Rajiv Mohabir is the author of four volumes of poetry, Whale Aria (Four Way Books, 2023), Cutlish (Four Way Books, 2021), The Cowherd’s Son (Tupelo Press in May 2017), and The Taxidermistʻs Cut (Four Way Books 2016) as well as a memoir, Antiman, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Nonfiction, The Publishing Triangle’s Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, and the 2022 PEN Open Book Award. Rajiv also has been longlisted for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, received a silver medal from the Northern California Publishers and Authors, was a “must read book” from the Mass Book Awards from the Massachusetts Center for the Book, a finalist for the New England Book Awards, received the Eric Hoffer Medal Provacateur, was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award, and was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award, and was also awarded the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets, and a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for his translation of Lalbihari Sharma’s I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (Kaya Press 2019). He received his PhD in English from the University of Hawai’i and is an assistant professor of poetry in the Department of English at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

Anne Posten is a literary translator based in Berlin. Her short translations of poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Music & Literature, Modern Poetry in Translation, VICE, The Buenos Aires Review, n+1, Gigantic, Hanging Loose, Words without Borders, FIELD, Stonecutter, and The Agriculture Reader. Book-length works include Anja Kampmann’s High as the Waters Rise from Catapult (shortlisted for the National Book Award 2020), Walks with Walser, from New Directions, Libuše Moníková’s Transfigured Night, from Karolinum, and Monika Held’s This Place Holds No Fear from Haus Publishing. She won the inaugural Loose Translations Award from Hanging Loose Press in 2012, which resulted in the publication of her translation of Tankred Dorst’s novella This Beautiful Place, and she won an Honorable Mention for the 2008 Susan Sontag Translation Prize. Her essay on translating the German poet Thomas Brasch appears in the 2012 issue of Text + Kritik dedicated to the latter’s work. Posten holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation from Queens College, CUNY and a Bachelor’s in German from Oberlin College. She is the recipient of a 2014-15 Fulbright Grant to Berlin.

Ariel Francisco Henriquez is the author of Under Capitalism If Your Head Aches They Just Yank Off Your Head (Flowersong Press, 2021), A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship (Burrow Press, 2020), All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017) which was named one of the8 Best Latino Books of 2017 by Rigoberto Gonzalez, and Before Snowfall, After Rain (Glass Poetry Press, 2016). Born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents, he was raised in Miami and completed his MFA in Poetry at Florida International University and an MFA in Literary Translation at Queens College CUNY. He was named one of the Five Florida Writers to Watch in 2019 by The Miami New Times and one of the 6 Guatemalan Authors You Should Know in 2021 by the Latino Book Review. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Yorker Podcast, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Rumpus, The New York City Ballet, Performance Today, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He is the translator of Columbian poet Carolina Sanchez’s Viaje/Voyage (Editorial Ultramarina, 2020) and of Guatemalan poet Hael Lopez’s Routines/Goodbyes (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022). He is an Assistant Professor of Poetry at Louisiana State University.

Eric M. B. Becker is a writer and literary translator, as well as digital director and senior editor of Words without Borders. He is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Commission, and the Louis Armstrong House Museum. In 2014, he earned a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for his translation of a collection of short stories from the Portuguese by Neustadt Prize for International Literature winner and 2015 Man Booker International finalist Mia Couto (now available from Biblioasis as Rain and Other Stories). He has also published translations of numerous writers from Brazil, Portugal, and Lusophone Africa, including Noemi Jaffe, Elvira Vigna, Paulo Scott, Martha Batalha,  Paulo Coelho, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade. Current book projects include work by Luiz Schwarcz, Lygia Fagundes Telles (NEA Fellowship 2019), Lima Barreto, and an anthology of writing about Rio de Janeiro. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Literary Hub, Freeman’s, and Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, among other publications. He has served on the juries of the ALTA National Translation Award and the PEN Translation Prize; he also serves as director of career development on the board of the Portuguese-English Literary Translators Association (PELTA), in addition to serving on the board of directors of artist brand management consultancy CargoCulture.

James Shultis (he/they) has been focusing his energies since QC as an educator, community organizer, and national consultant on equity and inclusion for LGBTQIA+ communities. Currently, James serves as the Co-Director for Translate Gender, a trans-led org supporting trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive youth and families in Western MA. Besides this work, he is a Senior Training Consultant with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Safe Schools Program, providing training and technical assistance to K-12 schools and agencies across MA and the Northeast. His most recent publication was related to his education work in Gender Diversity and LGBTQ Advocacy and Inclusion in Schools, Routledge, June 2018. In other news, James got married to his long term sweetheart, Dana, this past May and lives in Western MA with them and their sweet dog and cat. If you’d like to learn more about what James has been up to, please visit: www.jamesshultis.com.  

