Red Hen Press at the Annenberg Community Beach House

Founded in 1994, Kaya Press publishes cutting-edge Asian and Pacific Islander diasporic writers residing in the United States, with a diverse list of titles that includes experimental poetry, noir fiction, film memoir, avant-garde art, performance pieces, “lost” novels, and everything in between. Kaya and its authors have been the recipients of numerous awards, including the Gregory Kolovakas Prize for Outstanding New Literary Press, the American Book Award, the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award, the PEN Beyond Margins Open Book Prize, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Award, and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Prize. Originally based in New York, Kaya Press is currently housed in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

Moon Tide Press was founded in 2006 by journalist and poet Michael Miller. For a decade, the press published full-length collections, anthologies, and featured a Poet of the Month on their website—always bringing new and necessary voices to the forefront of the Southern California poetry scene and beyond. In 2017, Eric Morago became its new publisher and editor-in-chief, and continues the Press’ focus on new, diverse, and daring voices.

Tia Chucha Press is a cross-cultural press focused on socially engaged poetry and literature that matters. TCP began in 1989 with the publication of Luis J. Rodriguez’s first book, the 19-poem collection Poems Across the Pavement. The press published collections from the thriving Chicago poetry scene, and in 1991, became the publishing wing of the nonprofit Guild Complex Literary Arts Center in Chicago, run by Michael Warr and co-founded in 1989 by a collective of artists, writers and activists, including Rodriguez as editor. A chapbook series of Chicago poets and anthologies were also developed in the 1990s and early 2000s as well as an album of Chicago performance poets titled Snake in the Heart. By 2005, TCP became the publishing wing of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and published the anthology Dream of a Word: The Tia Chucha Press Poetry Anthology edited by Quraysh Ali and Toni Assante Lightfoot. In addition to Rodriguez, other TCP poets include Patricia Smith, national and international poetry slam champion and Pulitzer Prize nominee; Terrance Hayes, who won the National Book Award; Elizabeth Alexander who was President Barack Obama’s inaugural poet in 2009. Other TCP poets have won recognitions including the PEN Josephine Miles Literary Award, Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers Award, Carl Sandburg Book Award, Paterson Poetry Prize, Lannan Fellowship in Poetry, and as a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012, TCP published its first non-poetry book, Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams: How the Arts are Transforming a Community, edited by Denise Sandoval and Luis J. Rodriguez with a companion documentary of the same name, written and directed by John F. Cantu.

Red Hen Press is a place for writers’ work to be published and celebrated; a literary family for a diversity of voices that articulate the variety of human experience. Founded in 1994 by Kate Gale and Mark E. Cull, Red Hen is a literary press that publishes poetry, literary fiction, and nonfiction. Their imprints and series support diversity and representation in literature and include Arktoi Books, edited by Eloise Klein Healy and dedicated to publishing high-quality literary fiction and poetry by lesbian writers; Boreal Books, edited by Peggy Shumaker and focused on fine literature and fine art from Alaska; DJS Books, formed Ming Di of Poetry East West and publishing cutting-edge poetry books in Chinese; Letras Latinas, a series established with Francisco Aragón of University of Notre Dame that focuses on Latinx poets; Pighog, an imprint originally founded by John Davies and featuring writers from the British Isles; Quill, established by Tobi Harper and focused on prose by queer writers; Story Line Press, originally founded by Robert McDowell, Lysa McDowell, and Mark Jarman and publishing poetry with a focus on Formalism; Xeno Books, an imprint that publishes titles outside the boundaries of Red Hen’s regular literary program. They offer several literary awards each year, including the Benjamin Saltman Award.

The Unnamed Press publishes literature from around the world. Whether fiction, memoir or something in between, they are always interested in unlikely protagonists, undiscovered territories and courageous voices. Distributed by Publishers Group West, their sister nonprofit press is Phoneme Media, which promotes cross-cultural understanding by connecting people and ideas through translated books and films.

Katharine Coles’ seventh collection of poems, Wayward, is due from Red Hen Press in 2019; her memoir, Look Both Ways, will be out in 2018. She is a Poet in Residence at the Natural History Museum of Utah and at the SLC Public Library for the Poets House program FIELD WORK, and was sent to Antarctica in 2010 to write poems under the auspices of the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program (The Earth Is Not Flat, Red Hen 2012). She has received grants from the NEA and NEH and a 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Matty Layne Glasgow is the author of the poetry collection deciduous qween, selected by Richard Blanco as the winner of the 2017 Benjamin Saltman Award and forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2019. He was the runner-up for the Missouri Review’s 2017 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize and finalist for Nimrod’s 2018 Pablo Neruda Prize. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthologies and appear in the Missouri Review, Crazyhorse, Collagist, BOAAT, Muzzle, and elsewhere. He lives in Houston, Texas where he teaches with Writers in the Schools and adjuncts his life away.

