Welcome to Writers Resist Winter 2025-26 Issue

It’s been, hmm . . . a year.

Enough said. Let’s read some creative resistance instead. To get you all started, we’re excited to announce publications by two of our editors.

Poetry Editor Candice Louisa Daquin’s novel, The Cruelty, was released by Flowersong Press in November 2025.

Cover The Cruelty

The Cruelty focuses on the legacy of abuse. What learned behaviors from extreme abuse and mental illness can set individuals up to be controlled and manipulated to unimaginable levels. Daquin’s debut novel highlights connections between sexual abuse, sadism, extreme pornography and domestic violence. This fictional story posits the question: What if you lost everything and someone controlled your entire existence, how would you survive?

Available from the publisher, Bookshop.org, your independent bookseller, and the evil one.

Poetry Editor Debbie Hall’s collection of poems, Mixtape: Marginal State, was released by The Poetry Box in December 2025.

Cover art of Mixtape: Marginal States

The poems in Mixtape: Marginal States bear witness to members of our human family who exist just outside the mainstream of society. In these portrayals, we see individuals struggling with homelessness, those uprooted from their native countries, asylum seekers, and others dealing with altered or challenging psychological states—states that anyone of us might occupy at some time in our lives. The hope of bearing witness is to foster compassion and inclusion, human needs shared by all.

Available from the publisher, Bookshop.org, your independent bookseller, and the evil one.


Now, we are delighted to present the following writers and artists’ representations of resistance—join them for a virtual reading of this issue on Saturday 31 January 2026 at 5:00 pm PACIFIC. Email WritersResist@gmail.com for the link.

Self-Congratulation by M. M. Adjarian

A One-Way Correspondence with Fruit by Christine Strickland

Two Poems by Nnadi Samuel

Anarchists Unite by Kirsty Nottage

Skin by Frances Koziar

Bone China by Robert L. Reece

Graffiti Artists by Andrea L. Fry

Photograph and essay by Nina Pak

I visited Gaza in my sleep by Sophia Carroll

What Did You Wish For? by Myna Chang

Secret Light by Marianne Xenos

I’m Not Happy, the Therapy Client Says by Suzanne O’Connell

Don’t Talk About It by J.L. Scott

Incubator by Bethany Bruno

The Price of Standing Still by Melissa Moschitto

Louder then Silence by Rabia Akhtar

Burn This Book by Odette Kelada


Photograph by K-B Gressitt ©2025


Call for Submissions

Writers Resist is seeking poetry, fiction, narrative nonfiction, and digital images for a special March 2024 issue.

Guest edited by former Writers Resist editor DW McKinney, “Amplified Voices” will honor creative works by writers and artists affected by violent conflict around the globe.

Deadline: February 8, 2024

Please read our Amplified Voices submission guidelines.