Xiaole Zhan, Margo Montes de Oca and J. A. Vili

Xiaole Zhan (詹小乐 ) is a Chinese-New Zealand writer and composer based in Naarm. They are the

recipient of the 2024 Kat Muscat Fellowship. Awards include the Kill Your Darlings Creative Non-Fiction Essay Prize and the Charles Brasch Young Writers' Essay Competition. Their work has appeared in Island, The Suburban Review, Landfall, Cordite Poetry Review, Going Down Swinging, Starling and Sweet Mammalian. Their name in Chinese is 小乐 and means 'Little Happy' but can also be read as 'Little Music'. Margo Montes de Oca is a poet and researcher of Mexican and Pākehā descent living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She holds degrees in English literature and in ecology and biodiversity. She was a 2024 Starling writer-in-residence at the New Zealand Young Writers Festival, and her poetry has been published in issues of Starling, Sweet Mammalian, bad apple, Minarets and Mayhem Literary Journal. J. A. Vili is an Auckland-based poet of Samoan descent whose poetry often advocates for suicide prevention and mental illness support. He dedicates poems to friends and to his children who lost their mother at ayoung

age. Vili holds a bachelor of creative writing. His poems have appeared in Ika journal and Katuivei: Contemporary Pasifika Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand (Massey University Press, 2024).