Penumbra Online
Contributor Bios
(Organized Alphabetically by First Name)

Alex Russell loves to read poetry, collect DVDs and listen to The National. He works at a newspaper. He thought he was over comics but is back into collecting them, however steadily (John Constantine is his favorite title). In writing as in life, empathy is everything.
Ashley Varela (they/she) is a queer writer & author based in Seattle, Washington.
​Audacia Ray’s (she/her) essays and stories have been published in The Rumpus, Necessary Fiction, and Stone Canoe, and have been widely anthologized, most recently in We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival and Hustling Verse. Dacia was an editor at Utne-Reader Award Winning $pread Magazine, wrote the non-fiction book Naked on the Internet, and won a Feminist Porn Award for her directorial debut The Bi Apple. She is a queer femme who splits her time between Brooklyn and a cabin in the Catskill Mountains that has a labyrinth in the front yard. [Photo credit to Anna Carson Dewitt.]

BEE LB is an array of letters, bound to impulse; a writer creating delicate connections. They have called any number of places home; currently, a single yellow wall in Michigan. They have been published in Revolute Lit, After the Pause, and Roanoke Review, among others. They are the 2022 winner of the Bea Gonzalez Prize for Poetry. They are a poetry reader for Capsule Stories. Their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co
Bernardo Villela has short fiction included in periodicals such as Coffin Bell Journal, The Dark Corner Zine, Mortal Mag, and more. He’s had stories included in anthologies such as Disturbed, From the Yonder II, There’s More of Us Than You Know, among others. He has had poetry published by Entropy, Zoetic Press, and Bluepepper as well as poetry translations with New Delta Review and AzonaL. Website: www.miller-villela.com

Influenced by David Bowie, Virginia Woolf, and Sally Wainwright, Elinora Westfall is a British/Australian lesbian actress and writer of stage, screen, fiction, poetry, and radio. Her novel, Everland, was selected for the Penguin and Random House WriteNow Editorial Programme in 2021, and her short films have been selected by Pinewood Studios & Lift-Off Sessions, Cannes Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Camden Fringe Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, while her theater and audio shows have been selected by The British Library and performed in London's West End and on Broadway, where she won the award for Best Monologue. Elinora’s full-length poetry collection, Life in the Dressing Room of the Theatre, and her collection of short stories, The Art of Almost, are forthcoming with Vine Leaves Press. Elinora can be found on Twitter: @elinorawriter and at www.elinoralord.com
E.M. Lark (they/them) is a queer writer/reader & reviewer/occasional poet currently based in NYC. Their background in theater both informs their body of work and overtly influences their ridiculous habits. Reviews found in Defunkt Magazine, words found in Roi Fainéant Press, oranges journal; others forthcoming. Twitter: @thelarkcalls, for regular shenanigans.
​Emma Cholip (they/she) is a 23-year-old author from Wisconsin. Their passion lies in short fiction, particularly horror, but lately, they've done a deep dive into queer poetry. When they aren't writing, they will usually be playing video games with their cat, Juniper, nearby. They edit for Messy Misfits Club Zine and have been previously published by Queerlings, Brave Voices Mag, All My Relations, and Mag 20/20. Instagram and Twitter: @emmacholip


​Essence Saunders is a pansexual graduate student of literature at California State University, Stanislaus. She has had reviews and an art piece published with Penumbra Online before as well as had journalism articles published with the Signal at CSU Stanislaus. She primarily works with oil paint, sketching, short stories, and cosplay.
Ken Anderson was a finalist in the 2001 Saints and Sinners poetry contest. New Poetry from the Festival (an anthology of the 2021/2022 winners and finalists) includes four of his poems. His poetry books are The Intense Lover and Permanent Gardens. Some publications include Angel Rust, Gay and Lesbian Review, Mollyhouse, Queerlings, RFD, Screen Door, Café Review, Coffin Bell, Dash, Dawntreader, Free Verse Revolution, The Journal, London Grip, Lullwater Review, Oddball Magazine, Sangam Literary Magazine, Sein und Werden, Toho Journal, and Verbal Art.
​Leia K. Bradley (she/they) is a Southern born, Brooklyn based writer and lesbian performance artist, as well as an MFA Poetry candidate at Columbia University. She has work in Poetry Project, Ubiquitous, English in Texas, Tarot Literary, Versification, Wrongdoing Magazine, and more. She can be found dancing through candlelit speakeasies or climbing barefoot up a magnolia tree with a tattered copy of Stone Butch Blues tucked into her dress. After climbing out from the coffin of her first divorce, she is accepting love and lust letters through her Twitter @LeiaKBradley.

Leslie Cairns: n/a

​Mikal Wix lives in the American South, which seeds insight into many outlooks, including revenant visions from the closet. Their work can be found or is forthcoming in Corvus Review, Peregrine Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Roi Fainéant Press, decomp journal, Olit, and elsewhere. They work as a science editor by day.
​Morgan Victoria is a barista and writer whose work has been published in Horned Things Journal of Literature and Art. They were a finalist for the Ember Chasm Review Fiction and Poetry Contest of 2021. Follow them on Twitter @mvcgan.


Noemi Mangialardi (she/her) is a 24-year-old Italian woman who's currently studying foreign languages in Milan. She loves using her poetry to question the world and what her queerness means to her. Her poems have appeared in Velvet Fields Magazine, Bloom Magazine, and Bullshit Literary Magazine. Besides her silly little studies and her silly little poems, she loves theater and baking.
Nupur Shah (she/her) writes bisexually from Mumbai, India, weaving words from the seeds Depression sows inside her. She tweets @notyetposthuman.
Randy Stauffer: n/a
​Sam Moe is a writer focusing on gastronomy and eco poetry. She is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genres contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, Heart Weeds, is forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press in September 2022 and her second chapbook, Grief Birds, is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023.


Stephen Mead is an Outsider multimedia artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. He is also grateful to have managed to keep various day jobs for the Health Insurance. Currently, he is a resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations, and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum
​Val West (they/them/she/her) is a queer poet from Arizona, who is currently studying English and LGBTQ+ culture. New to the publication scene, they were recently featured in Fifth Wheel Press's, the truth is in the stars anthology. Along with their poetry, they have also done script-writing for multiple audio dramas, such as The Heart of Ether. Their work often explores themes of their own identity, including lesbianism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and their love for psychological horror & vampires. Keep up with them on Twitter: @pumpkinfrogs.
