ZIPODES: AN INVITATION TO POETRY – POETRY

From Richmond Heights, Florida, ARSIMMER MCCOY is an internationally recognized poet and interdisciplinary artist. She earned the 2024 Marjory Stoneman Douglas Poetry Award and the 2025 Arts & Environment Award from the Arts and Business Council of Miami-Dade. Her work has appeared in Artsy, Venice Magazine, Rootwork Journal, and others. Performances span from the Pérez Art Museum Miami to the Venice Biennale. Through poetry, performance, and film, she explores memory, Black life, and landscape, earning acclaim for blending personal narratives with collective histories.

GESI SCHILLING is a South Florida photographer and photo editor. She has worked with O, Miami since 2012, most recently as the photographer for the O, Miami book Ventanitas: A Window into Miami’s Coffee Culture. Her work regularly appears in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Miami Herald, where she began her career in photojournalism in 2010. She holds a degree in visual anthropology from the University of Florida and lives with her family in Fort Lauderdale.

MICHAEL DILLOW is a lens-based artist born in Philadelphia. He earned a B.A. in film and media arts from Temple University and an MFA in studio art from Florida Atlantic University. His work examines the concept of place, questioning how identities are formed, modified, and attributed to specific locales. Most notably, his work has been shown at the Center for Fine Art Photography, the Sweetwater Center for the Arts, and the 2019 PhotoAlicante Festival, and featured in FotoRoom, C41 Magazine, Fisheye Magazine, and In the In-Between. Most recently, he participated in the Beyond Addiction Reframing Recovery exhibition held at Rochester Institute of Technology’s City Art Space, curated by Graham MacIndoe and Susan Stellin. Currently, he maintains a studio practice in Lake Worth Beach, Florida, and works as an instructor in Florida Atlantic University’s photography department.

NICK VAGNONI was born and raised in Key West, Florida. He is a graduate of New College of Florida and Florida International University, where he now teaches writing. He is also the co-author of Forager: A Subjective Guide to Miami's Edible Plants (O, Miami) and co-creator of Key West: A Guide (Extra Virgin Press, 2025).

YADDYRA PERALTA is a poet originally from Tegucigalpa, Honduras. She immigrated to Miami with her family at the age of 6. It was there that her passion for poetry began, sparked by an introduction to haiku from her first grade Spanish teacher. Her essays and poetry have since been featured in anthologies like Eight Miami Poets (O, Miami, 2015), The Breakbeat Poets, Vol. 4: LatiNext (Haymarket Books, 2020), and Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness (University Press of Florida, 2021), as well as in various publications including Bomb, The Florida Review, Ploughshares, and the Miami Herald. She holds an MFA in poetry from Florida International University. She brings to her role as O, Miami's director of civic publishing her extensive experience working with writers of diverse backgrounds, as well as her six years of experience in the publishing industry.