LINEUP
HEADLINERS
Hanif Abdurraqib is an award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His newest release, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House, 2024) was a New York Times Bestseller and longlisted for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His previous book, A Little Devil In America (Random House, 2021) was a winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burn Prize. In 2021, Abdurraqib was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2024 was named a Windham-Campbell Prize recipient. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.
Photo by Kate Sweeney.
Jamila Woods is a musician, poet, and multidisciplinary artist from the South Side of Chicago. Her critically acclaimed debut album HEAVN – an ode to Blackness, girlhood, and home – was released by JagJaguwar Records in 2017. Her sophomore project, LEGACY! LEGACY!, features twelve tracks named after writers, thinkers, and visual artists who have influenced the creator’s life and work – including James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni and Frida Kahlo. Her most recent album, Water Made Us, is a genre-blending song cycle on love and the wisdom of surrender.
Jamila has been featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk, CBS This Morning, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She has shared stages with Corinne Bailey Rae, Rafael Saadiq, Bonobo, Common, Chance the Rapper, Brittany Howard, Macklemore, and many others. An award-winning poet, Jamila’s work often blurs boundaries between poem and song. As cultural critic Doreen St. Felix writes, “It makes you wish all singers were poets.”
Photo by Pidgeon Pagonis.
LITERATURE
Uchenna Awoke is a writer from Nsukka, Nigeria and the author of The Liquid Eye of a Moon. His short stories have appeared in Transition, Elsewhere, Trestle Ties, Oyster River Pages, Evergreen Review, and other publications. He has received fellowships from MacDowell and the Vermont Studio Center. He is an Artist Protection Fund Fellow and was the inaugural Arkansas International Writer-at-Risk Residency Fellow, currently enrolled at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He was a 2019 Graywolf African Fiction Prize finalist.
Photo by Andrew Kilgore.
Yu-Mei Balasingamchow was born in Singapore and moved to Boston, where she was a bookseller at Papercuts Bookshop and where she teaches writing workshops at GrubStreet. Her short fiction has received a Pushcart Prize special mention and been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. She has an MFA in creative writing from Boston University and has received grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation, Sewanee Writers Conference, and Singapore’s National Arts Council. Names Have Been Changed is her debut novel.
Born in Saigon and raised on Boston’s northshore, Quan Barry is the Lorraine Hansberry Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Barry is the author of nine books of fiction and poetry, including the novel, The Unveiling, a work set in Antarctica and which Kirkus Reviews described in a starred review as “a terrifying must-read set at the ends of the earth.” The New York Times named her poetry collection, Auction, once of the five best poetry books of 2023. Barry is one of a select group of writers to receive NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction. Her first play production, The Mytilenean Debate, was staged in the spring of 2022.
Poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, Carmen Boullosa was born in Mexico City in 1954. Boullosa is the author of nineteen novels (Texas: The Great Theft and The Book of Eve were translated by Samantha Schnee, Before, by Peter Bush), more than a dozen collections of poetry (Hatchet, translated by Lawrence Schimmel), two volumens of plays, and four of essays (How Mexico and the USA Created The "Mexican" Drug War, cowritten with Mike Wallace). Carmen Boullosa has collaborated with visual artists and has done herself artists books since the late seventies. Some of her work has been exhibited at museums and galleries and other venues. She has lectured and read her poems in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. She was a Guggenheim, a DAAD, and a Cullman Fellow, and the recipient of literary prizes in Mexico, Germany, Spain the Café Gijón, and the USA. Fellow of the NYIH (New York Institute of Humanities), and she presides the New York City branch of the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana. Her books have been translated to fourteen languages. More than a hundred Doctoral Degrees Dissertations have been written on her work, as well as a dozen of books about her in several languages. The show “Nueva York” on CUNY-TV that has aired for 20 years, has won her seven NY-EMMYs. She was a visiting professor at the universities of Georgetown, Columbia, NYU, SDSU and Blaise Pascal in Clermont Ferrand, a Chair Alfonso Reyes at la Sorbonne, was a faculty member at the City College CUNY, and is a Distinguished Lecturer at Macaulay Honors College, CUNY. The New York Public Library houses her archive.
Photo by Beowulf Sheehan.
