Our poetry editor for January and February is Maisha Z. Johnson,  a writer, healer, and troublemaker of Trinidadian descent. She has an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University, and she studied creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has won competitions including Literary Death Match, The Lit Slam, and Portuguese Artists Colony, appeared in numerous journals, and been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. Maisha is the author of No Parachutes to Carry Me Home (Punk Hostage Press 2015) and Through Your Own Words: 51 Writing Prompts for Healing and Self-Care (Inkblot Arts 2014), and she blogs about the relationship between writing and social change.

Why be an editor for The James Franco Review?

Editing for The James Franco Review seems to go well with the way I spend the rest of my time, analyzing Beyoncé’s flawlessness. Which is to say that through our art, we have the power to define for ourselves what it means to thrive. I like to see writers thriving in their own words when they create magic like nobody else can, offering originality and surprise and quirkiness to be uniquely flawless on their own terms.

Click here to submit work.