SOFT BOI: A Reading with MK Zariel + christa lei

​SOFT BOI: A Boy Apparition x Soft Places Reading
(An online event on Zoom)

​There are two transmasculine genders: the butch anarchist, and the tiny atemporal gremlin who really needs a hug. In BOY APPARITION, mk zariel tackles both. This chapbook is full of love letters to the BashBack tendency, chronicles of insurgent trans boyhood and its ties to lesbian culture, unhinged teenage rants, and the kind of love poems you’d write in lipstick on the mirror of the gender-neutral bathroom. Through it all, one question is central: what it means to be transmasculine beyond hegemonic manhood, beyond hierarchy, beyond linear time itself. This all-ages, trans-centered event will feature a reading from BOY APPARITION as well as a brief talkback.

​Joining mk zariel is Christa Lei (they/them), a queer, disabled Filipine-American writer based in New York. Christa will read from a work in progress and share Soft Places—a prose poem about the visceral —forthcoming in Door is a Jar Magazine’s Winter 2026 issue and as a special release with Pocket Pubs.

​BIOS:

​Christa holds editorial positions at Blood Tree Literature (creative nonfiction) and JAKE (poetry), and reads for Epiphany. They’re a regular Matador Network contributor, with work forthcoming in The Seventh Wave’s On Separation anthology and published in HerStry, Vast Chasm, and elsewhere. A proud Tin House, DISQUIET, and Southampton Writers’ Conference alum, Christa writes at the intersection of body, grief, and myth. When not writing, they’re traveling or wrangling their two dogs.
More on Christa: christalei.me | isthiswhatyouwant.org

​mk zariel {it/its + masc terms} is a transmasculine neuroqueer theater artist, Best Of The Net and Monarch Award nominated poet, movement journalist, and BashBack aligned anarchist translocally rooted in the Great Lakes region. the author of VOIDGAZING (2026, Whittle Micropress) and BOY APPARITION (2025, Vinegar Press), it creates conflictual spaces for trans survival and queer desire—spaces of insurgent genders, mutual aid beyond the nonprofit gaze, and the kind of care that negates (and negation that provides care). BashBack! remains close to its heart, as do anarchonihilism/egoism, experimental theater, and the defiant tenderness of queer collectivity. mk’s organizing is often underground, but its poetics and podcast crackle with the same unruly energy: community as generative+atemporal destruction, poetry as direct action. Oh, and according to anarchistnews.org—"zariel quotes the Principia Discordia, which is kind of funny" and "what is explicitly said about chaos is...fine?".

​Its writing has appeared in Querencia Press, Akpata, J Journal, Witches Magazine, Fifth Estate, ANMLY, OurLives Wisconsin, Library Of Eris, Oyster River Pages, and Seattle Journal of Social Justice, among many others. It contributes columns to Asymptote and the Anarchist Review of Books, its mixed media work is featured through Open Sorcery, and it authors the advice column DEBATE ME BRO and hosts the podcast THE CHILD AND ITS ENEMIES. it has also collaborated with Urban Ganges on a line of themed reed diffusers. mk is the author of eleven self-published zine projects, and performs regularly at anarchist gatherings, zine fests, and queer liberation events. You can find its offerings, commissions, and chaotic love letters to the world at mkzariel.carrd.co

​📅 Date: DEC 6,
📍 Location: Online via Zoom
🌐 More on BOY APPARITION: https://www.vinegarpress.org/store/p/boy-apparition-by-mk-zariel