Twice a year TIMBER publishes a selection of prose, poetry, and visual text-work, along with rolling interviews and reviews with contemporary writers and artists. We believe in taking raw materials and building something beyond the expected.
Run by the MFA candidates out of the University of Colorado-Boulder, we value work which pushes against boundaries: genre-bend, build or break form, confront the rules and voices of the canon. If you’re not flirting with failure or writing risky, it’s probably not for us.
That said, experimental does not mean: intellectually elitist, inaccessible, or haphazard. Disorientation to the point of estrangement does not equal quality. Obtuse is not necessarily experimental.
For inquiries, contact our editors at:
timberjournal @ gmail . com
TIMBER stands in solidarity with anti-racist, abolitionist movements across the nation.
As a journal of experimental writing, we are aware that literary experimentation has historically been overwhelmed by white voices, despite incredible experimental works from writers of color. TIMBER is furthering our commitment to navigating beyond a Western-European experimental history toward a more robust practice of experimentation which challenges white, colonial grammars and paradigms. We recognize our pressing responsibility to reevaluate TIMBER’s role in maintaining the status quo, and to implement new approaches to foster greater diversity in our readers, writers, and staff. It is vital we more actively seek out, encourage, and otherwise support underrepresented and marginalized writers.
While we continue working on serious, sustained efforts to make TIMBER the diverse, anti-racist journal of experimentation it should be, we also want to extend gratitude to past and current editors who have worked to resist complacency despite institutional and historic barriers.
Still, we could have done much more, and we are committed to active, ongoing improvement.
Black Lives Matter.
Staff
Editor-in-Chief:
Lux Kickapoo-Johnson
Lux Kickapoo-Johnson is a writer from Oklahoma who is always writing about Oklahoma. She graduated from Oklahoma State University with a degree in English Literature and is currently an MFA Fiction Candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her writing explores land, ancestry, monsters, hauntings, and healings. Her work appears in Quarter Press, Strip Mall Magazine, The Ana and Triptych. When she’s not writing she’s making art out of trash and hiking at high elevations.
Prose Editor:
Alisa Caira
Alisa Caira is a MFA candidate in Fiction at the University of Colorado, Boulder. They were born and raised in Massachusetts. You can find their work in The Round, Catalyst, V1, The Indy, and more. They are currently working on a short story collection about people's relationships with their collections. When they aren't writing, you can find them antiquing, bookbinding, or experimenting with material forms.
Prose Editor:
Daniella Castillo Vasquez
Daniella Castillo Vasquez is a fiction writer and multimedia storyteller based in Boulder, Colorado, originally from Santo Domingo. Having lived in the Dominican Republic for most of her life, her work typically explores ties of culture, memory, and history. She writes about relationships familiar, romantic, and platonic, with Dominican, folklore, superstition, tradition, and storytelling practices as central parts of the narrative. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing, Fiction from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her work has appeared in DWA’s Palabras del Alma and Callaloo.
Poetry Editor:
Maggie Rahilly
Maggie Rahilly is a writer from South Hadley, Massachusetts. She is a graduate of the University of Vermont’s Patrick Leahey Honors College and an MFA Candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she teaches creative writing. Her work has been featured in Oesa Arts Magazine and her play, Us Unparadised, made its Brooklyn debut in Summer 2021 with Next Life Theatre Company.
Poetry Editor:
Rosaline Nizam
Rosaline Nizam is a Bengali Transfeminine poet who writes poetry exploring the complexities of queer experience within the circumstances of Islamophobia and anti-queer sentiments being at the forefront of current politics. She approaches this tension with a poetics of vulnerable tellings and stressed conceits. Rosaline is the winner of the Charles G Weekes Scholarship from Queens College, a magna cum laude English Degree and is currently studying at the University of Colorado Boulder in pursuit of an MFA in Creative Writing.
TIMBER Talks Editor:
Bailey Lambeth
Bailey Lambeth is a poet from Shreveport, Louisiana. She is currently an MFA Candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her writing comes from a place of grief in never fully understanding anything and the joy of continuing to look. She enjoys engaging with the intricacies of language through leaping non-sequiturs and concrete images. This is probably also why Talking Heads is her favorite band.
TIMBER Readers:
Poetry: Maggie Rahilly, Rosaline Nizam, Bailey Lambeth, Grace Applegate, Gillian Kimmel
Prose: Alisa Caira, Daniella Castillo Vasquez, Lux Kickapoo-Johnson, Kate Kemp, Townes Bakke