Founding and Contributing Editors
Sakina B. Fakhri
|
Sakina B. Fakhri is a novelist and screenwriter based in Brooklyn. Prior to her role as chief editor at Lazuli, she was co-founder and teacher at a high school in Cairo, Egypt, where she headed the English department. She now owns and runs Scintilla Tutors, a boutique test prep company in NYC. She has won multiple industry awards for her screenwriting and was the head writer for "Time Hoppers: The Silk Road", a television series developed by Milo Productions. Sakina received her B.A. in literature from Northwestern University and her M.A. from New York University.
Sakina’s literary aesthetic tends towards theme-driven ornate prose, lyrical fiction, controlled absurdism, and political satire. Her first novel, The Speech of Flowers and Voiceless Things, probes the idea of a web of globalized mistranslations against a backdrop of a personable philanthropic enterprise and a caricaturesque dictator. Her first short film, "The Word Trader," debuted in 2013 at the Cannes Film Festival Court Metrage; her second short film, “Corner Piece,” was the winner of the 2015 Los Angeles Movie Award for Best Screenplay. Sakina’s fiction has been published in Gemini Magazine and Hive. She continues to develop television and feature film concepts as she writes her second novel, which intertwines motifs of micro-trading, blindness, particle physics, and ballet. [Read Sakina's writing here.] |
Diana McClure
|
Diana McClure is an artist and writer based in New York City. She is a contributing writer to the School of Visual Arts’ Visual Arts Journal and has written for Art Basel, Cultured, Photograph, Afropunk, Art in America, Pratt Institute’s Prattfolio, exhibition catalogs, and artist monographs, among other outlets. Diana’s artwork has been on view at The Philadelphia African American Museum, Edge Zones Miami, Baltimore Museum of Art, Judy Chicago’s Envisioning the Future project in Southern California, New York University and elsewhere.
Diana is a graduate of Columbia University and The New School for Social Research, where she studied history and sociology. She was part-time faculty in the Department of Photography & Imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts from 2016-2021 and was a 2023 participant in the Image Text Workshop Residency at Cornell University AAP hosted by The Soil Factory in Ithaca, New York. In spring 2025, she completed the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Certificate in Horticulture. Diana has received grants and fellowships from New York State Council on the Arts, The New School for Social Research and the Abhaya Yoga Foundation. With Sakina Fakhri, she is the co-founder of Lazuli Literary Group. |
Velid Beganovic Borjen
|
V. B. Borjen (he/they) is a Yugoslav-born writer and visual artist based in the Czech Republic. His first poetry manuscript in Bosnian won the 2012 Mak Dizdar Award and was published in 2013 as Priručnik za levitiranje. His second poetry manuscript, Odjezd, won the 2021 Darma Books Best Manuscript Contest in Belgrade and is to be published shortly. Borjen's poetry and fiction written originally in English have been featured in BOMB, The Rumpus, AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought, Grist Journal, EcoTheo Review, Rattle, The Maine Review and elsewhere.
His visual art can be found, among others, on the pages of magazines such as High Shelf, Folio, Parentheses and Honey & Lime. In 2024 he had the first solo exhibition of his paintings in Brno, Always Despite. Borjen is the recipient of the 2025 PEN America/Heim Translation Fund for his work-in-progress translation of Nataša Skazlić’s novel Cherries, published in Croatian as Bidon in 2015. He also serves as Guest Editor of the US poetry magazine Palette, responsible for editorial feedback letters. Borjen holds a PhD in Literatures in English from Masaryk University, Czech Republic, and his academic interests include Modernism, various communities of artists and intellectuals who lived in the first half of the twentieth century, as well as literatures of peace and exile. In his academic work he has mostly focused on Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group. (You can read some of it here.) He can be reached on Instagram (samoniklo), X (@Borjen), or LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/velid-beganovic-borjen). |
Laylage Courie
|
Laylage Courie is a writer and performer who makes things from words; things includes concept albums, art-pop songs, collage, performances, poems, and genre-bending texts such as Intimate Things.
