SOREN LIT

SOREN LIT. 2023. Raquel Battaglia.

www.sorenlit.com

Raquel Battaglia is an American southerner living ‘across the pond’ in the UK. She is a social psychologist by education and a hospice and palliative care researcher by job who uses writing to explore the qualitative nature of the human experience. Her poetry and flash fiction can be read in Fellowship & Fairydust, The Tower, and 50 Give or Take.

SOREN LIT

www.sorenlit.com

Producer: Melodie J. Rodgers, MFA

SOREN LIT

A Southern Renaissance literary journal... for storytellers with connections to the south. We showcase writers and artists who are women, femme-identifying, and/or non-binary creatives. The SOREN LIT podcast provides interviews, readings, and art reviews from our latest writers and artists. The podcast is hosted by SOREN LIT Founding Editor, Melodie J. Rodgers. SOREN LIT's published work and podcast episodes are also available on the official website: www.sorenlit.com

SOREN LIT's on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sorenlit/

SOREN LIT...A Southern Renaissance of women, femmes, and/or non-binary creatives exploring the lingering South...

www.sorenlit.com

SOREN LIT. 2023. Karin Pendley Koser

Karin Pendley Koser has been a writer the majority of her life since penning poetry for contests as a child to writing everything from journalistic TV features and articles to every form of public relations and marketing material as an adult. From speech backgrounders for two US presidents and several Georgia governors and travel writing for tourism departments, the diversity of her work means she’s rarely been bored. She and her small marketing/digital content company and its employees and contractors have been recipients of regional and national awards for videos, films, social media and marketing campaigns and more. 

Despite the seesawing ups and downs since the pandemic began, Karin feels fortunate to have had a variety of teaching, writing, and video production projects.

She is a graduate of the UGA Grady College of Journalism and in 2019 received her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction & Screenwriting from Queens University of Charlotte. A photographer since she was young, she also enjoys applying creative, literary writing techniques to client work as well as to her personal work on a memoir, essays, poems, and screenplay. She volunteers any leftover time to political campaigns, voting rights equity, and arts nonprofit fundraising.

Producer and Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers, MFA

www.sorenlit.com

SOREN LIT...A Southern Renaissance of women, femmes, and/or non-binary creatives exploring the lingering South...

SOREN LIT. 2023: Verlena Johnson, MFA

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Producer & Founding Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers, MFA

Verlena L. Johnson was born in Chicago and grew up in Madison and Beloit Wisconsin.  She earned a B.A. in Sculpture and a M.A. in Afro-American Studies with an emphasis in Art History from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and a M.F.A. in Sculpture from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Verlena has also studied wood carving with Ghanaian Master Wood-carvers, as well as, at the Haystack Mountain School of Craft and Penland School of Craft.

She has exhibited her artwork in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Oakland, amongst other places.  Her artwork has appeared on the cover of the book Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Toni Morrison and the journal Sinister Wisdom.  She has taught studio art and art history to children and adults in community centers and colleges.

Her children’s book, The Adventures of Kai and the Magical Machines was published in 2018.  Verlena’s current book project is a children’s picture book about a little boy named Jimmie in rural Mississippi in the 1940s.

Emily Bilman, PhD is a poet-scholar who lives and writes Geneva, Switzerland. Her dissertation, The Psychodynamics of Poetry: Poetic Virtuality and Oedipal Sublimation in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot and Paul Valéry, with her poetry translations, was published by Lambert Academic in 2010 and Modern Ekphrasis in 2013 by Peter Lang, CH. Her poetry books, A Woman By A Well (2015), Resilience (2015), The Threshold of Broken Waters (2018), and Apperception (2020) were published by Troubador, UK. “The Tear-Catcher” won the first prize in depth poetry by The New York Literary Magazine. Poems were published in Deronda Review, The London Magazine, San Antonio Review, The Wisconsin Review, Expanded Field, Poetics Research, The Blue Nib, Tipton Poetry Journal, North of Oxford Journal, Otherwise Engaged Magazine, Literary Heist, The High Window, Wild Court, Remington Review, Book of Matches, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Poets Live Anthology 4, OxMag, San Diego Poetry Anthology, Contemporary Poetry 2022, Ballast Journal, Soren Lit, Southern Arizona Press Anthologies, Poetry Salzburg Review. She blogs on her website. http://www.emiliebilman.wix.com/emily-bilman

SOREN LIT...A Southern Renaissance of women, femmes, and/or non-binary creatives
exploring the lingering South...

