Under the Belly of the Beast

What is Beauty? What makes a Beast? Cori Bratby-Rudd’s Under The Belly of the Beast shatters the fanciful conventions of dehumanization and desire through a collective bombardment of queer writers, trans writers, writers of color—those for whom defining beauty and beast is an everyday battle for survival, identity, and love. Under The Belly of the Beast is no make-believe fairy tale, but something far more brilliant and fantastic: a relentless elegy for the human, authentic, and true.

Cori Bratby-Rudd (she, her) is a queer LA-based writer and co-founder of Influx Collectiv(e)'s Queer Poetry Reading Series. She graduated Cum Laude from UCLA's Gender Studies department, and received her MFA in Creative Writing from California Institute of the Arts. She has been published in Ms. Magazine, The Gordian Review, Califragile, PANK Magazine, Entropy, Crab Fat Magazine, among others. Cori was nominated as one of Lambda Literary's 2018 Emerging Writers. Her first manuscript Dis/owned was a semi-finalist for YesYes Book's 2019 Pamet River Prize and was also longlisted for PANK Magazine's 2019 Book Prize. Cori is a co-founder and Director of Programs at Dissonance Press. She edited their debut anthology titled Under The Belly of the Beast.

Ryka Aoki is a poet, composer, and teacher and author of Seasonal Velocities, He Mele a Hilo (A Hilo Song), Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul and The Great Space Adventure. Her next novel, Light from Uncommon Stars is forthcoming from Tor Books in Fall 2021. Ryka's work has appeared or been recognized in Vogue, Elle, Publisher's Weekly, Bustle, Autostraddle, PopSugar, The Daily Dot, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, The San Francisco Bay Times, and the Huffington Post. Her latest poetry was part of "Are you okay?" curated by Franny Choi at Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, and she was honored by the California State Senate for "extraordinary commitment to the visibility and well-being of Transgender people." Aoki's work appears in many queer and mainstream publications and anthologies, and she was honored to work with the American Association of Hiroshima Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors, where two of her compositions were adopted as the organization's official "songs of peace." Ryka also appears in the recent documentaries "Diagnosing Difference" and "Riot Acts," as well as writing for and acting in the award-winning film "Transfinite." Ryka was the inaugural performer for the first ever Transgender Stage at San Francisco Pride, and has performed in venues including the San Francisco Pride Main Stage, Barnard College, the National Queer Arts Festival, Yale University, UC Berkeley, UCLA, the University of Iceland, the University of Winnipeg, and Ladyfest South. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University and is currently a professor of English at Santa Monica College. She is Japanese-American. She is a two-time Lambda Award finalist, and winner of the Eli Coppola Chapbook Contest, the Corson-Bishop Poetry Prize, and a University Award from the Academy of American Poets. Ryka is also a former national judo champion and the founder of the International Transgender Martial Arts Alliance. For the past 10 years, she has directed Supernova Martial Arts, a self-defense and martial arts program, now at the Trans Latinx Coalition, and has presented self-defense seminars at conferences and special events throughout Southern California. For her work with youth, Ryka was named an Outstanding Volunteer by the LGBT Center's Children, Youth and Family Services. (It's her favorite award ever.) Ryka is also Executive Director of Dissonance Press, and The After School programs at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, in Venice, California. She is also a professor of English at Santa Monica College, a half-decent pianist, and is starting to learn to play the violin.

féi hernandez féi hernandez (b.1993 Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico) is an Inglewood-raised immigrant trans non-binary visual artist, writer, and healer. féi is an Advisory Board Member of Gender Justice Los Angeles and was one of the artists for Forward Together's 2019 Trans Day of Resilience Campaign. They are a Co-Founder of ING Fellowship which provides mentorship to Inglewood youth working on projects to counteract gentrification and was also a femmetor for the 2019-2020 Seeds of Liberación (SOL) leadership development program for young transgender, gender non-conforming, and intersex (TGI) people in Los Angeles. They are a certified Reiki and Akashic Records practitioner who utilizes a decolonial approach to ancestral energetic healing. féi collects Pokémon plushies.