Contributors
Jorrell Watkins is an educator, writer, and martial artist from Richmond, VA. He is an alum of Hampshire College and the University of Iowa, Writer’s Workshop. His disability inclusive play, Meet us at the Horizon, was produced by Combined Efforts Co. for its 2019 world premiere. His chapbook, If Only the Sharks Would Bite, was selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as the winner of the inaugural Desert Pavilion Chapbook Series in Poetry. Find him on social media @brothajorrell, and www.jorrellwatkins.com.
Moriana Delgado is a Mexican writer, based in Mexico City, where she received her BA in English Literature from UNAM. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Besides writing poetry in her room, she is interested in Mandarin in its simplified form.
John McCurley joined the Writers’ Workshop in 2020. Before moving to Iowa he taught computer programming at CU Boulder and worked at the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless. He has a degree in philosophy from Reed College.
Peter Myers is a poet and writer living in New York. His poetry has appeared in Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Vestiges, Boston Review, and elsewhere. He received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2019.
Jaycee Billington studied poetry at Georgia College and State University and is a current student of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is from Folkston, Ga but currently living in the Midwest. She loves trees and is afraid of allergies as a concept. Her work appears in Plain China, the peacock’s feet, Hotel Amerika and The Oyez Review. She is the winner of a Wilson Award for excellence in writing.
‘Gbenga Adeoba is the author of Exodus (University of Nebraska Press, 2020), winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize, and the chapbook Here is Water, which appeared in the New Generation African Poets Series (APBF/Akashic books, 2019).
Claretta Holsey is a Rona Jaffe Foundation Graduate Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is at work on her poetry thesis. A three-time awardee of the Academy of American Poets prize, she recently graduated summa cum laude with a BA from Stetson University. Her poetry and creative non-fiction have been published in Poetry Breakfast, Fishfood Magazine, on Poets.org and PromptPress, and in Stetson University’s literary journal Touchstone.
Bread and Assembly Curators
Timmy Straw is a writer, translator, & pianist from Oregon. They most recently lived in Russia where, despite poverty and the various horrors of centuries of authoritarian rule, nearly every apartment, no matter how raggedy-ass and ex-Soviet, has its own private covered balcony from which trees – most often birch and poplar – are visible.
Romeo Oriogun is the author of The Origin of Butterflies, selected by Kwame Dawes for the APBF New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Series. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, McNeese Review, Vassar Review, and others. He was the 2017 winner of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, a fellow of the Ebedi International Writers Residency. He is currently a W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, and an MFA candidate at Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Marisa Tirado is a poet with roots from New Mexico and Chicago. She worked in ministry full-time as a pastor in Washington state until, upon losing copious amounts of vitamin D, transferred to the church of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She currently is working on curating a seminar for BIPOC poets, Protest Through Poetry.
Evana Bodiker is a second-year poetry MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her work appears in Columbia Journal, Frontier Poetry, Tin House Online, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in Iowa City, IA and North Carolina.
Marlene Effiwatt is from Tucson, Arizona. She is an MFA candidate in Poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has appeared in PromptPress, and the Iowa Review.
John Bosworth is a writer and walker from west Texas. He is the recipient of the 2018 Most Promising Young Poet Award from the Academy of American Poets, judged by Ellen Bass. He lives in northside Iowa City with his cat, Willow.
Margaret Yapp is from Iowa.
Julián David Bañuelos is a poet & writer from Lubbock, Tx, where he received his BA in English from Texas Tech University. He was recently awarded the 2020 Iris N. Spencer poetry award from the West Chester Poetry Center. He currently resides in Iowa City, Iowa, in pursuit of an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Kelsey Kerin is a writer from rural Michigan.
Michael Overstreet is a recent graduate of the translation workshop.
Sallie Fullerton is a current MFA candidate in Poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her work has previously appeared in Frontier Poetry, Vagabond City Lit, and Slanted House Collective.