About Us

Whether it be celebrities like Terry McMillan, winner of The American Book Award, or Oscar winner Lou Gossett or newcomers like Brynn Saito or Alex Maynard, since 1990, Konch has been publishing American and international writers of the highest merit. Konch is sustained by Ishmael Reed, Tennessee Reed and our readers, granting us an independence that those zines with corporate sponsorship lack. Contributors to Konch have submitted work that is innovative and serene, but we reserve the right to be rowdy. The Jim Crow Media and literary Scene Have Failed Us.

Editorial

EDITORIAL, SPRING 2025

From the publisher

We’ve taken nine months off for a good cause. Helping Ford Morrison launch Tar Baby. a new magazine funded by the Toni Morrison Foundation. I’m Editor-in-Chief and Tennessee is Managing Editor of a magazine which the great detective novelist T. J. English calls “aesthetically beautiful.”

We do not plan to abandon Konch, which has been on the run since 1990. This issue shows that we are still in the business of creating content that raises eyebrows and ignites discussion as well brings peace in a turbulent time as the dying Empire turns to fools for guidance.

Now that millions of voters, including Blacks and Browns, have handed us a fascist regime, the presence of Konch is even more important.

Ishmael Reed

Contributors

Judy Juanita’s De Facto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland [EquiDistance, 2016] explores key shifts and contradictions in her own artistic development as it explores black and female empowerment. Her semi-autobiographical debut novel, Virgin Soul [Viking, 2013], features a young woman in the 60s who joins the Black Panther Party.  Her collection of short stories, “The High Price of Freeways,” is a three-time finalist in the Livingston Press Tartt Fiction Award; stories from the collection appear in Oakland Noir, Crab Orchard Review, The Female Complaint, Imagination & Place: an anthology, Tartt Six and Tartt Seven.  Juanita’s twenty-odd plays have been produced in the Bay Area, L.A. and NYC.

Gerald Jackson (b. 1936, Chicago) lives and works in Jersey City, New Jersey. In May 2025, Jackson will present his first exhibition in Europe, Keep Looking: Works from 1978–2025 (curated by Matthew Higgs) at Kienzle Art Foundation in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include those held at Gordon Robichaux (2025 and 2021), Parker Gallery and Marc Selwyn in Los Angeles (2022), and White Columns (2021) and Kenkeleba Gallery (2020) in New York.

Dr. Michael LeNoir is a practicing Board Certified Pediatrician, Allergist and Immunologist. Associate Clinical Professor and Past President of the National Medical Association.

Tennessee Reed is the author of seven poetry collections, a memoir and a novel. She has read her work around the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, England, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Israel and Japan. Her seventh poetry collection, Califia Burning, was published on November 3, 2020. Her most recent readings include the Whitney Biennial in New York City and Write America. She attended an artist residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida in October of 2021 and at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony in Temecula, California in November of 2022. She is the chairperson of PEN Oakland and the managing editor of Konch Magazine.

Under the stage name Suz, Susanna La Polla De Giovanni first gained recognition in the early 1990s as a backing vocalist for Italian ragamuffin pioneer Papa Ricky. In the 2000s, she teamed up with producer Ezra and bassist Alessio “MannaMan” Argenteri (both former members of the historic band Casino Royale), embracing an elegant and refined trip-hop sound with the albums Shape of Fear and Bravery (2009 – No.Mad Records) and One Is A Crowd (2013 – No.Mad Records). In 2023 she released her first EP as a music producer entitled "Hiatus," published by Springstoff. She's a member of the Donnacirco team, who produced and released a new and up-to date version of the first feminist album ever produced and realized in Italy in 1974 by lyricist Paola Pallottino and singer Gianfranca Montedoro. Hiatus is the title of her latest EP, a collection of joyful electronic tunes entirely self-produced in 2022.

Boadiba carries within her the twisty paths and almost empty ravines of Haiti. She dreams about the time when they were rivers on the street corners of her childhood appear orange clay banks where red skinned people paddle dugouts on green mirrors telling the stories she inhabits gives them shape makes you dream and listen to our sacred songs. Boadiba’s writings can be found at Ishmael Reed Publishing, in “Left Curve Magazine” and “Konch Magazine.”

Poet, memoirist, and audio journalist Garrett Hongo was born in Hawaiʻi and grew up there and in Los Angeles. Forthcoming in June is Ocean of Clouds: Poems.  Other poetry collections are Yellow Light (1982), The River of Heaven (1988), which received the Lamont Poetry Prize and was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Coral Road (2011).  His most recent non-fiction is The Perfect Sound: A Memoir in Stereo (2022). He has also published The Mirror Diary: Selected Essays (2017) and Volcano: A Memoir of Hawaiʻi (1995).  His work has been recognized with fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.  In 2022, he was given the Aiken Taylor Award for lifetime achievement in poetry.  He lives in Eugene where he is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Oregon.

