Featured Title & Author
Smoke Girl
Smoke Girl is a study in loss: of body, safety, and identity. It interrogates the simultaneous invisibility and hypervisibility of fat, Black, femme bodies. Instead of forgetting, Simone Person breaks the silences and shame embedded in the murky aftermath of sexual assault, employing the voices of victim, perpetrator, and spectator throughout.
Simone Person
Simone Person grew up in small Michigan towns and Toledo, Ohio. She is a Pink Door Women’s Writing Retreat 2018 Fellow and author of Dislocate, the prose winner of Honeysuckle Press’s 2017 Chapbook Contest. She is currently an MFA/MA in Fiction and African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University. Her work has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Yemassee, Gigantic Sequins, and others. Find out more at simoneperson.com and follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @princxporkchop.
Featured Poem
Proud Flesh
from Diode Poetry Journal 13.2
2020 Sundress Publications Best of the Net Finalist
My rapist is a good boy.
Kisses his mama. Soaks her in salts
and places her up so high
no man but him can touch her.
My rapist wants
to love but don’t know how.
Ends up with all the wrong girls.
Can’t seem to find one that’s not crazy.
My rapist talks real clean.
Always has the right answers.
He built a whole world
where I was unbruised and had no name.
My rapist loves women.
The ones he can fit ripe
under his thumb.
My rapist smiles like the moon.
Makes you drunk from the shine.
Calls it your fault.
Simone Person
Simone Person is a Pink Door fellow and became Prose Editor at Honeysuckle Press in 2018. She is the author of Dislocate, the fiction winner of the 2017 Honeysuckle Press Chapbook Contest, and Smoke Girl, the poetry winner of the 2018 Diode Editions Chapbook Contest. Simone grew up in Michigan and Toledo, Ohio and is a dual MFA/MA in Fiction and African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University. She can be found at simoneperson.com and on Twitter and Instagram at @princxporkchop.
Simone Person is a 2020 Sundress Publications Best of the Net Finalist for "Proud Flesh." Read more from the 2020 Diode Best of the Net nominees here.
Featured Organization
Neighborhood Nerd Squad
"Nerd Squad's mission is to bring out the book-based super powers in all students. From day one, we want all students to know they have super powers that get stronger when they exercise the power of their brilliant, young minds."
Diode Editions has been fortunate to be able to donate to Nerd Squad and we hope that you might consider donating as well, if able.
