Hosted by Kevin Dublin and Giovanna Lomanto, the theme is "Tricks" and the featured writers are: Katie Aliféris, Allison Landa, Aiya Madarang, Noah Sanders, and Meri Tumanyan.
Katie Aliféris is a poet from San Francisco. She has been a featured performer at 40 local and international literary series and events including LitCrawl, The Melbourne Fringe Festival, and North Beach First Fridays at City Lights Books. Her first book, fool[ishly optimistic], was published by Nomadic Press in February of 2022.
Allison Landa is a Berkeley-based writer, editor, and coach whose memoir Bearded Lady came out from Woodhall Press in October 2022. She earned her MFA in creative writing from St. Mary's College of California and is represented by Marisa Zeppieri of Strachan Literary Agency.
Aiya Madarang is a creative writer and a proud member of Syzygy art collective. Her work has been published in Forum, Rise Up Review, The Abstract Elephant, Syzygy Magazine, and presented in art exhibits at Syzygy and Southern Exposure. Ask her about her favorite lines of prose.
Noah Sanders is the founder, editor and curator of The Racket and all it's tiny, tiny moving parts. He recently had a dream about a wormhole full of tentacles and woke with both his legs in the air.
Meri Tumanyan was born in Armenia, raised in the United States, and currently resides in California. She received a B.A. in Comparative Literary Studies from Occidental College and an M.A. in Creative Writing from California State University Northridge. She is a mother, a full-time high school teacher, and an adjunct English professor. Meri is the author of a poetry collection Love in the Time of Corona, as well as the children’s books Mommy, the Dreamweaver, Daddy’s Waltz, and Never Be Anyone Other Than You. Her collection of poems celebrates the power of unconditional, all-encompassing love as a healing force. Poetry becomes an exploration of the truth, a need to reconcile the disappointments experienced with acceptance and endurance, patiently hoping for a stronger, more loving, more evolved self to emerge.