Started in 1974, Bombay Gin Literary Journal is the flagship publication of Kavyayantra Press, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics publishing arm. The journal began shortly after the commitment to the “100 year project” was made—co-founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman—at Naropa University. Edited by department faculty and students, Bombay Gin Literary Journal publishes innovative poetry, prose, and hybrid texts as well as art, translations, and interviews. Emerging from the “Outrider” or left-hand lineage, which operates outside the cultural mainstream, Bombay Gin Literary Journal honors a heritage of powerful scholarship and counter-poetics through the publication of work that challenges the boundaries of language, form, and genre.
Each issue includes a folio of work from that year’s Summer Writing Program and a talk or lecture transcribed from the Naropa Audio Archives. Called “one of the three most important literary audio collections in America” by The New York Times, the Archives are comprised of approximately six thousand hours of audio tapes documenting classes, performances, workshops and lectures conducted at Naropa by many of the leading figures of the U.S. literary avant-garde. The collection represents several generations of artists who have contributed to aesthetic and cultural change in the postmodern era.
Bombay Gin Editors 2023-2024
Bo Hwang is an artist and writer working in poetry, movement and things so mundane nothing happens and that’s narrative. Her short fiction can be found at Wildness and the Poetry Project. She grew up in Indonesia, lived in Los Angeles and currently is based in Colorado where she is the 2022 Anselm Hollo Fellow at the Jack Kerouac School. She was previously a 2022 Periplus Fellow.
Bobby Kelleher is a first-year MFA candidadte at the Jack Kerouac School. He works as a graduate assistant in the Naropa Writing Center. Bobby spent the past two years as a high school English teacher in Newport News, VA and is originally from Reston, VA. You can find him enjoying long walks on the Cherry Creek Trail and late-night drives. Currently, Bobby is working on a book of poetry exploring the phrase “live by the sword, die by the sword” and a novel about an AI that becomes President of the United States.
Brian Alarcon is a Colombian-American poet, performance and visual artist from Queens, New York, currently an Allen Ginsberg fellow at the Jack Kerouac School. His poetry crosses the borders between mediums and industries, having performed at art galleries, for media clients such as Versace and Drome Magazine, non-profits like the Queer | Art Foundation and City Artists Corps, and so on.
Charlotte Sachs (or Charlie), she/her, is a first-year MFA student at JKS and an editor for Bombay Gin Literary Journal. She enjoys working at the Naropa Writing Center and reading writers’ work at all stages of their processes. Charlie is interested in the revision of old mythologies, reimagining archetypes, and the reclamation of symbols frequently used in popular folklore. During her BA&Sc degree, she studied narrative, gender studies, queer theory, and fairytales. She spent the last six years up in rainy British Columbia and is adjusting to the weather in Colorado. Poetry and prose that treats the macabre with tenderness make her toes curl.
Frank Ortega has been awarded residency fellowships at MacDowell, Edward F. Albee Foundation, Jentel Foundation, Karolyi Foundation (France), Dorland Mountain Arts, Millay Arts, The Studios of Key West, a Poetry Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Performance Grant from Poets & Writers, Inc., Second Place in The Fish Short Memoir Prize-Ireland, Commendation Winner from The Poetry Society of the United Kingdom, Finalist for Mississippi Review Prize, Merit Award in Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition, and fellowships to attend Naropa University, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the annual Frost Place Poetry Conference.
Huck Shine is an aspiring writer and performer of poetry. He is the founder of DarkLeaf Publicatio (darkleaf.org), a Colorado based publishing company. Huck is, as a writer and a publisher, focused on shedding much needed light into the least seen or spoken (marginalized) aspects of humanity – holding close to a spiritual aesthetic of choosing to seek beauty ~even and maybe especially~ inside the encroaching darkness of this capitalocene apocalypse. Currently, he is in his last year of the undergraduate program at the Jack Kerouac School with aspirations toward the JKS MFA program and is the managing editor of Bombay Gin Literary Journal.
Neshat Sadatmansoori (she, her) is a first-year MFA student from Iran at JKS. She enjoys reading, writing, and translating cross-genre prose and poetry. The concepts she often pursues in literature are nihilism, death, and transgression.
She studied cinema as her bachelor’s degree, and for her final project, she wrote a long fictional script influenced by one of Roberto Bolano’s short stories. Studying cinema allowed her always to be enthusiastic about interdisciplinary works.
She grew up in Tehran, and living in the United States is a new experience for her. Her experiences on this transformative path serve as the crucible for her art and her ceaseless exploration of identity in a foreign culture.
remy malik is a Black Trans nonbinary poet and performance artist from St. Louis, Missouri. They are the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Fellow at the Jack Kerouac School. Their work has been published in Nat Brut, Sleepingfish, and as part of the 2021 Transformation Residency in Portland, OR. malik’s work is centered on blackness and abstraction.
Sara Caldiero is a writer, book artist, dancer, costume maker, and creative arts instructor. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University. Sara brings poetry to people in classrooms, on desert white water river adventures, and to drifters on the street. They are the creator and director of Hunger for the Arts, an art program that provides workshops and food for unhoused teens in Salt Lake City. They are the founder of Salt Lake Samba where they teach and perform.
Shreeya Shrestha is the 2022 Anne Waldman Fellow at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where she is pursuing her graduate degree. Shrestha is an artisan who works with words, images, and textile. Born and raised in Nepal, she now calls Boulder, Colorado her not-home. Her current muse is the intersecting space that connects her two lives: home and present.
Shannon Sky is an author, poet, photographer, and activist born in Chicago. They received their B.A. in Speech Communication with a concentration in Radio/TV/Film from Eastern Illinois University, where they attended on a Talented Student Award scholarship. They have worked in electoral politics, successfully fought to pass juvenile justice reform laws in Illinois, lobbied Congress to fund public health care, and currently consult on renewable energy projects. A world traveler, Shannon has explored all 50 states and 25 countries. They are in the Low Res Creative Writing MFA program at the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University.
