About Foglifter
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 Staff
Michal "MJ" Jones
Editor-in-Chief
Luiza Flynn-Goodlett
Managing Editor
Milo Todd
Managing Fiction Editor
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
Print Production Manager
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
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
Saúl Hernández
Guest Poetry Editor
Lindsay Choi
Guest Hybrid & Nonfiction Editor
Contributing Editors
Tara Rose
Melton Cartes
Stacy Nathaniel Jackson
D. A. Powell
Sandhya Ramnan

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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.

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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.

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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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