Les Portes by Meredith Nnoka

Meredith Nnoka is a Chicago-based poet, teacher, and prison abolitionist. They are the author of Les Portes, winner of the 2025 CAAPP Book Prize, and the chapbooks I Could Never Be Your Woman and A Hunger Called Music. A member of the FireHorse Collective, Meredith teaches poetry in carceral facilities and has received fellowships from Illinois Humanities, Lambda Literary, and the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project. Twice nominated for Best of the Net, their poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Four Way Review, Diode Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.

Ashley Keyser lives in Chicago. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, AGNI, The Adroit Journal, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. She is currently writing a poetry collection about colors and queer desire

Crissonna Tennison is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist and cat lady-about-town. A nonprofit communications professional, she holds a BA in English Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles. Tennison is an active member of her local creative community; she hosts a queer fiber arts salon, performs as a drag king at various local venues, and is involved in multiple collaborative art projects at any given time. She is currently working on a series of paintings that explore geometric abstraction through a contemporary lens, as well as a personal essay collection about parental estrangement and self-actualization.