www.sorenlit.com

Producer & Founding Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers, MFA

Dr. Dionne Bates-SOREN LIT 2022

SOREN LIT: www.sorenlit.com

D. Dionne Bates, PhD, LPC, CPCS is a licensed professional counselor in private

practice who holds a B.A. in Sociology (with emphasis in deviant behavior), an M.A. in

Counseling Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. In clinical practice almost 20 years,

Dr. Bates has observed that the root of many individuals’ emotional and psychological distress is

their inability to integrate their “true” selves into various realms of their lives. The author of the

Self-SOULstice Model of Affirmation, Dr. Bates works with her clients to help them reach

optimal mental health by affirming self, affirming others, and living authentically.

From 2010-2015 Dr. Bates was an Educational Psychologist at Georgia Southern

University’s (GSU) Counseling Center where she had responsibility for the students’ mental

health needs as well as providing education and support to faculty and staff. She also served as

SAFE SPACE Coordinator and represented the Counseling Center on the university’s

Professional Development Council. Dr. Bates taught graduate studies, serving as adjunct

professor in GSU’s College of Education and Alabama A&M University’s Department of

Psychology and Counseling. The owner of Self-SOULstice, LLC in Marietta, Georgia, she

provides a range of psychotherapeutic, supervision, and consultative services, including serving

as Senior Mental Health Advisor for the Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective

(BEAM). Dr. Bates has participated in discussions on human sexuality and sexual health with

first year Emory University medical students. Her research has included identity development,

LGBT issues, and a stage model of affirming self and others. Her writings have been featured in

the Atlanta Tribune, Blavity.com, Your Tango, Dailyworth and numerous in regional, national,

and international newspapers and academic journals.

SOREN LIT: www.sorenlit.com

SOREN LIT editor and producer: Melodie J. Rodgers, MFA

Mary O’Brien Fall/Winter 2022

Mary O’Brien is an artist, writer and poet. Her writing evolves out of her engagement with place. and community, and the research she develops for land art installations. Her non-fiction works delve into ecological loss and community resilience. She writes about political landscapes and our anthropocentric relationships with them—the ways in which wars, capital, and infrastructure have molded lands and communities. O’Brien’s public art installations can be found across the US and are documented atwatershedsculpture.com . Her essays and poems have been published in Field to Palette , StanfordUniversity’s MAHB Journal ; The Solutions Journal ; Women’s Eco Artist Dialogue journal, Silver Birch Press, and Soren Lit.

SOREN LIT Founding Editor & Producer: Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Ami Mattison- SOREN LIT Fall 2021 ISSUE

Touring and performing professionally since 2002, Ami Mattison has been featured at various art venues, festivals, conferences, colleges, and universities across the US and Canada. In 2013, s/he was the recipient of the Fellowship of Southern Writers' Spoken Word Award. Acclaimed novelist, Dorothy Allison writes: “Always [Mattison] speaks for the despised in verse that hallows grief and embodies joy. The world is larger, wider, fuller for the people [s/he] brings alive in words.” Mattison taught poetry and creative expression in Detroit public schools while serving as a writer-in-residence at Inside Out Literary Arts Program. S/he's also taught at Emory University, Georgia State University, and Antioch College in Ohio. S/he currently resides in Alabama.

SOREN LIT Producer and Founding Editor- Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Rosa Ponton- SOREN LIT FALL ISSUE 2021

Rosa Ponton is a Louisiana born Spanish Instructor for Grambling State and Southern Universities. She holds Bachelors' degrees in English and Spanish from Howard University, a Masters' degree in Spanish from Virginia Tech, a MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University, and is completing the last year of her Ed.D in Education Leadership from Virginia Commonwealth University. She now resides in Tulum, Mexico where she is building her creative businesses and living in her purpose.

SOREN LIT Producer and Founding Editor: MELODIE J. RODGERS

www.sorenlit.com

Karen Southall Watts- SOREN LIT 2021. FALL ISSUE

Karen Southall Watts currently writes and works in the Pacific Northwest, where she lives with a chronic case of homesickness for friends and family in the South. Her flash fiction and poetry have been featured at Fairfield Scribes, Free Flash Fiction, The Drabble, Sledgehammer Lit, and 101Words. She is also the author of several business books and articles. Reach her at @askkaren on Twitter

SOREN LIT Producer and Founding Editor- Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Debra Bowling- SOREN LIT FALL Issue 2021

Debra Bowling is the author of The Memory of Flight. She grew up in Northeast Alabama with a love of books and writing.                                 After graduating from The University of Alabama with degrees in social work and criminal justice, she worked with issues such as domestic violence, runway teens, child abuse, and other areas while also writing articles and stories, taking photographs, and producing video documentaries.

