The Mulberry Team
Kae Johnston (they/them)
Founder, Managing Editor, & Editor-in-Chief
Katie Lynn Johnston or Kae, as they prefer to be called, is a queer, nonbinary, and autistic writer. They hold a BA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago and are an MFA candidate in Fiction at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
They have been a production, junior, and senior acquisition editor for the Columbia Poetry Review and a production and assistant-managing editor for Hair Trigger Magazine. Along with managing, founding, and creating Mulberry Literary in 2019, they also created and run the Hidden Zine, which publishes LGBTQ+ writing and art.
Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bodega Magazine, Oyster River Pages, and Lavender Review, among others. You can find them on Instagram: @katielynnjohnston and learn more about them on their website.
Darcy Dillon (they/them)
Co-Founder & Co-Editor-In-Chief
Darcy Dillon is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago with a BA in Creative Writing and a minor in Professional Writing. They previously worked as a junior editor for the Columbia Poetry Review and are currently arranging several chapbooks and anthologies to be independently published. They mostly spend their time juggling projects as a freelance artist, writer, and editor.
Their work has appeared in Flare Journal, Hair Trigger Magazine, and right here at Mulberry Literary, prior to taking up an editorial role. You can find out more about them on their website.
Alison Brackett (she/her)
Senior Fiction Editor & Social Media Curator
Alison Brackett is a marketing proofreader and writer living in Chicago. She received her BA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago. Her primary focuses are fiction and nonfiction, and you can often find her reading or working away at her first novel.
She has been a production and assistant editor for Hair Trigger Magazine, as well as an editor for Horizons. Her work has been published in Hair Trigger Magazine and has won awards with the Illinois Skyway Collegiate Conference Writers Competition and Festival.
Taylor Corkill (she/her)
Senior Fiction, Junior Art Editor,
& Social Media Curator
Taylor Corkill received her BA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago, but calls the evergreen forests of the Northwest home. She often finds any excuse to be at the gym or go outside.
She has been a production and assistant editor for Hair Trigger Magazine.
Her work has been published in Fterota Logia, and she has a long, long list of projects always in the works.
She believes in making it a great day, rather than having one.
Destiny Scott (she/her)
Senior Art Editor & Social Media Curator
Destiny Scott is a graphic designer and visual artist based in Florida. She received her BFA in Graphic Design from Savannah College of Art and Design as well as an AS degree from Santa Fe College. She loves creating surreal digital collages and exploring various mediums. Her artwork often explores themes of divinity and femininity. When she is not designing, you can find her reading or buying more books she doesn’t need.
Her work has been published in Same Faces Collective and Daughter Zine. You can find more of her artwork on Instagram: @destinyvscott.
Cassie Calcaterra (they/them)
Junior Art & Poetry Editor
Cassie Calcaterra is Midwestern poet, artist, and bookbinder. They previously worked as a junior editor for Columbia Poetry Review. Some of their poems reside in The Huron River Review, Allium—A Journal of Poetry & Prose, and Mulberry Literary, prior to taking up an editorial role. Their poem “Questions for My Fat” won first place in CSPA’s Gold Circle awards in 2022.
Cassie is drawn toward the birds, sci-fi, and horror films, and uncovering what is often unsaid. You can find them sporadically being sensitive and silly on Instagram: @cazz.crimson.
Gabriela V. Everett (she/her)
Junior Art & Fiction Editor, Senior Nonfic Editor,
& Social Media Curator
Gabriela V. Everett is a mixed-race, queer writer hailing from Sin City. She possesses a BA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago and an affinity for coffee at midnight. When she’s not road-raging or reading, she’s hiding secrets in plain sight. They can be found in Glyph, Hair Trigger 2.0, Allium, Dream Noir, Hot Pot Magazine, Main Squeeze, The Museum of Americana, The Acentos Review, and Fatal Flaw. Her piece “Love Poems for Death” won Glyph’s award for Best New Voice in 2016.