D. Scot Miller is a writer/editor at The East Bay Express, Co-Host of The Doom Loop Dispatch pod-cast, Columnist-In-Residence at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Advisory Board Member of Nocturnes Journal of Literary Arts, and regular contributor to several websites and magazines. Miller is also the founder of The Afrosurreal Arts Movement through his publication of The Afrosurreal Manifesto in The San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 20, 2009.

Vitin Cruz is a native of San Francisco who graduated from high school in Puerto Rico. He’s been writing since a young age.

Arthur Rickydoc Flowers, native of Memphis, is the author of novels, creative nonfictions, and graphic texts. He has been Exec. Dir. of The Harlem Writers Guild and various nonprofits and is a bluesbased performance artist and Delta Griot. He is professor emeritus, Syracuse University, and a practitioner of Literary hoodoo. The High Hoodoo of Memphis.

Robert Gover (November 2, 1929 – January 12, 2015) was an American journalist who became a best-selling novelist at age 30. His first novel, One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding, a satire on American racism, remains a cult classic that helped break down America's fear of four-letter words and sexually explicit scenes, as well as sensitizing Americans to sanctimonious hypocrisy. Gover worked with writers for three decades. On the Run with Dick and Jane was his ninth novel. His previous book, Time and Money, explores economic and planetary cyclical correlations. In 2015, the Eric Hoffer Prose Award was renamed the Gover Story Prize in his honor.

Linda María Rodríguez Guglielmoni is an award-winning writer whose poems and stories have been published in collections such as Dismantle: An Anthology of Writing from the VONA Workshop and From Totems to Hip-Hop: a Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002. She is a Professor of Caribbean Literature, Film, and Creative Writing at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez.

Paul Catafago is a Palestinian-Lebanese writer based in New Orleans. He has performed spoken word poetry at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe and The Poetry Project in New York. His poetry has been published in several international anthologies including “Antologia de Poesia de la Resistancia Palestina” Descontexto Editores (Chile) 2024. He represented both Palestine and Lebanon in the diaspora at the 14th International Poetry Festival of Puerto Rico in 2025. His first book, “Sumud: Poems of the Palestinian Diaspora” was published in 2024 by Sligo Creek Publishing. His second book, “The Palestinian Freedom Now Suite” will be published in 2025 by The Bodily Press.

Yuri Kageyama is a poet, filmmaker and author of THE NEW AND SELECTED YURI (2011). "NEWS FROM FUKUSHIMA" (2018) is a Yoshiaki Tago film documenting a San Francisco performance directed by Carla Blank of Kageyama's theater piece that combines poetry, music, video and dance, and "THE VERY SPECIAL DAY," (2019) is her collaboration with Japanese stop-motion artist Hayatto. 

Professor Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure teaches English, American and African American Literature and specializes in Ishmael Reed’s writings. He is the author of “The Dark Heathenism” of the American Novelist Ishmael Reed: African Voodoo as American Literary HooDoo and Lamentations on the Rwandan Genocide.

Jahdeen Brown lives in Oakland but was born and raised in Jamaica. This poem is his first publication. He wrote it in a creative writing class at Laney College after studying Judy Juanita's poem.  He graduated with an associate degree from Laney and then earned his bachelor's degree. His favorite literature is Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson and Beloved by Toni Morrison.

Ernie Brill grew up in a lively Brooklyn project of freelance storytellers. Brill’s pioneering fiction about hospital workers, I Looked Over Jordan and Other Stories (Boston: South End Press, 1980), was optioned by Ossie Davis’ and Ruby Dee’s Public Television Series “With Ruby and Ossie”. Ms. Dee performed Brill’s “Crazy Hattie Enters the Ice Age” to critical acclaim. The story was later included in Oxford University Press’ Anthology of American Working- Class Literature edited by Nick Coles and Janet Zande (New York and London. 2007).

Erica Bender savors words and has written poems for over six decades, chronicling her inner growth and major events in our country, from the turbulence of assassinations in the 1960’s and Vietnam to more recently, the years of COVID, racism, Trump, and challenges we all face. She was educated at UCSB, employed for nearly 30 years with the government, and most importantly, raised a talented and independent daughter. Erica reads, writes, and resides in Berkeley, wrapped in a wheelchair.

Keith Gilyard is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and African American Studies at Penn State University. The author or editor of thirty books, his works include The Promise of Language: A Memoir; the novella The Next Great Old-School Conspiracy; biographies of John Oliver Killens and Louise Thompson Patterson; and the poetry collections Impressions and On Location.

