Gaia Rajan @gaiarajan Twitter profile

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Gaia Rajan

3 months

I’ve been thinking towards this poem for most of my life—I’m so thrilled it’s the @POETSorg Poem-a-Day today. thank you so much @tagreathouse

Dent

You must convince yourself

poets.org

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

Being queer saved my life. Often we see queerness as deprivation. But when I look at my life, I saw that queerness demanded an alternative innovation from me. I had to make alternative routes; it made me curious; it made me ask, "Is this enough for me?" —Ocean Vuong

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

i was stressed for an exam and then i pulled out vintage sadness by hanif abdurraqib and YEAH

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

the poem begins not where the knife enters/but where the blade twists. — Hanif Abdurraqib

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

Robert Wood Lynn's work is new to me and holy fuck

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

might delete later but here's a poem I wrote about the capitalistic trauma expected of POC writers and artists in publishing.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

I am realizing that a lot of academia is the performance of certainty.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

Just had a poem accepted at my ultimate dream journal 😭💜💜

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

My debut chapbook, MOTH FUNERALS, just arrived today!!! 😭 I am SO excited to share it with you all. And overcome with gratitude for @anthonyframe and @glass_poetry . 🦋

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

more tenderness for our past selves, the ones who were inept and clumsy and unsure of themselves, more tenderness for the small towns where we made ourselves up from scratch

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

Y’ALL, I AM INCOHERENT— @BlackLawrence has been my dream press since I was literally 13. I couldn’t be more honored that Killing It landed with them?!! This just means a lot to me, and I’m so damn happy I’m here 💜

Black Lawrence Press

@BlackLawrence

3 years

🎉 The results are in, and we're beyond thrilled to announce that the winner of the Spring 2021 Black River Chapbook Competition is Gaia Rajan, for her chapbook KILLING IT! Congrats, @gaia_writes , and welcome to BLP!

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

"Too much joy, I swear, is lost in our desperation to keep it." — Ocean Vuong

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

I’m in Best New Poets 2022, and I still can’t believe it— incredible to be here among so many friends ⚡️ here’s I TRIED EVERYTHING:

Best New Poets

@BestNewPoets

2 years

We've posted our fifty selections for Best New Poets 2022 at . Special thanks to guest editor Paula Bohince. Please join us in congratulating these wonderful poets!

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

Bidart

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

there should be a subscription service where you get 2 random poetry books a month

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

So thrilled to share my favorite poem I’ve ever written, out now from this beautiful print issue of @splitlipthemag ! It’s about why I don’t like being called strong.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

Hi, I made a Chrome extension to remove faces from images and download without metadata so you can post protest photos while also staying safe. Download it here:

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

AHHH I’M 17 TODAY!! I’m so proud of all I’ve learned & accomplished in the past year, and excited to see where seventeen takes me 💌 If you want to give me a birthday present, maybe you could read my work? 💕

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

someday I wanna be someone’s favorite poet

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

bowled over to have a poem in the new @kenyonreview , about Ohio and failed memory:

Kenyon Review

@kenyonreview

3 years

Gaia Rajan is a runner-up of the 2021 Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers:

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open. Muriel Rukeyser

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

and that’s a wrap on high school! excited to be at Carnegie Mellon for computer science and creative writing in the fall 🍉

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

how it began how it's going

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

poetry is an evolving form not beholden to its legacy

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

As a brown queer kid, I grew up excising parts of myself in order to be safe. I was so angry with myself for not being "brave" enough to come out. But now, I feel so much compassion for that younger self. You are not difficult to love. You should not need to be brave to exist.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

HELLO I HAVE NEWS— my poem, "Ascent," was selected for the 2022 Best of The Net Anthology! I'm over the moon. Huge thank you to @SWWIMmiami for first publishing this poem, and @SundressPub and editor @maider_vang for selecting it.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

8 months

it is hilarious to me that i wrote an entire chapbook about ""the concept of girlhood"" at 16 w lines like this everywhere....anyways im transitioning now

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

thinking about how in my first workshop, the poetry prof put everyone's poems up and struck out almost every other line— deeply personal lines about classmates' childhoods, griefs. & said she was "just being honest." why do we believe that honest critique requires violence?

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

So excited to announce that I am the first place winner of the Princeton Leonard P. Milberg poetry prize for my poem, Simple Machines! The poem was originally published in @counterclock_ ; view the film here:

Simple Machines | PATCHWORK

Filmmaker: Katherine Han. Poet: Gaia Rajan. A short statement from the filmmaker: "For the film, I showcased the various pieces of the poem using quick, clos...

www.youtube.com

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

I AM NOT CALM ABOUT THIS AT ALL. This is my first nomination, by one of my favorite mags publishing today...can’t thank @splitlipthemag enough.

