It hits me: oh my God, I’ve slept so many years

Sophia Parnok is a queer Russian-Jewish poet who lived from 1885 to 1993. At a time when Stalin’s government termed homosexuality a disease, Parnok wrote openly of her romantic relationships with women, including the poet Marina Tsvetaeva. Parnok’s works remained censored until 1979, when an edition of her collected poems was published in the United States. Despite the strength of her work and her influence on the poetry of her contemporaries (Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Pasternak, Mandelstam, etc.), Parnok remains relatively unread and unknown.

Rainie Oet is a queer nonbinary writer and game designer. They are the author of Porcupine in Freefall (2019), Inside Ball Lightning (2020), and Glorious Veils of Diane (2021). They received an MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University in 2019. Read more at rainieoet.com.