Artist Statements

Annalee and Reese

Appleton, Maine / Long Beach, California We make playlists and post them on @reallygoodideaforapodcast on Instagram. “Summer Songs” features some great music we’ve been listening to lately!

Azelia Assin

Brooklyn, New York Hello! I’m Azelia and I do be making art sometimes I guess!

Dewa Ayu

Portland, Maine Dewa Ayu, who in real life goes by Ayu, is a multimedia artist. Their submissions for this issue take a focus on just ink on white paper and were produced in vulnerable states of mind.

Jordan Ballard

Hampshire College

Jillian Benham

Clara Callahan

Boston, Massachusetts

Zoe Fieldman

Brooklyn, New York Zoe (they/them) writes one poem every five years, so please enjoy this one.

Ella Giordano

Northampton, Massachusetts

Lila Goldstein

Mount Holyoke College

Juliette Harrison

New York

Sophia Hess

Los Angeles, California My name is Sophia Hess (she/her). I’m primarily a visual artist currently studying Studio Art & Environmental Studies at Mount Holyoke College, and I center my artwork around themes of identity, nature, migration, while critiquing settler-colonialism as I try to untangle my own participation within these systems.

Megan Hill

Fayetteville, New York Megan, like many others, can currently be found in limbo. Megan occasionally writes and creates art and it seems that everything that Megan creates is a self-portrait of sorts.

Reese Hirota

Long Beach, California Reese (she/her) is a passing cloud in the shape of a college student studying statistics and computer science. As an artist she paints colorful gouache still lives and landscapes which reveal the plain magic in daily life.

lucy james-olson

Western Massachusetts lucy james-olson is a poet in western massachusetts. common themes of their poetry include: creeks, birds, and boyhood.

Izzy Kalodner

South Orange, New Jersey Izzy Kalodner writes with half an eye for optimism, and half an eye for the understandable absence of it. Poems draw her in due to just a simple line, and she endeavors to write her poetry in a similar fashion.

Avery Martin

Mount Holyoke College

Maren McKenna

Southern Maine Maren is a poet, gardener, bird enthusiast, and Libra from Southern Maine. When not reading or writing poetry, you can find them making wildly specific Spotify playlists, dreaming about queer discos, and driving across the country.

Mavis Moon

San Marcos, Texas I love you.

Lily Reavis

Colorado / Mount Holyoke College

Casey Roepke

San Francisco, California Casey Roepke continues to miss the queer comfort of Mount Holyoke College. She is interested in writing about women, domesticity, and bad husbands. She would recommend the song “Split for the City” by Peter and Kerry and a bowl of homemade mac and cheese. This is the first time that she is sharing a short story publicly and she is very nervous.

Mira Rosenkotz

Bainbridge Island, Washington

Wolf Shen

Sikkiim

Los Angeles, California

Ishan Summer

Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts I’m a climber, chef, and poet with a fairly understated personality. More important to me than intelligence, talent, or any identifier is one’s capacity for kindness, as a theme in my creative endeavors and in my mundane life. Empathy and understanding have always been my biggest inspiration and continue to be something I strive for.

Kate Turner

Amherst, Massachusetts Kate is a student and writer from Rhode Island. She studies English Literature and Critical Social Thought at Mount Holyoke College, and is passionate about cooking, chocolate, and the transformative power of stories. Her writing often explores family, queerness, and magic of all kinds.

Claire Weber

Los Angeles, California

Margaret Wiss

Boston, Massachusetts / New York, New York Margaret Wiss (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar. Her work seeks to be shaped by each environment and the individuals who contribute to its development. She values the vitality of collaboration. She has an MFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts and a BA in Dance Kinesiology from Mount Holyoke College.

She believes dance is a reflection of the fluid collaboration of interpersonal and site-specific dynamics; these interfaces can be shaped, transformed, and taught in many different ways. Technology’s role in dance education and choreographic documentation excites her; it has allowed for expansion and transdisciplinary integration of the field. These photographs are from the series up in the air. It is a document of a daily movement exploration and meditation in the Time of Corona. Capturing the essential moment, the series highlights the tender absence of others but also the expansion and abundance of the natural world.

Callie Wohlgemuth

Northern New Jersey / Western Massachusetts Callie is a multimedia artist that aims to explore relationships between human and the natural or built environment through a variety of mediums like film, photography, dance and drawing. They wrote their first poem since seventh grade, which they are proud to have included in this magazine.

Jeno Zhuo

Zora Duncan

Amherst, Massachusetts / Atlanta, Georgia

Inside back cover: Dripping Free by Mavis Moon

Back cover by Callie Wohlgemuth

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