Good Light Editors’ Open Mic + Backlit Magazine + Reading Series feat. Hakim Bellamy, Sarah Haas, J

GLE presents an open mic with a focus on poetry and non-fiction in conjunction with the call for submissions for the debut issue of ‘Backlit,’ an online literary magazine that offers in-depth editorial exchanges between our editors and the writers who we accept for publication. Submissions are currently being accepted for poetry and non-fiction at backlit@goodlighteditors.com.

The event will feature some of New Mexico’s top and well-respected authors.

Hakim Bellamy
As the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Albuquerque (2012-2014), Hakim Bellamy holds three consecutive collegiate poetry slam titles at the University of New Mexico and is a national and regional Poetry Slam Champion. His poetry has been published on the Albuquerque Convention Center, on the outside of a library, in inner-city buses, and in numerous anthologies across the globe.

Sarah Haas
Sarah Haas’ debut book, Jealousy: A Memoir, is forthcoming from Catapult (November 2026). Her essays and criticism appear in Lit Hub, Longreads, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She’s an editor-at-large for Brink, a literary of hybrid literature.

Jessica Helen Lopez
Jessica Helen Lopez is the City of Albuquerque Poet Laureate, Emerita (2014-2016), a NM Humanities Chautauqua Scholar, Rural Women’s Collective Fellow at Justice for Migrant Women, and the Zia Book Award Recipient for her inaugural poetry collection, Always Messing With them Boys (West End Press). She is also the author of recently released My Heart is a Pomegranate/Mi Corazón es una Granada (Flowersong Press), as well as The Blood Poems (University of New Mexico Press), The Language of Bleeding, Provocateur and cunt. bomb (Swimming With Elephants Publications). An Adjunct Instructor with the University of New Mexico Chicana and Chicano Studies Department, Lopez also teaches Dual Enrollment Poetry courses at the Native American Community Academy High School through the Institute of American Indian Arts.