SIBLING RIVALRY PRESS
ARKANSAS QUEER
POET SERIES
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MISSION
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Sibling Rivalry Press is proud to host the Arkansas Queer Poet Series. The mission of the Arkansas Queer Poet Series is to highlight and honor LGBTQ poets with a connection to our home state of Arkansas.
AQPS #1: OTHERED by RANDI M. ROMO
RANDI M. ROMO (she/her) has a voice that reaches into multiple segments of who we are as humans, with an emphasis on queer. As a working-class Mexican-American, Southerner, former farmworker, organizer/activist, female, parent, grandparent, elder, and survivor, she has walked among and between many communities. Romo was instrumental in saving the lives of many young members of the Arkansas LGBTQ community through her tireless work with the Center for Artistic Revolution. Othered, her first book, was selected by the American Library Association as a top-five book in poetry/fiction for 2018 and a top-ten book of 2018 overall in its annual Over the Rainbow list of Recommended LGBTQ Reading.
AQPS #2: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? by KARL TIERNEY​
​​KARL TIERNEY (he/him) was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1956 and grew up in Connecticut and Louisiana. He received a Bachelor's Degree in English from Emory University in 1980 and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas in 1983. That same year, he moved to San Francisco where he dedicated himself to poetry. He was twice a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award, a finalist for the National Poetry Series, and a 1992 fellow at Yaddo. Though unpublished in book form during his lifetime, his poems appeared in many of the best literary magazines of the period, including Berkeley Poetry Review, American Poetry Review, and Exquisite Corpse. He published more than 50 poems in magazines and anthologies before his death. In December of 1994 he became sick with AIDS and took his own life in October of 1995. He was 39 years old.
​AQPS #3: JC ANDREWS = COMING in 2026! ​
​JC ANDREWS (she/her) is a lesbian poet from Springfield, Arkansas, with an interest in poems that work as an un-ing, poems that hold questions as a form of caretaking. Her work can be found in Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review, Salt Hill Journal, and elsewhere. Most recently, her manuscript, Of an Ilk, was a finalist for the 2024 National Poetry Series, and her poem, “Gargoyle,” was the first runner-up of the Palette Poetry 2024 Sappho Prize for Women Poets, judged by Megan Fernandes. She holds a B.A. in English-Creative Writing from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, an MFA from Indiana University, and is currently a student and teacher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For more about JC, visit jcandrews.com.
AQPS #4: TONI GARCIA-BUTLER = COMING in 2026!
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​TONI GARCIA BUTLER (he/they) is a poet, community artist, and DIY pretty boy of many names from Little Rock, Arkansas. He believes artists play a unique role as cultural historians. Named by the Arkansas Times as Arkansas's Best Poet of 2025, Toni strives to capture the intricacies of lived experiences and connect with others. His work centers his people: Black, Filipino, southern, queer, and everyone existing within their intersections. Find Toni’s work published in Closet Cases: Queers on What We Wear (2020, published under former name), {new words press}, beestung mag, and several independently published and self-made zines. You can also find them at www.tgbpoetry.com.
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