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, Summer/Fall 2026

From the publisher

Loomer’s Hoax

Bel wore a blue suit and a black bow tie as he accepted his award, with a big smile on his face. The future seemed bright.

Laura Loomer traded in her face

But her foul mind was left behind

Her boss’s head holds

The shit of bats

And she transformed herself to

Earn his glance

So he believed her when

She said Haitians eat dogs and

Cats

So did Vance

Who chimed in

When his mother asked him for help

Vance said, “Sorry, you’ve sinned”

 

Loomer’s hoax led to an ankle

Bracelet, a cross carried

By Pierre Damas Bel, who was

“Bullied” by a “throng of foes”

Those with no honor drove an honor

Student to step in front of a truck

Shamed by those who have no

Shame, he lost his life that day

He was as much a citizen as

They say a citizen could be

He even joined the ROTC

 

May bile and gunk clog the veins

Of his enemies, their hearts, their livers

And their brains

The noble blood that flowed through Bel’s veins

Was his ancestor’s: Jean-Jacques Dessalines

 Ishmael Reed

Contributors

Robert Mailer Anderson is a writer, producer, activist, father of four, and 9thgeneration Californio. Anderson most recent graphic novel “My Fairy Godfather" was published by Fantagraphics and in French by Komics Iniative. He is the author of the best-selling novel “Boonville,” co-writer/producer of the films “Windows on the World” (also a graphic novel) and cult horror classic “Pig Hunt”, the play “The Death of Teddy Ballgame,” and has been a contributor to The Anderson Valley Advertiser for over 40 years, among publishing work in other numerous publications. He currently is the president of the CinemaSFbay board, a board member of PEN Oakland, and on the advisory board of Los Cenzontles. As a music producer, he has been nominated for three Grammy Awards and won two NAACP Image Awards. He was was appointed by Governor Newsom to the California Humanities Board in 2020, was the 2013 Colonial Standard Bearer for the Selkirk Common Ride, and received the San Francisco Arts Medallion in 2016.

Charles T. Averett is a self described Hip Hop Conservative Baby Boomer.
He's a former Producer and A&R for Folkways Records/Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. He's a retired Bank Executive and former New York City Teaching Fellow.  He's a Political Satirist, Cultural Historian and Jazz Poet. He's currently the host of Growing Up Folkways. You can find him on substack at: https://substack.com/@charlesaverett

Jason D. Joseph conceived in St Croix US Virgin Islands, born in Oakland, California, a degree in Global Studies and a career in education serving Oakland and the Greater East Bay. Jason strives to be a person that speaks truth to power and corrects things that have fallen. Giving back to the community the best way he knows, by empowering the minds that will usher change in our world.

Richard Oyama’s poems, stories and essays have appeared in Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry, The Nuyorasian Anthology, Breaking Silence, Dissident Song, A Gift of Tongues, About Place, Konch Magazine, Pirene’s Fountain, Tribes, Malpais Review, Anak Sastra, Buddhist Poetry Review and other literary journals. The Country They Know (Neuma Books 2005) is his first collection of poetry. He has a M.A. in English: Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Currently retired, Oyama taught at California College of Arts in Oakland, University of California at Berkeley and University of New Mexico.

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

Dr. Sean Foley is a professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University and a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute. He specializes in the history of the Middle East and the cultural, political, and religious trends in the wider Islamic world. He has published widely and delivered public presentations to major institutions and conferences around the world. His second book, Changing Saudi Arabia: Art, Culture, and Society in the Kingdom, was published by Lynne Rienner Press in 2019 and is based on extensive in-country research and interviews in the Kingdom. His first book, The Arab Gulf States: Beyond Oil and Islam, was published in 2010 by Lynne Rienner Press. He has won multiple fellowships, including Fulbright grants to Syria, Turkey, and Malaysia. In addition, he has contributed to the Atlantic, CNN, and other media outlets around the world.

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

Greg Koss is a regular guy that made a career out of figuring stuff out.  Networks, computers, and the ways to use them, turned out to be a good way to enjoy figuring stuff out and not starving.

Owólabi Aboyade is a multidimensional cultural worker, hip hop artist, poet, editor, and essayist from Detroit. His work is anthologized in Nombono: Anthology of Speculative Poetry by BIPOC Creators, and A Body You Talk To -An Anthology of Contemporary Disability. His essays can be found in Riverwise, Geez, Against The Current, and Womens Studies Quarterly. He is currently working on collapse: Notes from the Detroit underground, an essay collection about grief, culture, and family in gentrifying Detroit. 

Maiko Mine is a Japan- and UK-based scholar and Associate Professor of African American Literature at Chuo Gakuin University, Japan. She is the author of “Ernest J. Gaines’s Literary and Historical Strategies in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” published in Rewriting America: New Essays on the Federal Writers’ Project (University of Massachusetts Press).

Aurora Flores is an artist, author, and activist living in East Harlem. Her podcast, 100 Years of Latin Music, is available on YouTube. The Salsa Diaries are on Substack.

