They Saw the Dead | Contributors
BOO and welcome from the editor and contributors of When Other People Saw Us, They Saw the Dead. Find out more about us below…
The Editor
Lauren T. Davila
Lauren T. Davila is a Pushcart-nominated Latina writer currently pursuing her Ph.D. in English at Claremont Graduate Universityin California, USA. She holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from George Mason University and dual BAs in English and Creative Writing from Pepperdine University. After completing her studies, she plans to teach at the collegiate level while publishing poetry and fiction.
Her writing has appeared online in Granada Magazine, The Paragon Journal, Ghost Heart Literary Magazine, Peach Velvet Mag, Voyage Journal, Second Chance Magazine, Headcanon Magazine, In Parentheses, and Poets Reading the News, and in print anthology, Hireath.
She lives in Los Angeles where you can find her writing in coffee shops and swimming.
The Designer
Mina Martinez
Mina Martinez is an illustrator and story artist based in Los Angeles, California. Her art has been included at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, California, as part of the Warrior Painters Group Exhibition in 2019. You can also find one of her donated sketchbooks, Moments Well Spent, at the Brooklyn Art Library in Brooklyn, New York. Naturally, she has been drawn to cultivating her artistic skills by collaborating with other artists and writers on zines, with topics ranging from picturesque landscapes, recipes and vampire lore. Much of Mina’s interest in art came from exploring hidden parts of Los Angeles and cherishing nature.
The Contributors
Nisha Addleman
Story: ‘The Mountain Air’
Nisha Addleman is a half-Indian, half-white writer and the daughter of an immigrant mother. Her stories vary from genre to genre and often address mental health issues, including ones she experiences herself, such as depression and anxiety. Growing up in a diverse community, Nisha’s work also features an emphasis on inclusivity and diverse characters. She was born and raised in Central Coast, California, where she still lives with her husband and dog. In her spare time you can find her cooking, sewing and dancing.
Angela Burgos
Story: ‘Hollywood Nightmare’
Angela Burgos is an Ecuadorian-American writer and researcher from Los Angeles, California, currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Social-Cultural Anthropology from Cal State, Los Angeles. Angela’s writing is centred on community-based research and an anti-oppressive approach that emphasises creating accessibility of knowledge through fiction and nonfiction pieces. Angela’s work utilises the intersectionality of her experiences as a first-gen Latine individual to showcase the complexities of her community. By taking a versatile approach, Angela is able to explore and write about topics that vary from gothic short stories to the shared experiences of POC in academia.
Aliya Chaudhry
Story: ‘The Ghost of Creek Hill’
Aliya Chaudhry is a fiction writer and journalist. As a journalist, she covers music and internet culture, and has written for Billboard, Vice, Slate, Kerrang! and The Verge, among other publications. She has lived in the United Kingdom, Pakistan, the United States and Kenya. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in English and a concentration in creative writing in 2018. The following year, she earned her Master’s in Journalism from Columbia University. She is currently working on her first novel, which is about death, memory and ghost stories.
D.C. Dador
Story: ‘The Veil and Cord’
D.C. Dador is a Filipino-American science fiction and fantasy writer whose stories explore the unknown, whether the darkness of outer space or one’s heart. Her day job supports space exploration and at night she devises ways to scare her protagonists. She resides in Virginia, where she enjoys exploring haunted sites.
Margaret Elysia Garcia
Story: ‘What the Wind Brought With It’
Margaret Elysia Garcia is the author of Graft, a short story collection, to be published by Tolsun Books in October 2022. She’s the author of the ebook Sad Girls & Other Stories and the audiobook Mary of the Chance Encounters. She writes and produces plays with her Latina theatre troupe Pachuca Productions in the northeastern Sierras. She’s a Pushcart-nominated essayist who works as a staff writer for Feather Publishing as well as a poet associated with the Community Literary Initiative in Los Angeles, working on her first poetry collection. Sh teaches creative writing and theatre at California Correctional Center through the William James Associations Transformative Arts programme and with the Artists in the Schools programme in Plumas County. She’s the co-editor of Red Flag Warning, an anthology about living with fire, to be published by Hey Day Books in 2024. She’s a graduate of the University of San Francisco’s graduate creative writing programme.
