meet the team:

Amanda Pendley is a twenty-three year old writer from Kansas City currently earning her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. Her writing centers around themes of family, queerness, grief, and disability. She has worked on over ten mastheads over the last few years and is thrilled to continue her literary career as a Co-Managing Editor for Lumina. You will often find her rewatching 2000s rom coms, yearning for Trader Joe’s wine, and taking every personality test under the sun.

Catalina Irigoyen is an Argentinian nonfiction writer and co-Managing Editor for Lumina. She has a deep appreciation for the editorial process and is excited to bring the revival of this publication to fruition. Having lived in six different countries, she often finds herself thinking about belonging/not belonging, fragmentation, and memory — all themes that are featured in her work. She currently resides in New York, where she is pursuing her MFA in Writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and taking every opportunity possible to enjoy a warm cup of tea, bake gluten-free scones, and listen to old bops.

(she/her) is a poet from Texas now living in New York. When she's not writing or reading, you can find her rock climbing or hanging out with her best friends (and her cat Carrots).

Adeline Wong (she/her) is a web developer for Lumina, currently pursuing an MFA in Speculative Fiction at Sarah Lawrence College. She is a lover of magic in all its forms.

(she / they) is a second year Fiction student in Sarah Lawrence's MFA program. Holly's focus in fiction is on liminal spaces created by the collision of the real and the unreal, the impossible and the mundane. A transgender writer, she cares deeply about supporting work from writers of all populations and backgrounds -- the weirder the work, the better. In her free time Holly can be found playing too much Elden Ring for her own good.

Joe Sullivan is a fiction writer from Queens, New York. He has a Bachelors in English and American Studies from Fordham University. In polite company, he’d tell you about his love for Flannery O’Connor and Paul Auster. In private, he’ll admit that he mostly just reads comic books.

Claire is a writer from the Midwest. Before moving to New York in 2021, she worked in Publicity & Operations at Coffee House Press, and is currently the Marketing Coordinator at Greenlight Bookstore.

Tori Walters is a second-year MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College for Creative Nonfiction with no money and no prospects; she's already a burden to her parents and she is frightened about the post-MFA life—so don't judge her, don't you dare judge her! Her favorite book at the moment is The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch. She plays ultimate frisbee, was in the top 1% of Bad Bunny listeners in 2022, and binges clips of Law and Order: SVU on Facebook. She has been published in Helen: A Literary Magazine and the Penultimate Peanut.

Abigail Lopez is a Mexican-American writer, editor, and translator who loves to indulge in the musicality of language and thrives at the borders of cultures. You can find her in her attic spinning her inklings into poems.

tangie mitchell is a poet and collage artist from Fayetteville, North Carolina. Writing about Black girlhood and southern, working-class life, her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, Aunt Chloe: A Journal of Artful Candor, Exposition Review, and more. A Watering Hole Poetry Fellow, she lives in Harlem with her growing collection of 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s soul/funk/r&b memorabilia.

Rita M. Pérez-Padilla (they/any pronouns) is a queer Puerto Rican speculative fiction writer who loves all things otherworldly. After finishing a Master’s thesis on the use of Klingon in the Spanish dub of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Rita moved to New York to pursue an MFA at Sarah Lawrence. Rita is thrilled to cultivate an expansive view of genre work as one of Lumina's two speculative fiction editors.

Sarah Jane gravitates towards stories that break genre boundaries and upend expectations. She is a first-year MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College and holds an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies from NYU and a BA in English from Bowdoin College. She served as Editor-in-Chief of Caustic Frolic. The only thing she loves more than reading is her poodle Theo.

(she/her) is from Southeastern Kentucky. She is afraid of horses.

Kate Peters lived in the Pacific Northwest before moving to New York City in 2017. She has worked as a copywriter and editor for online and print publications and is currently a student in the MFA in Writing program at Sarah Lawrence College.

Kayla is the copyeditor for Lumina and an MFA candidate for Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She received her bachelor from the University of Illinois at Springfield with a double major in English and Communications. Kayla has been published in Spellbinder and the Alchemist Review. She has a strong interest in unconventional storytelling, whether that be structural, through point of view, or otherwise pushing the boundaries of the page. Her favorite authors include Sofia Samatar, Carmen Maria Machado, Renee Gladman, and whoever she is currently reading (at the time of this writing, it’s Helen Oyeyemi). When she isn’t writing, Kayla can be found panicking about thesis or drinking her fourth cup of coffee pretending to feel zen.

(they/she/he) is an Indian poet and writer whose work primarily focuses on themes of queerness, mental health, family and community. They love to think about the fluidity of language and are constantly experimenting with form in their writing. Currently, they are an MFA in Fiction candidate at Sarah Lawrence College, and spend their days reading fanfiction and listening to BTS' entire discography (usually at the same time)

Melissa Dittrich is a writer and educator from Santa Cruz, CA, currently living in Brooklyn. She is an MFA in Creative Writing candidate at Sarah Lawrence College and can be found online @melissedittrich.