FICTION
Kristen Arnett is the queer author of With Teeth: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2021) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and the New York Times bestselling debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute, has held residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and the Millay Colony, and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize recognizing mid-career writers of fiction. Her work has appeared at The New York Times, TIME, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, Guernica, Buzzfeed, McSweeneys, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, and elsewhere. Her next book (an untitled collection of short stories) will be published by Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House). She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and lives in Orlando, Florida.
POETRY
C.T. Salazar is a Latinx poet and librarian from Mississippi. His debut collection, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking is now available from Acre Books. He’s the author of three chapbooks, most recently American Cavewall Sonnets (Bull City Press, 2021). He’s the 2020 recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award in poetry. His poems have appeared in The Rumpus, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, 32 Poems, RHINO, and elsewhere.
NONFICTION
Tijanna O. Eaton (Tə-zha-na) is a Black, queer butch with a high school diploma and a rap sheet who has been clean and sober since 1994. She is based in Oakland California. Tijanna’s nonfiction memoir, BOLT Cutters, is the story of her 12 arrests in three years in the early 1990s during the height of the crack epidemic. She has served on the Five Keys Schools and Programs Board of Directors since 2006 and was on the board of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project from 2016 to 2018. Tijanna is the proud recipient of the 2021 Unicorn Authors Club’s inaugural Alumni award and is a 2023 Rooted & Written Fellow. She has been published in Honey Literary, Noyo Review, Yellow Arrow Vignette, and Panorama Journal, the latter essay having been nominated for a 2024 Pushcart Prize.