Lauren Oertel is a community organizer covering Texas and New Mexico for a nationwide nonprofit that works on voting rights, policy advocacy, elections, and antiracism. Her work has been published in The Ravens Perch, Evening Street Review, Steam Ticket, The Bluebird Word, The Sun Magazine, and more. She won first prize in the 2021 MONO. poetry competition, she was a winner of the 2022 Writer’s Digest short story contest, the 2022-2024 Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference poetry contests, and a finalist for the 2023 Prime Number Magazine Award for Short Fiction. She is working on her second novel and three poetry collections.
