Staff & Board

Kazim Ali co-founded Nightboat Books with Jennifer Chapis in 2004 and served as its publisher from 2004-2007. He continues to edit books for Nightboat and serve as President of the Board of Directors. He is the author of sixteen books of poetry, fiction, essay and cross-genre work, as well as translator of works from French, Farsi and Spanish. He teaches at the University of California, San Diego, and lives in California.

Lina Bergamini is the Publicity and Marketing Manager at Nightboat Books. They have a BA from the New School and their work has appeared in Eleven and a Half Journal. Lina lives in New York.

Lindsey Boldt is the Editorial Director of Nightboat Books. Before joining Nightboat, Lindsey was Managing Editor of The Post-Apollo Press, co-publisher of the chapbook series Summer BF Press, and taught poetry in Bay Area public schools. She is the author of Weirding (Dogpark Collective, 2022), There Are No Cops in America & The Streets Are Paved w/ Cheese (2020), Some Ennui (2019), <<(( ))>> (2016), and Overboard (2012). She lives in Oakland, California.

Emily Bark Brown is a poet from Mobile, Alabama and Brooklyn, New York. They co-edit Hot Pink, an online poetry magazine, and co-host HANK, a reading series in Prospect Park. They received degrees from Wesleyan University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Recent work can be found in Bennington Review, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Noir Sauna, mercury firs, and blush. Their chapbook, Welcome to August, is forthcoming in 2025 from The Year.

Jaye Elizabeth Elijah is an editor at Nightboat Books. They previously served as the Publicity and Communications Coordinator. Their words have appeared in Polly Magazine and Rookie Magazine, and were recognized by the Cincinnati Arts Overture Awards. Jaye Elizabeth holds a BA in Literary Studies and a BFA in Illustration at The New School, and now lives in New Mexico.

Gia Gonzales is an Editor-At-Large at Nightboat Books. She is also a poet based in New York City, where she was born. Her work has most recently appeared in Bæst: a journal of queer forms and affects, Femmescapes, Bomb Cyclone, and variously with the Poetry Project.

Destiny Hemphill is a chronically ill ritual worker and poet, living on the unceded territory of the Eno-Occaneechi band of the Saponi Nation (Durham, NC). She is a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow and has received fellowships from Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, Callaloo, Tin House, Kenyon Review's Writers Workshop, and Torch Literary. She is a co-editor for Poetry as Spellcasting (North Atlantic Books 2023) and the author of the poetry collection motherworld: a devotional for the alter-life (Action Books, 2023), which was a finalist for the National Poetry Series Award, Lambda Literary Award, and Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Prize.

Terry Hudson (they/them) is a genderqueer poet, writer, and archivist raised on a Dexter cattle farm in Climax, NC. Inspired by a long lineage of radical Black writers, their work deals in recurring themes: Blackness, queerness, chronic illness, and the social power of memory work and the archive. In their free time, you can find them—if you hunt keenly enough—watching old horror movies, reading Claremont X-Men comics, or researching esoteric queer literature. Their writing can be found in publications such as Bloodletter magazine.

Dayeana Jung is the spring intern for Nightboat Books. They are a senior at New York University, working towards a BA in English and Creative Writing. Their favorite way to read is while riding the subway, or sitting passenger on a long drive.

Morgan Levine is the Development Associate at Nightboat Books. They have a BA in English and Creative Writing from Columbia University, where they were Editor-in-Chief of The Columbia Review. They live in Brooklyn.

Trisha Low is the author of two books—The Compleat Purge (Kenning Editions, 2013) and Socialist Realism (Emily Books / Coffee House Press, 2019). She is an occasional contributor at tor.com and curates experimental film on celluloid as a member of the Light Field film collective. She lives in the East Bay of California.

Stephen Motika is the Director & Publisher of Nightboat Books. He was on the staff of Poets House in New York City from 2004 through 2017. The author of the poetry collection Western Practice (2012) and the poetry chapbooks Arrival and At Mono (2007), In the Madrones (2011), and Private Archive (2016), Motika is also the editor of Tiresias: The Collected Poems of Leland Hickman (2009) and co-editor of Dear Kathleen: On the Occasion of Kathleen Fraser’s 80th Birthday (2017).

Kit Schluter is the Design & Production Coordinator at Nightboat Books. He is author of Pierrot's Fingernails, The Good in Having a Nuclear Family, and 5 Cartoons. In addition to his work at Nightboat, he has worked as poet, translator, and book designer with New Directions, Wakefield Press, Ugly Duckling Presse, Canarium Books, Fonograf, & Other Stories, Dalkey Archive, Deep Vellum, Gato Negro Ediciones, & the Autonomous University of Mexico. He lives in Mexico City with his dog Xochi.

Dante Silva is the Publicist at Nightboat Books. He has a BA from Columbia University, where he received the Ellis Avery Award in Creative Writing.

Santi is an editor at Nightboat Books. They previously served as a Fellow. They are a poet writing liminal states of consciousness at the intersection of Mexican ancestral ritual and queer futurity incubations. Santi holds a BA in Creative Writing from Reed College, where their poetry was recognized by the Academy of American Poets. They currently reside on Tsalaguwetiyi land in East Tennessee.

Naima Yael Tokunow is a writer, educator, artist, and editor living in New Mexico. Her work focuses on exploring Black queer femme identity, kinship, and futurity. She is the author of three chapbooks: MAKE WITNESS (2016), published by Zoo Cake Press; Planetary Bodies (2019), out from Black Warrior Review; and Shadow Black, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown for the Frontier Digital Chapbook Prize in 2020. Alongside her work as Nightboat's inaugural Editorial Fellow, she edits for Tupelo Press. For selections of her poetry and art, visit naimaytokunow.com. She is blessed to be Black and alive.