Poet, Zinester, Writer
Xalli (shawl-lee) is a young butch, QTPOC and Disabled LA-based zinester and poet. Zie has been writing from a young age– mostly for fun at first, from the long, winding picture books of a preschooler to the more emo forever-incomplete novels of hir middle school years– but now sees storytelling as a form of resistance and community-building. Zie aims to embody that in all of hir work.
As a high schooler, zie attended California School of the Arts – San Gabriel Valley for Creative Writing to help hir find the tools to expand their work as a writer. Since then, zie has gone on to publish hir work in Drifter Zine, Transmuted, LBRNTH, Verve Poetry Press, and Polyphony Lit among others, and is forthcoming in both Death Rattle Literary’s Oroboro Vol. 11 and
Shadowbanned Magazine. Zie also served as Editor-in-Chief of hir high school’s literary magazine, Sugar Pine Literary, and worked as an Executive Editor and Junior Board member for Polyphony Lit. In the fall, zie will be attending UCLA to pursue a BA in Labor Studies, with hopes of becoming an investigative journalist.
In hir daily life, Xalli puts hir energy into a wide range of interests, but especially enjoys zines, reading & writing, folk punk music, bass guitar, photography, horror movies, and mutual aid. You can find hir on Instagram @saintpsyop and on hir website, tehuan.neocities.org.