Bob Holman’s new book is called either “Streamers” or “We Interrupt This Program” and is a collection of texts from his poetry films. Please let him know which you prefer. 

Corie Rosen is a fiction writer and poet. Her second book of poems, entitled Wildfire, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press/The University of Wisconsin in 2025. Her recent work has appeared in New Letters, Arts & Letters, Crab Creek Review, and Juked among many other places. Her writing has also been anthologized by Da Capo Press and Michigan State University Press, recognized as a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, nominated for the Pushcart Prize and for the National Book Award, and featured on NPR. 

Rainy Dawn Ortiz (July 5, 1973-December 6, 2023), was born on July 5, 1973 in Albuquerque, New Mexico to her mother Joy Harjo (Mvskoke) and her father Simon J. Ortiz (Acoma). She first started writing in elementary school because she wanted to write novels like Stephen King. Her first poems were published in a Teenage Parent Program student publication in Tucson in 1990. She performed her poetry at Salt of the Earth Books in Albuquerque, University of Rochester, NY, and the University of New Mexico, Gallup Branch. She wrote poetry inspired by her family, which include her children Krista Rae, Desiray Kierra, Tayo Chayton, Chayson Rain, Shayla Jewel, Kaiya Feather, Natasha Arielle, and Tamiran, and was inspired by her many grandchildren including Sebastian and Theo. Rainy Dawn passed from this world on December 6, 2023.

Last child of a large family of eight, Zarrin Ferdowsi had the stamina and determination to stay alive despite all the odds. Growing up in the family that love of books and learning was the flame of their life, finished her father's book collections plus the entire fiction section of local library, by age twelve. Always thought one day she'll have a novel of her own shelved in that library. Though not wanting, the wheel of life took her from the east and south to the west and North. Here after 35 years, is her first print of any sort, about a dentist's mind.

Elizabeth Nunez (18 February 1944 – 8 November 2024) was a Trinidadian-American novelist academic who was a Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College, New York City. Her novels have won a number of awards: Prospero's Daughter received The New York Times Editors' Choice and 2006 Novel of the Year from Black Issues Book Review,  Bruised Hibiscus won the 2001 American Book Award, and Beyond the Limbo Silence won the 1999 Independent Publishers Book Award.

Molly Guillermo is a writer and blogger in NYC. She’s the co-writer of the podcast Calm It Down with Chad Lawson and an Assistant Editor at Barrelhouse Magazine. 

Felipe Luciano (born 1947, East Harlem, New York City) is a poet, community activist, journalist, media personality, and politician. He is of Afro-Puerto Rican heritage. He is known for his significant involvement in both the Young Lords Party and The Last Poets, and more generally, as "an early and important participant in the awakening of the new consciousness-raising radicalism among Puerto Ricans in New York and across the country in the late 1960s and 1970s."Luciano later became a radio, television, and print journalist.

C. Leigh McInnis is a poet, short story writer, Prince scholar, co-founder of the Jackson State University Creative Writing Program, the former editor/publisher of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, and the author of eight books, including four collections of poetry, one collection of short fiction (Scripts:  Sketches and Tales of Urban Mississippi), one work of literary criticism (The Lyrics of Prince:  A Literary Look at a Creative, Musical Poet, Philosopher, and Storyteller), one co-authored work, Brother Hollis:  The Sankofa of a Movement Man, which discusses the life of a Mississippi Civil Rights icon, and the former First Runner-Up of the Amiri Baraka/Sonia Sanchez Poetry Award sponsored by North Carolina State A&T.  Additionally, his work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Obsidian, Callaloo, African American Review, Black Fire—This Time Vols. 1 and 2, Tribes, Konch, Down to the Dark River, an anthology of poems about the Mississippi River, and Black Hollywood Unchained, which is an anthology of essays about Hollywood’s portrayal of African Americans.

Julia Wright is the elder daughter of Richard Wright and executrix of his estate. Having previously worked as a journalist and essayist on both sides of the Atlantic, she is now preparing a memoir on her father and writing Haiku from her lockdown in Southern Europe.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr., (1948-2025) was a professor Emeritus of English (Tougaloo College). He lived in New Orleans and his work mainly focused on the works of Richard Wright and African American literature.  Publications included Fractal Song: Poems (2016) and Blogs and Other Writing, 2011-2018 (2018).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You’ve Been Played, Chump.”

Cartoon by Ishmael Reed and Tennessee Reed.

In This Issue

Spring 2025

Editorial

Fiction

Interviews

Non-Fiction

Poetry

Reviews

Speech

Tributes

Photos/Images