So to Speak is thrilled to announce that on Sunday, April 18, 2021, at 8:00 PM EST, we’ll be holding a virtual reading featuring contributors in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art! The event will be an hour long, and will have closed captioning.
We are proud to feature some of our incredible 2020/2021 contributors from both our blog and 2021 contest issue, available for sale in digital and print here. Additionally, we will be hearing from some of our amazing editors who are leaving the So to Speak staff as they graduate from the George Mason University MFA program, which houses our journal, this spring.
So to Speak aims to give back to our community as much and as often as we can, which often includes events like this one aimed at raising donations for charitable organizations. At this free event, we will be encouraging donations to Ayuda, which provides legal, social, and language services to immigrants throughout the Washington, DC, metro area where we are based.
To RSVP for the event and receive the Zoom link, you can register here via Eventbrite. If you send us an email at sotospeakjournal@gmail.com with a screenshot/receipt of a recent donation to Ayuda, we’ll enter your name in a raffle to win free print copies of some of our recent issues, including our brand new 2021 contest issue!
Below is our wonderful lineup of readers, who provided us with some information about themselves and places to read their work! See more of them on April 18 – we love our writing community, and we can’t wait to immerse ourselves in your art.
Aisling Walsh (she/her) is a freelance writer and translator based between Ireland and Guatemala, with stories, essays and reports published in [Pank], Entropy Mag, Pendemic.ie, The Irish Times, The Sunday Business Post, Open Democracy and The Establishment. Her personal essay ‘The Center of the Universe’ was selected as runner up in the So To Speak CNF Prize for 2021. She is currently working towards a PhD in sociology at the National University of Ireland Galway, where she is researching decolonial and feminist practices of healing justice in Guatemala.
Find Aisling’s work on her website, www.aislingwrites.net
Rebecca Burke (she/her) is an MFA candidate in fiction at George Mason University. She is the managing editor of a forthcoming anthology featuring the work of writers with disabilities, and the fiction editor at So to Speak. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Peatsmoke, Breakwater Review and Homology Lit, among other places.
Rebecca is the graduating Fiction editor at So to Speak.
Read Rebecca’s work on her website, rrburkewrites.com
Bo Schwabacher (she/her) is a South Korean adoptee. Her poems have appeared in CutBank, diode, The Offing, and others. Her book of poems, Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs, is forthcoming with Tinderbox Editions.
Read some of Bo’s work here and here, and on So to Speak’s blog here
Stephanie Buckley (she/her) is originally from Slower Lower Delaware. Stephanie is the 2020-2021 nonfiction thesis fellow at George Mason University and the nonfiction editor of So to Speak journal. Her writing has been published in Ligeia and Grub Street Literary Magazine. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her partner, Danny. She is desperately looking for a job.
Stephanie is the graduating nonfiction editor at So to Speak.
Read some of Stephanie’s work here
Kyra Kondis (she/her) is graduating with her MFA in fiction from George Mason University. She has been on the So to Speak staff for all three years of her MFA, both on the fiction and editor-in-chief teams, and she is going to miss it immensely! She has published work in Wigleaf, the Atticus Review, Okay Donkey, and more, and is the social media editor for Pithead Chapel. She’s recently completed a full-length short story collection.
Kyra is the graduating Editor-in-Chief for So to Speak.
Find Kyra’s work at her website, kyrakondis.com
Jessica Alazraki (she/her) was born and raised in Mexico City and is based in N.Y.C. since 1998. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Communications from Universidad Anáhuac, a Certificate in Drawing & Painting from The New York Academy of Art.
She has exhibited her work in the U.S. in 3 solo exhibitions and over 50 group exhibitions. In 2020 she was awarded by the Queens Art Fund the New Work Grant recipient and she completed the Trestle Art Space Residency Program. In 2019 participated in the ARTWorks fellowship at JCAL and, Creative Capital N.Y.C. “El taller program.”
Her work got published in a few publications, including New American Paintings, No. 152, Northeast Issue. The Diane Etienne Founders Award, from Stamford Art Association, 2020. Shortlist Hopper Price and 2020 winner of the MvVo AdArt Show. She was given an “Honorable Mention Award” by the Barrett Art Center at the Circle Foundation for the Arts and the prize for second place at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. Received “The Passion Project Award” and the “Artdex Award.”
Check out Jessica’s work at her website, www.jessicaalazrakiart.com
Danielle P. Williams (she/her) is a Black and Chamorro writer and spoken-word artist from Columbia, South Carolina. She is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet with fellowships from Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Watering Hole, and The Alan Cheuse Center for International Writers. She completed her B.A. in Arts Administration at Elon University, and is a MFA candidate in poetry at George Mason University. Her poems were selected for the 2020 Literary Award in Poetry from Ninth Letter. You can find her work in Hobart, The Pinch, Barren Magazine, The Hellebore and elsewhere.
Danielle is the Graduating Poetry Editor at So to Speak.
Find Danielle’s work on her website, https://www.daniellepwilliams.com/
Caitlin Leggett (she/her) is a spoken word poetry artist from Durham, NC. She has been published by Ghostheart Literary Journal, Oddball Magazine, The B’K Literary Journal, and Durham Magazine. She has recently just published her first book entitled “The Mad Black Woman,” available on Amazon.
Read Caitlin’s work on her website, http://leggettwrites.weebly.com as well as on So to Speak’s blog here and here