Lawrence Burney is a writer, editor, critic, and the founder of True Laurels, an independent magazine covering Baltimore’s music and culture scene. His work has appeared in publications such as New York Magazine, GQ, Washington Post and Pitchfork. He has also worked as an editor at The Fader, a staff writer at VICE, and an editor/reporter at The Baltimore Banner. His first book, No Sense in Wishing, a collection of essays, was published in July 2025 via Atria Books. Follow him on Instagram and X @TrueLaurels.
Frank Campagna is the owner of Kettle Art gallery in Deep Ellum. Beginning with the music venue Studio D, through his statement murals that are still seen in Deep Ellum, and Kettle Art, which recently celebrated 20 years, he has been a trailblazer in Dallas music and art history.
Afsheen Farhadi is the author of the novel, FALSE PROPHET, which releases July 7, 2026 from Melville House. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Conjunctions, The Southern Review, Colorado Review, Catapult, Bright Lights Film Journal, and elsewhere. He served as the inaugural Hughes Fellow in Creative Writing, Prose at Southern Methodist University, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Javier García del Moral (Logroño, Spain, 1978) is the cofounder and owner of The Wild Detectives, the independent bookstore, café, bar, and cultural venue in Dallas’s Bishop Arts District. A civil engineer by training, he worked on infrastructure projects across Europe, the Middle East, and the United States before opening The Wild Detectives in 2014. He also coordinates Hay Festival Dallas and divides his time between Dallas and Barcelona
Rodrigo Hasbún is a Bolivian writer and screenwriter. He is the author of eight works of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels Affections (Simon & Schuster) and The Invisible Years (Deep Vellum). Named one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists in 2010, his short stories have been published in Granta, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Words Without Borders, among others, and his work has been translated into twelve languages. He teaches Creative Writing in Spanish at the University of Houston.
Jason Hensel is a writer, editor, photographer and musician with more than 25 years of experience writing for magazines, digital productions and live comedy performances. Originally from Granbury and a graduate of the University of North Texas, he has called Dallas home for more than 30 years.
Dr. Jessica Luther is an award-winning investigative journalist, author, sports historian, and podcaster. She has written extensively on the intersection of sports and gendered violence. She is the author of Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape and co-author with Kavitha Davidson of Loving Sports When They Don't Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan. In 2025, Luther completed and defended her dissertation – “Desexigration and Desegregation: Gender, Race, and Women’s Basketball at the University of Texas in the 1970s" – in the Physical Culture and Sports Studies program at the University of Texas. Since 2018, she has co-hosted the feminist sports podcast Burn It All Down.
Photo by Michael T. Davis.
Oksana Lutsyshyna is a Ukrainian writer, translator, and poet, author of three novels, collection of short stories, and five books of poetry, the latest of them published in the English translation in 2019 (Persephone Blues, Arrowsmith). For her latest novel, Ivan and Phoebe, she was awarded Lviv City of Literature UNESCO Prize (2020) and the Taras Shevchenko National Award in fiction (2021). She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Instruction in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches the Ukrainian language and Eastern European literatures in translation.
Karan Mahajan is the author of The Association of Small Bombs, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review. His debut novel, Family Planning, was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He has been selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, and other venues. He is an associate professor of Literary Arts at Brown University.
David Marquis is a writer and activist who lives in Dallas, Texas. Throughout his career he has worked to create lasting, positive social change in the environment, education, and human rights. Raised in West Texas during the drought of the 1950’s, he has an abiding interest in water and conservation issues. Coming from a family of storytellers, he has written and performed multiple one-person stage shows, including I AM A TEACHER, which toured for almost 20 years. He dedicates his environmental work and advocacy to his three grandchildren, that he might leave the world a better place for them and for future generations. His book-length lyric essays, The River Always Wins and The River of Goodness, are published by Deep Vellum Publishing.
Robin Myers is a poet and translator. She won the 2025 National Book Award in Translated Literature for We Are Green and Trembling, by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (New Directions), which was also longlisted for the 2026 International Booker Award. Her latest translation for Deep Vellum is Pink Tongue Out, Blind Cat, by María Paz Guerrero. Her poetry collection Centro is forthcoming from Coffee House Press.