zakia henderson-brown is a 2023 NYFA/NYSCA Poetry Fellow and the author of What Kind of Omen Am I, winner of Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship, selected by Cate Marvin. She was a Poets House Emerging Poets fellow, and has received additional fellowships and support from the Fine Arts Work Center, Callaloo Journal, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Cave Canem. Her poems have appeared in Adroit, African American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, the Brooklyn Review, Burner Magazine, Epiphany, Little Patuxent Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Reverie, No, Dear, North American Review, Obsidian, the Offing, Thethepoetry.com, Torch, Under a Warm Green Linden, Vinyl, Washington Square Review, and the anthologies New Daughters of Africa (Amistad: 2019) and Why I Am Not a Painter (Argos: 2011).

Sunu P. Chandy (she/her) is a 2013 graduate of the QC MFA program with a focus in poetry. Sunu’s the daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India, a queer woman of color, and lives in Washington, D.C. with her family. Sunu’s collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, was published by Regal House in 2023. Sunu’s creative work can also be found in publications including Asian American Literary Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Poets on Adoption, Split this Rock’s online social justice database, The Quarry, and in anthologies including The Penguin Book of Indian Poets, The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood and This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. Sunu is also a civil rights attorney, and currently a Senior Advisor with Democracy Forward. She supports work across the teams including, fighting back against the attacks on measures that promote racial equity, and working alongside partner organizations to help build a nation that does right by all of us. Before that, Sunu was the Legal Director of the National Women’s Law Center for six years until August 2023, where she oversaw litigation and led policy work on LGBTQ+ rights. Sunu is also a board member for the Transgender Law Center. Sunu is delighted to celebrate her first collection of poetry with all of you and with the book’s fabulous cover artist, Ragni Agarwal, and updates re events are available on her website, www.sunuchandy.net.

Chandanie Somwaru (she/her) is an Indo-Caribbean woman born and raised in Queens, New York. She is the author of Urgent \\ Where the Mind Goes \\ Scattered (Ghostbird Press, 2021). Her writing has been published in Poem-A-Day, Honey Literary, Solstice, SWWIM, The Margins, and other outlets. She was the first runner-up for the 2023 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award. In 2024, she won a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Somwaru is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Hawaii. 

Creative Nonfiction MFA ’23 alumna Catherine LaSota has been busy with the growth of the Resort, a writing community that she founded in 2020 to offer mentorship, workshops, and other forms of support to writers of all genres and experience levels, as well as her Cabana Chats podcast on writing and community, which recently wrapped its third season. Last year, she added one-on-one creativity coaching to her offerings for her fellow writers (you can learn more about that here). She is especially excited to bring back in-person Resort events this Fall, including the Resort’s first in-person retreat for NYC-based writers on October 7-8, 2023, and a workshop with fellow QC MFA alum Eleanor Whitney on October 18, 2023. If you want to catch her IRL before that, swing by her official Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend event with Greg Mania, Denne Michele Norris, and Matt Ortile on September 26, 2023 or catch her on the BKBF festival day moderating a panel called “Echoes of Artistry” with Brendan Slocumb, Catherine Lacey, Idra Novey, and John Wray on October 1, 2023. In other news, Catherine recently returned to Burning Man, taking her young children with her this time, and she wrote about that experience for Memoirland.

Jay Rubin is a contributing translator to No Edges, the world’s first collection of Swahili literature in English translation (along with current MFA student Richard Prins). His translation of the Swahili novel Rosa Mistika by Euphrase Kezilahabi is forthcoming from Yale University Press’ Margellos World Republic of Letters series.

Since graduating from the first Queens College MFA class in 2009, Tejas Desai has published five books, including the Amazon #1 bestselling, multiple award-winning international crime trilogy, The Brotherhood Chronicle (The Brotherhood, The Run and Hide, The Dance Towards Death) and the acclaimed short story collection Good Americans (The Human Tragedy, Volume 1), which Kirkus Reviews called “a solid collection of rare caliber” that “speaks volumes about the human condition and modern life in America.” He is currently completing its anthology sequel, Bad Americans (The Human Tragedy, Volume 2). He is also the founder and leader of The New Wei Literary & Artistic Movement, which promotes provocative narrative artists and runs monthly Salons throughout New York City. He has been featured widely in publications ranging from HuffPost, ThriveGlobal, and Buzzfeed.

Todd Sullivan teaches English as a Second Language in South Korea. His fiction, poetry, and non-fiction have been published internationally. He was listed on the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker’s Awards in 2018, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for Poetry in 2023. He currently has two book series through indie publishers in America. He wrote for a Taipei play and web series that focuses upon African narratives. He founded the online publication, Samjoko Magazine, in 2021, and hosts a YouTube Channel that interviews writers across the publishing spectrum.