Poetry: Cai Sherley, Charlie Lou Evans, Kaitlin Hsu 徐欣, and Toni Garcia-Butler

Award-winning poetry by established and emerging poets throughout the summer.

Cai Sherley (he/him) is a Black trans poet-educator with roots in Boston, MA. Cai is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, with work published or forthcoming in Best New Poets, swamp pink, Peach Mag, and Tupelo, as well as the anthology I Feel Nothing Like Good: Poets Against Genocide from Taylor & Co Books. His work centers Black transmasculine life, past and present, in the United States, and has found homes at The Watering Hole, Brooklyn Poets, Tin House, LAMBDA, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Cai is a member of the Crossroads Writers Collective and Trans Corner Poets, and the proud stepfather of two sphinxes. He is the author of Out of Yearning, selected by Kay Ulanday Barrett as part of SRP’s 2026 Bridges Series.

Charlie Lou Evans (he/they) grew up in a small town in New Jersey, went to college at Virginia Tech, spent two summers thru-hiking the east and west coast, and now lives in Bellingham, Washington. His first chapbook, Gay Sex, celebrates the liberating power of queer love and was released by Sibling Rivalry Press this June. He explores gender and sexuality through poetry and finds it most fulfilling when others see themselves in their work.

JC Andrews (she/her) is a lesbian poet from Springfield, Arkansas. Her work can be found in Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review, Waxwing, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, Of an Ilk, was a finalist for the 2024 National Poetry Series and won the 2026 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. It will be published with Yale University Press in April 2027. Her chapbook, Trillion Amber Trumpets, was published with Sibling Rivalry Press in April 2026 as part of the Arkansas Queer Poet Series.

Kaitlin Hsu 徐欣 (she/her/她) is a queer Taiwanese poet who believes in a free Palestine. A 2025 Lambda Literary Fellow and 2024 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers Workshop, she has also received support from Brooklyn Poets, genARTS Silicon Valley, the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, and more. She is the author of the chapbook Paper Dolls (Sibling Rivalry Press), selected by Kay Ulanday Barrett as part of SRP’s 2026 Bridges Series. Her work can be found most recently in A Public Space, Poet Lore, and Peach Mag. She currently works at Kaya Press as an associate editor and development coordinator.

Toni Garcia-Butler (he/they) is a poet and community artist-educator rooted in Little Rock, Arkansas. He approaches his craft as a memory keeper, believing that poets and artists can be creative cultural archivists. His writing and art center the lived experiences of his people: Black, Fil-am, southern, trans/queer, and everyone existing within the intersections. As a facilitator, Toni encourages folks to empower themselves through DIY publishing/zinemaking, personal narrative, and creative joy. In 2025, Toni was named Best Poet in Arkansas by the Arkansas Times. His chapbook, D I Y Body, was published with Sibling Rivalry Press in June 2026 as part of the Arkansas Queer Poet Series.

Hosted by:
Bryan Borland is the founding publisher of Sibling Rivalry Press and founding editor of Assaracus: A Journal of Gay and Queer Poetry. He is the author of multiple poetry collections, including Brotherful, a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, and DIG, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry and Stonewall Honor Book as honored by the American Library Association. His most recent book is Listen, Kid: Selected and New Poems (2010-2026).

Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, essayist, and cultural strategist. Barrett is a 2024 Disabled Futures fellow awarded by The Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and United States Artists. They are the winner of the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, a winner of the 2022 Next Book Residency with Tin House, a James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell, residencies at Baldwin for the Arts, and Millay Arts awarded by Lambda Literary. Their second book, More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award by the American Library Association and was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. They have featured at the United Nations, Lincoln Center, Hemispheric Institute, The Whitney, MoMA, Symphony Space, the Ford Foundation, Brooklyn Museum, Princeton, Columbia, Yale, Manchester PRIDE, Sesame Street, & more.