Celebrate the start of SMOL Fair with Santa Fe Writers Project and The Rumpus! Featuring inspiring readings from and conversation with Kayleb Rae Candrilli, Adrienne Christian, Lilly Dancyger, Benjamin Garcia, Elizabeth Gonzalez James, and Deesha Philyaw. Hosted by Marisa Siegel. This event will be held digitally via Crowdcast and is free to attend. Click here to register for the event. Live ASL interpretation will be provided courtesy of Pro Bono ASL. Books are available through Loyalty's Bookshop page!

Kayleb Rae Candrilli is the recipient of a Whiting Award, and of a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. They are the author of Water I Won’t Touch, All the Gay Saints, and What Runs Over.

Adrienne Christian is a poet, writer, and fine art photographer. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Hayden’s Ferry Review, CALYX, phoebe, Los Angeles Review as the Editor’s Choice, and elsewhere. She is the author of two previous poetry collections, A Proper Lover (2017) and 12023 Woodmont Avenue (2013). A fellow of both Cave Canem and Callaloo writing residencies, she earned her BA from the University of Michigan, her MFA from Pacific University, and her PhD from the University of Nebraska.

Lilly Dancyger is a contributing editor at Catapult, and assistant editor at Barrelhouse Books. She's the author of Negative Space, a reported and illustrated memoir selected by Carmen Maria Machado as one of the winners of the 2019 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards; and the editor of Burn It Down, a critically acclaimed anthology of essays on women's anger from Seal Press. Her writing has been published by Longreads, the Washington Post, Glamour, Playboy, Rolling Stone, The Rumpus, and more. She lives in New York City, and you can find her on twitter at @lillydancyger.

Benjamin Garcia’s first collection, Thrown in the Throat (Milkweed Editions, August 2020), was selected by Kazim Ali for the 2019 National Poetry Series. He works as a sexual health and harm reduction educator throughout the Finger Lakes region of New York. A CantoMundo and Lambda Literary fellow, he serves as faculty at Alma College’s low-residency MFA program. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, and New England Review.

Elizabeth Gonzalez James’s stories and essays have appeared in The Idaho Review, [PANK], The Rumpus, and elsewhere and have received numerous Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. She is currently a regular contributor to the Ploughshares blog. Her novel, Mona at Sea, was a finalist in the 2019 SFWP Literary Awards judged by Carmen Maria Machado, and is forthcoming, June 2021, from Santa Fe Writers Project. Originally from South Texas, Elizabeth now lives with her family in Oakland, California.

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction, a finalist for The Story Prize (2020/2021), and longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church. Deesha is also the co-author of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce, written in collaboration with her ex-husband. Her work has been listed as Notable in the Best American Essays series, and her writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Brevity,  Apogee Journal, and elsewhere. Deesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow.

Marisa Siegel lives, writes, and edits near NYC. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Mills College in Oakland, CA. Her essay “Inherited Anger” appears in the anthology Burn It Down (Seal Press, 2019), and her debut poetry chapbook, Fixed Stars, is forthcoming from Burrow Press in 2022. She is editor-in-chief and owner of The Rumpus. Follow her on Twitter at @marisasaystweet.

Please note Loyalty has a zero tolerance policy for harassment or intimidation of any kind during this virtual event.

Santa Fe Writers Project & The Rumpus celebrate SMOL Fair