Mike Nagel is the author of Duplex and Culdesac, both from Autofocus Books. His essays have appeared in D Magazine, The Rumpus, Little Engines, and The Paris Review Daily. He lives in Plano.
Anders Nilsen is the author and artist of such award winning graphic novels and comics as Big Questions, The End, Dogs and Water, and Tongues. His work has appeared in Kramer’s Ergot, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine and elsewhere and has been translated around the world. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize. A native of Minneapolis and long-time resident of Chicago, Northern New Hampshire and Portland, Oregon, he now lives in Los Angeles.
Maria Reva was born in Ukraine and grew up in Canada. She holds an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas. Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney's, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere, and has won a National Magazine Award. Endling is her debut novel and has been translated into nineteen languages. She also works as an opera librettist.
Ito Romo was born and raised on the border in Laredo, Texas. His work, dubbed “Chicano Gothic” and “Chicano Noir,” shows the dark and gritty life along Interstate 35 through South Texas, where his family has lived for 11 generations. A former Professor of English Language and Literature, Romo was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2019. His books includeThe Border is Burning and El Puente / The Bridge, published by University of New Mexico Press, and his latest, Filth Eaters, published by Deep Vellum Publishing, 2026. He lives in San Antonio.
Ethan Rutherford’s fiction has appeared in BOMB, Tin House, Electric Literature, Ploughshares, One Story, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, and The Best American Short Stories. He is the author of two story collections—Farthest South and The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories—and for these works has been named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, a finalist for the John Leonard Prize and CLMP’s Firecracker Award, received honorable mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and was the winner of a Minnesota Book Award. His first novel, North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther, was published by A Strange Object / Deep Vellum in March, 2025. It was a finalist for the National Book Award, longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, named a “Best Book of 2025” by Vanity Fair, the Globe & Mail, Lit Hub, and President Barack Obamba.
Born in Seattle, Washington, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota and now teaches Creative Writing at Trinity College. He lives in Hartford, Connecticut with his wife and two children.
Photo by Lou Russo.
Kyle Seibel is a writer living in St. Louis, MO. His debut collection of short stories, Hey You Assholes, is available now from Clash Books.
Brad Ford Smith is a visual artist and art conservator living in Dallas. His work explores a wide variety of topics, from the influence of dyslexia on sight perception, to tongue-in-cheek pseudo-science exhibitions under the guise of the Nomadic Fungi Institute, and his current focus, drawing local spots of historic and cultural significance which have often morphed into urban detritus.
Mary Helen Specht is the author of the forthcoming novel Mudlark (July 2026) and the novel Migratory Animals, a New York Times Editors' Choice and winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Best First Fiction Award and the Writers’ League of Texas Fiction Prize. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Prairie Schooner, and numerous other publications. A Fulbright Scholar to Nigeria and Dobie-Paisano Writing Fellow, Specht currently teaches creative writing at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, where she lives with her family.
Alex Temblador is the award-winning author of a writing craft book, Writing An Identity Not Your Own, and two magical realism novels, Half Outlaw and Secrets of the Casa Rosada. In addition to receiving her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Oklahoma, Alex's creative work has been published in literary outlets like PALABRITAS, D Magazine, Colorado Review, as well as two anthologies — Living Beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican in America and Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology. Alex has taught creative writing seminars, workshops, and classes with WritingWorkshops.com, the Women's Fiction Writers Association, the Writer's League of Texas, StoryStudio Chicago, WorldShift: The Speculative Fiction Writer's Summit, Texas Book Festival, Macmillan Publishers, Abydos Learning Conference, and more. When she's not writing her next book, Alex is working as an award-winning journalist, traveling, gardening, or exploring her home base of Dallas with friends.
Sophia Terazawa is the author of Tetra Nova (US: Deep Vellum, UK: the87press) and several poetry collections, most recently, Oracular Maladies (Noemi Press). Her second novel Curse Him is forthcoming in 2027, winner of FC2's Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize.
Photo by Leslie King.
