Simone Zapata is a queer poet, editor, and educator based in Oakland, CA. She’s the inaugural Emerging Writer Fellow for Brink Literary Journal, and was selected by Marie Howe as a finalist for the 2023 Adrienne Rich Award. As a Pushcart nominee, her recent work appears or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Inverted Syntax, Foglifter and elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for MAYDAY, and holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts.
PUBLICATIONS
2024 | “Deep Breath” Beloit Poetry Journal, forthcoming
2024 | “Required Transfusion” Brink Literary Journal, Issue 7
2023 | “‘we tell ourselves stories in order to live’” Inverted Syntax, Issue 5
2023 | “My therapist asks me if I like myself” Inverted Syntax, Issue 5
2023 | “As Particulate Matter” Midnight Chem, Issue 1
2023 | “Spaces of Affect and Enormity: Angela Peñaredondo interviewed by Simone Zapata” MAYDAY
2023 | “Reason for Consultation” The Vassar Review, Issue 8
2023 | “In the beginning we were waves” Reed Magazine, Issue 156
2023 | “Spray Paint” Spectrum Literary Journal, Volume 66
2023 | “Stone Sequence” Tiny Spoon, Issue 10
2022 | “A Cauldron of Bats” Foglifter Journal, Volume 7, Issue 2
2022 | “Stranded Prepositions” The Quarterless Review, Volume 22
AWARDS & RECOGNITIONS
2024 | Poet & Author Fellowship, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing
2024 | Patricia Clifford Scholarship, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
2023 | Finalist, Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry, selected by Marie Howe
2023 | Emerging Writer Fellowship in Hybrid Writing, Brink Literary Journal
2023 | Finalist, Sublingua Prize for Poetry, Inverted Syntax
2023 | Burnett Miller Memorial Scholarship, Community of Writers
2022 | REEF Post-Graduate Fellowship, California Institute of the Arts
2021 | Finalist, Nightboat Poetry Prize, Nightboat Books
EXHIBITIONS
2022 | Tense Renderings: the will and won’t of spatial logics
Co-curated with Fía Benitez, The REEF, Los Angeles, CA
2021 | Voices Under Water
Solo Exhibition, WaveCave, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
2021 | Inheritance
Group Exhibition, Glendale, CA
2021 | Next Words
Group Exhibition, REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA
2021 | Come Sail Away
Group Exhibition, NeurOpera, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
2020 | Resonance, Instability & Witness
Group Exhibition, Discrepant Engagement: An Interdisciplinary Writing Symposium
California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
ZINES
2023 | Collected Poems, edited by Sarah Sophia Yanni
Circa Festival, Los Angeles, CA
2022 | An Evening of Performance, edited by C. Bain
Los Angeles, CA
2020 | Until Further Notice, co-authored with Christine Imperial
Documentary Poetics, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
2020 | Site of Limitation, co-authored with Christine Imperial
The Practice of Publishing, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
2018 | Standing Out (editor)
Chapter 510, Oakland, CA
2018 | Home is a Place (editor)
Chapter 510, Oakland, CA
2018 | Mother of Gold (editor)
Chapter 510, Oakland, CA
2018 | What is Beneath
San José ZineCon, San José, CA
2018 | Body Channels, co-authored with Li Patron
Bay Area Queer Zine Festival, Oakland, CA
2016 | Notes from the Highway
South Bay DIY Zine Collective, San José, CA
2016 | Breaking the Ice
Cheers From The Wasteland, San José, CA
2016 | Names
Think and Die Thinking Zine Trade, San José, CA