You can catch her on Instagram: @gaby.v.everett or @livedeadly
Paulina Kwik (she/her)
Junior Art & Prose Editor
Paulina Kwik is a multidisciplinary artist and freelance writer currently based in Chicago. She received her BA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago, but has since moved forward with writing endeavors rooted in Journalism.
She currently writes content focused on sustainable living and education, but often indulges her creative writing background through poetry and speculative nonfiction essays.
Katie Klear (they/them)
Junior Art & Fiction Editor
Katie Klear is a creative writing graduate of Columbia College Chicago. They have been a production and acquisition editor for Hair Trigger Magazine, an editor, reader, and publisher for The Borgen Project, and an editor and curator for As I Lay (Stu)Dying Literary Magazine. They’ve always had a natural inclination toward editing and the production side of writing.
Their work has appeared in Chief Learning Officer Magazine, Study Breaks, Allium, As I Lay (Stu)Dying Literary Magazine, among others.
Natalie Benson-Greer (she/her)
Junior Fiction Editor
Natalie Benson-Greer is a Chicago-based writer with a BA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago. During her time at Columbia, she worked as an acquisition editor for Hair Trigger Magazine and was a founding member of the only on campus writing collective Speak Your Truth. Since, she has volunteered at Awakenings as an Associate Board member and as a reader for Awakened Voices. When she's not writing, you can find her around the city working as a bartender or crying at Lake Michigan.
Her work has been published in Hair Trigger Magazine and Awakened Voices. You can find out more about Natalie on her website.
Vic Xochitl Chavez (they/them)
Junior Poetry Editor
Vic Xochitl Chavez is a queer Mexican American poet from the Chicago suburb, Berwyn. They hold a BA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago, where they were an assistant editor for the Columbia Poetry Review and an assistant copyeditor for Hair Trigger Magazine. Their poetry has been published in Los Angeles Times, Southside Weekly, Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT, and in Columbia College’s the Columbia Poetry Review and Allium Journal. They are a junior poetry editor at Mulberry Literary, which published their work prior to taking up an editorial role. Find Vic on Twitter and Instagram: @_vichavez.
Emily Carroccio (she/her)
Junior Nonfiction Editor
Emily Carroccio is a Chicago-based artist with a BA in dance and BS in molecular biology from Loyola University Chicago. She currently works as a freelance choreographer and performer in addition to teaching concert and ballroom dance.
When not in the studio, you can probably find Emily making an attempt to max out her library card with stacks of nonfiction on her latest topic of interest.
Angel Page Smigielski (they/them)
Junior Poetry Editor
Angel Page Smigielski is an actor and poet based in Chicago, IL. They graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2021 studying acting, poetry, and ASL.
Angel’s publications include Same Faces Collective and Mulberry Literary, prior to taking up an editorial role.
They enjoy reading poems, dancing with friends, and calling their mother.
Kimberly Vazquez (she/her)
Junior Nonfiction Editor
Kimberly Vazquez studied creative writing and graphic design at Columbia College Chicago. Originally from Texas, she writes about the border town experience in both fiction and nonfiction and will have a collection of instances titled “Spare Parts” published in Allium. As Managing Editor for the Columbia Chronicle, her work included writing editorials, news articles, editing stories in both English and Spanish and leading the Spanish reporting team, of which she was a founder. She has aspirations of working in the publishing industry. This fall, she was a managing editorial intern at Simon & Schuster.
Natalie Pivoney (she/her)
Junior Art Editor
Natalie Pivoney is a contemporary oil painter and educator serving as a Project Coordinator for Purple Window Gallery in Chicago, IL. Pivoney earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2019 from Northern Illinois University where she also served as president for the Graduate Art Association. Solo exhibitions include “Chasing Dopamine” at Purple Window Gallery in Chicago in 2023 and “Games for May” at Northern Illinois University in 2019 as well as numerous group exhibitions throughout the United States. She has worked as an arts educator at college and elementary levels, juried multiple shows, and completed artist residencies in Galesburg, Illinois and Paonia, Colorado as well as been featured in multiple magazines including Studio Visit Magazine, PIKCHUR Magazine, and Art+Type Magazine.
