NOTE: Hello, supporters of The Deaf Poets Society! We have been really quiet over here—too quiet, we have to admit. This is our official announcement that we are on hiatus. We ARE coming back, but we just don't know when. Until then, we won’t be reading submissions sent to us after August 3, 2022. Thank you for your understanding.

About Us

The Deaf Poets Society is an online literary journal that publishes poetry and art by D/deaf and/or disabled writers and artists. Founded in 2016, our mission is to provide a venue for D/deaf and disability literature and art, as well as to connect readers with established and emerging talent in the field.

We're looking for narratives about the D/deaf and/or disabled experience that complicate or altogether undo the dominant and typically marginalizing rhetoric about deafness or disability. We especially want to highlight work that investigates the complexity of the experience across identities. Whether you're drawing from experiences related to gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, race, or any other marginalized identity, we want your voice in our journal. For more on our vision, check out our manifesto published in Anamoly (formerly called Drunken Boat).

Note: Writers and artists who have chronic pain or are neurodivergent are members of our community and should feel free to submit.

Ava C. Cipri, Poetry Editor

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Ava C. Cipri teaches writing at Duquesne University. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University, where she edited Salt Hill. Ava’s poetry and nonfiction appears or is forthcoming in 2River View, Cimarron Review, decomP, Drunken Boat, Rust + Moth, WHR, Whiskey Island Review, and PROSODY: NPR-affliate WESA’s weekly show featuring the work of national writers. Her award-winning tanka sequence “From the Barre” is featured in AHA Books’ Twenty Years, Tanka Splendor. She is anthologized in Red Moon Press’ Contemporary Haibun Anthology and SUNY’s Unruly Catholic Women Writers II. Next reincarnation she wants to be drawn with wings. Ava resides at www.avaccipri.com.

Maura Alia Badji, Guest Poetry Editor

[Image Description: A head/shoulders shot of a smiling woman with olive skin, wavy purple hair with visible silver/black roots, and purple lipstick.  Her hair partially obscures one of her dark brown eyes.  She wears a black/white adinkra-like abstract patterned top and two silver necklaces, including a personal talisman—a mermaid—and an amethyst quartz.  Behind her is a purple/fuchsia batik tapestry, and an abstract metal and glass angel ornament.]

Maura Alia Badji is a disabled poet/writer/artist/energy healer. Her poems and prose have appeared in Cobalt Review, Welter, The Delaware Review, Pirene’s Fountain, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The Good Men Project, This City Is a Poem, Barely South Review, Red Flag Poetry, Liberated Muse, Yellow Chair Press, The Phoenix Soul, The Buffalo News, The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and others. Maura holds an M.Ed. in Migrant/Special Education from SUNY New Paltz, and an MFA from the University of WA, Seattle where she served as an editorial assistant for The Seattle Review. While in Washington State, Maura taught poetry classes to public school students in grades 4 to 12 and served as a Mentor to a gifted high school student. She was an Early Childhood Special Education teacher in Title I public schools in Virginia for almost a decade. Currently she teaches ESL online to children in China. Maura is a member of The Watering Hole, an online community for poets of color. A NY state native, she lives in Virginia Beach with her son, Ibrahim.

T. K. Dalton, Prose Editor-at-Large

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T. K. Dalton's essays have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and inclusion in Best of the Net. His fiction and nonfiction are forthcoming in The Common, Duende, and Front Porch Journal, and appear in The Millions, Tahoma Literary Review, Radical Teacher, Deaf Lit Extravaganza, Disability Studies Quarterly, and elsewhere. With poet John Maney, Jr., he edited What if Writing is Dreaming Together? He earned an M.F.A. from the University of Oregon and is currently writing a memoir. Tim lives with his family in New York City, where he works as an ASL-English interpreter.

Travis Chi Wing Lau, Ideas Editor

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Travis Chi Wing Lau is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania Department of English. His research interests include eighteenth and nineteenth-century British literature, the history of medicine, and disability studies. His academic writing has been published in the Journal of Homosexuality, Romantic Circles, and English Language Notes (forthcoming). His creative writing has appeared in Atomic, Feminine Inquiry, Wordgathering, Assaracus, Rogue Agent, and QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology.