BIO

Xalli (shawl-lee) is a young butch, QTPOC and Disabled zinester and poet living on unceded Tongva land. Zie has been writing from a young age– mostly for fun at first, from the long, winding picture books of a preschooler to the more emo forever-incomplete novels of hir middle school years– but has most recently grown into a practice of storytelling as a form of resistance and community-building. Zie aims to embody that in all of hir work.

Zie attended California School of the Arts – San Gabriel Valley for Creative Writing as a high schooler, looking for tools to expand hir work as a writer. Since then, zie has gone on to publish with LBRNTH, Drifter Zine, Death Rattle Literary, Transmuted, Verve Poetry Press, and Polyphony Lit among others, and is forthcoming in Shadowbanned Magazine. Zie has also served as Editor-in-Chief of the CSArts-SGV literary magazine, Sugar Pine Literary, and worked as an Executive Editor and Junior Board member for Polyphony Lit. Now, zie is attending UCLA to pursue a BA in Labor Studies with a minor in American Indian Studies, aiming to explore poetry, editing, and teaching professionally.

In hir daily life, Xalli puts hir love in many different places, but especially enjoys trying to catch glimpses of hir neighborhood coyotes, playing videogames and reading with hir girlfriend, going to punk & folk punk shows, and working with local mutual aid organziations.