Originally from San Diego, Cora Schipa spent part of her childhood in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, before moving to Charleston, South Carolina, to attend middle and high school at Charleston County School of the Arts as a Creative Writing major. She is a 2022 graduate from the College of Charleston with a B.S. in Sociology (Bachelor’s Essay: “College Students’ Perception of Reproductive Rights and Choices: A Qualitative Study”) and a B.A. in English with a Creative Writing Concentration in both fiction and poetry. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she received the John C. Hodges and John B. Emperor Fellowships for full funding and serves as an English Teaching Assistant and Writing Center Consultant. She is also a Poetry Reader for Grist, the Assistant Managing Editor of Crab Creek Review, and a volunteer with WriteGirl, a creative writing mentoring organization for teen girls and gender-expansive youth. Her poem “White Elephant” was recently a semi-finalist for Southeast Review’s Gearhart Poetry Prize. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Harpur Palate, Southeast Review, Peatsmoke, Cola Literary Review, Rust & Moth, The Shore, 3Elements Review, Gulf Stream, ONE ART, Unbroken: Prose Poems, Screen Door Review, and elsewhere magazine, among others.