Having accepted her role as Co-Editor-in-Chief in the summer of 2020, Raena Shirali will be stepping down from Muzzle Magazine; Brittany Rogers will remain on as Editor-in-Chief in her stead. Raena looks forward to Muzzle’s exciting future and is extremely grateful for all she has learned from this role, as well as for the amazing poets she had the opportunity to meet and publish during her time with Muzzle! She will miss the team greatly. We at Muzzle want to thank Raena for her extremely hard work and dedication to the literary community. She will be deeply missed! ​

It is our distinct pleasure to announce that we have accepted ten(!) New Poetry Readers to join our team! Please give a warm welcome to...*drumroll, please!*:

Fatima Jafar, Caely McHale, Jane Morton, Sun Paik, stevie redwood, Miona Short, Yvanna Vien Tica, Samantha Williams, Serrina Zou, & Hafsa Zulfiqar!

Lily Zhou is an undergrad at Stanford University. Her work appears in Poetry, Best New Poets 2017, Tin House, Sixth Finch, Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and The Adroit Journal. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We are excited to be adding four new Poetry Readers to our staff! Welcome Stephanie Chang, kiki nicole,  Christina D. Rodriguez, and McKenzie Lynn Tozan.

We are looking for a handful of new first round poetry readers to help us keep up with our growing submission pool. Muzzle publishes two online issues a year and uses Submittable to manage submissions. Muzzle is 100% volunteer run. If you are interested in applying to work with our staff, please send a brief cover letter explaining your experience and interest and a 10-page poetry sample to muzzlemagazine@gmail.com by August 15th. Please put "Poetry Reader Application" in the email subject line. It's our goal to never be homogeneous in taste; we are looking for readers who come from a wide variety of backgrounds and aesthetic traditions.
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The main considerations will be 1) poetry sample 2) reasons for wanting to volunteer with a literary magazine (particularly this one) and 3) literary citizenship. Some familiarity with Submittable is preferred. 

 
Kemi Alabi is a writer, performer and Black queerdo from the future. Their poetry and essays can be found in The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic, Catapult, Winter Tangerine, Apogee Journal, HEArt Online and elsewhere. As Editorial Manager for the nonprofit organization Forward Together, they lead Echoing Ida, a community of Black women and nonbinary writers. They live in Chicago.
 
Alana Folsom earned an MFA in poetry from Oregon State University, where she founded and served as Editor-in-Chief of 45th Parallel, OSU's literary magazine. Her work has been published in The Believer, Missouri Review, The Journal, Apogee, and others. Originally from Los Angeles, she currently lives in Boston with her cat, Birthday. Find her @axfolsom 
 
Aidan Forster is a queer poet from upstate South Carolina. A Tin House Summer Scholar in poetry, his work has been honored by the Poetry Society of America, the Poetry Society of the United Kingdom, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and the National YoungArts Foundation, among others. His work appears in or is forthcoming from Best New Poets 2017, BOAAT, Columbia Poetry Review, Indiana Review, Muzzle, Ninth Letter, Pleiades, and Tin House, among others. His debut chapbook of poems, Exit Pastoral, was a finalist for the Vinyl 45s Chapbook Contest and is forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2018. 
 
Stephanie Horvath is a poet who divides her time between Oregon and Southern California. She received her MFA from Indiana University, where she worked both as Associate Poetry Editor and Nonfiction Editor for Indiana Review, and she is currently a PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California
 
Kamal E. Kimball is a Cincinnati poet, member of the Cincinnati DIY Writers, as well as the Ohio Poetry Association. Her work has been published in Rattle, Hobart, One, Sundog Lit, Bone Parade, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal,  Califragile, and elsewhere. She works as a freelance grant writer, journalist, and creative writing instructor. More at kamalkimball.com
 
Brittany Rogers is a poet, mother, educator, and Hufflepuff Prefect. She is Co-Chief Editor for WusGood.black, a literary magazine that highlights urban writers. Brittany has work published in Vinyl Poetry and Prose, Freezeray Poetry, Gramma, and Tinderbox Poetry; she also has work forthcoming in The BreakBeat Poets: Black Girl Magic Anthology. Brittany is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a fellow of  VONA/ Voices and Pink Door Writing Retreat.When she’s not looking at poems, she’s decorating things with glitter and dying her hair colors black girls aren’t “supposed” to have. 
 
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, raised in Essex County, New Jersey, author of Memories of an Old World (Wilde Press, 2016), and current finalist for the Atlantis Award for Poetry, Julio Cesar Villegas is the writer that your abuelos warned you about. His scriptures can be found in Subprimal Poetry Art, Into the Void Magazine, Memoir Mixtapes, Rigorous Mag, as well as within the heart of the abyss. Puerto Rico Se Levanta.
 
Born and raised in Chester, PA, Jameka Williams is a MFA candidate in poetry at Northwestern University. She earned her BA in Creative Writing from Eastern University in Philadelphia, PA. Her poetry has appeared in Prelude Magazine, Gigantic Sequins, Powder Keg Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her poem, “Yeezus’ Wife [when asked what do you actually do]” was nominated for a “Best of the Net 2017” and a Pushcart Prize by Muzzle Magazine. She resides in Chicago, IL.
 
 
 

We are looking for a handful of new first round poetry readers to help us keep up with our growing submission pool. Muzzle publishes two online issues a year and uses Submittable to manage submissions. Muzzle is 100% volunteer run. If you are interested in applying to work with our staff, please send a brief cover letter explaining your experience and interest and a 10-page poetry sample to muzzlemagazine@gmail.com by Thursday, February 8th. Please put "Poetry Reader Application" in the email subject line. It's our goal to never be homogenous in taste; we are looking for readers who come from a wide variety of backgrounds and aesthetic traditions. The main considerations will be 1) poetry sample 2) reasons for wanting to volunteer with a literary magazine (particularly this one) and 3) literary citizenship. Some familiarity with Submittable is preferred. Bonus points if you are familiar with Weebly and might be willing to web edit a few poems per issue (but that is definitely not a key requirement). 

-Stevie Edwards, Editor-in-Chief / Founder