Chioma Ubogagu is a professional footballer for Dallas Trinity F.C and a forward with over a decade in the women’s game. Born in London and raised in Coppell, Texas, she came up as the No. 1-ranked recruit in the nation, won an NCAA national championship at Stanford, and a FIFA U-20 World Cup with the United States. She went on to earn senior caps for England. Across her career she’s played for some of the sport’s biggest clubs, Arsenal, Real Madrid, Tottenham Hotspur, Houston Dash, and the Orlando Pride before returning home to help launch Dallas Trinity in the USL Super League’s inaugural season.
Adam Voith is the author of Recommended If You Like: A Novel, the publisher of Little Engines books & magazine, and a retired booking agent.
LaToya Watkins is an award-winning author of two books. Her short story collection, Holler, Child, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the winner of Reading the West Book Award in Fiction and the Writer’s League of Texas Book Award in Fiction. Her debut novel, Perish, was published to great acclaim in 2022. LaToya’s writing has appeared in A Public Space, The Sun, McSweeney’s, and the Kenyon Review, among other publications.
Photo by Chanel Mitchell C. Rene Photography.
Sasha West is the author of How to Abandon Ship, finalist for the 2025 Kingsley Tufts, and Failure and I Bury the Body, a National Poetry Series selection. Her awards include multiple Texas Institute of Letters awards, Inprint’s Verlaine Prize, a Writers League of Texas award, and a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Fellowship. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies, including: American Poetry Review, Ecotone, The Slowdown, Georgia Review, The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, and Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency. As eco-arts collaborative Hammonds + West, her multi-media shows with visual artist Hollis Hammonds have been exhibited at the Columbus College of Art and Design, Texas A&M, ArtPrize Michigan, Abilene’s Grace Museum, and elsewhere. She lives in Austin and teaches at St. Edward’s University.
DALLAS POETS
Matthew W. Baker is a poet and professor currently living in Texas where he teaches Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Dallas and works as a bookseller and publishing assistant at Deep Vellum Books. His research focuses on aesthetics and contemporary U.S. poetry. He is also the author of the chapbook Undoing the Hide’s Taut Musculature (FLP 2019), and other craft essays, reviews, and poems appear in Gulf Stream Magazine, Cleaver, Muzzle Magazine, The Southern Review, and The Atlanta Review, among others.
Aaron Brown is the author most recently of the poetry collection Call Me Exile (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2022) and memoir Less Than What You Once Were (Unsolicited Press, 2022). His debut poetry collection, Acacia Road, won the 2016 Gerald Cable Book Award and was published by Silverfish Review Press. Brown grew up in Chad and now lives in Texas, where he is an associate professor of English and directs the writing center at LeTourneau University. He holds an MFA from the University of Maryland.
Katie Condon is the author of Praying Naked. Her poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, and the 2025 Best American Poetry Anthology. Condon is the recipient of a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and is an assistant professor at SMU.
Photo by Tara Arseven
J.D. Debris is a poet, fiction writer, and musician from Salem, Massachusetts, known for his unique live performances incorporating poetry, live music, and storytelling. His debut book, The Scorpion's Question Mark, was selected by Cornelius Eady for the 2022 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. He has been a Goldwater Fellow at New York University, where he received his MFA; a Luso-American Fellow at DISQUIET; and a Mass Poetry Teaching Artist Fellow. His work has recently appeared in Poems.com's Poem-a-Day and The Kenyon Review, and has been commended by Narrative's 30 Below 30 List and Ploughshares' Emerging Writers Prize. He currently serves as a Hughes Fellow in Creative Writing at Southern Methodist University and is the creative director/bassist for the jazz-and-poetry collective D-CLAIM.
Cadence Diggs is our current Dallas Youth Poet Laureate. She is a senior in the theater conservatory at Booker T. Washington high school for the performing and visual arts. Originally from Kentucky, she’s been on the stage since the age of four in school, community and regional professional theater. She first found poetry her freshman year in her school’s local Poetry OutLoud competition and has continued to expand her knowledge in creative writing. As a 3 time gold medalist in the ActSo NAACP local competition, she uses her experience to inspire others and help them reflect on the current state of our society. Most recently she founded the Pegasi Poetry Society at Booker T Washington High School to cultivate an atmosphere of creativity and a space for expression. Over the next year she hopes to collaborate with schools, organizations, and fellow artists to continue to showcase how poetry is both a reflection of the times that we are living in and the possibilities for the future.