Emily Hoang
Story: ‘Dream House’
Emily Hoang is a Chinese–Vietnamese writer and editor from San Francisco. She is a first-generation college student who attended UCSD for her undergraduate studies and attained a MFA in Creative Writing at USF. You can find some of her work in GASHER Journal, The Baram House and Black Horse Review. When she’s not working on her short story collection, you can find her running by the beach or exploring new parts of the city.
Adaline Jacques
Story: ‘Poppy Tea and Hearty Pie’
Adaline Jacques is a young black individual and a Native New Yorker living in Los Angeles who holds an interest in all things art. Jacques, whose real name is Amra-Adachi Jean, has a background in performance arts, having spread herself among multiple musical groups, whether they be educational or extracurricular. She is more than honoured to be a contributor to When Other People Saw Us, They Saw The Dead and looks forward to contributing to many more projects akin to it.
C.M. Leyva
Story: ‘Smoke From a Flame’
C.M. Leyva is a fiction writer and registered nurse who loves sharing her passion for science and medicine in her stories and exploring the what-if ’s around them. She enjoys writing character-driven fiction that provides representation for Latine women in science. When she’s not working on her next short story or manuscript, you can find her attempting home improvement projects, losing herself in a good book, or playing video games.
Danny Lore
Story: ‘We Have Always Lived in the Projects’
Danny Lore (they/them) is a black writer from Harlem and the Bronx whose work in comics and prose runs the gamut of speculative fiction subgenres. They’ve written for Marvel, DC, Vault, Dark Horse and IDW, as well as Fireside Fiction, FIYAH, Nightlight and other short fiction venues. Most recently, they’ve written Transformers (IDW) and Champions (Marvel). They were also included in the Unfettered Hexes anthology (Neon Hemlock). Their wife and cat probably wish that they would take a nap.
Adam Ma
Story: ‘Acheron's Lesson’
Adam Ma is an avid fan of horror and fantasy, and has spent most of his freelance career building lore-rich worlds for adventurous strangers to be lost in. By day he manages customer support for a gaming company. Also by day (and mostly by night) he’s dedicated to crafting stories. Adam has been a contributor for D&D-related editorial in a range of indie TTRPG publications, designed sandbox-style multi-group campaigns for local game stores, and is the writer behind the ongoing superhuman horror comic Folklore – which was voted by Sequential Magazine as one of the Best Webcomic of 2020.
Lauren McEwen
Story: ‘The House by the Dell’
Lauren McEwen is a writer from the Atlanta area. A graduate of Howard University, her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Tempest, AJC.com, Bitch Magazine, Madame Noire, The Baltimore Sun, Ebony.com and elsewhere. When she is not staring at a blinking cursor, or trying to squeeze words out of her brain like blood from a stone, Lauren can be found trying to justify buying more books despite the fact that her to-be-read pile is over three feet tall.
Michelle Mellon
Story: ‘Blood and the Bottomland’
Michelle Mellon has been published in more than two dozen speculative fiction anthologies and magazines. She is a member of the Horror Writers Association and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Her first short story collection, Down by the Sea and Other Tales of Dark Destiny, was published in 2018, and she’s currently completing her second collection.
Gerardo J. Mercado
Story: ‘The Guilt of Rosalino’
Gerardo J. Mercado Hernández (he\they) is a Puerto Rican writer and poet. Currently working as a math tutor, he enjoys making art learning about world history and different spiritual beliefs. Gerardo’s recurring subjects are the Caribbean, individuals and their community, and undefined, ever-protean, creatures. He is currently working on his first poetry book and other stories. Gerardo lives in Northern Puerto Rico while permanently catching up on physics and music.
A. M. Perez
Story: ‘Headmaster’
A.M. Perez is a writer of speculative fiction with a Master’s in Psychology completing her PhD thesis in the same field at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. She is Mohawk, Jewish and Puerto Rican and grew up in Santiago, Chile. Her expertise in psychology and her mixed-cultural identity inspire the themes and elements in her dozens of novels and short stories. When she is not writing, she enjoys painting, teaching, running and playing with her dogs.
Desiree Rodriguez
Story: ‘Clockwork’
Desiree Rodriguez is an Eisner-winning editor, writer and journalist who has been a featured voice in Latinx and queer representation in media outlets such as The Washington Post, USA Today, The Nerds of Color, Color Web Magazine, SYFY Wire and Black Comics Chat.
