Kailey Tedesco's books These Ghosts of Mine, Siamese (Dancing Girl Press) and She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publications) are both forthcoming. She is the editor-in-chief of Rag Queen Periodical and a performing member of the Poetry Brothel. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart. You can find her work in Bellevue Literary Review, Hello Giggles, UltraCulture, Poetry Quarterly, and more. For more, please visit kaileytedesco.com.
Dracula
The Vampire’s Wife Is the Collection for Dark Mistresses of the Night
Stephanie Valente lives in Brooklyn, NY. She has published Hotel Ghost (Bottlecap Press, 2015) and waiting for the end of the world (Bottlecap Press, forthcoming 2017) and has work included in Susan, TL;DR, and Cosmonauts Avenue. Sometimes, she feels human.
Frida Kahlo
Mi Nombre Es Dimas: Poetry by Gerardo Pacheco Matus
Gerardo Pacheco Matus, a Mayan Native, is the recipient of the distinguished Joseph Henry Jackson Award and fellowships from CantoMundo, The Frost Place, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and The Katharine Bakeless Nason Endowment. Pacheco’s poems and essays have appeared and are forthcoming from La Bloga, Spillway, Grantmakers in the Arts, Apricity Press, Amistad, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Cipactli, Poets Responding to SB 1070, The Packinghouse Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, West Branch Wired, and The Cortland Review.
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These 4 'Twin Peaks' Coloring Books Are So Cool
Joanna C. Valente is the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Xenos, and the editor of A Shadow Map: An Anthology by Survivors of Sexual Assault.
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Ali Inay
When There's a Room for Rent
Calin Van Paris is a reader who somehow became a writer. She writes about beauty for Vogue.com, fashion for Allure.com, and travel and lifestyle for the local magazine that gave her a start. She writes copy about sweaters for a Bay Area brand.
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Review of Siân S. Rathore’s 'Wild Heather'
In Wild Heather, we go inside the head of Rathore as lover, as friend, as non-binary human, kin, and yet none of the above, however everything plus more. We are brought into the fold, we watch the cuckold, and we thank the universe for heavy moments for without them, the muse would not be able to animate Rathore, to allow the spindling of poetic births and mutations of witchy proportions. A classic conjuring of Sexton or Tzara’s stream of consciousness writing. All the greats have done it, Rathore no different, following suit and instinct alike.
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Eugene Richards
My Eight Days in a Mental Hospital
I passed the doors of patients who were on bed rest, their bodies weak from lithium side effects and felt immediately lucky to be on such a mild dose of my anti-psychotic medication. The hospital psychiatrist seemed to only prescribe two medications: Seroquel for the depressed, and lithium for those with bi-polar disorder.
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Luna Luna Spotlight: Patricia Grisafi
Ghosts! I don’t really believe they exist, but I like the idea that there are these mostly silent, invisible creatures causing great psychic upheaval, haunting places and people, refusing to rest. There’s something very powerful about their intangibility and rage.
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Annie Spratt
Poetry by Courtney Leigh Jameson
Courtney Leigh Jameson is The Bowhunter of White Stag Publishing LLC & a QC Analyst (proofreader) at CVS/caremark. Her poems & prose have appeared in several journals, including Sierra Nevada Review, Naughty Ghost, FLARE: Flaglar Review, The Doctor T.J. EckelburgReview, MadHat Lit, Crack The Spine, Slipstream Press, Cowboy Poetry Press, GoneLawn, Danse Macabre, Similar:Peaks::, & Clockwise Cat. She just completed her chapbook Milton[ic] Partisan & her first full length book of poetry ghosts in the sky. She currently resides in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Samuel Zeller
Motherhood & Love Post-Divorce
Lee Taylor is a writer, musician and light worker raising two children in Brooklyn, NY. She has an MFA in creative writing from The New School and spent the past six years living and blogging in Switzerland. Her essay “The Patron” was recently published in the inaugural print edition of Hofstra University’s literary journal, Windmill. She was also featured in the March issue of Bodega, an online literary magazine.
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Luna Luna Spotlight: Monique Quintana
BY THE EDITORS OF LUNA LUNA
We here at Luna Luna love our contributors. We know how busy they are—running their own magazines, writing books, resisting the darkness in the world, and making all sorts of magic. That they come back to Luna Luna again and again to write and share and create is an honor, and there are no words to express our thanks. They are family to us, so we thought we'd spotlight them so you could learn more about who they are and what they do. Please support them! Read their articles, buy their books, subscribe to their blogs, and send kisses.
Monique Quintana
Tell us a little bit about what inspires you as a writer.
I write because I feel compelled to do it. If I go too long without writing, I get anxious and I have a hard time sleeping. I was an extremely shy child, and I always felt more confident when I wrote things down. I always seem to articulate myself better that way. I always feel more powerful when I write as opposed to speaking.
I’ve been really inspired the writings of Wendy Ortiz, Myriam Gurba, Jennifer Givhan, and Laurie Ann Guerrero because they write about sex and death in joyful and grotesquely beautiful ways.