Her work has appeared on stages all over New York, streaming through sound systems all over the world, and in literary publications including Fence, Adbusters, and the performance journal The Open Page. She lives on the vertices of the triangle between Georgia, New York City, and the Delaware River Valley, with the enchantments of her imagination and a potted garden for companions. Her recording of Heloise’s Song is available online for your listening pleasure; you can find it and much more at luminouswork.org. |
Katherine Don
|
Katherine Don is a Chicago-based author, journalist, book editor, and communications consultant. She is a reporter and editor at the news publication Inside Philanthropy, where she covers the arts, criminal justice reform, and gender justice, and was previously a regular contributor at Bustle and Romper, where she covered politics, culture, and entertainment. Katherine also freelances as a communications consultant for foundations and nonprofits.
Katherine has been an author or contributing writer of nearly a dozen nonfiction books, including Power of the Dog (St. Martin’s Press), several books in the Armchair Reader book series, Real Courage: The Story of Harper Lee (Morgan Reynolds), and The Inside Philanthropy Reader. Along with author Sonja Trom Eayrs, Katherine was the co-writer of Dodge County, Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America (University of Nebraska Press), which won the Midwest Book Award for nonfiction. Katherine runs a boutique book editing company, yourbookdon.com, where she has collaborated with many award-winning authors writing in a range of genres. She is proud to partner with Lazuli Literary Group, which publishes incredible fiction, lovingly unearths previously undiscovered voices and talents, and celebrates the written word with unique lectures, courses, and performances. |
Stephen Harris
|
Stephen Harris was born with jaundice but defeated the illness within three days. “I ain’t yella,” the four-day old infant was heard bragging to the pediatric nurses. Born in 1985, he became obsessed with underground and alternative comix and 1950s EC horror. He began publishing his comics at twelve, and ever since then he’s been in love with the medium.
Stephen graduated from the University of New Orleans in 2008 with a degree in film production, but he dove headfirst into theory when he entered grad school in English that same year. After reading far too many books written by adjunct professors about the lives they lead after graduation, Stephen dropped out before completing his thesis, but has since published three of the four chapters he had intended to write (see: https://brightlightsfilm.com/author/stephenharris/). Stephen has worked in the hospitality industry, has been a writing instructor, and for over fifteen years has been a freelance writer, editor, and researcher, with a diverse portfolio including academic publications, books, and professional reports. Stephen has worked as a copy editor and proofreader for Lazuli Literary Group on an as-needed basis since 2020. It’s easily his favorite project on which to work. |
Kirk Marshall
|
Kirk Marshall (@AttackRetweet) is a Brisbane-born writer, teacher, fundraiser, and hellraiser living in Melbourne, Australia.
He is the author of an illustrated miscellany (A Solution to Economic Depression in Little Tokyo, 1953); a fiction chapbook (A Brief Study of the Dissolute Properties of Comedy When You're Propelled Off Your Speeding Motorcycle Into A Sharp Asphalt Road, And Your Name Is Takeshi Kitano) published by Dynatox Ministries (New Jersey, USA); a novella (The Signatory) published by Skylight Press (Gloucestershire, U.K.); and two collections of fiction: Carnivalesque, And: Other Stories, published by Black Rider Press (Perth/Sydney, Australia); and Popcorn In the Barrel: Stories, published by KUBOA Press (Pennsylvania, USA). His début photostory/poetry chapbook (Ghostyawp: Overshares from an Autopsy) is forthcoming from Corona/Samizdat Books (Slovenia, EU) in 2025. He has written for more than eighty publications, both in Australia and overseas, including: Award-Winning Australian Writing; Island; Wet Ink; Going Down Swinging; Voiceworks; Verandah; visible ink; fourW; Cordite; Mascara Literary Review; frankie; The Grapple Annual; 3:AM Magazine (France), Vol. 1 Brooklyn (U.S.A.); and AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought (U.S.A.). He has received various grants, awards, shortlistings, and commendations for his writing, and has held various teaching positions, including at RMIT University in Melbourne. In 2025, he was awarded a summer travelling residency to commence work in Iceland on a mythopœic intaglio-illustrated verse novel, concerning the ecology and ethology of snow dragons. Most recently, a standalone chapter from his hillbilly apocalypse novel secured a nomination for The Pushcart Prize. He writes for dollars and dinosaurs as a senior philanthropy coordinator at Museums Victoria. |
M. Ann Reed
|
M. Ann Reed is a writer, poet, and professor of English literature, performance studies, and theory of knowledge. She is an international teacher and learner who offers the bio-poetic organic unity study of literature in support of the Deep Ecology Movement for global and local academics. M. Ann was awarded a doctorate in theater arts and performance studies, and her continued education includes Jungian psychology studies. Her published literary essays are cited or remarked upon in journals of medicine, literature, and psychology.
