AUTHOR & ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES...

T. ABEYTA is a third grade dropout who didn’t get a GED but did snag two Master’s degrees. After she recently turned 40, she decided to write for real and has been published by Hobart Pulp, the Brooklyn Review, and Diagram. She teaches literature and lives in Oakland where she is working on Smile, a dark comedy meta-memoir about micro-aggressions. Follow her on Tabeyta.com or tweet @abeytawrites.

MIRA BELLE ARBRETON is a photographer and a student of creative writing at Berkeley City College.

EMMA ARNESTY-GOOD is a writer and teacher living in San Francisco. She’s currently working towards an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga. In her free time, Emma likes to be outside as much as possible.

TIPHERETH BANKS is a creative artist, entrepreneur, and art student born in Berkeley and raised in the Bay Area. She earned her AA in Studio Art at BCC. At an early age, she had a strong passion for art, and grew up to selling her paintings and merchandise, winning art contests and competitions, exhibiting, working on murals, and teaching art to youth. She assists, mentors, and supports the youth in her community by advocating and opening a community center for them to heal, have sanctuary, truly benefit, and expand in their personal and professional skills.

PABLO BAUTISTA is a 1.5 generation Filipino immigrant Gen Xer currently residing in Oakland, CA.

ZOEY BLOOM loves to take poetry classes at Berkeley City College because she finds writing very cathartic and healing. Take a class! In real life she loves hanging out with little kids as a pre-schoolteacher, loves dogs, riding bicycles, playing the accordion, creating puppet shows and spending time in nature.

ELAINE DE COLIGNY (she/they) is new to poetry writing, beginning her studies in 2020 at Berkeley City College. Her subjects address personal and social healing and the intersection between the two. She has spent her professional career working to end homelessness and seeks to express her commitment to social justice through artistic expression. She has raised four children with her husband of 34 years.

LAILA DIAZ is a Mexican and Yemeni writer from Berkeley, California. She primarily writes poetry, focusing on issues that have to do with race, mental health, and gender and sexuality. She hopes to use writing as a way to spread awareness and encourage young people to find their own voices and self-expression through art.

COLIN DODSWORTH draws, designs, makes videos, writes, photographs, builds, and uses art for fun, expression, and social justice. makefunthings.com

CHLOE DONNELLY is an English teacher, linguist, and memoirist. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Humboldt State University, and an MA in Linguistics from SFSU. Her research interests include conceptual metaphor, and the fine print of student visa processes in various European countries. When she’s not doing research or traveling, she likes to sing, write poetry, and watch trash TV.

ELAINE DOWD is a Berkeley based poet who believes in the power of story to heal and transform lives. Poetry is her favorite practice, as it connects her to secret portals and new spaces of exploration in which she can dance with both shadow and stars.

BARRY EBNER is a print maker and arts educator and director of The Studio of Nothing Else. He has exhibited internationally, most recently at Taller 99 in Santiago, Chile. He also takes creative writing at Berkeley City College. See his website: barryebner.com

VIDA FELSENFELD was born and raised in Oakland by her mother with 11 other siblings. She attended Catholic and graduated from college at age 40. Her poems have appeared in The Racket Journal, Rag Zine, The Berkeley Times, Penumbra Art & Literary Annual, and Milvia Street Art & Literary Journal. She has been a featured reader at various poetry events and has submitted her poetry manuscript for publication.

SHIRA FREEHLING began writing poems at age 6. Hippie rebel preacher’s kid, she travelled abroad at age 17, returning 11 years later with a son and some notebooks. She divorced three times (no fault California), worked hard, raised three children and kept writing. Life and breast cancer happened. She was never voted employee of the month. Shira lives in Berkeley, California.

Born and raised in Oakland, YOHANA GIRMA GEBRE enjoys writing creative work with an edge. Her work centers on dark topics that she hopes to normalize discussion around and bring healing to the community. She aims to capture uncomfortable moments as a starting point for exploration. With this, she hopes change will be generated and others’ healing processes will start. She writes poetry, fiction, journal columns, memoirs, and prose. Her journal columns were published in the Laney Tower. Her poetry can be found in Milvia Street.

GEOFF GEIGER loves art, music, literature, and riding the waves of the spiritual dimension. Though not necessarily in that order.

LISA JACQUELINE GRAVES was born in Southern California and has lived in the Bay Area since 1980. Always involved in the visual arts, she now finds art and expression in writing.

SORMEH HAZRATI is a writer, veterinary nurse, English major, and part-time painter whose main inspirations for art and writing come from examining the emotional depth and complexity of humans. When she’s not working on her crafts or thinking about how much she misses Anthony Bourdain, she enjoys reading in the sun with her two dogs, three cats, and three chickens.

THOMAS A. E. HESKETH was born in Toronto, Canada, on a cusp, last millennium; none of it was his fault. Most of the things that have happened to him have happened to other persons, too. He enjoys poetry because of its verbal range, except the caesuras, and chess because it is non-verbal, until the regicide.

KATIE HUNTER is a writer and educator based in Oakland. Her works of creative nonfiction and poetry have been published in The ANA, Hecate Magazine, Porridge Magazine, and the Bold Italic. She is currently pursuing her MA in English at San Francisco State University. You can find her at @kahunteroma and katiehunterwriter.com or else hanging out with her friends, her husband, and her spoiled Maine Coon mix, Rue.

