and the 2020-21 Artist in Residence at the University of Central Oklahoma. Mountain is a contributing editor at the Kenyon Review. She is a lesbian poet, based in New York City where she teaches at Columbia University and in the Writer’s Foundry MFA program at St. Joseph’s College. Keep up with her on twitter at @HiGroundCoward. Alicia uses she/her pronouns and her name is pronounced “a-lish-a,” the middle syllable rhyming with fish or dish.

Natalia Vigil

Natalia Vigil

Board Secretary

Natalia M. Vigil (she/her) is a queer Xicana writer with native heritage, multimedia curator, and big sister of six, born and raised in San Francisco. She is an arts administrator passionate about community-driven creativity and cultural preservation through artist sustainability. She is the Executive Director of the Queer Cultural Center of San Francisco and the co-founder of Still Here San Francisco for which she was honored as a Local Hero by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.

Matthew Clark Davison

Matthew Clark Davison

Director

Matthew Clark Davison (he/him) is the author of Doubting Thomas (Amble Press ’21). He is creator and teacher of The Lab :: Writing Classes with MCD, a non-academic school started in 2007 in a friend’s living room in San Francisco. The textbook version of The Lab, co-authored by bestselling writer Alice LaPlante, will be published by W.W. Norton. His prose has been in or on Lambda Literary, The Advocate, Literary Hub, Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Foglifter, Lumina Magazine, and others; and has been recognized with a Creative Work Grant, Cultural Equities Grant, Clark Gross Award for a Novel-in-Progress, and a Stonewall Alumni Award. Matthew earned a BA and MFA in Creative Writing from SFSU, where he now teaches full-time.

Rowena De Silva

Rowena De Silva

Art Consultant

Rowena De Silva (they/them) Birmingham, England; Sri Lankan; queer; brown; big, curly hair; can talk about decolonization any day of the week; afraid of cats; BA in art history (…in progress); San Francisco / Chicago

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Guest Fiction Editor

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya (she/her) is the managing editor of Autostraddle and the managing editor of TriQuarterly magazine. She is a lesbian writer of fiction, essays, and pop culture criticism based in Orlando, and she is the author of the queer horror novelette Helen House (Burrow Press, 2022).

Saúl Hernández

Saúl Hernández

Guest Poetry Editor

Saúl (he/him) is a queer writer from San Antonio, TX who was raised by undocumented parents. Saúl has an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso. As a finalist for The Wisconsin Poetry Series, Saúl’s first poetry collection, How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters, is forthcoming in Spring 2024 from University of Wisconsin Press. He’s the winner of both the 2022 Pleiades Prufer Poetry Prize (selected by Joy Priest) and the 2021 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize (selected by Victoria Chang), as well as a finalist for the 2020 Palette Poetry Spotlight Award, among other recognitions. His poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net and are featured in Pleiades, Frontier Poetry, Poet Lore, Foglifter, Quarterly West, Pidgeonholes, The Acentos Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and more. He currently lives in San Antonio, TX.

 

Lindsay Choi

Lindsay Choi

Guest Hybrid & Nonfiction Editor

Based in Berkeley, CA, 최 Lindsay is the author of Transverse (Futurepoem, 2021), which was a finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry. They are also the author of the chapbooks Who Can Remember His Past Lives (Belladonna* Chaplet Series, 2022), and Matrices (speCt! Books, 2017). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in translation in Nioques, 22/23: Nouvelle Poésie des États-Unis (New U.S. Poetry), Edited by DoubleChange Collective and translated to French by Abigail Lang, and Tydningen, translated to Swedish by Sara Wengström. Recent writing can be found in Amerarcana and Aster(ix) Journal. They are a Kundiman fellow and a Ph.D. candidate in English at UC Berkeley, and they run the chapbook press MO(0)ON/IO. Visit them at lindsaychoi.com.

 

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