Meet Our New Authors
Diode Authors with Books & Chapbooks Forthcoming in 2025
Greetings from Diode!
We are thrilled to introduce you to the incredible voices joining our press as winners of the Diode Editions 2024 Book and Chapbook Contests! We look forward to sharing new poetry from five new Diode authors in 2025: Rosa Castellano, Hind Shoufani, Mandy Shunnarah, Samaa Abdurraqib and Mack Rogers. Thank you for being a vital part of our literary community and sharing the joy of reading and creating together.
Best regards,
The Diode Team
Rosa Castellano
All Is The Telling (2025)
Originally from Tampa, Fl, Rosa Castellano is a poet and teacher living in Richmond, VA. A finalist for Cave Canem’s Starshine and Clay Fellowship, and co-founder of the RVA Poetry Fest, her work can be found or is forth coming from RHINO Poetry, Diode, Passages North, Nimrod, The Ninth Letter, and Poetry Northwest among others.
Hind Shoufani
Dark Star Requiem In The Key Of Nova (2025)
Hind Shoufani is an Oscar-nominated/BAFTA-winning Palestinian American filmmaker, writer, & poet who grew up all over the Arab world, & now calls Brooklyn home. She's a New York University filmmaking MFA, Fulbright scholarship awardee, & the recipient of an International Writing Program residency with the University of Iowa. Hind is the editor of two anthologies of literary essays, poetry, & photography, Nowhere Near A Damn Rainbow (xanadu*, 2012, Lebanon) & Uncommon Dubai (Uncommon, ltd., 2014). Her writing is published or forthcoming in the anthologies Heaven Looks Like Us (Haymarket Books, 2025), We Call to the Eye & the Night (Persea Books, 2023), Arab Women Voice New Realities (Turning Point Press, 2017) & the Michigan Quarterly Review, Cordite, among others. She's the contributing editor of the political journal Discontent & has published creative essays, prose & poetry in international journals, magazines & anthologies. Hind worked as a director, producer & editor of documentaries for over 25 years globally. She's also curated & hosted poetry/spoken word communal events for over 15 years & is currently attempting a Coming-Of-Middle-Age hybrid-genre lust & politics memoir, her second feature film, & some semblance of purpose & meaning in the zeitgeist.
Mandy Shunnarah
We Had Mansions: Poems (2025)
Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is an Alabama-born Appalachian and Palestinian-American writer who calls Columbus, Ohio, home. Their essays, poetry, and short stories have been published in The New York Times, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, and others. They are the winner of the Porter House Review 2024 Editor’s Prize in Poetry and are supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. Their first book, Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland, was released in July 2024 from Belt Publishing, and their second book, a poetry collection titled We Had Mansions, is forthcoming from Diode Editions in 2025. Read more at mandyshunnarah.com.
Samaa Abdurraqib
Towards A Retreat (2025)
Samaa Abdurraqib, PhD, lives, writes, and loves in Wabanaki Territory. She is the editor of From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast (2023). Her poetry has appeared in Cider Press Review, Obsidian, Big Wing Review, and in the edited collection Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic (2022). Samaa is a certified Maine Master Naturalist. She is always listening for birdsong.
Mack Rogers
Hindsight (2025)
Mack Rogers is a queer Black writer whose work appears in Foglifter, Glass, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. Mack is a poetry reader for Split Lip Magazine, staff critic for Pencilhouse, and poetry editor for Zero Readers Magazine. He has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and the Pushcart Prize. He lives with his partner and their three cats in Raleigh, NC.