John N. Roberts, founder of the Landscape Architecture firm John Northmore Roberts & Associates, has been a leader in the urban design and public arts renaissance in the City of Berkeley and is widely recognized for his work in ecologically resilient community design.  Over the past 50-years, he has completed projects for National Parks (Yosemite, Sequoia/Kings Canyon, Golden Gate, Redwood National Parks, Presidio of SF); state, regional, and local park districts; local communities; and other institutions and non-profits.  He was a Beatrix Farrand Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in the Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning Department at U.C. Berkeley.  His book, Changing the Commons: Stories about Placemaking, received a 2024 American Book Award for Contemporary American Literature from Before Columbus Foundation.

Sarah Raymundo is a Filipino activist working with the Philippine anti-imperialist struggle and an Assistant Professor at the University of the Philippines-Center for International Studies. Her scholarl-activist work engages, Global Political Economy, Bolivarian Studies, Indigenous Studies, Feminist Studies and Popular Culture. This article is first published in her column "Blood Rush" in bulatlat , a pioneering   human rights journalism platform  in the Philippines establishment in 2001. She also writes for the progressive multimedia platform, KODAO . She may be reached through  Facebook,  X , Instagram and ssraymundo@up.edu.ph

Kenshaka Ali is a poet, play maker, performing artist, and retired professor of theater arts whose work spans more than four decades in Black theater and cultural excavations. Born in central Harlem and based in Los Angeles, he is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection “The Lonest Person I Know.” His new collection, “The Erotic Ramblings of a Scorpio Poet,” explores the intersection of eros, spirituality, and African diasporic cosmology through a voice rooted equally in jazz, the orishas, and the hard-won wisdom of a life fully lived. He began writing poetry as a child in central Harlem, with an early poem, “Alva,” broadcast on WLIB radio.

Noah Hipps is a Nashville native, pursuing a B.A. in History at Middle Tennessee State University. He is a United States Marine and a volunteer firefighter. He enjoys traveling, and last year he was in France and other parts of Europe. He plans to travel in the future to the Mediterranean and South America. He is also an avid outdoorsman, who greatly enjoys backpacking. He has his sights set on the Appalachian Trail and the John Muir Trail.  

David Fleming is a writer originally from Memphis, Tennessee, now based in Nashville. He began writing seriously at a young age, drawn early to the work of Robert Frost and Edgar Allan Poe. His work tends toward themes of love, loss, and estrangement from community. In 2026, he graduated from Middle Tennessee State University and plans to attend graduate school. 

Jackson Cunningham was born and raised in the hills of rural Tennessee with no access to Wi-Fi. He is currently an undergraduate student at Middle Tennessee State University and is pursuing a degree in History. He is devoted to his partner, the pursuit of knowledge, and exploring his faith.

Makenna Gapp is a lifelong storyteller currently living in Nashville, TN, but originally from Knoxville. With a deep love history, she holds a bachelors degree in History from Middle Tennessee State University. She has loved writing and storytelling since she was child and finds inspiration in the stories, people, and places around her. Eager to always be learning more, she loves to travel to new cities and countries. When she isn't traveling or writing, she can usually be found reading or hiking and running and being outside. Her greatest companions and, perhaps, most frequent sources of distraction are her cats.

Monique LeNoir, a native of Oakland, California is the Executive Director of the African American Wellness Project, an Oakland based national non-profit that works to address the health disparities that exist in the African American community. She also works as the National Director of Communications for UNCF (United Negro College Fund), the largest scholarship provider for students of color that advocates for the nation’s historically black colleges and universities. She resides in DC with her family and her passion is helping others get healthy. She is a certified health and wellness coach who has coached more than 150 back to optimal health.

Victor Hernandez Cruz was born in Puerto Rico’s mountainous town of Aguas Buenas in 1949. His family joined the mid-40’s to mid-50’s waves of migrations from the island to the city of New York, a space to the north of America, and they ended up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the famous immigrant neighborhood. While still in high school, his neighbors took up a collection to help him self-publish a mimeograph booklet, Papo Got His Gun. His recent poetry collection, Guaycán, was published in 2023 by Ishmael Reed Publishing Company.

David Henderson (September 19, 1942 – May 14, 2026) was an American writer and poet. He was a co-founder of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s. Henderson was an active member of New York's Lower East Side art community for more than 40 years. His work appeared in many literary publications and anthologies, and he published four volumes of his own poetry. He is best known for his biography of rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix, which Henderson revised and expanded for a second edition that was published in 2009.

Radical polymath, humanist, and visionary, Gerald Jackson (1936-2026) embraced the spiritual dimensions of art to grapple with the cultural and social conditions of our time. Throughout his multidisciplinary practice spanning seven decades, the artist had always responded to his lived experiences—including poverty, racism, and violence—through a highly philosophical and conceptual approach to art making infused with poetry and politics.

 

 

The late poet and writer David Henderson

In This Issue

Summer/Fall 2026