SOREN LIT Producer and Founding Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Elliott Udoh- SOREN LIT FALL ISSUE  2021 Elliott Udoh, 14, attends The Webb School in Bell Buckle Tennessee. Elliott is a driven individual with a passion for social justice who strives to change the world through a combination of compassion and curiosity through the lens of their most authentic self. Elliott has been named an Atlanta Youth Poet Laureate ambassador for 2021 and hopes to publish a chapbook in the near future.

SOREN LIT Founding Editor and Producer: Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Denise Berry-SOREN LIT FALL ISSUE 2021

Denise Berry currently has 20 years in public health administration and international humanitarian relief fundraising.  She has also worked with CARE USA,  Carter Presidential Center, and the Centers for Disease Control in International Health.  Denise and her family has lived and worked in the US, Germany, and The Netherlands. She loves learning.  Her current focus is deconstructing American history to discover TRUTH: researching WWII and international history. Denise loves writing and languages. She is planning to write a book from the manuscripts her father left.  Most importantly, Denise is working on the legacy she will leave for her granddaughter Amelia and her daughter Sydney; one that incorporates truth, faith, and justice.

SOREN LIT Founding Editor and Producer: Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Laila Sokera Henderson- SOREN LIT Fall Issue 2021

Laila Sokera Henderson is an American poet, writer and actor of Nigerian descent. She is currently a university student, also working as a teaching artist in Atlanta, GA. She has served as one of Atlanta’s Youth Poet Laureate Ambassadors since 2017, and has competed in the international poetry slam competition Brave New Voices. She is currently working on releasing a collection of poems. Stay up to date with her @LailaSokera

www.sorenlit.com

SOREN LIT Founding Editor an podcast host: Melodie J. Rodgers

SOREN LIT Southern Renaissance of women, femmes, and/or non-binary writers exploring the lingering South...

Malika Hadley Freydberg- SOREN LIT Fall Issue 2021

Malika Hadley Freydberg is a multi-medium performance and visual artist based in New Orleans, Louisiana. She’s a four time national slam poet, and has graced the final stage in two of those four competitions. She’s had a fascination with magick and Conjure Women since she read “Mama Day” by Gloria Naylor at age 9, and became determined to become a woman of magick from that day forward. She works as a tour guide, sharing the history and folklore of Southern Louisiana, which has informed most of her work since 2016.Malika is a Sode in Ifa, an Olorisa of Oya upon completion of initiation at Temple Yemoja in Ibadan, Nigeria in 2019, and Priestess of Osun and Obatala in Louisiana Plantation Vodou as of July 2021. She’s been an eclectic Conjurer since she began praying to the moon at 14. She’s read tarot cards for 22 years, and cowries for 8.  She is also a proud member of the choir at First Grace United Methodist Church in Midcity New Orleans; she sees this as the honoring of as many branches of her ancestry as possible.Malika holds a B.A. in Arts Management-Music from Bennett College in Greensboro, NC (HBCU PRIDE!), and a Masters in Music Education, focus in Choral Conducting and Ethnomusicology from Georgia State. She lives in a house with a purple door with her wife and three cats~ the culmination of every love-obsessed queer witch, in her opinion.

SOREN LIT FOUNDING EDITOR & PODCAST HOST: Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Soniah Kamal- Fall Issue 2021, SOREN LIT

Soniah Kamal is an award winning novelist, essayist and public speaker. Her most recent novel, Unmarriageable: Pride & Prejudice in Pakistan (Penguin Random House USA), a post colonial parallel retelling of Jane Austen’s classic, is a Financial Times Readers’ Best Book of 2019, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Shelf Awareness, Library Journal, is a New York Public Library and an NPR Code Switch Summer Read Pick, a Library Reads and People’s Magazine pick, a 2019 ‘Books All Georgians Should Read,’ a 2020 Georgia Author of the Year for Literary Fiction nominee, is shortlisted for the 2020 Townsend Award for Fiction, and hailed as a novel that writes back to Empire, and more.

