My name is Christina Polge and I’m an undergraduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill studying English and journalism. I’m a Raleigh native and I’ve lived in North Carolina my whole life. As a queer woman, stories have always been a way for me to grapple with my identity. I’ve learned a lot about myself through both theatre and poetry. Onstage, I’ve been able to explore and process emotions that haven’t always been safe for me to feel existing in my personal life. Poetry allows me to work through these complicated emotions at the intersection of fear, desire, love, shame and joy. I’m still not sure exactly how I identify, but I know I’m somewhere on the sapphic spectrum. When I’m not writing, I enjoy frolicking in meadows, hosting board game nights and running really fast through puddles. I’m thankful for a space that specifically focuses on Southern queer writers because I feel like we’re often overlooked or dismissed, especially in current online discourse.