Contributors’ Notes
Elsie Alten is a Brooklyn resident, anthropology student, and collage artist. She is interested in collage and mixed media as visual representations of identity and the unconscious mind.
Juliana Broad is a student in the Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy. She has been published in Lit Hub, El Diaro, and is a producer for Re:Construcción, a multi-media documentary examining the impact of the Salvadoran Civil War.
Mackie Burt found her love for literature and writing at a young age. At sixteen she wrote her first novel, Above, which was later published and now is in development for a television show. She’s currently working on her fourth novel.
Israeli-born and raised, Moran Michelle Dankner works as a fine-art, sports, and portrait photographer. Their recent works deal with their gender and childhood growing up in Israel.
Kaylin Dodson is an eighteen-year-old Brooklynite and Huffington Post contributor who spends her nights screeching and crying and SOMETIMES, when those tears aren’t directed at children’s shows, 95 page readings, and horrible bouts of writer’s block, she somehow writes things that people actually like.
Tracy Fernandez is a student in the Strategic Design and Management program at The New School. Trashy YA fiction is her guilty pleasure when she’s in the midst of a writer’s block.
Jacquelyn Gallo is a creative nonfiction writer living in Manhattan. She is a recent graduate of the Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy at The New School and the Issue Managing Editor of their literary journal 12th Street. Her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Dossier Journal, and Art Critical: The Online magazine of Art and Ideas and has been cited alongside her most beloved sheroes in The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History.
Isabelle Hay was born on Nantucket Island. Her favorite place in the world is her bed. She is attached to her zodiac: Taurus, Leo rising. The former explains the bed thing, the latter explains the red hair. She dislikes making her mind up about anything, so she likes to do many different things: She just completed a study on Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. She wants to begin a collection of essays to avoid finishing a novel she began four years ago. She is earning her sommelier certificate this summer after graduation. She regrets the bangs she cut with office scissors a few months ago, in hopes of becoming Brigitte Bardot. To keep up with her preoccupations, see www.bellehay.com.
Casey Haymes is the most famous storyteller you’ve never heard of. And what’s more important than fame? bypasserby.com
Victoria Iglesias came to writing from a deep love of reading. She is currently a senior at Lang finishing her bachelor’s in psychology (with a minor in writing), and she finds joy in the interdisciplinary concerns of the two. She believes that language dictates our realities and that how we talk about mental health directly affects how we experience our own. She aspires to be a social worker and someday open up her own therapeutic practice.
Noura Kiridly is a Palestinian-Lebanese first generation American with lots of identity issues. She enjoys writing about them. She believes in the power of story to change old definitions of false history and to give validity to collective voices against repression or erasure.
Jane Lee is an artist, designer, and aspiring psychologist studying both fine arts and psychology for the BA/BFA Dual Degree program at The New School. Born and raised in NYC, her work explores the intersections between personal autobiography and the human experience, with material and conceptual investigations into topics such as psychology, philosophy, and politics.
A poet stuck in a fiction writer’s body, Greg Levine-Rozenvayn emigrated from Pluto in Ninety-Eight, drank three gallons of sunflower oil everyday for six months and turned into a photograph of one hundred ten-degree bathwater sold for thirty dollars an ounce—only available by the quart
Ernesto Moreno loves history and believes that to understand it, you have to live it through multiple perspectives. He is in a constant search to understand everything it took for him to exist.
Originally hailing from Charlotte, North Carolina, Tucker C. Newsome is known primarily for his work in fiction. When not writing or pursuing a career as an editor, he can be found heckling players from the bleachers at any local ballpark. He has been ranked as one of Seamless’s “Most Loyal Customers” four months running. In an effort to maintain a tolerable sense of misery, Tucker currently resides between a Whole Foods and an “artisanal” kombucha shop in Brooklyn, NY.
Daniela “Dani” Ochoa is an internationally-published writer majoring in the arts and global studies at The New School. Some of her previous publications include Thrush, Orange Island, and Sarah Mook. She is currently working on a multi-genre collection, and on getting her roommates to allow her to adopt a dog.
Melissa “Mel” Ortiz is a long time storyteller turned writer. A student of the Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy at The New School, she is currently working on a series of science fiction short stories, which span multiple lifetimes and universes. Additionally, she is in the process of being certified as a peer advocate for those with mental illness and hopes to one day help others find the healing power of their own words through narrative medicine. When not writing, Mel can be found honing her narrative medicine skills as a guest instructor at the GMHC, refurbishing antique and vintage furniture in her workshop, or crafting cuteness for her niece, Sonia. She lives in the Western Slopes neighborhood of Jersey City with her husband, two daughters, three dogs, and a cat named Bleux.
Sanika Phawde is an illustrator/animator working between Mumbai and New York. She makes art to feel worthy of existence. A lot of her work explores themes of human discomfort in the context of physical and mental spaces, and how uneasiness can be evoked, or expressed. She likes watching cartoons, adopting trees, collecting glass bottles, and writing morbid poems, and is the world’s okayest badminton player. She once won a food challenge and would like to include it in her resume.
Shivam Sinha is a design and technology enthusiast currently enrolled in the Parsons School of Design BFA program as a communication design major. Though his work prefers the digital medium, the works themselves explore all themes and issues while maintaining a sleek, simple, and minimal aesthetic that is meant to draw the eye and intrigue the viewer. Apart from design and technology, Shivam’s interests also lie in helping non-profit causes and acquiring all sorts of general knowledge.
Louisa Strothman’s piece comes from a long time of struggle and conversation about the reality of solidarity. It comes from an awareness of her own New York Jewish past, and a future that relies on the uplifting of women of color who are leaders and have been the inspirers of leaders. Looking at and remembering history, and separating the current moment, are the only ways to support and advance intersectional movements. As a playwright, she hopes to support a memory of stories and dialogues which need to be brought to the forefront. In the last year she was a co-creator for 16 Bars: Youth (Off)Ending Justice, a documentary theater piece about raising the age of criminal responsibility in New York. She worked for Humanities Action Lab, an organization that educates about incarceration at the academic level and is a vital force in the reclaiming of historic archives.