M. Ann is also a Chinese calligrapher and brush-painter. Her work has been exhibited in Oregon, New Mexico, and the Shenzhen Fine Arts Museum in China. She previously partnered with the poet Paulann Petersen and Friends of William Stafford to offer his poems for birthday celebrations in Malaysia, Ukraine, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. M. Ann’s first book, Strange Kindness, was co-authored with Mabel S. Chu Tow and first published at University Press of America. It is now curated by Rowman & Littlefield. An award-winning poet, M. Ann has published poems in various literary arts journals, including Psychological Perspectives and AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought. Her chapbooks include making oxygen, remaining inside this pure hollow note (Finishing Line Press, 2021) and ekphrastics & eccentricities (Kelsay Books, 2023). Her full-length collection of poetry, he for she she for he, was published by Kelsay Books in February 2025. |
Artists and Performers
Evgenia Barsheva
|
Evgenia Barsheva is a self-taught artist who delights in both the grandeur and the intricacies of the natural world. She brings her deep knowledge of florals and strength of observation of animals into her drawings, equally comfortable working in both black-and-white and color formats. She can often be spotted at the edge of the beach sketching shorelines or rendering delicate depictions of wildlife wherever it is to be found.
Hailing from Moscow, Russia, Evgenia is currently based in New York City. In addition to composing her independent artwork, Evgenia works as an in-house illustrator for Lazuli Literary Group, creating customized illustrations for its associated literary magazine AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought. She is also commissioned to create personalized artwork for gifts and event backdrops. |
Abby Abdel-Khalek
|
Abby Abdel-Khalek is a violinist and composer from Los Angeles, CA. She studied at the Colburn pre-college program and from there went to the Cleveland Institute of Music for her bachelor’s. It was from there that her love for film music blossomed and she returned to Los Angeles to work for Hans Zimmer at his studio, Remote Control Productions. She can be heard on numerous shows such as BBC’s Planet Earth II and The Strain, among others. Abby later joined forces with Ann Marie Calhoun and Michael Einziger to create String Mob, a string contracting company. They worked with artists such as Pharrell, Justin Bieber, Pentatonix, Steve Martin, and Skrillex, among others.
Abby has performed as a session violinist for countless films and television shows. She has also been composing for visual media. You can find her at her website: www.abbyabdelkhalek.com |
Nora Kelly
|
Nora Kelly (she/her) is an illustrator, oil painter and muralist based in Montreal, Quebec. Her professional art career started in Mexico City, when she apprenticed with the muraling company Street Art Chilango. From there, she traveled across North America painting murals for small businesses and private residences.
When the pandemic struck, Nora transferred her passion of painting to oil on canvas and illustration. Kelly currently works as an editorial illustrator, creating work for online and print media outlets, designing book covers, and most recently illustrating children’s books. Her paintings have been jury-selected contributions of the Art Volt Collective. She lives with her Boston Terrier named Squid and sings/plays guitar in an alt-rock band called the Nora Kelly Band. Her website is www.norakellyart.com |
Alifiyah Vali
|
As the Creative Lead of Studio Whyte, Alifiyah Vali brings a flair for the extraordinary. With an interior designer’s passion for spatial narrative, a furniture designer’s precision and a graphic designer’s originality, she adds a multidisciplinary approach to the design process. Her global interior design experience spanning New York, San Francisco, Europe, and the Middle East is studded with award-winning projects, high-profile government contracts, Michelin-starred restaurants, and premier cruise liners. Having begun her journey with John R. Harris Architects, Alifiyah later trained under world-famous interior and furniture designers in Copenhagen and New York City and ultimately led her own design-build firm for two decades. She holds a BFA in Interior Design from the American University in Dubai and an MS in Interior Design from Pratt Institute in New York.
|
|
Subscribe to our free newsletter to receive AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought and other literary things in your inbox.
|
© Lazuli Literary Group 2025 | [email protected] | 847.970.2506
Illustrations & Logo by Evgenia Barsheva As an affiliate of Bookshop.org, Lazuli Literary Group earns a small commission on sales made via any associated links on our website. |