New season, new cohort of incredible TSW contributors. We are over the moon to share with you a glimpse into these 16 writers’ perspectives, processes, and obsessions. Our original call for submissions for Issue 17: The Cost of Waiting opened last November, a tumultuous time rife with grief and uncertainty. As an organization, we view our role within the public discourse to be one of resource gathering and reflection — our call was born of a deep belief in the power of community and in amplifying some incredibly necessary and urgent voices.
Nine years since our founding, we still feel so incredibly honored to bear witness to the evolution of each and every piece that we publish, and to welcome in such talented individuals who are making waves in the world both on and off the page. Everything we do at The Seventh Wave centers around the publication of our annual literary magazine. So we are once again thrilled, honored, and humbled to continue our work of co-creation, this time alongside 16 talented writers and poets, educators and activists. We’ll be publishing their pieces collectively in June, and can’t wait for you to get to know their voices.
You can learn a little more about each contributor and their work below.
-
AboutAline Mello
Aline Mello is the author of More Salt than Diamond (Andrews McMeel, 2022). Her work has been published in anthologies and journals including Breakbeat Poets: Latinext, Somewhere We Are Human, The New Republic, Poets.org’s Poem-A-Day and others. She is an Undocupoet fellow and has a Creative Writing MFA from The Ohio State University.
AboutCeleste Chan
Celeste Chan is a writer and artist schooled by Do-It-Yourself culture and immigrant parents from Malaysia and the Bronx, NY. She founded and directed Queer Rebels (a queer and trans people of color arts project), created and curated experimental films, joined Foglifter Literary Journal as an editor and board member, and toured with legendary feminist road show, Sister Spit. She’s grateful for support from Hedgebrook, Hugo House, Periplus, Ragdale, SF Arts Commission, and SF Public Library, among others. Celeste is currently researching and writing her hybrid memoir.
AboutChristian Hooper
Christian Hooper is first and foremost a lover of storytelling who lives his life in search of the stories others hold. Currently studying at the University of Michigan, he is an editor for the Xylem magazine and a finalist for Philadelphia Stories’ National Prize in Poetry. When he isn’t too busy failing his French class, he loves watching sunsets in his spare time.
AboutGoeun Park
Goeun Park is a writer born in Busan and raised in Northern Minnesota. They are a 2023 Periplus Fellow.
AboutJessica Yuru Zhou
Jessica Yuru Zhou / 周玉茹 is a poet, writer, researcher, and artist rooting in San Francisco. She enjoys theorizing at the club, ambling in-and-out of the panopticon, and reveling in summery autumns in California. Her poems and essays live amidst a hydra of Tumblr/Twitter accounts, and have found perches with exhibitions at the Asian Art Museum, Gray Area, Southern Exposure; performances for Litquake, Berkeley Poetry Festival, Pride Poets Hotline; publications with or forthcoming in Inverse Magazine, The Ecopoetry Anthology: Volume II, the Los Angeles Times. She thinks of how old her younger child selves have felt, and hopes for all that you feel tenderly toward to be a source of resolute fierceness in turn. Talk with her about diaspora, opacity, networked selves/squads, queering the nuclear family, making worlds together, bell hooks’ love ethic, and finding one another, on and offline.
AboutKate Kastelberg
Kate Kastelberg is a writer who lives in Durham, North Carolina and is a North Carolina native. She currently lives her husband and two cats. She has won several awards in creative writing for fiction prose and poetry. Among them recently include first place prizes awarded in poetry for poems entitled, “Worm Moon” and “New Stones in the River: A Life Insured.” She revels in nature, travel, mystery, mythology and the fantastical.
AboutKathy Jiang
Kathy Jiang lives, works, and studies in the D.C. area as a poet and psychotherapist-in-training. Her poetry can be found in Oxford Poetry, The Seventh Wave, and elsewhere. She was a 2024 Surreal Scholar, Brooklyn Poets Fellow, and HVWC Altman Writers of Color Scholarship recipient. Kathy was previously Editor-in-Chief at The William and Mary Review and is presently a poetry reader with The Adroit Journal.
AboutKayla Blau
Kayla Blau is a queer Jewish writer and facilitator based in Seattle, WA. Her poetry and prose can be found in Crosscut, The Stranger, Mondoweiss, and Real Change, among others.
AboutKurt David
Kurt David is a public school teacher and unionist. His creative work has appeared in Foglifter, Gulf Coast, Split Lip, and elsewhere. He lives with his boyfriend in Lenapehoking/Philadelphia.
Aboutkyung
kyung is a medic and leather harness maker living on Peoria, Potawatomi, Miami, Sioux, Kickapoo, and Kaskaskia lands in South Side Chicago. Their commitments delve into community-led crisis & street herbalism, liberatory practices of queer/trans care, and anti-imperial lineages of memory. Their poetry appears in Meridian, Sonora Review, Radar, Tiger Moth Review, and elsewhere.
AboutMark Spero
Mark Spero is a poet and essayist. Mark was awarded the 2024 Robert Watson Prize, was a finalist for the 2023 Prufer Prize, and was selected by Philip B. Williams for the 2021 Madeline DeFrees Prize from the Academy of American Poets. They have received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Community of Writers, and the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference. Their work can be found or is forthcoming in The Greensboro Review, Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, and elsewhere. Mark holds an MFA in Poetry and an MA in Literature from the University of Montana.
AboutMo Fowler
Mo Fowler is an MFA candidate at UC Irvine and the author of the chapbook Sit Wild (Finishing Line Press, 2021). Their writing is forthcoming in The Minnesota Review and The Hopkins Review, and can be found in Snaggletooth Magazine, Rough Cut Press, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere
AboutNadine Monem
Nadine Monem is an Egyptian-Canadian writer working in a hybrid autotextual forms. She graduated with an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from Birkbeck (University of London) in 2021 and since then her work has been supported by the Tin House Workshop, Catapult Books, The Sewanee Review, The Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast Journal, Room Magazine, and The Literary Consultancy. She is currently working on her first book, excerpts of which won the 2022 Wasafiri New Writing Prize, and the 2023 Black Warrior Review Nonfiction Prize. Nadine lives and works in London, UK, and teaches writing, cultural studies and criticism at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.
AboutSabs Stein
Sabs Stein spends forty hours a week as a front desk attendant in a waiting room, experiencing eternity alongside a rotating cast of strangers. They are interested in how our relationships to the passage of time shape our movements and lives. Sabs is a writer, river, and disco ball subsisting on broth and electricity.
AboutSara Bawany
Sara Bawany is a clinical social worker and third-year MFA Poetry student at Texas State University. She published (w)holehearted: a collection of poetry and prose in 2018, and her second book, Quarter Life Crisis (FlowerSong Press), was published in October 2023. She is the Managing Editor at Porter House Review and serves as a mentor and instructor at House of Amal, a writing institution for Muslim youth.
AboutTheodora Ziolkowski
Theodora Ziolkowski is the author of the novella, On the Rocks, winner of a Next Generation Indie Book Award, and the short story chapbook, Mother Tongues. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, Short Fiction (England), and Prairie Schooner, among others. In the past, Ziolkowski served as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast, Fiction Editor for Big Fiction, and Assistant Poetry Editor for Black Warrior Review. She holds an MFA from the University of Alabama and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston, where she was the recipient of the Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing. Currently, she teaches creative writing as an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Her debut poetry collection, Ghostlit, is forthcoming from Texas Review Press.