About Koss
Koss (she, them, they) is a queer, mixed-race poet, writer, artist, and asemic writer with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their debut chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect, a Diode ’23 contest winner, was released in October, ’24 from Diode Editions. Their poetry, flash, visual poetry, and photography has been published widely in journals including Spillway, Cincinnati Review (miCro), Michigan Quarterly (Mixtapes), Schuylkill Valley, Five Points, Action, Spectacle, diode poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, The San Pedro River Review, Spoon River Review, Permafrost, Midway Journal, Sage Cigarettes, Beaver Mag, Petrichor, Outlook Springs, Lunch Ticket, Prelude Magazine, Mom Egg Review, Variant Lit, MoonPark Review, Chiron Review, Red Ogre Review, Harpy Hybrid, Amethyst Review, Rogue Agent, Bending Genres, Gone Lawn, Flash Boulevard, Ran Off with the Star Bassoon, and many other journals (see recent publications here).
Anthologies include Get Bent, Punk, Beyond the Frame, Bone Milk II, Dead of Winter III, Secrets in the Garden, Querencia’s Winter ’24 Anthology, Best Small Fiction 2020, Fifth Wheel Press’s ’24 Anthology, and Thin Places and Sacred Spaces. They were also a recipient of a 2024 Granta Bursary for memoir writing and hope to someday have an agent and publish a book.
Koss’s MoonPark publication, “The Short Lives of Wombats” was longlisted for Wigleaf’s Top 50 in ’24 and asemic work, “Love Song for Queers Who Suicided,” published in Sage Cigarettes, was a finalist for ’24 BoTN. Over the last several years, they received many BoTN and a couple of Pushcart nominations in multiple genres: poetry, fiction, CNF, art, and photography. The latest was a Pushcart nomination from Ran Off With the Star Bassoon which was also a finalist for Wigleaf Top 50 ’25, and a 2025 Best Small Fictions nomination from Midway Journal for a flash fiction piece. See their ’24 BoTN page for details from this year’s nominations. They won the 2021 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry award with “My Therapist Sez,” first published in diode poetry, and their contest-winning chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect has been shortlisted for the Lambda Lesbian Poetry Award (winner will be announced in October ’25).
Koss also does web design, content strategy, copy writing, content creation and curation, and organic marketing for money. They’re available for consultations for websites, SEO (search engine optimization), graphic design, book covers, and art feedback/portfolio consultations. In addition to professional experience and education, they have taught drawing, design, graphics, and typography at the college level. If you need an author, ‘zine, or press site, feel free to contact them on social for work (they have a degree in web design). See their web services page for more details.