Kristina Percy (she/ her) lives with her husband & two young children on Vancouver Island, BC in the traditional territories of the Ligwiłda’xw people. Neither of her degrees have anything to do with creative writing. Her work has been published extensively in her Gmail drafts folder, & you can also find it on Instagram @__kpwrites.
Her debut collection, Both True, was a runner up in the 2024 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest and is forthcoming from Button Poetry in Fall 2025.
(On |Un-)Becoming is here! Welcome FreeQuency’s highly anticipated release!
(On |Un-)Becoming is a collection of stories, reflections, forgivenesses and offerings rooted in conversations and conflicts with FreeQuency’s mother, chosen family & other selves. The anti disciplinary project liberates the concept of “transitioning” from the realm of Westernized notions of gender and expands|explores|explodes the concept of (un)becoming in relationship to international Blackness, migration|movement, geographic and corporeal displacement, spiritual|mental health and the ties between personal and communal transformation.
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More about FreeQuency
Mwende “FreeQuency” Katwiwa is a Kenyan, Immigrant, Shoga|Queer storyteller, speaker & feeler. The 2018 Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, a 2017 TEDWomen speaker and ranked 3rd at the 2015 Individual World Poetry Slam, FreeQuency is a highly sought after performer, host, social justice teaching artist and workshop leader. Rooted in various global communities & having spent their life at the intersection of arts, education and activism, they and|or their work in Reproductive Justice, #BlackLivesMatter organizing & activism, LGBTQ+ advocacy and writing have been featured on The Independent, the New York Times, OkayAfrica, Upworthy, TEDx, For Harriet, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, Everyday Feminism, & other outlets.
Hailey Tran’s an everyday occurrence Is Here Now!
Hailey Tran’s Personal Statement On Their Newest Release
“When I started writing poetry, I never would have believed it possible to write a book of my own. With all of the excitement in the universe, I introduce you to my very first collection of poetry, an everyday occurrence!
Writing these poems challenged me in being unabashedly myself and I can not wait for you to read them. The collection holds up a mirror to my toughest experiences and the journey to overcome them. There is no amount of thanks I could give to my family, friends, editor and community in encouraging me to put my stories on paper.
Lastly, thank you to Button Poetry for seeing me, for your trust in this project, and giving my words the legs to run out into the world.”
Hailey M. Tran is a DC-based and Lowell-raised dreamer. They are a queer Asian American Latina spoken word and performance poet, who believes in the transformative power of storytelling and art.
Hailey has their BA in Political Science and Social Work from Simmons University and is currently a high school history teacher. Passionate about helping students understand their ancestral memories, Tran’s pedagogy uses the creative process to interrogate structural and interpersonal violence. They strive to help their students to better understand racial, gendered, and queer identities, and connect with their community at large.
Hailey has competed in MassLEAP’s Louder Than a Bomb with FreeVerse! and the 2018 Brave New Voices Festival where they advanced to Final Stage. They have served as a Youth Spoken Word Leader for the Boston cohort. Hailey’s debut collection, an everyday occurrence, is forthcoming by Button Poetry.
ClickHEREto see the finalists’ full video collection!
DISCLAIMER: If you are viewing this page before November 7th, 2025, not all of the following videos will have been made public yet. However, post-November 7th, they will be. Please check back then to get the full experience!
“In 2024, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. It was the kind of news that rearranges your body, your mind, your sense of time. I turned to poetry—not as therapy, but as a way to stay honest while everything shifted.
Glandscapes came out of that year: diagnosis, scans, side effects, surgery. But it’s not just a cancer book. It’s about sex, aging, identity, and what it means to inhabit a queer body when that body suddenly feels unfamiliar. These poems are messy, intimate, and sometimes funny. I didn’t write them to be brave. I wrote them because I didn’t know what else to do.
Button Poetry helped bring this work into the world, and I’m so grateful. Working with Button Poetry has been an incredible experience—collaborative, thoughtful, and deeply respectful of my voice. From the back-and-forth on edits to the cover design process, I felt fully seen and supported every step of the way.
