Semilore Kilaso - Editor-in-chief
Semilore Kilaso loves to collect photographs of humans, architecture, wildlife, and landscape. When she is not playing Scrabble or reading books, she is reading lines from architectural drawings. You can read her works here https://linktr.ee/SemiloreKilaso.
Madison Ellingsworth - Lead Editor (Prose)
Madison Ellingsworth is an avid runner, surfer, and writer who graduated several years ago from the University of Southern Maine. She spends her post-graduate life making ceramic fish, listening to podcasts, and taking time off to blow all her savings and travel the world. Links to Madison's published writing and unpublished artwork can be found at madisonellingsworth.com.
Mohammed Yusuf - Lead Editor (Art)
Mohammed U. Yusuf is a writer and editor from North-Central, Nigeria. His works have recently appeared—or are forthcoming—in Frontier Poetry, RoseyRavelston Books, Lunaris Review, The Lumiere Review, Olongo Africa Journal, KonyaShamsrumi, among others. He is an Associate Poetry Editor at Chestnut Review and tweets @Unyomo.
pamela zero - Lead Editor (Poetry)
Though she's been writing non-fiction for decades, Pamela finally ventured into creating science fiction in 2019. Her trilogy, the Visitor Series, follows the lives of people pulled hundreds of thousands of years into the future. She is a member of several writing groups, has won several awards for her short stories, and is currently editing the second novel, Ose, in the Visitor Series. Pamela is based in Ventura, California, and spends her time writing and teaching. Now and then she travels, gardens, cooks, and genuinely tries.
Ashley Bach - Associate Editor (Social Media)
Ashley’s life was changed fundamentally by the pandemic. Prior to 2020, Ashley had a hard time finding steady employment, despite having expertise in astrology, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, and battle tactics. Once the pandemic forced everyone to work remotely via Zoom, Ashley was no longer handicapped by the fact that she is a centaur. We are lucky to have her.
Erin Conway - Associate Editor (Social Media)
Erin is an experienced classroom teacher, nonprofit staff trainer and curriculum designer who lived ten years in indigenous villages in Guatemala. When asked what she loved most about education, her response was, “the storytelling”. After she returned to live on her family's farm in Wisconsin, she also returned to writing. Erin’s fiction, non-fiction and poetry are published in a variety of literary magazines, including The Hopper’s fiction submission for the 2019 Push Cart Prize. Her work in progress can be found at www.erinconway.com. Erin spends a great deal of time watching her niece’s current Netflix binge and dedicates the remainder to boring her dogs by exploring books, learning new languages and contributing to libraries that thrive across borders.
Kirsty Crawford - Associate Editor (Prose)
Kirsty has the distinction of having visited 191 of the 195 recognized countries in the world. The only countries she hasn’t visited are the ones beginning with W, Y, and Z, because she just hasn’t gotten around to them yet. She is an avid connoisseur of local foods in every country she visits, although by “local,” she means whatever cool things they have at the airport Starbucks in that country, because ever since that time in Australia when someone convinced her to eat a bug, she’s just not having any of that.
Jasmin Davis - Associate Editor (Poetry)
Jasmin Davis is an aspiring contemporary author currently living in Chicago, Illinois. Her work tends to focus on what it means to be human. Shining a spotlight on all the love, grief, and raw moments most people turn a blind eye to. When she's not reading, she's slowly working on one of her many unfinished stories or browsing for more books to add to her growing pile. She enjoys listening to music, eating sweets, studying Japanese, watching anime, analyzing motifs in media, and watching horror movies. She is also a volunteer poetry reader for Kitchen Table Quarterly. Jasmin is currently in the process of having her first book of poetry published.
Olaore Durodola-Oloto - Associate Editor (Poetry)
Olaore is not only a poet, but a pioneer of floral cuisine. He eats only flowers and foods derived from flowers (like honey and fruit). He can tell you what kind of flower would enhance any dish (hint: fuchsia goes with everything), and can give you twenty flower-only recipes that would surprise and delight you. Sadly, while he is a wizard of floral cookery, he is a terrible gardener and has failed in all his attempts at growing the flowers he most loves to eat.
