Where are the children
special issue
Millicent Borges Accardi is a Portuguese-American writer has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, CantoMundo, Fulbright, the Corporation of Yaddo, Fundação Luso-American, and California Arts Council. Her most recent book is Only More So (Salmon Poetry, Ireland).
Arla Shephard Bull writes creative nonfiction and poetry in the Pacific Northwest, while also working as a freelance reporter. Her creative nonfiction pieces and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Reservoir Journal, Maganda Magazine and WusGood? Magazine. She is a fellow of the VONA/Voices writer’s workshop for writers of color and is a University of Washington graduate. When not writing, she spends time eating with her husband, playing with her Dachshund Scottish terrier puppy and daydreaming of her next adventure.
M. Soledad Caballero is a 2017 CantoMundo fellow, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a New Poet’s Prize, and have been a finalist for the Missouri Review’s Jeffry E. Smith poetry prize, the Mississippi Review’s annual editor’s prize, and Rita Dove Poetry Prize sponsored by the Salem College Center for Women Writers. Her work has appeared in the Missouri Review, the Mississippi Review, the Iron Horse Literary Review, Memorius, the Crab Orchard Review, Anomaly, Pilgrimage, and other venues. She is looking for a publisher for her collection titled “Immigrant Confessions.” She is Associate Professor of English at Allegheny College and her scholarly work focuses on British Romanticism, travel writing, post-colonial literatures, WGSS, and interdisciplinarity.
Robin Davidson is a poet, literary translator, and professor of creative writing for the University of Houston-Downtown. She is the author of two poem chapbooks, Kneeling in the Dojo and City that Ripens on the Tree of the World. Her full collection of poems, Luminous Other, received the 2012 Richard Snyder Memorial Prize awarded by The Ashland Poetry Press, and she is co-translator with Ewa Elżbieta Nowakowska of The New Century: Poems by Ewa Lipska. Davidson served as the 2015-2017 Poet Laureate for the City of Houston under the leadership of Mayors Annise Parker and Sylvester Turner, and edited the citywide anthology, Houston’s Favorite Poems, that includes beloved poems submitted by more than 200 Houstonians. She was a finalist for Texas State Poet Laureate in 2017.
César L. De León is a poet-organizer for Poets Against Walls and a member of the Chocholichex writing collective. His work appears in journals like Pilgrimage, The Acentos Review, La Bloga and the anthologies Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando (Damaged Goods Press, 2018) Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute, 2016) and Texas Weather (Lamar University, 2016), among others.
Patricia Garcia is a poet and educator from the Twin Cities, Minnesota. Patricia earned her B.A. in English and American Racial and Multicultural Studies from St. Olaf College. She has coached and taught performance poetry to students in the U.S. and South Korea. She currently resides in Houston, Texas where she organizes youth writing programs for Writers in the Schools and supports the AAPI community through her work with civil rights organization OCA – Greater Houston.
Roberto Carlos Garcia’s second poetry collection, black / Maybe, is available from Willow Books. His first collection, Melancolía, is available from Červená Barva Press. His poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Bettering American Poetry, The Root, Those People, Rigorous, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, The New Engagement, Public Pool, Stillwater Review, Gawker, Barrelhouse, Tuesday; An Art Project, The Acentos Review, Lunch Ticket, and many others. He is founder of the cooperative press Get Fresh Books, LLC. A native New Yorker, Roberto holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His website is http://www.robertocarlosgarcia.com/
Carlos Andrés Gómez is a Colombian-American poet and a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Winner of the 2018 Sequestrum Editor’s Award in Poetry, 2015 Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared in the North American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, BuzzFeed Reader, Rattle, CHORUS: A Literary Mixtape (Simon & Schuster, 2012), and elsewhere. For more: CarlosLive.com.
Raina J. León, member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, has been published in numerous journals as a writer of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, and sombra: (dis)locate (2016) and the chapbook, profeta without refuge (2016). She has received fellowships and residencies with Macondo, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Montana Artists Refuge, the Macdowell Colony, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale. She also is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She is an associate professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Laura Malaver is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Their short stories have been previously published in Cultura Colectiva, and they are currently working on a book chapter on Latinx queer performances. Lau enjoys writing fiction, watching film, and working towards dismantling systemic oppressions.
Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. Publications include two book-length memoirs: Through Eyes Like Mine and Overdue Apologies, and excerpts, essays, and poetry in Kartika, Catapult, Meridian, Compose, Hippocampus, Rising Phoenix Review, Linden Avenue, and elsewhere. Through Eyes Like Mine was also a finalist for the 2040 prize.
Emily Pérez is the author of House of Sugar, House of Stone and the chapbooks Backyard Migration Route and Made and Unmade (forthcoming). A CantoMundo fellow, her poems have appeared in journals including Acentos, Poetry, Diode, and Bennington Review. She teaches English and Gender Studies in Denver, where she lives with her husband and sons.
Reyes Ramirez is a Houstonian. In addition to having an MFA in Fiction, Reyes won the 2017 Blue Mesa Review Nonfiction Contest, 2014 riverSedge Poetry Prize, and has poems, stories, essays, and reviews (and/or forthcoming) in: Queen Mob’s Teahouse, december magazine, Texas Review, TRACK//FOUR, FIVE:2:ONE Magazine, Houston Noir, Southwestern American Literature, Gulf Coast Journal, Origins Journal, The Acentos Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. You can read more of his work at reyesvramirez.com.
Michael A. Reyes has received scholarships and recognitions from VONA, Home School, PEN American Los Angeles, UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, Otis College of Art and Design, and Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Michael is a graduate student at Cal State Los Angeles and writes for Spider children’s literary magazine.
Leslie Contreras Schwartz is a multi-genre writer, whose work has recently appeared or is upcoming in Gulf Coast, PANK, Verse Daily, The Collagist, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others. Her new collection of poems, Nightbloom & Cenote (St. Julian Press, May 2018), was a semi-finalist for the 2017 Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, judged by Ilya Kaminsky. She is the author of Fuego, and was a finalist for the 2018 Houston Poet Laureate. She is a graduate of The Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and earned a bachelor’s at Rice University.
Allison Bird Treacy is a poet, essayist, and professional ghost, whose work grapples with issues of disabled embodiment and history, ecology, and the entanglement of both in myth and faith. Bird’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Cider Press Review, the Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and VIDA, among others, and she is a staff reviewer for Run & Tell That. She lives in the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts with her wife and too many cats.
Oswaldo Vargas is a former farmworker and recent graduate from the University of California, Davis. Previous publications include Nepantla: an Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color and the Green Mountains Review’s tribute issue to former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera. He lives in Davis, CA.