It was either a phone call or a message, or a fight so bad your tongue set trees on fire. It was around a table, at a bar, in an art gallery, a support group, over a late night with your favorite person, the last night you saw them, on a bike ride, in a breakup, at a hospital, when you were in love. It happened when you least expected it, maybe you weren’t ready to hear it, maybe you fought it with the worst parts of yourself. Whenever it came or whatever it was, what a thing to know it arrived.

Sand Bodied’s publisher, Foglifter Press, was created by and for LGBTQ+ writers and readers—continues the San Francisco Bay Area’s tradition of groundbreaking queer and trans writing, often publishing those who are multi-marginalized (BIPOC, youth, elders, and people with disabilities).

Their biannual journal features the widest range of forms, with an emphasis on transgressive, risky, challenging subject matter, innovative formal choices, and work that pushes the boundaries of what writing can do. By putting extraordinary queer and trans writers into conversation, they uplift a growing community of LGBTQ+ readers and writers and carve out space in the larger literary community for voices that have historically been silenced.