Gerald Ewa - Associate Editor (Prose)
Gerald is not only a writer and editor, but is also the world’s best dancer of the Polydactyl Tarantella, a dance which requires the performer to have at least six toes on each foot. Not coincidentally, he is also a world-renowned sock designer, pedicurist, and hopscotch champion. In his spare time, he creates miniature dioramas of the insides of empty garden sheds.
Sam Fowler - Associate Editor (Prose)
Sam is the former owner of the first and only all-volunteer circus. At its height, Phowler’s Phenomenal Phair boasted a lion and lion tamer (who had both been employed by a now-defunct zoo), a dozen acrobats, a knife thrower, and a high-wire act made up of twenty-seven people aged 3 months to 6 years. Sadly, the circus had to be abandoned when its staff was reduced to a sick elephant and a man who would guess people’s hair color.
Wilson Hannalei - Associate Editor (Poetry)
Wilson Hannalei is an emerging queer Filipino writer and poet from the valley of the Bay Area in California. Alongside being a student at the University of Santa Cruz, California, where they study literature, they are also an orchard farmer, teacher, painter, mental health advocate, and an entomology aficionado. An avid horror fan of all mediums, though with a special attention towards video games and comics.
tessa lee - Associate Editor (Prose)
Tessa (she/her) is a 19-year-old writer based in California. She is a college undergrad studying English literature and sociology. When she isn't tinkering with a story or tucked into a book, Tessa likes to spend time with her friends and drink unhealthy amounts of boba.
Ricardo Moran - Associate Editor (Prose)
Ricardo spent the ages of 14 to 27 on a unicycle. He not only rode it around instead of walking, but he rode it around the house, even in the shower. His love of unicycling began when, on a long bike ride through a rough neighborhood, his bicycle broke apart while in motion, and he was forced to continue his ride using only the rear wheel and pedal assembly. He holds world’s records for length of time on a unicycle, the most cheese omelets cooked while on a unicycle, the most shirts ironed on a unicycle, and the most relationships ruined by a unicycle (this last being what led him to give it up).
Victoria Ojo - Associate Editor (Art)
Victoria is a member of the only surviving set of decasextuplets (16 babies born at one time). Of the five boys and eleven girls, only nine have individual names, as the exhaustion of birth and then simultaneously dealing with 16 infants sapped her parent’s imaginations. But her siblings Anne, Margaret, David, Michael, Jennifers 1-8, and Robert 1-3 are all very close.
Yasmeen Owens - Associate Editor (Poetry)
Yasmeen Owens is a prolific writer with a list of notable publications, including The Rainbow Poem, Atlantis, Earth and Sky Anthology, and Seabreeze Literary Magazine. In her leisure time, she enjoys taking her beloved dogs Barney and Miracle for long walks, indulging in a good book or immersing herself in a captivating video game. Yasmeen is determined to publish her first novel series with the unwavering support of her family and friends.
Li Quintana - Publisher
Li Quintana is the publisher at Zoetic Press and was, until early 2024, editor in chief for NonBinary Review. Quintana was formerly the Editor in Chief of Lunch Ticket, the literary journal of the MFA program of Antioch University Los Angeles. They have been on the Boards of the Bay Area Book Festival and Nanowrimo. They write, too. Google them. You can read their stuff. They also lecture about writing-adjacent subjects for Antioch University’s MFA program. They’re a popular speaker, and, for a reasonable fee, will show up at your party and act charming and mysterious, thereby increasing your social capital.
Their work has been published in Extract(s), Red Fez, Drunk Monkeys, The Weekender, The Rambler, Role Reboot, Willow Review, SLAB, and other fine venues.
Khalila Soubeih - Associate Editor (Poetry)
Khalila’s original ambition was to become a mighty oak tree in the English countryside. Upon being told that humans very rarely become trees as adults, Khalila turned to the next most obvious career choice, marine necrology (which is like marine biology, but instead of studying living things in the ocean, it’s the study of dead things in the ocean). As marine necrology is not a lucrative career, Khalila also delivers signing telegrams, which consist of taking the sender’s message and doing an interpretive dance while using ASL to communicate the message.