I use paint palpably to convey that which is real, viscous, and undeniable. I also use paint to fabricate illusion, to present the viewer with an uncanny version of the spaces I experience physically and through devices. My work is bemusedly real and fake in order to reflect the conflict of our current reality where realness is confusingly debatable. There is tension between the ordinary and the superlative and between what is natural and artificial. I utilize painting and “the landscape” specifically as a visual tool to explore and depict the destructive forces affecting both our physical and social landscapes such as wildfires and misinformation. My colors are tempestuous to represent this pernicious narrative. Through painting, I am able to both investigating and celebrating the power of mark and process, representing the liminal space we occupy between what is real and what is not.
Category: Contributors for mojo 19
Contributors for mojo 19
Alara Egi is a seventeen-year-old junior from Istanbul and a new poet, as of now looking to be published. She likes to fool herself into thinking that she spares enough time for poetry and guitar.
Avery Gregurich is a writer currently living and working in Marengo, Iowa. He was raised next to the Mississippi River and has never strayed too far from it.
Ayesha Raees identifies herself as a hybrid creating hybrid poetry through hybrid forms. Raees currently serves as an Assistant Poetry Editor at AAWW’s The Margins and has received fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Brooklyn Poets, and Kundiman. Raees’s first book of poetry, Coining The Wishing Tower, won the Broken River Prize hosted by Platypus Press and judged by Kaveh Akbar, and will be forthcoming in March 2022. From Lahore, Pakistan, Raees is a graduate of Bennington College, and currently lives in New York City. Her website is www.ayesharaees.com
Cari Oleskewicz is a writer based in Gainesville, Florida. Her work has been included in several online and print publications, including Literary Orphans, The Collapsar, The Fourth River, Blotterature, Mom Egg Review, Sandhill Review, Commonline Journal, and The Gainesville Sun. She is currently at work on a memoir, raising a teenager, and planning multiple overseas escapes.
Cezarija Abartis has published a collection, Nice Girls and Other Stories (New Rivers Press) and stories in Baltimore Review, Bennington Review, FRiGG, matchbook, Waccamaw, and New York Tyrant, among others. Recently she completed a crime novel. She lives and writes in Minnesota.
Emma Eisler (she/her) is a junior English major at Cornell University with a concentration in poetry. She is Editor in Chief of the university magazine, Kitsch, as well as a columnist for the independent newspaper, The Cornell Sun. She is a recipient of the Cornell University Dorothy Sugarman Undergraduate Prize for poetry and has been published in magazines including The Smart Set, Allegory Ridge, Cathexis Northwest Press, Prometheus Dreaming, Storm of Blue, Blackheart Magazine, SWITCHBACK, and Beyond Words. She was also a semi-finalist in Digging Through the Fat’s 2021 chapbook contest. Emma plans to continue pursuing a career in writing after she graduates.
JD Debris writes poems, songs, and prose. He held the Goldwater Fellowship at NYU from 2018-20, where he completed his MFA. In 2020, his work was chosen by Ilya Kaminsky for Ploughshares‘ Emerging Writers Prize, and he was named to Narrative‘s 30 Below 30 list. His releases include the chapbook SPARRING (Salem State University Press, 2018) and the music albums BLACK MARKET ORGANS (Simple Truth Records, 2017) and JD DEBRIS MURDER CLUB (forthcoming).
Lauren Shapiro is a New York-based writer and musician. She holds a B.A. from Queens College of the CUNY, a B.Mus. from Manhattan School of Music, and an M.A. in writing from Manhattanville College. Having started out as a songwriter, merging words and music, Lauren later began to separate them into words as essays, stories and poems and music by way of dance accompanying. She is a 2017 winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts Literary Award.
Peter Leight lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has previously published poems in Paris Review, AGNI, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, FIELD, New World, Raritan, and other magazines.
Roberta Allen is the author of nine books, including three flash/short story collections, a novella, a novel and a memoir. Her latest is The Princess of Herself, flash and short stories. She is also a conceptual artist in the collections of MoMa and The Met Museum. Read more at www.robertaallen.com.
Rob Swigart is a fiction writer and former poet, professor, technology journalist, computer game designer, archaeology writer, and futurist. He earned a B.A. at Princeton University and a PhD at SUNY Buffalo. He has authored 16 books, one of which was nominated for a BSFA Best Novel Award. His hybrid of fiction and nonfiction stories, Mixed Harvest, won a 2019 Nautilus Gold Award. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in American Poetry Review, Atlantic Monthly, Epoch, Fiction, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, New York Quarterly, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Stonecoast Review, and others. Read more at www.robswigart.com.
Shayna Hodkin is a vegan queer Jewish poet. She believes a better world is possible.