Photograph by Mena Cempoalxóchitl
Day Heisinger-Nixon is a poet, essayist, interpreter & translator. Their debut poetry collection, ROOM | ROOM | ROOM, recipient of the 2024 Other Futures Award, is set for publication with Futurepoem in 2026.
Raised in an ASL-English bilingual home in Fresno, California, Day holds an MA in Deaf Studies: Cultural Studies from Gallaudet University & an MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry from New England College.
Their essays and poetry have appeared in Apogee Journal, Peach Mag, Boston Review, Foglifter, Nat. Brut & elsewhere. A three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize & a nominee for the Best of the Net Prize, Day’s work has received recognition from Witness Magazine, Indiana Review, Boston Review & Death Rattle Writers Festival, among other organizations.
As an interpreter, Day works primarily between ASL, English, International Sign & Spanish. In addition to these, Day holds varying levels of proficiency in several other languages, spoken & signed. They seek to practice a language justice-informed model of language work, & largely specialize in academic, conference, liaison & solidarity interpreting. Day has interpreted in more than 20 countries in Europe, Asia & North America.
They are currently based in Berlin.
SELECTED ONLINE PUBLICATIONS
Apogee | “Mechanisms of Blue”
Booth | “Thirteen Ways of Looking…” & “Publick Universal Friend Flirts with Typhus”
Boston Review | “Room, Room, Room in the many…” & “Publick Universal Friend Adopts a More Androgynous…”
Call Me [Brackets] | “Publick Universal Friend Pauses…” & “Publick Universal Friend Sees the Signs”
Disability Studies Quarterly | “On Crip Horizons”
Gasher Press | “Étude”
The Lickety~Split | “Ars Poetica”
Lover’s Eye Press | “(Be)Side: A Meditation on the Parenthetical”
Malasaña | “In an Ecosystem, Everything Has a Name”
Nat. Brut | “Gender is a Room, Gender is a Field: On Metaphor”
Oroboro | “Publick Universal Friend Contends…” & “Poplerne ved Hobro…”
Peach Mag | “Aubade [ ]”
Plum Recruit | “HORS_” & “Window, Museum of Modern Art…”
Post Road | “Notes from a Field on Fire,” “Félix González-Torres– ‘Untitled’…” & “Multiclausal Exercises in Translation”
Riggwelter Press | “After David”
Underblong | “On Surplus Value” & “In Which a Single World…”
SELECTED PRINT PUBLICATIONS
Always Crashing | “The Family Photo Albums” & “Clinical File, Genetics…”
Booth | “Thirteen Ways of Looking…” & “Publick Universal Friend Flirts with Typhus”
Boston Review | ‘“Room, Room, Room, in the many…”’
Foglifter | “Following their Rebirth…” & “Publick Universal Friend Meets the Doctor”
Second Factory | “Even Publick Universal Friend’s Father…”
Witness Magazine | “Sestina Re-Sequenced, Serotonin Returned”