6 - Contributor bios — m er c ur y f i r s

I s s u e 6 C o n t r i b u t o r s

Shuchi Agrawal is a Masters in Creative Writing student at Cambridge, with a Literary Arts degree from Brown. She was recently a 30/30 poet with Tupelo Press for July 2024. Her poems have won the Kim Ann Arstark Prize and the Edwin Honig Memorial Prize at Brown. She has some fiction in Brownies Zine, Vol. 2, and upcoming in Cambridge Cult, Issue XI, and some film credits.

Bella Akhatovna Akhmadulina (1937-2010) was a prominent Russian poet and translator, who was especially active during the Khrushchev Thaw, starting from the 1950s. She was born to parents of Tatar and Russo-Italian ancestry, and achieved fame early in her career, with her first collection Struna (String) and for her efforts to translate from Georgian and Armenian into Russian. She performed her poetry in front of packed stadiums, and won the USSR State Prize.

Yagmur Akyurek was born in Turkey, raised in Massachusetts, and now lives in New York. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at New York University, where she is a Rona Jaffe fellow and books editor at Washington Square Review. Her debut chapbook DONNA I LOVE YOU STEVE is forthcoming from No, Dear in May, 2025.

Jeff Alessandrelli’s new work appears/is forthcoming in New American Writing, Cleveland Review of Books, Image and The American Poetry Review. The Kenyon Review called his most recent poetry collection Fur Not Light (2019) “an example of radical humility” and, entitled Nothing of the Month Club, the UK press Broken Sleep released a revised version of Fur Not Light in June 2021. His novel And Yet was published by Future Tense Books in April 2024. He also directs the non-profit record label/book press Fonograf Editions.

Mike Bagwell is a form of mutual antagonism towards the sky, a writer, and software engineer in Philly. He received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence and his work appears in Poetry Northwest, Action Spectacle, ITERANT, Sprung Formal, Heavy Feather, HAD, Tyger Quarterly, Annulet, and others. Recent chapbooks include Poem of Thanks: A Court of Wands (Metatron 2025), A Collision of Soul in Midair (Bottlecap), and micros from Ghost City and Rinky Dink. He runs the Ghost Harmonics reading series in Philly. Find him at mikebagwell.me, @low_gh0st, or playing dragons with his daughters.

Jenkin Benson is a poet, musician, and graduate student. New Mundo is publishing his full length debut are we rocking with this? in the coming summer. He is the poetry editor for Cult. Magazine

Ellen Boyette is a poet and essayist whose work is interested in the occult, the internet, and objects real or imagined. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net nominee, and an Academy of American Poets College Prize recipient. Her manuscript, BEDIEVAL, was a finalist at Slope Editions, Cleveland State University Press, and Inside the Castle. She is the author of two chapbooks and has work featured in Poetry Daily, The Columbia Review, the Action Books blog, jubilat, New Delta Review, The Bennington Review, Prelude, and elsewhere.

Joanie Cappetta is a poet living in Western Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in Tilted House, Tyger Quarterly, and Little Mirror, other writings have been published in the Brooklyn Rail and elsewhere. She's an MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst & is thinking about the smell of low tide.

Cecily Chen is a writer and translator from Beijing, China. She is also the poetry editor of Chicago Review.

Yuyi Chen is from Sichuan, China. First coming to the US in 2017, they are now in a PhD program in anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Their work can be found or forthcoming in antiphony, Nat. Brut, HOT PINK MAG, and Blue Bag Press. Their first chapbook Erotic Continent is out now from Discount Guillotine. They go by Echo.

Shira Dentz is the author of five books including SISYPHUSINA (PANK Books), winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Prize 2021, and two chapbooks including FLOUNDERS (Essay Press). Her writing appears in many venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Pleiades, Denver Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, Diagram, Colorado Review, Idaho Review, New American Writing, Brooklyn Rail, Apartment, Lana Turner, Academy of American Poets" Poem-a-Day Series (Poets.org), Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Poetrysociety.org, and NPR, and she’s a recipient of awards including an Academy of American Poets Prize and Poetry Society of America's Lyric Poem and Cecil Hemley Awards. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a PhD from the University of Utah, and currently works as a senior education specialist at The Research Foundation at SUNY, and teaches in Goddard College's M.F.A. Creative Writing program. More at www.shiradentz.com

Thom Eichelberger-Young is an artist and publisher living in Buffalo, New York. Blue Bag Press is their operation. Their books include the forthcoming OINTMENT WEATHER: Insurgent Poietics amidst Desperate Times (CLOAK) and ANTIKYTHERA (out from Antiphony Press).

Hannah Ensor is the author of Love Dream with Television (Noemi Press). Laura Wetherington is the author of A Map Predetermined and Chance (Fence Books), and Parallel Resting Places (Free Verse Editions). Ensor and Wetherington have been writing poems collaboratively for ten years. The poems included in mercury firs are part of the chapbook Feel Fragments, forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books.

