Voices of Resistance

                                                                                                Katherine DiBella Seluja

                             Stella Reed                                                                        Alicia Elkort                                                                              Mary Oishi

                  Tina Carlson                                                                        Tachee Momaday Gray                                                           Michelle Otero

Katherine DiBella Seluja is the author of three poetry collections: POINT OF ENTRY (UNM Press, 2023); WE ARE MEANT TO CARRY WATER ( 3: A Taos Press, 2019), winner of the NM-AZ Book Award and the Southwest Design Award; and GATHER THE NIGHT ( UNM Press, 2018), finalist NM-AZ Book Award. Recent work can be found at Thimble Literary Journal, Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press, Medmic and Taos Literary Journal. Katherine is a poetry editor at Unbroken Journal. She is currently working on a hybrid collection inspired by the Covid-19 global pandemic.  

Mary Oishi, Albuquerque Poet Laureate (2020-2022), is the author of Sidewalk Cruiseship (UNM Press, 2024) and Spirit Birds They Told Me (West End Press, 2011), co-author of Rock Paper Scissors (Swimming with Elephants, 2018), and Editor of 2023 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award-winning One Albuquerque, One Hundred Poets. She is a lifelong activist and retired public radio professional. Her work is published in numerous anthologies and publications throughout the U.S. and internationally, including in translation. 

Stella Reed (she / her) is the co-author of the AZ-NM Book Award winning, We Are Meant to Carry Water, 2019, from 3: A Taos Press. She is the winner of Jacar Press Chapbook Prize for Myth from the field where the fox runs with its tail on fire and the Tusculum Review chapbook contest for Origami. You can find her work in various journals and anthologies including Terrain, The Baltimore Review, and SWWIM. She holds an MFA from New England College. Stella is a poetry teacher for several communities including homeless and domestic violence shelters, and Title 1 public school students. 

Natachee Momaday Gray is a Santa Fe native and indigenous poet/performer/musician. Her work focuses on the melding of art and myth, ancestry and nostalgia, food and prayer, glamour, frivolity and time. She comes from a long lineage of storytellers and honors this tradition. Moving beyond English, Spanish, and the blood memory of the Plains people, she expresses a boundless identity, often using the alias Tatja Lucía. She holds numerous awards including the Lena Todd award for poetry and recently was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of Small Presses. Her debut poetry collection, Silver Box from Finishing Line Press, has garnered praise and esteem across the board. Some new creative ventures include a second poetry collection, a cookbook, a delve into a new chapter of cooking and curating, and "Homesteading",  A new mother, she spends her time alchemizing in the space between life and art and dreams. Always creating and collaborating. She lives on a small farm with her family in Coyote, NM.

Tina Carlson is a New Mexico poet. She is the author of three full-length collections of poetry:  Ground, Wind, This Body (UNM Press, 2017), We Are Meant to Carry Water (3: A Taos Press), a collaboration with 2 other NM poets, and A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery (UNM Press, 2023) which won first place in the NM/AZ book award for poetry. Her chapbook, Obsidian, was by Dancing Girl Press in 2024. Her work has been published in SWWIM, Ilanot Review and Verse Daily, among others.  She is an editor of the online journal Unbroken.

Alicia Elkort's manuscript “To Mother Some Small Living Thing” recently won the Two Sylvias Press Wilder Poetry Book Prize and will be published in 2026. Her first book of poetry, "A Map of Every Undoing" was published in 2022 by Stillhouse Press with George Mason University, after winning their book contest. Alicia's poetry has been nominated several times for the Pushcart, Best of the Net, and the Orison Anthology, and her work appears in numerous journals and anthologies. She reads for Tinderbox Poetry Journal where she also writes reviews. Alicia lives in Santa Fe, NM. For more info or to watch her two video poems: Alicia Elkort’s Poetry

Michelle Otero is the author of Vessels: A Memoir of Borders, Bosque: Poems and the essay collection Malinche’s Daughter. She served as Albuquerque Poet Laureate from 2018-2020 and co-edited the New Mexico Poetry Anthology 2023 and 22 Poems and a Prayer for El Paso, a tribute to victims of the 2019 shooting. She is a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop and co-founder of Gozo: a creative feast for women & nonbinary writers in Oaxaca. See michelle-otero.com