SOREN LIT Founding editor and podcast host: Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Danyelle Briggs is a junior studying Public Relations and Politics at Oglethorpe University. This summer she is prepping for the publication for her first novel A Darker Hue of You. On campus, she is apart of ten organizations ranging from the cheerleading team to the robotics club. When she’s not writing, you can catch her reading novels and using Pinterest for writing motivation. After graduation next spring, Danyelle plans to attend law school and become a criminal defense lawyer while continuing her dreams of becoming a New York Times bestselling author.

SOREN LIT podcast host and Founding Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Shi Evans is a research/project assistant for the Sports and Race Initiative at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.  She started writing after leaving the FBI to live in South Korea on military orders with her spouse. Shi draws on years of travel experience and meeting interesting people to write captivating stories. She wrote Whiskey Road and will release her second novel this fall. Her publishing company, Georgetown Literary, has also published  the novel Faith for Ava. Shi writes academic articles for publication with the museum as well.                   Shi is an alumna of Savannah State University and has a master of public administration.

SOREN LIT podcast host and Founding Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Ellen Birkett Morris is the author of Lost Girls, a collection of short stories called "a varied set of tales from a skilled practitioner of the short form" by Kirkus Reviews. Her fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, Antioch Review, Notre Dame Review, South Carolina Review, and Santa Fe Literary Review, among other journals. She is a winner of the Bevel Summers Prize for short fiction. Morris is a recipient of a 2013 Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council.

SOREN LIT Editor and Podcast Host: Melodie J Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Tia King (she/they) is a 20 year old musician, creative writer, and teaching artist hailing from Atlanta, Georgia. She is an Atlanta Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador an well as Youth Speaks’ 2018 MC Olympian, as awarded to her by Brave New Voices International Festival and Poetry Slam. Her work has been published by VOX Teen Communications and in Oglethorpe University’s “The Tower.” In her Hometown, Tia continues to amplify inner city youth voices as Atlanta Word Works’ lead facilitator and collective coach.

Guest: Tia King

SORENLIT Podcast Host and Founding Editor- Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Ariana Francesca Thomas- SOREN LIT Summer issue 2021

Ariana Francesca is a Black, mother poet of the Deep South, born and raised in Jonesboro, Georgia. Her work explores the positions, reflections, and interconnectedness of Black motherhood, womanhood, spirit and epic memory. 

With roots as a performance poet, Ariana’s work has been featured at The Kennedy Center, The Verizon Center, The National Black Arts Festival, on America's Next Top Model, The HistoryMakers, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and other international stages, recordings and compilations. Ariana is also a Queens University of Charlotte MFA, Poetry candidate and Watering Hole Poetry Fellow. Her work is featured or forthcoming in/on Netflix’s Strong Black Lead, Burrow Press, Jelly Bucket Magazine, and elsewhere.

SOREN LIT podcast host- Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Courtney LeBlanc- SOREN LIT Summer issue 2021

Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full length collections Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart (Riot in Your Throat, July 2021),  Beautiful & Full of Monsters (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, March 2020), The Violence Within (Flutter Press, 2018, currently out of print), and All in the Family (Bottlecap Press, 2016, currently out of print) , and a Pushcart Prize  and Best of the Net nominee. She has an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning.

SOREN LIT podcast host & Editor- Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

Brooke Dupree is a future memoirist and an English instructor at Greenville Technical College in

Greenville, South Carolina where her passion is teaching entry level reading and composition.

Brooke has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of South Carolina, a Masters in

Writing from Coastal Carolina University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens

University in Charlotte. She enjoys spending time with her family and drinking wine with her

friends. Brooke lives in Easley, South Carolina with her husband and daughter.

Guest: Brooke Dupree- SOREN LIT Summer issue 2021

SOREN LIT podcast host: Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com

SOREN LIT Podcast- Summer issue 2021. www.sorenlit.com

Podcast Host and Founding Editor, Melodie J. Rodgers

Leslie Peterson

Leslie Peterson grew up in rural middle Georgia, and lives there still, working for a local non-profit and trifling occasionally with poetry and stories. When she's not working or writing, she can be found wrangling a plethora of creatures from cats to quail or coaxing her hazard garden to grow...

i, too, collect bones

by Leslie Peterson

if it doesn't fit,

force it into the joint.

but I digress—first,

you must excavate.

golden relics,

samite,

red mud, hydria,

hercules beetle horns,

shrike wings,

harvestmen fangs and legs

that still writhe after death.

sweep it all away

and dig up the bones

of your mothers.

the teeth of a woman

who stood before the mastodon,

spear in hand,

screaming hoarse triumphs.

the humerus of she

who stood with sword of iron

between intruder and heir,

trembling in fear.

the ossicles that listened

on the edge of the bluff

to the wild ocean roar

and dove into the roiling foam

like a bird of prey

and came up for salty air—

despite

despite

despite

—and did it with a laugh,

for spite.

do not let them rest.

build yourself from their spines and

skint-bare knuckles, and,

let them haunt you.

