Parel Joy is a poet, writer and printmaker. Their work was previously published in Wicked Gay Ways, Blacklist Journal, The Gaudie and Hysteria, and their zine I Dreamt I Was Kissing a Stranger is currently for sale at Good Press in Glasgow. They were recently commissioned to design a temporary mural in Aberdeen's city centre, on view during June 2022, and their work was also included in the Unseen World printmaking exhibition in De Wintertuin, Antwerp. Parel relocated from Aberdeen to Antwerp in the summer of 2021, and occasionally works as a literary translator. The Queen of Cups and Other Poems is their pamphlet debut.
‘I had a dream I didn’t have a body / but was breathing, still / borrowed my girlfriend’s black silk tie / picked out summer dresses and leather jackets / and put it around nothing at all, draped it / on nothing at all, held it / with nothing at all.’