In 2018, while working as a high school teacher in Oakland, Alan Chazaro would often bike around at night and stargaze by the city’s largest lake. He began to write poems about outer space, which later became his second collection, These Spaceships Weren’t Built for Us (Tia Chucha Press, April 2026). By splicing descriptions of black holes and spaceships with imagery of the Bay Area, hip-hop references, and anecdotes about friends and family, Chazaro meditates, as he says, on the “physical and social dimensions” of space. In poems that wrestle with the pandemic, immigration policy, policing, and climate change, he invokes those who are often not given space in the United States while also looking for sites of resistance. “Believe that I’m ready to / conjure a mixtape of revolution and single-parented love with a cassette / player stuck // on rewind,” he writes. “It’ll be playing everywhere my spaceship drifts.”
Alan Chazaro is the author of These Spaceships Weren’t Built for Us (Tia Chucha Press, April 2026), a second poetry collection. (Credit: Alicia Vera)
“I’ve always been an independent, DIY kind of person, in general, which I think is rooted in my upbringing as the son of immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area, doing things like graffiti and being heavily influenced by hip-hop from a young age,” says Chazaro. “Because of that I’ve always rejected larger, institutional acceptance and often look to engage with—and support—anything on a smaller, grassroots level.” When publishing his work, Chazaro says, this approach means, “sending my poems to journals that are up-and-coming, lesser known, or simply have established a dope reputation as an indie outlet.” The online biannual Honey Literary fit that bill for Chazaro. He describes the magazine as “run by a group of committed, hardworking individuals with nothing more than a love for their communities.” The writers Dorothy Chan and Rita Mookerjee started Honey Literary in 2020 to counteract the “overwhelming homogeneity of the literary landscape”; the journal publishes only “BIPOC women, nonbinary and trans people, disabled writers, and anyone of color from the LGBTQIAP2+ community.” A playful spirit infuses the magazine, which features poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid work as well as sections focused on valentines, animals, food, rants and raves, and sex. Submissions in all genres are open until July 31.
Chazaro favors magazines “born out of a funky desire to expand the literary landscape, and powered by writers without the glamorous support of any university or literary organization.” One such outlet is Gigantic Sequins, which ran his lyric poem “Spacesuit, or Learning How to Float Through Public Space” in 2020. The journal, which gathers poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art, and comics in an annual black-and-white print volume, is put together by volunteer editors throughout the United States. The editors seek to curate work by writers in different stages of their careers; they have published more established writers, such as Kayleb Rae Candrilli and Morgan Parker, but also uplift poems by teenagers in their “Teen Sequins” section. Submissions will open in November.
“The alchemy of finding one’s voice looks drastically different for everyone,” says Chazaro. “I appreciate when a journal understands that and invites those kinds of raw, idiosyncratic expressions to exist as they are.” In 2020 he published two poems with an online journal that follows that ethos, Variety Pack. The editors note they are a “space for every genre under the sun,” including horror, formal poetry, magical realism, and criticism. Variety Pack, which is produced in Buffalo, New York, releases two issues a year, as well as occasional “mini packs” showcasing just a few pieces. The journal has an anti-authoritarian bent and an aesthetic reminiscent of early zine culture; editor in chief J. B. Stone opens each issue with “Variety4Justice,” a list of mutual-aid organizations and social causes that support communities in need or that help “fight the encroaching tyranny within our own nation.” Submissions in all genres are open until June 15.
Another journal Chazaro singles out as one of the “most human-feeling places with cool, relatable aesthetics,” is the Adroit Journal, which published one of his poems in 2022. The online quarterly spotlights poetry, fiction, nonfiction, translation, and interviews and has seen more than 140,000 submissions. The Adroit Journal also hosts a mentorship program that pairs established writers with high school and gap-year students every summer; more than five hundred young writers have graduated from the program since 2014. Submissions to the annual editor’s prizes in poetry and fiction will open July 1; general submissions will open on September 15.
“Whenever I see other artists trying to build something positive, I’m happy to add a few of my own bricks to it,” says Chazaro. He did so by publishing two poems in the inaugural edition of Inner Forest Service in 2021, alongside Abigail Chabitnoy, Iain Haley Pollock, and Jake Skeets, among others. Chris Kerr, a Bay Area artist and writer, edits the journal and seeks to publish poems “attentive to the earth.” Kerr writes, “Both ecopoetic critique and transcendental sylvan worship are welcome.” The publication appears once every four years to “more legibly take the pulse of poets and the earth and read any changes.” Mark your calendars: Submissions will open on January 1, 2029.
Dana Isokawa is the editor in chief of the Margins and a contributing editor of Poets & Writers Magazine.