R. Flowers Rivera is a Mississippi-born poet and fiction writer. She is the author of Heathen, which won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize, and Troubling Accents, which received the Texas Authors Association's Poetry Book of the Year Award. Her work explores the intersections of Southern culture, language, history, and identity. Her work has been recognized by The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters and has received Pushcart Prize nominations. Rivera earned degrees from Hollins University and Binghamton University and lives in downtown Dallas.
Lauren Brazeal Garza is the author of four books of poetry and short fiction, including her memoir-in-verse, Gutter, which chronicles her homelessness as a teenager. She earned her M.F.A in creative writing from Bennington College and her Ph.D. in Literature from The University of Texas at Dallas with a specialty in testimonial literature and narratives from marginalized voices. Lauren teaches literature and creative writing at UT Dallas and serves as the project manager for SMU English's Project Poëtica at Southern Methodist University.
Lisa Huffaker’s poetry appears in The Iowa Review, Pleiades, Cincinnati Review, Sixth Finch, Diagram, and elsewhere. Pegasus Contemporary Ballet choreographed a new dance work built on her poetry as a live score, and Pierce Planetarium featured her hybrid of poetry, full-dome art projections, and music. She is at work on a book-length collage/erasure transformation of a 1963 “self-improvement” book for wives.
LyriK Hunter is a Dallas-based poetic expressive artist, originally from Midland, TX. She's a passionate poet, singer, speaker, actress, teaching artist, mentor and entrepreneur. She’s graced stages like The Black Academy of Arts & Letters, F.L.O.W. International (Brazil/Italy/France), and many other national and local stages. LyriK is former CEO of the award-winning Brown Sugah Lounge, and a very passionate community advocate, who strives daily to provide safe spaces for the community to gather and be heard, using her #PoetiKHealingMovement brand to promote healing and mental wellness through writing, poetry and the arts. Lyrik's projects and creative works can be streamed, downloaded and purchased online and in person, including her debut EP #MuziKNPoetry Vol 1 and her book, "Love N Life Thru The Eyes of LyriK Vol 1". Local community bookings are available via the Dallas CAP (Community Artist Program).
Learn more at: https://linktr.ee/lyrik_hunter
L. A. Johnson is the author of Nobody Brings Flowers, forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2027, and an Associate Editor of Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems of Larry Levis, which appeared from Graywolf Press. She holds a PhD from University of Southern California, where she was a Mellon Humanities and University of the Future Postdoctoral Fellow. The winner of the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, the Arts & Letters Rumi Poetry Prize, and the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Prize for Poets Under 35, her poems appear in The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.
Reverie Koniecki is a Black writer and educator living in Dallas, Texas. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Guernica, Post Road and other places. She is the author of chapbooks —to the god of sore feet and bad backs (Finishing Line Press), The Wars That Steer Us (Mouthfeel Press), and The Arguments (Bottlecap Press).
Hannah Mosing is currently residing in Dallas, Texas with her fiancé, Sergio, and their two dogs, Pepper and Kodiak. Since graduating from the University of North Texas in May of 2020, she has written and published two poetry books, Fragile Heart and The Corpse of Who I Used to Be, and is actively working on her third poetry book.
Mary Alissa Park is an emerging poet from Dallas, Texas. She received her MFA from New York University (Writers Workshop in Paris) and is a PhD student of Poetry and Poetics in the Department of English at Southern Methodist University.
Naisha Randhar served as the 2024-26 Dallas Youth Poet Laureate. She has received national recognition by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and was named a winner of the National High School Poetry Contest in 2025. Her poetry has been recognized by TED, the Adroit Summer Mentorship, Kenyon and Yale Young Writers’ Programs and appears in Cleaver Magazine and Stirring Lit.
Jacob Rubin is the author of the novel The Poser and Piggy Bank, a book of poems. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in New York magazine, The New Yorker online, Slate, The Paris Review Daily, and the anthology Best New American Voices, among other places. He is an associate professor of creative writing at SMU.