Split Lip Magazine

@splitlipthemag

3 years

We’re pleased as punch to announce our nominations for the 2021 @BestNewPoets anthology! Congratulations to @jasonbcrawford and @gaia_writes !

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

young poets are powerful

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

I’m so proud and excited to share this poem, out now in the incredible @PalettePoetry !

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

I’m 18 today

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

so thrilled to be recognized as a runner-up in Kenyon Review's Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize!

Kenyon Review

@kenyonreview

4 years

Congratulations to Daniel Zhang, the winner of this year’s Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize! And to our runners-up, Blair Enright of Weston, Massachusetts, and Gaia Rajan of Mason, Ohio. Yong-Yu Huang of George Town, Malaysia received an honorable mention.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

favorite angry poems? I'm especially curious about irrational or irate speakers

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

new poem! lately i've been reckoning a lot with the responsibility of the artist and the commodification of trauma, and this poem is about that 💜 so grateful to @POCKETFIREPRESS for giving this piece a home!

POCKETFIRE/PRESENTS

@POCKETFIREPRESS

4 years

As promised, we published a poem submitted to us today and we could not believe the intensity of @gaia_writes and her poem Inside Every Poem You Can Hear Muffled Screams. ❤️

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

The teen contest industrial complex of diaspora/identity poetry as a whole teaches kids a poetics that operates on loss. What happens when we want to write and we're happy?

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

New poem I'm really proud of in @DIALOGIST !

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

This still doesn't feel real. I'm so elated and honored and beyond grateful to be working with @glass_poetry to bring you my chapbook, Moth Funerals!!

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

I have a poem about becoming a fugitive to yourself in the new @GASHERjournal 💚

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

My poem in @hobartpulp , about mermaids, a dead girl, and the myth of Thessalonike, is out!! Especially excited to share this one. Thank you so much to @Aaron__Burch for seeing something in it.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

Grateful that my second chapbook manuscript, Killing It, was named a semi finalist in the @tupelopress Snowbound Chapbook Competition!

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

this gorgeous poem by Ross Gay:

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

COVER ART REVEAL!!! the incredibly talented @dariusdraws did art for Moth Funerals, and I'm so grateful for his vision! so excited to hold this chap.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

excited that my poem about tokenization found a home at @rustandmoth !

Rust and Moth 🥥

@rustandmoth

4 years

New #poetry from Gaia Rajan @gaia_writes : "An Editor Says Can You Put More Foreign Words in Your Poems".

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

HELLO, THIS DOES NOT FEEL REAL. So so excited that the preorder link for my debut chapbook is out!!! You can preorder here—

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

I owe a lot to those I don’t love. —Szymborska

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

AAAAH MY BOOK COVER IS HERE!! I love it so much— photo by my best friend @byesaniya , designed by Zoe Norvell!!

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

6 months

finally i have a new author photo

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

what're some small litmags I should be submitting to?

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

Poetry tip I like: when stuck, pose an impossible question to yourself and write through your answer. A recent example: why do you want to be understood?

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

I used to ask people to "be brutal" with my drafts, but that's a v white idea— the idea that rigor requires a breakdown so you can be rebuilt in the image of the canon. what if we were kinder? what if we taught poetry not as a vexed individualism but as a collective history?

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

New poem in @DiodeEditions about violent, colonial nostalgia 💚

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

"son, you do not have to be afraid anymore. there is no city that is not my arms. I am everyone who loves you." —Hanif Abdurraqib

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

my second chapbook KILLING IT is out today with @BlackLawrence ! can't believe this book is finally in the world— here's the title poem

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

when poets say they're unhinged they mean: My brain feels like it has been taken off its hinges by an army of troubling but benevolent bluebirds. I have a doorless, porous brain, and it's letting the winter draft in

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

does this work as an author photo?

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

new poem at the amazing @SWWIMmiami ! huge thank you to the editors!

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

I wrote a sonnet with "comments" about teen writing culture for @ogmamagazine !

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

So excited to have a microchap coming out with Variant Lit!!

Variant Literature

@VariantLit

3 years

The 2021 Variant Literature Microchap Contest Results!

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

here's the book this is from:

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son …

www.goodreads.com

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

I won first place at CMU's poetry awards for a selected set from KILLING IT! v excited to bring y'all this very queer, very angry book in fall ❤️‍🔥

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

10 months

i just found my book in a random bookstore for the first time

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 months

I'm interning @CopperCanyonPrs this summer! very excited to be part of the team

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

which women poets on Twitter are interested in the violence of capitalistic self-care?

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

I don’t want to “romanticize my life”, I don’t want to make the unspecial things in my life seem special, I don’t want to upgrade or scale or aestheticize, I just want to love my life knowing it’s unspecial, common as dirt, or maybe love it because it is

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

what is this week?! so unbelievably excited to be a finalist for the Glass Chapbook Series for my chap, "Moth Funerals."