MONET KHANYAHL is a student, photographer, videographer, and writer from the Bay Area. She’s a lover of color, punk photography, and taking pictures of herself just like everyone in Generation Z.

r.a.d. LENG LENG, RN, PHN, MPH, their mountains are Mt. Kanlaon of the Bisayas, the sacred hills of Bohol, the unknown names of the mountains in Tequila, Jalisco, Mexico. Their waters and homes are the overflowing creek of red dirt in Goodrich Village, Marikina; the Seas and land of Luzon, Bisayas at Mindanao, the shores of the Pacific Ocean in Califas. They are descendants of Cebuanos, Batoanons, a Padre and Bisayan twin ancestors from Bohol. @callmerad1

BEVERLY LESCH, born in Brooklyn, NY, is a long-time resident of the SF Bay Area. A veteran writer and teacher, she currently enjoys teaching adults in Berkeley. Bev earned her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop many moons ago. She is still searching for her North Star.

MARY MAGAGNA is the daughter of a mother who believed animals, plants, and people are interchangeable and a father who loved to visualize ledger sheets so that he could add numbers together in ordered columns in his head. She is under the influence of Roman Catholicism, is a practicing Buddhist, and she squints when she looks into the distance even when wearing her glasses.

LIZ MCCALL is a printmaker and poet. Their work is an exploration of the body, as a physical presence and manifestation of who we really are. They create art and poetry as a method of discovery, as a never-ending way to answer questions, organize thoughts, and look at the world around them.

ANTMEN PIMENTEL MENDOZA (he + she) is a writer based in Richmond, CA. Her poetry is published in Cosmonauts Avenue, Underblong, and Lantern Review and is anthologized in Peach Mag’s Worlds In Which: Speculative Mix. In 2020, she was selected as an IWL fellow by Kearny Street Workshop. His favorite donut is a maple old-fashioned. antmen is online as @antmenismagic

SARAH MORGAN remembers ripping the butts off of bioluminescent bugs and sticking them to her forehead so she could glow into the night. The experience of writing is similar for her. She doesn’t know why she is drawn to do it, and sometimes it comes off as kind of stupid. She only hopes that with time she can learn to honestly express her glow, preferably without the need to rip off butts.

Art History major and artist NIGHTSHADE comments on our social systems and looks inward at emotional states of being. Thank you to BCC Professor Carolyn Martin for being a continual inspiration.

BEAR RODRIGUES-KINDFIELD, Meat Head, Karuna, Xi, and Ephemeral are a collective of human and non-human beings who all share the Body. They care for humans with mobility limitations and have a multitude of aspirations including becoming an English teacher, continuing to be a loyal companion to all of their fur babies, and to grow wings.

CARLA SCHICK is a queer transformative justice activist and educator. Their works have appeared in Forum, Milvia St., Earth’s Daughters, Suisun Valley Review, online at A Gathering of the Tribes and The Write Launch, and in the 100 Lives Anthology (Pure Slush) and the Medusa Project (Mookey Chick). Carla received a first place award in the 2012 & 2018 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry prize, and the 2022 first place poetry prize from SF City College’s Forum. They received their Certificate in Poetry from Berkeley City and has served as an editor for BCC’s literary arts journal, Milvia St. Carla is a member of Circulo de Los Poetas, and numerous writing circles including Las Chingonas Poets.

CHRISTIANA SMITH is an emerging writer and poet, but most importantly, a parent of two cats. Some of the topics they write about are sapphic and non-binary experiences, family, and the discovery of self. One of their biggest influences is music, which is what led them to poetry. They believe that language is always evolving, and learning to evolve with it is a valuable skill.

KAI SUGIOKA-STONE is a Japanese-American poet, mindfulness-based meditator, musician, actor, photographer, and upcoming filmmaker. His writing focuses on liminal identity, growing up in the era of California wildfires, and Covid. He featured at San Francisco Poet Laureate Kim Shuck’s event Sudden Return of The Fire Thieves and read at Tea Roots’ Recovery A.C.T. He is part of Lauren Ito’s upcoming exhibit Political Inheritance.

Until their arts programs were defunded, LAUREN TRAETTO ran a trauma-informed creative writing program at public schools in the Oakland Unified School District. They hold/have held positions on the board of directors at Small Press Traffic, as West Coast Director of Vouched Books, contributing editor for FANZINE, staff member of Quiet Lightning, producer at PAC, and co-producer of Scene Missing SF.

RENATE VALENCIA is an artist who works in both traditional and digital forms. Her work often focuses on consumerism and utilizes distortion. She lives in El Cerrito, is originally from New York City, and is owned by four cats. See her work at renatevalencia.com

CELO VERARI is an Oakland native who has been living in California for ten years. He grew up in Miami, Florida, but moved back to the west coast in search of a better life. He has a passion for his Afro-Latino heritage as well as creating poetry & music. He loves to include the realities of society while tying in wise lessons within his art that will have you admire the rhyme and rhythm of every word. A hip-hop background with a southern hospitality upbringing, Celo Verari has a charm & sound that is uniquely his own.

A Bay Area native born in Berkeley, California, JAY WHITTINGTON, recently found her home within the written word. Painting unique landscapes with words, Jay hopes to create a platform for the voices lost within the world’s noise. Led by the mantra “I write the wrong to right the wrong,” Jay uses the stroke of her pen to bring forth new thought and new hope, one letter at a time.

Hailing from the East Bay, AUBURN WILSON IV is a poet and rapper (under the stage name The Kid Anubis) who’s primary artistic focus is discussion, whether about his and his friends and family’s experiences with racism as a Person of Color in America, or his struggles with depression and mental health he believes in “being vulnerable first” to allow the people he interacts with to feel safe opening up and exploring themselves as well.

TIM XONELLY is an autism paraprofessional and union negotiator, semi-retired. He has lived in downtown Berkeley since 1991. His recent poetry publications include SFPL poem of the day March 10, 2021, Wicked Gay Ways, The Fabulist, The Racket Quarantine Journal #18, The Naked Bulb Anthology 2019, Monday Journal, Berkeley Times.

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