SOREN LIT Podcast- Episode #3

Podcast Host & Founding Editor, Melodie J. Rodgers

Aanika Eragam - Summer Issue 2021

Aanika Eragam is a rising senior at Milton High School in Milton, Georgia. She is the 2021 Atlanta Youth Poet Laureate, and her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Bennington College, and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has been published in Teen Vogue and Atlanta Magazine, among others. Outside of writing, she is passionate about history and politics.

ON HOME (OR THE LACK THEREOF) by Aanika Eragam

Here,

I do not know who I am.

An American, I proclaim,

In the dry, carpet fiber syllables

Falling like maple leaves from

My accentless tongue.

It’s scary carrying culture in this country.

I remember the time I wore a kurta

To school and got teased mercilessly

By incarnadine children who bottled

Venom in their veins and ice in their eyes.

Last month, another set of snake tongues yelled

“Fuck Indians!” while my mother and I

crossed the street. To them, our fear was funny.

To them, our fear is always funny. I think it’s funny

how quickly this melting pot reached its boiling point.

I think it’s funny how quickly I learned to hide my dal rice

and starve silently at lunch instead. Mother would hold up my

Untouched lunchbox with shaking hands, fury

Rolling off her in heat waves, ask me if

We should leave, go back, her eyes pooling

Over like the village well, fists grasping

At my arms like chipped rocks.

No, I would say,

This is home.

But the words still felt

Stale on my tongue.

There,

Everyone tells me who to be.

Grandmother balks at my hairy knees

and potato-skin arms,

Tells me to cover up, gives me a long-sleeved

kurta and leggings suited for hibernation,

As if the raging heat only applies to the boys,

Who choke on dust and smog

Untangling the village labyrinth.

Girls in two braids even like rice crops

invite me to play.

They ask me what it's like in America.

They laugh each time I attempt to speak in our mother tongue,

and I realize to them, our language is more sacred

than the air we breathe.

I feel ashamed. I feel like a butcher

flattening each syllable to make it palatable.

I feel that there, too, I am a spectacle.

There too, I only fit in when my mouth is shut.

But these girls, they smile like me,

and I want them to want me.

The next day, Mother

Packs up the tattered suitcase

Smelling of jalebi and jaggery.

I tell her I want to see the girls again and she

says no, we are leaving soon anyway.

I don’t want to leave, I tell her,

This is home.

But the crows chuckle from

The telephone line and the

Thunder cracks out a roar.

In the end,

America tells me I’m Indian

And India tells me I’m American

And when I try to be both I

Find out that I am neither,

Too foreign to be native so I

Must only be alive in the ocean-clad

Expanse between two countries,

My mother’s womb

My only home.

SOREN LIT Summer Issue 2021: www.sorenlit.com

SOREN LIT Podcast Host and Founding Editor, Melodie J. Rodgers

Episode#1- Shanna Greene Benjamin 

Shanna Greene Benjamin is a biographer and scholar who studies the literature, lives, and archives of Black women. Dr. Benjamin earned her Ph.D. in English and M.A. in Afro-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; she received a B.A. in English from Johnson C. Smith University—a historically Black college in Charlotte, North Carolina—where she was class valedictorian. A one-time professor and associate dean at Grinnell College and the former director of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program there, Dr. Benjamin is a member of the 2015-2016 HERS class—a program administered by the Higher Education Resource Service that develops women leaders in higher education—and a 2018 graduate of the Council of Independent Colleges' Senior Leadership Academy.

Dr. Benjamin has published on African American literature and Black women's intellectual history in African American Review, MELUS, a/b: Auto/Biography, Studies in American Fiction, and PMLA. Her book, Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay, is forthcoming from UNC Press (April 12). Through her coaching and consulting firm, FireStarter, and her First Book at Mid-Career Institute, Dr. Benjamin lives out her passion for giving post-tenure faculty the strategies and support they need to achieve professional goals that reflect personal, not institutional, priorities. A Mellon Mays undergraduate fellow who now facilitates Social Science Research Council writing retreats for MMUF dissertators and serves on the UNCF/Mellon Board of Advisors, Dr. Benjamin is an independent scholar who lives with her family in Charlotte, North Carolina.