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

i just love this photo

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

1 year

two poems from the new project in @swamp_pink today

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

My website is done(made it from scratch)! Would be v grateful if you checked it out:

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

this @brennatwohy poem forever 💜

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

two poems I'm really proud of out with @upthestaircase (both also in my forthcoming chap)! here's one:

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

new small poem out in @dreams_walking !

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

moving into college today! i’m so excited! in other news, Ikea bags are the second best invention after hoodies.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

it's world poetry day and I am wildly grateful to be a poet & editor & to run events with so many poets that light up my world.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

"The moon hit me/on the head each night, a tradition we called/dreaming." I have two new poems out in one of my favorite magazines, @TinderboxPoetry — so excited to share these! You can also hear me read them at .

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

I HAVE NEWS! The preorders for KILLING IT are out! This book is about queerness, memory, and the detritus of American achievement— it gripped me for two years and I can’t believe it’s finally time to share it with you. Preorder here:

Killing It - Black Lawrence Press

Winner of the Spring 2021 Black River Chapbook Competition Poet Gaia Rajan’s second short collection is a razor-sharp interrogation of queer Asian American identity, intergenerational trauma, and the...

blacklawrencepress.com

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

KILLING IT IS IN THE WORLD!! so happy this book is out; if you preordered, it’ll be here this week! can’t thank my editors @BlackLawrence and my friends enough ❤️‍🔥

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

when we were 10 and 7, my sister and i made up a way to leave arguments called "truce/cut scene," wherein we'd pretend the argument was a "scene" and we were exiting it by singing a precise series of 3 notes. to accept the exit, the recipient would sing the same notes backwards

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

AHHH IT'S OUT! I am the Grand Prize Winner for the 1455 Teen Poetry Contest!! I'm so so grateful to @1455LitArts and @bullmurph for seeing promise in my work 💚

Sean Murphy

@bullmurph

4 years

1455’S 2nd ANNUAL TEEN POETRY CONTEST WINNERS ANNOUNCED @TheBookMaven @pamelaspunch @1455LitArts #poetry #poets #writers #writing

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

1 year

poet / poem

K. Iver

@k_ivertown

1 year

The poet the poem

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

Excited to be a Poetry Editor for Saffron!! If you're a south/west/central asian + mena writer, I want to read your work- be sure to submit!

saffron lit !!

@saffronlit

4 years

hi, twitter!! we’re SAFFRON LIT 💐 a new litmag amplifying the voices of south/west/central asian + mena writers, and we’re now OPEN to issue 1 submissions & staff apps!! you can learn more about us at , or keep reading this thread!

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

so so excited to announce that I'm the first place winner of the 9-12 division of the 2020 Sarah Mook Poetry Contest, for my poem, "October"!

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

Two new poems out at @HominumJournal , including a modified contrapuntal I'm really proud of!

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

just got my cover for my debut chap and— WOW. Y'ALL ARE NOT READY.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

💜💜💜

Rep. Seth Moulton

@RepMoulton

4 years

And finally, our first place winner for our Congressional App Challenge! They say lightning doesn’t strike twice, but whoever said that must not have met Gayatri Rajan, whose win this year marks her second consecutive first place prize.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

I write poems for people who cry on their birthdays

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

I'm really proud of this poem, titled "hopscotch", and so excited that it found a home with the incredible @perhappened !

perhappened | on hiatus

@perhappened

4 years

close your eyes & surrender to the buzz: the thrum of wings. the drumbeat of water. the distant rumble of thunder. the hum of young love & maybe-love & never-was-love. the rushing of rivers that carry us home. perhappened mag issue 4: MIXTAPE is out now.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

submitted my first piece in almost a year last night! she's back!

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

Dorianne Laux

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

after three days of hearing ice cream truck noises everywhere i finally bought one for my inner child 😌

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

2 years

my book comes out tomorrow. holy fuck

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

So honored to have this poem in the new issue of @MuzzleMagazine , alongside visionary @isjonespoetry and my (Twitterless) college roommate Divya Krishnan! Can't thank @theclaudster enough for guiding this poem in its early stages.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

Just signed an email with "Pandemically yours", LMAO

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

hi! so excited to announce that I’m joining the @wearehalfmystic team! 🥰✨

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

omg, I have a poem coming out tomorrow 👀

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

just got a rejection that gutted me....send pet pics/work you've published recently/memes pls 🥺

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

4 years

year-in-review thread! This year I had in 38 poems published in 34 magazines! I'm going to put highlights in this thread :) So grateful for all the editors and fellow writers I've met this year: getting to know you has been such a gift.

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Gaia Rajan

@gaiarajan

3 years

Hi! I'm open for commissions for author & litmag websites now! I made my personal website, , from scratch, and I'm also the designer & web manager of . My rates depend on the number of pages and complexity of the project 💚

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