Biography
Cody Stetzel is a Seattle resident working within arts organizing. They are a literary critic in journals like Tupelo Quarterly and The Colorado Review, offering insights on contemporary queer poetry and poetry-in-translation. They are the co-host of Other People’s Poems (@SeattlePoetry), a reading series for readers.
More of their criticism can be found in Poetry Northwest, Salamander Mag, and Aster(ix). They have poems published or forthcoming in The Pinch, Vagabond City Lit, The HOOT Review, Boston Accent Literature, Birmingham Arts Journal, and Across the Margins.
They have worked as the managing editor for Five:2:One Magazine, and as a poetry editor for the Rise Up Review. They received their Masters in Creative Writing for Poetry from the University of California at Davis. Find them on bluesky @bearable or find more of their writing at riantly.substack.com.
Current Materials: Arts, Projects, and Interests
- Poetry Manuscript: A hybrid collection of poetry and essays invoking both persona and historical research on bear, the colonial history of bear hunting, the current framework of bear preservation, and human-bear interactions.
- Poetry Manuscript: A queering, lyric profile of the mythological figure of Atlas? And more loosely, poems about shattered masculinities.
- Poetry Chapbook: About the pancreas.
- Queer Coming-of-Age Fantasy Novel: An unlikely triad turns into fast friends as they explore a world where seemingly everyone is content to disconnect from other societies and risk survival. The group faces consequences for rebelling against the conflicting constraints of saving their town from new, monstrous threats and forcing the town to reconcile with the emergence of unfamiliar powers.
- Essays on Laughter: A series of essays where I try to detail a handful of laughs on a weekly basis.