April Sojourner Truth Walker, PMP is a Dallas native who studied at Emory University in Atlanta and Hollins University in Virginia. Before starting her writing coaching company – A Little More Truth, LLC – in April of 2020, she worked for seven years as a Senior Project Manager at AT&T. April is currently an Adjunct Professor at Dallas College and UNT Dallas. Previously she was an Adjunct Professor at Oklahoma City Community College, teaching a myriad of classes in the Humanities. A perfect day for April is one spent in nature with her camera, a cup of tea and nowhere to be. Her current manuscript, Fire Psalm, grapples with how the history of the black community in Dallas is covered up by the city’s constant need to revitalize its image. She is also working on a manuscript exploring the role of women in Christianity, Judaism and Islam and how these historically man-made roles manifest in women’s lives today.
Myca Williamson is a Dallas-based multidisciplinary storyteller, strategist, and cultural curator whose artistic practice explores the intricate connections between memory, identity, and community through poetry and documentary film. She holds an MBA and a B. A. in Journalism & Fashion Media from Southern Methodist University, where her commitment to social impact through storytelling earned her a Human Rights Fellowship. Williamson’s recent works include Crowning Glory: An Ode to Black Hair (2025), a poetic and visual study of Black hair as ritual and resistance, and the 2024 film Shades of Excellence, which celebrated the personal narratives and legacies of prominent Black artists in Dallas. Her work has been recognized on Good Morning Texas and KERA, and she is a recipient of multiple grant awards through the City of Dallas and National Endowment for the Arts. In every part of her storytelling, Williamson centers the complexities of womanhood and the multifaceted Black experience.
Charles Wuest (he/him) has poems in Illuminations, Folio, Verse, Subtropics, Southword, Poetry Quarterly, The Toad Suck Review, and other magazines. His manuscript was recently a finalist for the Omnidawn Open Book Poetry Prize. He also publishes scholarship on medieval literature and works at SMU English.
Joaquín Zihuatanejo is the proud grandson of migrant field workers. Born and raised in the barrio of East Dallas his poetry captures the beauty and struggle of barrio life. He received his MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was the Inaugural Dallas Poet Laureate and received a $50,000 Poet Laureate Fellowship Prize from the Academy of American Poets in honor of his outstanding work as Dallas’ first poet laureate. He is the author of Arsonist, Occupy Whiteness, and the forthcoming: IMMIGRANT from Deep Vellum Publishing. Joaquín has two passions in his life: his wife Aída and poetry, always in that order.
MUSIC
DAMOYEE is an award-winning singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and live streamer from Dallas, TX who is known for her remarkable musicianship, evocative lyricism, luminous voice, and sonic versatility. Born with the rare gift of absolute pitch, she began playing piano at the age of two, and performing original music at age 10, and quickly built a reputation for immersive live performances built through layered instrumentation and vocal harmonies.
Her 2019 album The Whole Truth charted internationally and earned recognition from Dallas Observer and Central Track, while her 2024 project PURPLEXED explored vulnerability, self-discovery, and coming of age through autobiographical storytelling and atmospheric production. DAMOYEE's work has received acclaim from the GRAMMYs, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, EBONY, American Songwriter, PAPER, Consequence, and FLOOD. She has performed at festivals including New Orleans Jazz Fest and Gov Ball, and has collaborated with artists such as Bryson Tiller and DC The Don. Her music and compositions have also been featured through partnerships with brands including TikTok, Meta, Coca-Cola, AT&T, FX x Hulu, Cartoon Network, Walgreens, Bose, and Roland. Her vivid blend of classical training, jazz fluency, soulful vocals, folk intimacy, and experimental production places her at the forefront of modern independent music.
Cayuga All-Stars is a Dallas, TX based party band playing a mix from Cumbia and other styles like latin music. Formed by Cesar Vargas with help from Champ Cantu and the barrio.
Ceci Ceci is a Nicaraguan–Ecuadorian singer-songwriter whose music bridges modern Latin pop with raw emotional depth. Known for her commanding stage presence, she brings intention to every lyric and electricity to every performance.
D-CLAIM is a jazz-and-poetry collective from Dallas, TX. Praised by the Dallas Observer for their "spark that allows the poetic medium to evolve while also giving jazz new material,” D-CLAIM host a popular monthly residency at the Wild Detectives, collaborating with acclaimed poets and guest musicians from DFW and beyond. Their sound combines the lyricism of Gil Scott-Heron, the bass-driven explorations of Esperanza Spalding, and hypnotic grooves informed by East Coast boom-bap and Brazilian soul.