Lauren Underberg (she/they)
Junior Nonfiction Editor
Lauren Underberg is a creative writing student at a fine arts school hidden in the American South. Her work appears in the Élan Literary Magazine and Susquehanna University’s Apprentice Writer. She was also the 2023 recipient of the Judith Hillman Paterson Award for Excellence in Essay Writing presented by the Alabama Writers’ Forum. She’s been referred to as a long-distance runner on multiple occasions, which basically means she’ll never write a short short story in her lifetime.
Khadija Mohideen (she/her)
Junior Poetry Editor
Khadija Mohideen is a zealous writer and reader of poetry. She has hands on experience working on and editing her poetry. Often, her inner voice will finish a poem or song instinctively following sound and rhythm. She is a firm believer that the “poem is a temple, a place in which to feel, only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing.” (Mary Oliver)
As an editor, her main goal is to connect with the sentiment of the poem as opposed to making it sound overly literary. Her aim is to get to the heart of the poem.
Abbey Villasis (she/her)
Junior Nonfiction Editor
Abbey Villasis studies Classics and English at King’s College London, where she is currently a Feature Editor of the KCL Latin American Society’s online journal, El Cortao'. She has been publishing poems and essays since high school and is enthusiastic about writing and reading as much as possible. Additionally, she advocates for progressive art that is new, breaks boundaries, and is unconventional.
Ruofei Ivy Du (they/them)
Junior Fiction & Nonfiction Editor
Ivy is a fourth-year undergraduate from San Jose, currently pursuing a writing BA at University of California, San Diego.
They have also been a part of two other publications: Other People Magazine and Maximalist Magazine.
Besides writing, they enjoy doing digital art and watching the NBA—their ultimate goal is to own merchandise of all 30 teams in the league.
You can find their writing in Other People Magazine.
Sam Luthiya (he/they)
Junior Poetry Editor
Sam Luthiya is a non-binary, transmasc person based in Bangalore. They volunteer as an Editor at Dear Asian Youth and as a Beta Reader at The Young Writers Initiative. They served as Youth Advisor on Sangath’s Addictions and Mental Health Youth Advisory Board and as Director of DEI at STEM Without Boundaries for two consecutive terms. His work has been published in the Bombay Literary Magazine, The Sour Collective, and Perfumed Pages Magazine.
A magpie at heart, Sam finds joy in collecting rings, coins, shells, dried flowers, leaves, pebbles, feathers and other shiny and natural trinkets. They run a small business via Instagram where they sell handmade charm bracelets, chokers, anklets, and earrings. Besides dabbling in poetry and photography, they enjoy knitting, crocheting and devouring soups and street food. In the future, he hopes to work with animals and fill his home with rescues of all kinds.
Alannah Benae (she/they)
Junior Poetry Editor
Alannah Benae is an Indigenous and 2-Spirit writer and artist living in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Outside of Alannah’s hobbies—that being painting, playing video games, and loudly cackling in a too quiet coffee shop—she can often be heard, rather than being “seen,” reading their work at local open mics, leading local BIPOC Writing groups, marginalized programming showcases, and more. Alannah is currently a staff writer and editor for Daughter Zine and Dalika Magazine. Alannah has works published with Beyond the Veil Press, Mujer Manifesto, God’s Cruel Joke, Chapter House Journal, and more.
Contact them at @happy_doozie and @alannah_benae on Instagram.