Jessy Randall’s poems, comics, and other things have appeared in McSweeney’s, Poetry, and Best American Experimental Writing. She is the author of two Red Hen books: Injecting Dreams into Cows (2012) and Suicide Hotline Hold Music (2016). Her latest book is How to Tell If You Are Human: Diagram Poems (Pleiades Press, 2018).

Kim (Freilich) Dower, originally from New York City, received a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, where she also taught creative writing. She has published three collections of poetry, all from Red Hen Press: Air Kissing on Mars (2010), which was on the Poetry Foundation’s Contemporary Best Sellers list and described by the Los Angeles Times as “sensual and evocative . . . seamlessly combining humor and heartache”; Slice of Moon (2013), called “unexpected and sublime” by O magazine; and Last Train to the Missing Planet (2016), “full of worldly, humorous insights into life as it is,” according to Janet Fitch. Kim’s work has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and has been featured in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem A Day, Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, as well as in Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Rattle, and Eclipse. Her poems are included in several anthologies, including Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque Books/Pacific Coast Poetry Series, 2015) and Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes & Shifts of Los Angeles (Tia Chucha Press). She teaches poetry in the BA program of Antioch University. Kim was City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood, California from October 2016 to October 2018.

Tina Schumann is a pushcart nominated poet and the author of three poetry collections, “Praising the Paradox” (Red Hen Press, 2019) which was a finalist in the National Poetry Series, Four Way Books Intro Prize and the New Issues Poetry Prize, “As If” (Parlor City Press, 2010) which was awarded the Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize, and “Requiem. A Patrimony of Fugues” (Diode Editions, 2016) which won the Diode Editions Chapbook Contest. She is editor of the IPPY-award winning anthology “Two Countries. U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents” (Red Hen, 2017.) Schumann’s work received the 2009 American Poet Prize from The American Poetry Journal, finalist status in the Terrain.org annual poetry contest, as well as honorable mention in The Atlantic. She is the poetry editor for Wandering Aengus Press and Assistant Director at Artsmith.org. Her poems have appeared in publications and anthologies since 1999 including The American Journal of Poetry, Ascent, Atticus Review, Cimarron Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Nimrod, Parabola, Palabra, The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine and Verse Daily. You can read more about Tina at www.tinaschumann.com.

Dolores Hayden, award-winning poet and historian of American landscapes, engages the lives of daredevil pilots—women and men from the earliest years of aviation—in Exuberance, her third poetry collection. Hayden’s poems have appeared in Poetry, the Common, Ecotone, Raritan, Shenandoah, the Yale Review, Southwest Review, Best American Poetry, and Poetry Daily. Author of American Yard (2004) and Nymph, Dun, and Spinner (2010), she’s received awards from the Poetry Society of America and the New England Poetry Club, and residencies in poetry from Djerassi, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Noepe. Professor of Architecture and American Studies Emerita at Yale University, Hayden has also been a Guggenheim fellow and won an American Library Association Notable Book Award for nonfiction.

Hélène Cardona is a poet, actor & translator, the author of 7 books, including the award-winning Life in Suspension and the translations Birnam Wood (José Manuel Cardona), Beyond Elsewhere (Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac), winner of a Hemingway Grant, Ce que nous portons (Dorianne Laux), and Walt Whitman’s Civil War Writings for WhitmanWeb.

She wrote her thesis on Henry James for her masters in American Literature from the Sorbonne, taught at Hamilton College and LMU, and worked as an interpreter for the Canadian Embassy in Paris. Her work has been translated into 16 languages. She has contributed to The London Magazine, Washington Square Review, World Literature Today, Poetry International, The Brooklyn Rail, Asymptote, The Irish Literary Times & elsewhere.

Acting credits include Chocolat, Star Trek: Discovery, The Romanoffs, The Hundred-Foot Journey, Jurassic World, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Happy Feet 2, and Serendipity among many.

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, and translator. He is the author of Cenzontle, chosen by Brenda Shaughnessy as the winner of the 2017 A. Poulin, Jr. prize (BOA editions 2018). His first chapbook, DULCE, was the winner of the Drinking Gourd Prize published by Northwestern University Press, and his memoir, Children of the Land is forthcoming from Harper Collins in 2020. He was born in Zacatecas, Mexico. He holds a B.A. from Sacramento State University and was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. He cofounded the Undocupoets campaign which successfully eliminated citizenship requirements from all major first poetry book prizes in the country and was recognized with the Barnes and Noble “Writers for Writers” award. His work has appeared or is featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, People Magazine, PBS Newshour, Fusion TV, New England Review, Gulf Coast, Buzzfeed, Indiana Review, and Southern Humanities Review, among others. He lives in Marysville, California where he teaches poetry to incarcerated youth and also teaches remotely at the Ashland University Low-Res MFA program.