Manny Galindo, Piano | Ste’fon Landers, Sax | Nicholas Rothouse, Percussion | J.D. Debris, Bass/Vocals
As an artist, Denise Lee is an award-winning Dallas based actress/singer who has performed in all genres of entertainment for almost four decades. She has performed on stage in almost every theater in the metroplex. She is the founder and Executive Producer of the DLO Cabaret Series and the Dallas Cabaret Festival. She is a 4-time recipient of the Dallas Voice’ ‘Best Vocalist’ in the Reader’s Voice Awards and a 3-time Leon Rabin Award winner. She has the distinct honor of being the 1st recipient of the Sammons Center for the Arts ‘Cabaret Artist of the Year’. Her commitment to Equity and Social Justice led her to establish Visions For Change, Inc., a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, where she serves as the Executive Director. For her work in the arts and community she has been awarded the Rudy Eastman Diversity Award by the Live Theater League of Tarrant County and a Special Citation of Recognition by the DFW THEATER CRITICS. She is also the recipient of the 2019 Hero of Hope Award for her courageous stand for the rights of all people without regard to gender, race, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. She currently serves on the Board of Directors at the AT&T Performing Arts Center, has served as a member and Board Chair of the Dallas Street Choir and is the Social Justice Strategist for the Dallas Children’s Theater.
Sam Cormier is an indie pop singer-songwriter and producer based in Dallas, Tx. Known for lush chords and emotional songwriting that “sticks in the hearts of an audience,” Cormier’s music reflects on queer identity and love.
Team Effort is a four piece band blending sounds and space pairing heavy guitar riffs & speedy rhythm with extreme delay & anthem like mantras. They describe their sound as “Noise with sum Real Force.” A real gut punch in question . A real Magazine to look at.
MODERATORS
Jill Meyers is the editorial director of A Strange Object, an imprint that publishes award-winning fiction and nonfiction. Her writers have received wide acclaim and honors, including the Whiting Award, The Believer Book Award, and the Discovery Award from the Writers’ League of Texas, and have been named Finalist in Fiction for the National Book Award. She oversees editorial for a new venture between Texas Book Festival and Deep Vellum. Formerly, Jill worked on staff at Texas Monthly. An avid home cook, she writes the Thursday Supper Club newsletter for Bookshop.org. She lives in Austin with her family and their incorrigible basset hound.
Sanderia Faye is a distinguished author, speaker, activist, and sommelier, renowned for her impactful contributions to literature and culture. Her novel, Mourner’s Bench, is the winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in debut fiction, the Philosophical Society of Texas Award of Merit for fiction, and the 2017 Arkansas Library Association, Arkansiana Award. Her work appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, and many other literary journals. She serves on the faculty at Southern Methodist University, if co-founder of Kimbilio Center for Fiction, and is the co-director of PEN America Dallas. Sanderia is working on a new novel, Eleven Days.
Jaina Sanga is co-founder of the Dallas Literary Society, and Board member of the San Miguel Global Literary Institute. She holds a Ph.D. in English and has authored a critical book on Salman Rushdie and edited two volumes on South Asian literature. Her fiction publications include: Silk Fish Opium - A Novel, Train to Bombay - Stories, and Tourist Season - Two Novellas.
Photo by James Edward.
Abigail Shepson-Lesage is former bookseller, turned host of Deep Vellum's very own sci-fi / fantasy book club, Underdogs in Space. She works at Rakkasan Tea Company and attends too many book clubs.
Omar Zendejas is a Dallas poet, curator and author of Horror Romance novella Love for Chicanos. Omar represents the brand Indigenous Dallas with the mission to preserve Dallas identity by lifting other homegrown Dallas creators.
Matthew W. Baker is a poet and professor currently living in Texas where he teaches Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Dallas and works as a bookseller and publishing assistant at Deep Vellum Books. His research focuses on aesthetics and contemporary U.S. poetry. He is also the author of the chapbook Undoing the Hide’s Taut Musculature (FLP 2019), and other craft essays, reviews, and poems appear in Gulf Stream Magazine, Cleaver, Muzzle Magazine, The Southern Review, and The Atlanta Review, among others.