Meet Our Grantee-Partner: Foglifter Press
Foglifter Press centers the stories of those who are multi-marginalized, propelling diverse collective narratives into the future literary history.
Grayson Thompson, 2025 Start a Riot! Award recipient, speaking at the launch event of his award-winning chapbook, SAND BODIED FLORIDA BOY.
Mission: Rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area, Foglifter Press is a platform for 2SLGBTQIA+ writers that supports and uplifts powerful and intersectional queer and trans writing through publication and public programs to nurture and enrich our communities as well as the greater literary arts.
Foglifter Press was founded in 2016 to fill the need for a publication of, by, and for literary artists who identify as Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual (2SLGBTQIA+). Foglifter centers the stories of those who are multi-marginalized, propelling diverse collective narratives into the future literary history. Located in San Francisco, California, it is one of few surviving presses of its kind in the United States.
Foglifter’s mission is rooted in the individual identities of editorial staff and board of directors as historically excluded literary artists and readers. Holding the space for freedom and possibility within the pages of Foglifter Journal and at Foglifter’s events is a direct response to the ongoing experiences of minimization and tokenization in the mainstream publishing world and the literary arts community. In fulfillment of this service, Foglifter does not charge submission fees and its events are always free and ADA accessible. The press fairly compensates all authors, presenters, and journal guest editors.
Foglifter Press publishes two literary journals annually featuring more than 60 authors. It hosts reading release parties for each journal issue at The Stud, a community center in the Folsom District of San Francisco, as well as other readings around the Bay Area and beyond. It also actively promotes authors by nominating their work for yearly “best of” anthologies produced by other publishers and organizations.
In response to gentrification and displacement of 2SLGBTQIA+ and BIPOC+ literary artists in the Bay Area, and in celebration of their revolutionary history, Foglifter facilitates the Start a Riot! Chapbook Prize for local emerging writers. Administered annually in partnership with Still Here San Francisco, the prize awards one local literary artist with publication, a cash award, and a reading release party at a venue of their choice. Additionally, Foglifter puts $1,000 toward the promotion of the awardee’s publication. The most recent prize went to Grayson Thompson for his collection, Sand Bodied Florida Boy. Thompson will serve as a judge for the upcoming Start a Riot! Chapbook Prize.
The launch event for Grayson Thompson’s SAND BODIED FLORIDA BOY.
Foglifter has collaborated with Still Here and Chrysalis Studio’s Queer Ancestors Project to produce Kaleidoscope, a series of writing workshops serving 2SLGBTQIA+ transitional-age youth. Kaleidoscope provides free 12-week poetry courses taught by local 2SLGBTQIA+ poets.
By receiving a general operating support grant from the Poetry Foundation, Foglifter has been able to deepen its efforts and build more meaningful connections at a time when its presence and programming are deemed more essential than ever. Funding has supported the journal publication and related events as well as the 2025 Start a Riot! Poetry Chapbook Prize.
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