Holding this book feels like reclaiming something.“
“Glandscapes is an incredibly moving collection, rich with the kind of up-close intimacy that covers such wide ground — parentage, beloveds, the self, survival and not. It builds a rich interior world that is clear and distinct to the speaker, but not isolating to you, the reader, who might want to walk through that world for a while. This book is a triumph, is massively generous, and also just plainly a pleasure to read.”
Mickie Kennedy is a gay writer who resides in Baltimore County, Maryland. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY, The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, The Sun and elsewhere. His first book of poetry Worth Burning will be published by Black Lawrence Press in February 2026. His Button Poetry Chapbook Prize winning collection, Glandscapes, will be available in Fall 2025. Follow him on social media @MickiePoet or his website mickiekennedy.com.
"I could tell he wished I knew. I told him about the kids, about Randy. Six months later, his obituary. No service, no cause of death. He never mentioned a lover, or the night we slept together, all those years ago,"
My book Cipotais written and edited and available to the world today. It is a collection of stories from Salvi girlhood in the diaspora, notes on my own navigation of life and relationships, and lessons on becoming more sure of myself while also being less sure about the future.
This book is a product of love made possible by my families and communities who pour into me everyday, and I’m in giddy shock every time I read my name on the spine.
Working with Button Poetry to develop this collection has been so much dreamier than I could have ever wished for. I’m so grateful to work with a team that truly cares about my relationship to the work, and has provided their constant support, expertise, and vision into making this real and beautiful.
To everyone who has been a part of this process with me, I love you and thank you so much.
To anyone who asks me how I’m doing today, I’m releasing my first book 🙂 and you should get a copy or two here <3 – Chelsea Guevara
More about Cipota
Chelsea Guevara’s Cipota breathes a lineage into a song—making music of ancestral memory: dirges of heartbreak and generational trauma, anthems of rage and reclamation, ballads of love and homecoming.
Guevara’s voice enchants as she delves into history, ancestry, and the self—reaching for a lineage that has been battered by strife and strangled by colonialism. She moves through place and memory with deft skill and earnest humanity. Cipota examines the grief of culture lost, of a home you’ve been separated from, one that doesn’t truly feel like yours.
Cipotais a beating heart that demands to be heard. You will be rapt from start to finish.
Chelsea Guevara is a U.S.-Salvadorian poet from Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2024, she won the Womxn of the World International Poetry Slam, becoming the first Salvadoran and the first Utahn to earn a national individual slam title. Currently a student in the University of Arizona’s Latin American Studies graduate program, she utilizes her academic research to inform her creative work centering culture, history, memory, and identity. Chelsea’s micro-chapbook Somewhere Over the Border was a finalist for the Gunpowder Press Alta California Chapbook Prize in 2023. You can find her work on Button Poetry, Write About Now Poetry, and Mapping Literary Utah.
Daniel Elias Galicia is the son of Chicana/o activists and educators. His poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Button Poetry, EcoTheo Review, Ruminate Magazine, Iron Horse Literary Review, Relief: A Journal of Art & Faith, and more. His chapbook Still Desert was the Runner-Up for the 2023 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest (Button Poetry), the 2022 Robert Phillips Chapbook Prize (Texas Review Press), and a Finalist for the 2023 Chad Walsh Chapbook Prize (Beloit Poetry Journal). He is a Pushcart-nominated poet and a recipient of an Editor’s Choice Award (Relief).
Mickie Kennedy is a gay writer who resides in Baltimore County, Maryland. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY, The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, The Sun and elsewhere. His first book of poetry Worth Burning will be published by Black Lawrence Press in February 2026. His Button Poetry Chapbook Prize winning collection, Glandscapes, will be available in Fall 2025. Follow him on social media @MickiePoet or his website mickiekennedy.com.
2023 Video Contest Winners & Runners-Up
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL WINNERS AND FINALISTS IN THE 2023 BUTTON POETRY VIDEO CONTEST Watch previous winners on our YouTube channel
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