I’m mostly inspired to write by my friends, Jackie Huertaz, Steven Sanchez, and Jacob Hernandez, who got me through my painful/beautiful MFA experience and are still my point people. They’re the other three corners of my tiny coven and are all doing great things with their writing.
What projects/pieces are you working on (especially if it's not LL-related, so we can promote you).
I’m expanding my MFA thesis into a longer manuscript, tentatively titled, Chola Mona Lisa and Other Pieces. It’s a hybrid collection of interconnected Xicana gothic flash fiction, micro-fiction, short stories, and a novella.
Which one of your LL pieces do you recommend people read right now?
I’d recommend reading my first Luna Luna piece, “Trash Glamour: A Manifesto,” because it gets at what I’m trying to do with my beauty, fashion, and wellness writing for the magazine. These things aren’t petty things, they’re rituals, they’re a part of our everyday lives. Individuals should find what makes them feel powerful and helps them to manifest their existence to the fullest.
In this current political climate, I’m trying to find ways to politicize my spending. Time is energy, and money is energy. I’m not interested in telling individuals how to look good to appease other people or how to spend a ton of money to live up to a certain ideal that might not be conducive to their own experience. I love transformation and glamour, but it has to be done on my own terms. I adore Old Hollywood and a gothic aesthetic, but I’m not going to forfeit my feminism to try to fit into some kind of preconceived idea of what that means. As a woman of color, it is always going to mean something different for me. There are a lot of brown and black alt girls out there and I’m trying to make contact with them.
Vampires, witches, or ghosts—and why?
All three of these entities have been a resounding presence in my life and are connected in some way. Years ago, my father had a woman do a limpia blessing on his house when a ghost refused to leave, and I prayed many nights to be a vampire when I was a kid, because I wanted to live forever. I was really a witch. Ultimately, witching is my feminism. It makes me think of the women who came before me. It makes me think of my ancestors. It makes me think of a time before colonization. My great-grandmother helped women give birth on both sides of the Mexican border. One day, she left her husband, took back her maiden name, and went to live alone in a doll’s house with a pond and ducklings in the backyard. She was a curandera, and I am a witch, a bruja. They are different, but there are some commonalities. I still try to learn from her.
Monique Quintana is the fashion editor for Luna Luna, and is the Editor-in-Chief of the literary blogazine, Razorhouse. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from CSU Fresno, and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Huizache, Bordersenses, and The Acentos Review, among others. She is a Squaw Valley Writers Fellow and was the Senior Associate Fiction Editor for The Normal School. She has an affinity for Ray Bans, red lipstick, and Ramón Novarro. She is a Pocha/Chicana identified mother, daughter, sister, lover, and English teacher from central California.
Alison Scarpulla
Pospongan Mi Muerte, Por Favor: Poetry by Nancy Mercado
Nancy Mercado is the author of It Concerns the Madness (Long Shot Productions, 2000). Her work has also appeared in numerous anthologies and collections, including Looking In Looking Out Anthology of Latino Poetry (Arte Publico Press, 2013), Me No Habla with Acento: Contemporary Latino Poetry (Rebel Satori Press, 2011), and Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets (Tenth Anniversary Edition; Melville House, 2011). Mercado is currently an editor for Eco-poetry.org and an associate professor in English literature at Boricua College in New York City. More at www.nancy-mercado.com
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Poetry by Heather Myers
Heather Myers is from Altoona, Pennsylvania, where she received a BA in English at Penn State Altoona. She is currently pursuing an MFA at West Virginia University where she was the 2016 Hungry Poets Winner. Her work has recently appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly. You can find her on twitter @isitthesea.
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Luna Luna Spotlight: Leza Cantoral
I am inspired by dreams, love, sex, tragedy, textures, feelings, and ideas. Art, books, and movies, people I know, famous people, cats, music, the clouds, winter, the night, the moon, Tarot cards, conspiracy theories, music videos. Sometimes the title for something will drop into my head, like the title and titular story of my short story collection Cartoons in the Suicide Forest. Then I had to figure out what story would match such a crazy title. I was inspired by the Vice documentary about Aokigahara aka the Suicide Forest in Japan. I was fascinated with the fence sitters: the people who are undecided. They bring a tent and camp out. Some leave and others end their lives there. That idea haunted me. So I wrote a story about a character who goes to the forest, hoping to decide whether to live or die while she is there. Turns out that if you do not decide, then there is always someone else who is happy to make that choice for you and you might not like the results.
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Luna Luna Spotlight: Trista Edwards
Right now, what inspires me as a writer is seeing and reading other writers that create with abandon. I don't mean that their writing is careless or reckless but that they seem, to me anyways, to write as if nobody is watching. I often get too caught up in my head and, at times, this really prohibits me from going to strange and necessary places in my writing. I like weird. I like reading weird things that don't always make sense, have a perfect ending, or follow the rules of reality. Although I'm a poet, I have been reading a lot of fiction and I am feeling the itch to get down on paper some short stories that have been floating around in my head. Lately, I have been most inspired by J.T. Leroy, Julia Elliot, Claire Vaye Watkins, Edna O'Brien, and Shirley Jackson.
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