Colossus:Body is Colossus Press's fourth anthology. It was conceived in May 2022 when the draft of the Dobbs decision was leaked to the public. The thinking from this leaked decision made it clear that the ongoing fight for bodily autonomy needed to be taken to a new level. Colossus:Body is a celebration and a call to action. Our fundamental rights to privacy and liberty have been attacked and we will not back down. All funds raised from sales of Colossus:Body are donated to Keep Our Clinics.
Featured Readers:;Ruth Crossman,Kitty Costello, Kim Shuck, Shilpa Kamat, T. S. Leonard, Kimi Sugioka and Tracy Artson.
Reader Bios:
Ruth Crossman is a Pushcart-nominated writer from Berkeley, California. She is the author of the auto-fiction collection All the Wrong Places and is currently looking for a home for her memoir-novella, All My Friends Lie. Her work has appeared in publications including The Fabulist, Litro, and Maximum Rock n Roll. You can find out more information about her at https://msruthcrossman.com/
Kitty Costello is a Mission District poet, psychotherapist and teacher. Poet friends who influenced her most include Diane di Prima, who taught her early on how to tap into the creative wellspring within, and Mary TallMountain, with whom she shared the delights and transformative power of writing in community. She is author of Upon Waking: New & Selected Poems, 1977-2017, co-editor of Muslim American Writers at Home: Stories, Essays & Poems of Identity, Diversity & Belonging 2021, and she has served 30 years on the editorial board of Freedom Voices, publishing works to and from communities on the margins.
Kim Shuck is a poet and visual artist born, raised, and remarkably still living in San Francisco. She is the 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco Emerita. Shuck is solo author of nine books, co-author of one collection of poems and collage, and a major contributor to three or four others at time of this writing. Shuck is currently building a book fort out of anthologies that she has either been part of editing or in which her work appears. Her latest effort is a collection of essays Noodle, Rant, Tangent.
Shilpa Kamat is a poet, educator, yoga teacher, and healing arts practitioner. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and has been published by a range of magazines, from Strange Horizons to Willowherb Review. Her chapbook, Saraswati Takes Back the Alphabet, was a finalist for the Gloria Anzaldúa Poetry Prize and was published by Newfound. You can read more about her work at shilpakamat.com.
T.S. Leonard is the author of God Save the Queens! (Irrelevant Press, 2022) and poems published or forthcoming in Post Road, Foglifter, Frontera, & Change, and The San Franciscan. Leonard was a finalist for the 2022 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize. Leonard appeared in the multimedia program Spectral Transmissions (Portland Art Museum, 2020) and as a poetry finalist in the 18th Annual Saints + Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival. Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, he lives and teaches in San Francisco.
Kimi Sugioka, is a mother, educator, songwriter and poet. Here newest book is Wile & Wing on Manic D Press and she is the poet laureate of Alameda, CA. She loves cats and birds and believes that creating community through art is a revolutionary act.
Tracy Artson is a Bay Area poet and licensed psychologist in California. Her poems explore intersectional themes of social justice, climate crises, transformation, grief and yearning. Professionally, she works with complex and single-incident trauma. Poems published in The Passionfruit Review (Spring & Fall 2023), Colossus Press, The Los Angeles Press (Fall, 2023), River Heron Review (Fall, 2023).