Farnaz Fatemi is an Iranian American writer and editor in Santa Cruz, CA. She is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective, which presents a weekly radio show and podcast in Santa Cruz County and hosts readings and poetry-related events, and is Santa Cruz County’s Poet Laureate for 2023 & 2024. She was formerly a writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her debut book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر , was published in Sept 2022. It won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, from Kent State University Press and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly. Farnaz is a recipient of a Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets and an Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council. She has been an artist in residence at Storyknife, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, PLAYA, Willapa Bay AiR, Jentel, I-Park, and Marble House Project. Farnaz’s poems and lyric essays have recently appeared in Poem-a-Day (Poets.org), Tab Journal, Nowruz Journal, Koukash, Pedestal Magazine, Jung Journal, Grist Journal, Catamaran Literary Reader, Crab Orchard Review, SWWIM Daily, Tahoma Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, phren-z.org, and several anthologies (including, most recently, Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora, My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices of the Iranian Diaspora and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me).