Gary Lemons studied for two years with Donald Justice, Norman Dubie, and Marvin Bell in the Undergraduate Poetry Workshop at Iowa City from 1971 to 1973. He has published five books of poetry, including Bristol Bay, Día de los Muertos, Snake, Snake: Second Wind (the last two of which comprise the first two books of the Snake Quartet), and The Weight of Light. For decades he fished Alaska, built grain elevators, worked high steel, and reforested the clear cuts of the Pacific Northwest. Currently he and his wife, the artist Nöle Giulini, teach yoga from their studio, Tenderpaws, in Port Townsend, Washington.

Poet/photographer Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, The New York Times, The MacGuffin, Plume, Tinderbox, Diode, Nashville Review, Wide Awake, Poets of Los Angeles, Anomaly, KYSO Flash, Pirene’s Fountain, Cleaver, Glass, Rust + Moth, Duende, The American Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. Her books include: How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen & other heart stab poems (Sybaritic Press, 2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here, (2017), and The Dead Kid Poems, (2019), all published by KYSO Flash Press, and Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), an autobiographical chapbook chronicling Alexis’s first, disastrous marriage. She’s been published in over 50 anthologies, including the best-selling Nasty Women Poets (Lost House Press, 2017) and Antologia di poesia femminile americana contemporanea, (Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, 2018). Her photographs have been published worldwide, including the covers of Witness, Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, Heyday, and Pithead Chapel, and a spread in River Styx. A multiple Pushcart Prize, Best Short Fiction, and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. She and her husband live 20 miles outside of Los Angeles, in a small beach community overlooking the Pacific Ocean.They have an extraordinary view.

Sarah Cannon grew up in the north-end suburbs of Seattle, and graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Spanish. She earned her MFA from Goddard College in 2014. Her essays have been featured in the New York Times, Salon.com, Bitch magazine, and more.

Sarah wrote The Shame of Losing while caring for her family after her spouse survived a workplace accident. Sarah is active with the Brain Injury Alliance of WA and offers creative writing classes at community centers. She lives in Edmonds, WA with her family, where she is a public-school employee.

The Shame of Losing is her first book.

Francesca Bell’s poems and translations appear in many journals, including B O D Y, Massachusetts Review, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and Rattle. She is the former poetry editor of River Styx, the translator of a collection of poems by Palestinian poet Shatha Abu Hnaish (Dar Fadaat, 2017), and the author of the collection Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019).

Rachel Cline, author of the novels What to Keep and My Liar, has written for the New York Times, New York, More, SELF, and Tin House magazines, and is a produced screen and television writer. For five years, she was a screenwriting instructor at the University of Southern California and has taught fiction writing at New York University, Eugene Lang College, and Sarah Lawrence College. She has been a resident at Yaddo, a fellow at Sewanee, and a Girls Write Now mentor. She lives in Brooklyn Heights, a few blocks from where she grew up.

Raymond Luczak lost much of his hearing at the age of eight months and grew up in a hearing family of nine children in a small town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He was not allowed to sign until he was fourteen years old. A proud Gallaudet University graduate, Luczak is the author and editor of over twenty books. Titles include The Kinda Fella I Am: Stories and QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology. His Deaf gay novel Men with Their Hands won first place in the Project: QueerLit Contest 2006. His work has been nominated nine times for the Pushcart Prize. Also a playwright, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Susan Straight was born in Riverside and still lives there with her family. (She can actually see the hospital from her kitchen window, which her daughters find kind of pathetic; most days, she walks the dog past the classroom where she wrote her first short story at 16, at Riverside City College, which they find even more sad.) She has published seven novels and one middle-grade reader. Highwire Moon was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001; A Million Nightingales was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2006. Her short stories have appeared in Zoetrope, The Ontario Review, The Oxford American, The Sun, Black Clock, and other magazines. “The Golden Gopher,” from Los Angelas Noir, won the Edgar Award in 2007; “El Ojo de Agua,” from Zoetrope, won an O. Henry Award in 2007. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Family Circle, Salon, The Los Angeles Times, Harpers, The Nation, and other magazines. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on Highwire Moon, and a Lannan Prize was an immense help when working on Take One Candle Light a Room.