Mia Amore Del Bando
Mia Amore Del Bando (she/her) is a Mexican/Filipino author, photographer, and creator. She was born and raised in Long Beach, California. Her writing and photography featured in The Perch, The Rising Phoenix Review, Flora Fiction, Backwards Trajectory, and others. Her poetry book Fragments of a Woman’s Brain published by Nymeria Publishing debuts in 2024. She is a faithful friend, difficult daughter, and selfish lover. Instagram: @miaamoure
A Conversation with Sophie Sandberg
Sophie Sandberg is a gender justice activist, chalk artist and founder of the popular initiative against street harassment, Catcalls of NYC.
She leads Chalk Back, an international youth-led movement consisting of 150 “Catcalls of” sites around the world. Her work with Catcall of NYC and Chalk Back has been featured in the New York Times, BBC, CNN, Cosmopolitan, and NBC. She is an inaugural fellow of the Vital Voices and Tresemme Leadership Incubator for young women. She has presented her work to students at Juilliard University, Pratt University, Plan International's Youth Leadership Academy, The Think Peace Workshop for Girls, and YouthBridge Munich. She has given talks at UNESCO's Media Information Literacy Conference, and UNESCO’s World Cities Day. Sophie champions local and global efforts to combat gender-based violence through public art, education, and events.
Sherry Shahan
Sherry Shahan is a teal-haired septuagenarian who grows potatoes in the box that delivered a stereo. Her personal essays have appeared in Text Power Telling, Exposition Review, Memoir Magazine, Hippocampus, Progenitor, and elsewhere. She is nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry, 2024. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Artist statement: Feeling shipwrecked in 2020, I began ripping words from the heart of old magazines. My scissors were like me, rusty and dull. The glue, too thick. My collages resembled drawings found in a kindergarten classroom. I like that about them; it frees me from ideas of what art should be.