Simone Zapata is a poet, editor, and educator based in Oakland, CA. Her writing can be found in Beloit Poetry Journal, Foglifter, Dilettante Army, and Brink Literary Journal, where she served as the inaugural Emerging Writer Fellow in Hybrid Writing. Her work has been supported by fellowships and residencies from Hedgebrook, Banff Centre, Community of Writers, and Miami Book Fair. She holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and organizes with the SF/Bay Area chapter of the Editorial Freelancers Association.
Voices Under Water is a hybrid poetry manuscript that centers the speaker’s aunt, who had schizophrenia and died suddenly of colon cancer in 2018. Incorporating medical records, interviews, divination, and printmaking, the project traces the speaker’s efforts to reconcile her identity in the wake of familial rupture. As the manuscript unfolds, the speaker develops a series of large-scale block prints adapted from her aunt’s final CT scans, which evidenced that the cancer had metastasized beyond the possibility of treatment. By inhabiting shifting frames of reference, Voices Under Water troubles the boundary between self and other in its attempts to reckon with an absence that resists dis/closure.