Armen Davoudian’s poems and translations appear in&nbsp;AGNI,&nbsp;The Sewanee Review,&nbsp;The Yale Review,&nbsp;and elsewhere. His chapbook,&nbsp;Swan Song, won the 2020 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. He grew up in Isfahan, Iran and is currently a PhD candidate in English at Stanford University.

Armen Davoudian

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¤ 
 
<h5>Blue Willow</h5> 
My mother sliced the cucumbers on a plate 
and sprinkled them with salt and lemon juice. 
A dragon inked in blue, fat as a goose, 
shone through their pale translucent flesh. We ate 
the puckering slices, my brother and I, then dared 
each other to drain the juice. I wasn’t scared. 
The jellied seeds quivered like dragon spawn. 
Glazed with acid yellow, their mother glared 
 
and I glared back, startled by my own 
eyes on the plate. And then it was as though 
when I tipped up the dish and sucked the brew, 
the thick spawn burned my throat all the way through 
and, hatching there, made my whole body shudder. 
I grabbed the knife and pointed at my father. 
 
&nbsp; 
¤ 
<a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/armen-davoudian/">Armen Davoudian’s poems and translations appear in&nbsp;AGNI,&nbsp;The Sewanee Review,&nbsp;The Yale Review,&nbsp;and elsewhere. His chapbook,&nbsp;Swan Song, won the 2020 Frost Place Chapbook Competition.&nbsp;</a>

Blue Willow: A Poem

Randa Jarrar’s work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Utne Reader, Salon.com, Guernica, The Rumpus, The Oxford American, Ploughshares, The Sun, and others. Her first book, the Arab-American coming of age novel, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Map-Home-Novel-Randa-Jarrar/dp/0143116266/ref=tmm_pap_title_1">A Map of Home</a>, is now on many college syllabi. It was published in half a dozen languages and won a Hopwood Award, an Arab-American Book Award, and was named one of the best novels of 2008 by the Barnes and Noble Review. Her second book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Him-Muhammad-Ali-Randa-Jarrar/dp/1941411312/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8">Him, Me, Muhammad Ali</a>, was named one of the <a href="http://www.themillions.com/2016/07/most-anticipated-the-great-second-half-2016-book-preview.html">Most Anticipated Books of 2016</a> by The Millions, a <a href="http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2016/08/books/fiction/short-fiction-for-fall-key-collections-from-18-authors-both-veteran-and-new/">Key Collection for Fall</a> 2016 by Library Journal, and one of Electric Literature’s <a href="https://electricliterature.com/electric-literatures-25-best-short-story-collections-of-2016-eb6b05903777#.8u5sc37gu">25 best collections of the year</a>. She has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Hedgebrook, and others, and in 2010 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut39">was named </a>one of the most gifted writers of Arab origin under the age of 40. She runs RAWI (the Radius of Arab-American Writers) and loves coordinating events and strengthening communities.

Randa Jarrar

Two Chapters from "Love is an Ex-Country"

"The older one grows, the more one likes indecency." — Virginia Woolf

Memoir &amp; Essay

Miki Arndt is from Kobe, Japan. She lives in New York and has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in the&nbsp;Colorado Review&nbsp;and&nbsp;Redivider&nbsp;and she was the recipient of a fellowship from the Center for Fiction in New York.

Miki Arndt

In Another Life: A Short Story

LARB Lit

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

Fiction

Deborah Paredez is the author of the poetry volumes, Year of the Dog and This Side of Skin, and the critical study, Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory. She is a Co-Founder of CantoMundo, a national organization for Latinx poets. She lives in New York City where she teaches creative writing and ethnic studies at Columbia University.

Deborah Paredez

Falling Bodies: A Poem

"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry." — John Cage

Poetry

Colin Winnette is a screenwriter and the author of several books, including The Job of The Wasp (Soft Skull Press), Haints Stay (Two Dollar Radio), and Coyote (Les Figues). He’s online at colinwinnette.net.

Colin Winnette

The Coast: A Short Story

Jenny Fran Davis is an MFA candidate at the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. She is the winner of the 2019 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award in nonfiction and the author of the novel Everything Must Go. Her work is forthcoming in the Washington Square Review, and she is at work on a book about femme lesbian performance.

Jenny Fran Davis

High Femme Camp Antics

"As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag." — Patti Smith

Gender &amp; Sexuality

Elvia Wilk is a writer living in New York. She is author of the novel&nbsp;Oval&nbsp;(Soft Skull press, 2019) and her work has appeared in publications including&nbsp;Frieze, Artforum, Bookforum, Granta, n+1, The White Review, BOMB, Mousse, Flash Art,&nbsp;and&nbsp;Ssense.&nbsp;She is a contributing editor at&nbsp;e-flux Journal&nbsp;and a&nbsp;2020 fellow at the Berggruen Institute.&nbsp;

Elvia Wilk

Queen of Reps (On Spaceship Earth)

"There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them." — Federico García Lorca

Nonfiction

Marilyn Hacker is the author of fourteen poetry collections, including Blazons (Carcanet 2019) and A Stranger’s Mirror (Norton, 2015)&nbsp; a book of essays, Unauthorized Voices, &nbsp;a collaborative book, Diaspo/Renga, written with Deema K. Shehabi (Holland Park Press, 2014) and &nbsp;seventeen books of translations of French and Francophone poets, most recently Samira Negrouche’s The Olive Trees’ Jazz (2020). She received the 2009 American PEN Award for poetry in translation, and the international Argana Prize for Poetry from the Beit as-Sh’ir/ House of Poetry in Morocco in 2011. She lives in Paris.

Photo by Alison Harris&nbsp;

Marilyn Hacker

Karthika Naïr is the author of several books, including the award-winning&nbsp;Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata&nbsp;(American edition: Archipelago Books, 2019), and principal scriptwriter for Akram Khan’s&nbsp;DESH&nbsp;(2011),&nbsp;Chotto Desh&nbsp;(2015)&nbsp;and&nbsp;Until the Lions&nbsp;(2016), a partial adaptation of her own book. Also a dance enabler, Naïr’s closest association has been with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet as executive producer of works like&nbsp;Three Spells,&nbsp;Babel&nbsp;(Words),&nbsp;Puz/zle&nbsp;and&nbsp;Les Médusés,&nbsp;and as co-founder of Cherkaoui’s company, Eastman.&nbsp;

Photo by Koen Broos

Karthika Naïr

Renga Spring 2020

Alex Dimitrov is the author of Love and Other Poems, which will be published in February of 2021, Together and by Ourselves, and Begging for It. With Dorothea Lasky he is the co-author of Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac. He lives in New York.

Alex Dimitrov

River Phoenix: A Poem

Kiki Petrosino is the author of four books of poetry:&nbsp;White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia&nbsp;(forthcoming, 2020),&nbsp;Witch Wife&nbsp;(2017),&nbsp;Hymn for the Black Terrific&nbsp;(2013), and&nbsp;Fort Red Border (2009), all from Sarabande Books. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Her poems and essays have appeared in&nbsp;Poetry,&nbsp;Best American Poetry, The Nation, The New York Times, FENCE, Gulf Coast, Jubilat, Tin House,&nbsp;and online at&nbsp;Ploughshares. She teaches at the University of Virginia as a professor of Poetry.

Kiki Petrosino

Two Poems

<h4>Matthew Zapruder is an American poet, editor, and teacher. He&nbsp;is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Father’s Day, from Copper Canyon in Fall 2019, as well as Why Poetry, a book of prose. He is editor at large at Wave Books, and teaches in the MFA and English Department at Saint Mary’s College of California.</h4>
<h4>&nbsp;</h4>