CONTRIBUTORS

MacKenzie River Foy (she/they) is a multi-media writer, producer, and editor amplifying stories of Black joy, resistance and history. Her cultural work fuses performance, media, curation and design. 

With a background in Black and queer worker organizing, MacKenzie has honed a creative practice rooted in radical imagination and collective work. Her time in the restaurant industry and her mother's kitchen inspired her development of culinary fiction zine Village X. She served as the editor-in-chief for all 10 issues of the zine while writing stories and producing short films to accompany her expansion of the culinary fiction canon.

MacKenzie has produced media for The Laura Coates Show on SiriusXM, Market Road Films, Sojourners Magazine, and several national non-profit organizations. Her recipe "Moses' Waffles" was included in the 2021 Reclamation exhibit at the National Museum for Women in the Arts. She was awarded Best Director (DMV Short Film Festival) and Honorable Mention for Best Documentary Short (Workers Unite Film Festival) for her short film “Feed/back”. Her short film “Strike a Match” was a winner of the 2022 NAACP National Cinematic Shorts Competition.

When she isn’t incubating experiments in sci-fi and food writing, MacKenzie works with Reckon News and Android Press amplifying the stories of early career storytellers and growing brands. Read more about their work here.







Emerging from the intersection between the marsh and the metal, Morgan Butler (also known as Mo), studies, observes, meditates, and strategizes around building new ecosystems centered around pleasure, magic, healing, and culture. Their work as a multimedia artist, performer, and educator is approached from an intergenerational lens and prioritizes the histories and futures of Black and Indigenous people. Mo is a 2018 Loft Literary Center Spoken Word Immersion Fellow, 2xHarvard University AOCC Facilitator, and TEDx Speaker, and was awarded as one of the 2020-21 Mayor's Office of LGBTQ Affairs 40 Queer Women Under 40. As a 2023 Atlas Arts Lab Fellow, Mo is currently working on their first stage production.

Check out their website and sign up for their newsletter to connect with Mo’s work!











Justus Cornelius Pugh (he/him) is a south side Chicago-bred storyteller, writer, technologist, and creative.

Justus is guided by the belief that our imagination is our ancestor’s wildest dreams, inherited. Guided by this mantra, he creates spoken-word poetry, experimental fiction, and archival-based narrative works. Beyond the page, Justus is founder of The What’s The Move? App, a tech platform that creates local community ecosystems between businesses, community organizations, social groups, and the people that sustain them.

Read about his work here.

Preetham Chippada (he/him) is a writer and advocate. His near-future diaspora stories like Love Labyrinth and The Spirit of Lake Osiris can be found in the digital archives alongside recipes for toor dal, kombucha, and puri. Chippada is a first-year law student at Boston University with interests in jurisprudence and literature. He loves gardening, crocheting, and all things homesteading.

If you are looking for me, the first place you should go is the kitchen. You will most likely find me simmering a huge pot of something that smells incredible and asking if you have eaten. If you haven’t you’ll have to beat me with a stick if you’re trying to walk away without a plate. As the resident Kitchen Witch, I find joy and liberation in cooking and magic. I enchant my ingredients my soups and curries are love potions. I intend to leave you feeling happy, full, and ready for a nap. The next place you should look is the library. Books are my therapy, writing is my ritual, and tea time is my safe space. If you still haven’t found me I have found a place to nap and will magically reappear in an hour or two.

Alkebuluan is a Chicago born and raised artist. Their work is centered around Black grief, printed matter, archives, and analog photography.Their work seeks to centralize their lineage that is connected to The Great Migration, Jamaica, and the Black Belt. Alkebuluan is the founder behind the Black Matriarch Archive and Homagetoblkmadonnas which is centered around Black mothers, femmes, and women as a source of the spirit of inquiry and hopefully one-day repatriation.

MacKenzie River Foy

Founder & Editor-in-Chief

Morgan Butler
Writer & Tech Witch

Justus Pugh

Writer

Preetham Chippada

Writer & Chef

Dan Townes

Writer & Chef

Alkebuluan Merriweather

Collage artist