Jay Aja (they/he)
Junior Art Editor
Jay Aja is nonbinary, queer, second-generation-immigrant Guyanese. He is currently an MFA candidate in nonfiction at the University of South Florida, yet mainly writes poetry and draws comics. Jay is fascinated by the confluence point of text and image, how the two in tandem may lead to more nuanced storytelling, and how these mediums may allow them to continue exploring the diaspora-identity of Caribbeans within and outside the U.S.
Jay is currently working on a graphic memoir that navigates the effects of childhood sexual trauma alongside gender identity in a West Indian household. You can find them on Instagram and Twitter @comicsbhaijay.
Sabine Wilson-Patrick (she/her)
Junior Nonfiction Editor
Sabine Wilson-Patrick, originally from Barbados, is a student of literature at Cardiff University.
Her work can be found in Nawr, Mixed Mag, and Mulberry Literary (prior to taking up an editorial role), among others.
Sabine is a the Managing Editor of Rover Magazine and an editor for Quench Magazine.
xochi quetzali cartland (she/they)
Junior Poetry Editor
xochi quetzali cartland is a queer and Latina poet, seamstress, and transformative justice practitioner. She graduated from Brown University with a BA in literary arts and has since moved to Washington, DC, where they are rekindling their love of trees and learning to make pretzels. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in apple in the dark and common ground review, as well as supported by National Arts Strategies and Brooklyn Poets.
Victoria Bao Wang (any pronouns)
Junior Fiction & Nonfiction Editor
Victoria is an interdisciplinary storyteller who believes that narratives can transform the relational fabric of our society. After graduating from Duke University with a BA in Psychology, Victoria snagged a position doing research in environmental justice. As a literal treehugger, Victoria loves to explore the relationship between humans and plants. (You can find her on Instagram @psitsvictoria and her plant content on TikTok @psitsvvic!) She works to intertwine the arts and sciences so that each adds indispensable meaning to the other. Victoria cares deeply about ancestral reconnection and queer world-making, aspiring to alchemize wonder, love, and joy from the smallest of observations.
Cecilia Mary Morris (all pronouns)
Junior Poetry Editor
Cecilia Mary Morris is a Queer, transsexual poet with a BA in Creative Writing from Allegheny College. Fond of poetry that strains against traditional form, Cecilia is drawn to explicitly subversive forms of writing. Currently living nowhere-in-particular, they spend their time writing whenever possible and adventuring with their Queer cohort.
Cecilia’s poetry can be found in The Allegheny Review, Blood Orange Review, NewWriters.uk.org, and a few scattered zines.
Jessica Powers (she/her)
Junior Poetry Editor
Jessica Powers is a poet and writer from Chicago, IL. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago, and her work has appeared in Hair Trigger Magazine, Ransack Press, Goats Milk Magazine, Allium—A Journal of Poetry & Prose, and Mulberry Literary (before taking up an editorial role). She was previously an acquisition and production editor for Hair Trigger Magazine.
She's currently reading lots of novels, playing dress-up, and learning pottery.
Mackenzie Moody (she/her)
Social Media Curator
Mackenzie Moody is a former astrophysicist turned data analyst. She received her BA in physics and astrophysics from UC Berkeley and MA in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University. She moonlights (and daylights) as a bookstagrammer and book blogger.
When not working or reading, she can be found scouring the city for the best matcha latte boba, getting covered in chalk at the climbing gym, fighting demons in video games, or dreaming of opening a bookstore boba cafe.
Nona Lea (they/them)
Social Media Curator
When Nona Lea isn’t authoring essays on literature, mythos, and ecology, they work on their debut collection.
Lea’s work can be found in Mayari Literature, redrosethorns magazine, twoheaded press zine, Koru Magazine, and Purple Press.
Julia Moser (she/her)
Social Media Curator
Julia (she/her) is a nonprofit professional with a focus on marketing and event coordination based in Oklahoma.
In her free time she serves on several art committees, volunteers, and practices knitting and cyanotype art.
Interested in joining our team?
Please note: editor positions are not paid.