She co-edited the Eisner-winning anthology Puerto Rico Strong in 2019, and has written in anthologies such as Ricanstruction, a collaborative charity anthology with DC Comics for which she wrote two original stories, Mañana: Latinx Comics From the 25th Century from Power and Magic Press with artist Naomi Franquiz.
Marwa Sarraj
Story: ‘Every Soul Will Taste Death’
Marwa Sarraj (she/her) is a Muslim Turkish-American writer. Her tastes lean heavily towards fantasy and gothic tales but she will read almost anything (especially true crime and narrative non-fiction). Through her own works, she utilises her philosophy degree to form compelling fantasy worlds and intriguing characters. In addition to being a writer, she is a graduate student working on a degree in General Psychology. When she isn’t writing or reading, she can often be found playing video games or binging true crime documentaries, and baking. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two cats, Eevee and Ghost.
Shakira Savage
Story: ‘Sight’
Shakira Savage is a poet and fiction writer from northwest Alabama. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Alabama.
In her work, Shakira makes it a priority to pay homage to her rural upbringing - from red clay dirt on white tennis shoes to sticky summer humidity that makes even the strongest lungs suffocate. Through a contemporary Southern Gothic lens, she explores both the beauties and complexities of surviving in the Deep South.
L.C. Star
Story: ‘Reincarnated Rose’
L.C. Star is a Latina adult, young adult and middle-grade writer with a focus on fantasy, witches, gothic horror and identity. She is also the author of the upcoming novel series The Servant Prince. She is a Buddhist Mexican-Salvadorian American who currently lives in New Jersey, USA, with her Chinese-American boyfriend.
Amiah Taylor
Photo credit: Kayla Lane
Story: ‘The Candlemaker's Daughter’
Amiah Taylor is an editorial fellow at Fortune as of 2022. She enjoys writing about race, gender and emerging technologies. Previously she served as the freelance technical editor for Blair Lauren Brown’s book, CBD for Dummies, a reference book published in 2021. Her articles can be found in the Institute for Science and Policy at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, NBC LX, The Observer, Discover, Fortune, Well + Good, Yahoo Finance and elsewhere. Her work is also forthcoming in an anthology on Black womanhood, Mamas, Martyrs, and Jezebels, from Black Lawrence Press. Amiah grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii, and is pursuing her graduate degree in science writing from Johns Hopkins University. She loves baby lemurs, Claude Monet and rice krispy treats, though not necessarily in that order.
Alicia Thompson
Story: ‘The Repetition Tango’
Alicia Thompson was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, where she has lived for the past 53 years, minus three at the end of the 80s when she jumped down a rabbit hole that took her to Humboldt County.
Alicia loves sci-fi, fantasy and horror and has written two YA novels about quantum physics and how hard it is being 17 and the most destructive force in the universe. She is a human being, proud to be Black and thanks you for reading her stuff! All love to all of you.
S.M. Uddin
Story: ‘For Evermore’
S.M. Uddin is a London-born author of gothic fiction and a 2020 graduate. Her literature preferences lean more towards the dark, with an unusual affinity for eerie tragedies or the viscerally uncomfortable.
During her leisure time, her hobbies include not leaving the house, reading up on different psychological theories and admiring new K-pop videos. Whichever one requires the least talking.
Anuja Varghese
Story: ‘In the Bone Fields’
Anuja Varghese (she/her) is a Pushcart-nominated writer with a degree in English Literature from McGill University. Her work appears in Hobart, The Fiddlehead, Corvid Queen: A Journal of Feminist Folklore & Fairy Tales, Plenitude Magazine, So to Speak Journal, Southern Humanities Review and elsewhere. In 2021, she took on the role of Fiction Editor with The Puritan Magazine. She recently completed a collection of short stories (forthcoming from House of Anansi Press, 2023) and is working on a debut novel. She lives in Canada with her partner, two kids and two cats.
jonah wu
Story: ‘Yama-uba’
jonah wu is a queer, non-binary writer and filmmaker currently residing in Los Angeles, California. Their work is usually a deep dive into their Chinese-American upbringing and explores the intersection between mental illness, trauma, dreams, memory and family history. Their writing has been published or is forthcoming in Longleaf Review, Jellyfish Review, The Aurora Journal, Sinister Wisdom, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal and elsewhere.