William Erickson is a poet from Vancouver, WA. Read him now or soon in Sixth Finch, West Branch, Ghost City, The Biscuit Hill, and elsewhere. He is the author of two chapbooks, Monotonies of the Wildlife (FL 2022), and Nothing Lied Still on the Sea (Tilted House 2024). William's 1st collection is out now from April Gloaming. He lives with his partner and two pups in an old house across a busy street from a large tree.

Zhong Fang (钟放) (1989-2016) is a poet born in Beijing, China. He was the editor-in-chief of poetry journals Prisoner (Qiu Tu) and Attic (Ge Lou).

Maxwell Gontarek is the author of the forthcoming texts Study for Swimming Hole (Community Mausoleum), Goat Foil (TABLOID), and A Perfect Donkey (Creative Writing Department). He has poems out in Lana Turner, Grotto, La Lancha, and elsewhere. With Léa Fougerolle, he runs the translation project verseant. He has lived in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Belgrade, Langres, and Lafayette, LA.

Chris Holdaway is a poet, publisher, and translator from Aotearoa New Zealand. He is the author of Gorse Poems (Titus, 2022), and directs Compound Press. He studied poetry and translation with Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Göransson at Notre Dame.

Wayne Koestenbaum is a writer (poet, critic, novelist) and visual artist (painter, filmmaker). He has published 23 books, most recently Ultramarine (Nightboat, 2022) and Stubble Archipelago (Semiotext[e], 2024). He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Whiting Award. He lives in New York City and is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Inna Krasnoper is a poet and artist born in Ufa (Bashqortostan) and based in Berlin. Her work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Annulet, antiphony, Black Sun Lit, Ghost Proposal, Poetry Daily, Gulf Coast, Pocket Samovar, Oversound, 128 LIT, and TILT. She is the author of two Russophone poetry collections and two chapbooks of multilingual poetry: Over Sight (Eulalia Books, 2024) and Sealed (Black Sunflowers Poetry Press, 2024). Krasnoper's full-length English-language poetry collection dis tanz is forthcoming from Veliz Books in March 2025.

Monroe Lawrence (he/they) is a Canadian writer, and author of the poetry book About to Be Young. He has published writing in The Capilano Review, Annulet, The Brooklyn Review, Prelude, Flag + Void, and Best American Experimental Writing, among other places. They hold an MFA in Poetry from Brown University and are a PhD candidate in Literary Arts at the University of Denver.

Jake Levine is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Keimyung University. He has written and translated or co-translated over a dozen books, including Kim Yideum’s Hysteria (Action Books, 2019) which was the first book to be awarded both the National Translation Award and the Lucien Stryk Prize. He is a former Fulbright Fellow (to Lithuania in 2010), a recipient of a Korean Government Scholarship, served as an assistant editor at Acta Koreana, as a poetry editor at Spork Press, as the managing editor and editor-in-chief at Sonora Review, and currently edits the award-winning contemporary Korean poetry series, Moon Country, at Black Ocean. He has also translated other cultural contents such as Yun Hyong-Keun’s diaries and narration for the K-pop group ENHYPEN. His latest book of poetry The Imagined Country is out with Tolsun Books in 2023.

Emmett Lewis holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University where he was the recipient of a Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship. His work has appeared in No, Dear; HAD; Otoliths; petrichor; E·ratio and elsewhere. He lives in Queens, NY.

Aaron Lopatin is a poet and teacher living in Brooklyn, NY. Recent work has appeared in Chicago Review, Conjunctions, Black Sun Lit and elsewhere.

Parker Menzimer is the author of the chapbooks Aion's Ribbon (Inpatient Press, May ‘25) and The Links (1080press, ‘22). His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in A Public Space, Couplet Poetry, Annulet, Prelude, Tagvverk, and elsewhere. A 2020 Capote Fellow at Brooklyn College, where he earned his MFA, he serves as Public Programs Manager at the Poetry Society of America.

Óscar Moisés Díaz is a poet-astrologer, translator, artist, and film curator. Currently, they serve as an inaugural Poetry in Translation Editor for Fence alongside Maryam Ivette Parhizkar. They were a 2020-2021 Inaugural Curatorial Fellow at the Poetry Project as a member of Tierra Narrative. Recently they completed a writing residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts under the mentorship of Eileen Myles. Recent poems can be found in Copenhagen, Schlag Magazine, Annulet, and The Brooklyn Rail. They've exhibited in numerous museums and biennials around the world including The Queens Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Costa Rica, and The 10th Central American Biennial.

César Moro (né Alfredo Quíspez Asín, 1903 - 1956) was the only Latin American featured in key Parisian Surrealist periodicals of his day. Passionate and iconoclastic, Moro was unique among modern-era Surrealists not only for his queer identity but for his ardent transnationalism. He traveled widely, wrote in both French and his native Spanish, and lived in at least 3 different countries in his lifetime--Peru, Mexico, and France--championing Surrealism and echoing their calls for political revolution until his untimely death. To date, no comprehensive volume of his work exists in English.

Marta Núñez Pouzols is a poet and translator from Andalusia, Spain. She co-authored with Argentine poet Maia Morosano the bilingual collection Pronombres siderales/Starry Selves (Turba, 2019.) Her poems can be found in Telegráfica, Works & Days, Lute & Drum, and DREGINALD. She is the cocurator of the reading series Paradiso and the organizer of the horizontal poetry workshop Moon Palace.

Ann Pedone’s books include The Medea Notebooks, The Italian Professor’s Wife, as well as The Best Kind of Love, forthcoming from If a Leaf Falls Press. She was named a finalist for the Four Way Books 2024 Levis Prize. Her poetry, non-fiction, and reviews have been published widely. Ann is the founder and editor-in-chief of antiphony: a journal & small press.

Oli Peters' writing is forthcoming in Annulet, DIAGRAM, and DREGINALD. Her past work appears in Pleiades, New World Writing, Rain Taxi, Heavy Feather Review, and abo zine. Her dance-performance piece "Body Glyph State" will be performed at the 2025 Iowa Choreography Festival. She is a MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame.

Fabrizio Quemé is a Hueco-sodomite, poet, and pornographer who has done all kinds of work: salaried, artistic, self-managed and sexual. He has published the poetry collections Alucinaciones (2013), Perverso y Dysfórico (Ediciones La Maleta Ilegal, 2015), and Simetría Distópica (Ediciones La Maleta Ilegal, 2019). He is part of the CuirPoétikas collective and co-founder and co-editor of Macha Fanzines.

Henriette Jenny Savalette de Lange (???? - 1858) is a post-mistress, ghost, and little-known poet from 19th-century France.

Jimin Seo is the author of OSSIA (Changes, 2024) and A-1982 (mf editions, forthcoming).

Miguel Otero Silva (1908-1985) was a Venezuelan author, journalist, and statesman. He was a member of the radical Generation of ‘28, opposing both the Gómez and Jiménez dictatorships, spending time in prison and exile. He founded the daily newspaper El Nacional, where he commissioned Neruda to write a weekly column of poetry that would turn into the Elemental Odes. Otero Silva published six books of poetry and seven novels, and served on the Venezuelan Senate after the overthrow of Jiménez.

Willa Smart was born in Idaho and is the author of numerous fantasies, insofar as one can claim to be the author of her own fantasies.

Jake Syersak is the author of the poetry books Mantic Compost and Yield Architecture. He is also the translator of several books by Moroccan author Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine, most recently Proximal Morocco--. He currently lives in Olympia, WA.

Carleen Tibbetts is the author of several chapbooks and books, most recently dossier for the postverbal (Carrion Bloom Books, 2023). Her work has appeared in jubilat, the tiny, Sink, Dreginald, Datableed, The Offending Adam, The Pinch, The Laurel Review, and many other publications. She lives in Chicago with her family.

NOIR SAUNA is a floating aggregate. NOIR SAUNA is a dream sequence. NOIR SAUNA is a nonfungible document. NOIR SAUNA is a hungry fever. NOIR SAUNA is bastardized pharmakon. NOIR SAUNA is a measurement of calories. NOIR SAUNA is form, modality, and condition. NOIR SAUNA is the future. NOIR SAUNA was the future. NOIR SAUNA is already passé. NOIR SAUNA wants out. Trust NOIR SAUNA.

Olivia Sio Tse is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, with poems appearing in Denver Quarterly, Bennington Review, Second Factory, and elsewhere. Her interests include lineage, dispersion, and how we can hug among the junk surrounding us.

Cassie Vogel holds an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her other work can be found in Annulet, Keith LLC, and NEW: The Journal of American Poetry, with poems forthcoming in blush.

Jackson Watson is a writer and translator from Georgia. They live in Providence now, where they work as a wildlife rehabilitator and serve as a poetry reader for Nat. Brut Magazine and Tyger Quarterly. Their work is published or forthcoming in DUNCE CODEX, Fence, Blush, and elsewhere.

Soohyun Yang is a freelance translator and interpreter. Her translations have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation (2016), Korean Literature Now (Winter 2019) and The Poems of Hwang Yuwon, Ha Jaeyoun, and Seo Daekyung (Vagabond Press, 2020), Seoul Wowbook Festival (2017), and Gothenburg Book Fair (2019).

Hwang Yuwon, born in Ulsan, South Korea, in 1982, is a poet and translator. He is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently “초자연적 3D 프린팅“ (Munhakdongne Publishing 2022, Eng.: Supernatural 3D Printing) and “하얀 사슴 연못“ (Changbi Publishers 2023, Eng.:White Deer Lake). A selection was published in “Poems of Hwang Yuwon, Ha Jaeyoun & Seo Dae-kyung” (Vagabond Press 2019, translated by Jake Levine). Hwang translates poetry and novels from English to Korean, including works by Bob Dylan, Anne Carson and Herman Melville. He has received many awards for his poetry, including the Kim Soo Young Award and the Kim Hyun Literature Prize.