The generation that follows will find a road that was once unpaved, walkable for them
Gabriella Peña shares their story with Phie Stopper September 2025
Phie Stopper: Your work seems to focus, like The Neighbors, on giving voice to people whose stories are often overlooked. How do you decide which voices or stories are urgent to share?
Gabriella Peña: I enjoy advocating for marginalized voices most of all. Something I consistently discuss with the student staff I work alongside on the literary magazine ZAUM is recognizing which voices they want to highlight. I ask them gently to set aside their personal biases and consider the broader picture of who our audience is and which stories and experiences are most important for us to share as a platform. Of course, quality work is important most of all, but spotlighting different cultures, backgrounds, and sexual identities reinstates our broad mission to be wholly inclusive. This extends to unconventional means of storytelling and a variety in voice and style.
PS: If you were guest editing an issue of The Neighbors News, which city’s stories would you spotlight, and which kinds of artists or stories would you want to bring forward?
GP:I would love to focus on spotlighting stories that highlight artists whose work bleeds into the culture of the city they are working in. I would love to focus on street artists and performers, and learn about how their environment inspires their work, or vice versa, how their work inspires their environment. I would love to focus on the community around the artist, as I feel that The Neighbors’ mission is to form a family of creatives by cultivating a home made by a myriad of other little homes.
PS: What role do magazines like ZAUM or platforms like The Neighbors have in changing how students, young writers, authors of underrepresented backgrounds see themselves?
GP: Young creatives have the capability of harnessing the privilege of their youth and the ability to shape the world they want to grow into. When a platform truly invites young voices into the fold, they are influencing the way the artistic world will shift and change. When those voices are not only young but marginalized, a new path opens for more underrepresented voices to be heard, appreciated, and not only represented, but headed. The generation that follows will find a road that was once unpaved, walkable for them.
PS: With ZAUM, you helped spotlight authors through radio-broadcasted interviews and reading events. How do you see performance and community engagement intersecting with literature?
GP: Community engagement is everything in the artistic world! Whether that be performing arts, visual arts, or literary arts, community is the base an artist needs to continue growing and creating. The community around all different genres of art intersects because oftentimes, the support of another artist is all you have. A found family forms between artists, a kinship layered with trust and mutual respect. Having the ability to look a fellow creator in the eye and tell them they’re doing a wonderful job and you want to see more of their work is oftentimes just the confidence boost they need to finish that painting, book that gig, or submit that poem.
PS: Many writers describe editing as a form of reading that is both generous and critical. How do you balance those qualities—kindness and critique—when working with another writer’s text?
GP: Something I always remind myself when I’m critiquing a piece is how much bravery that person needed to hit the submit button. I think about the time and effort it took to write the piece, to edit it, to think on it, and then to send it out into the world to be judged. It takes a special kind of person to put their work out there, knowing they could be met with staunch criticisms. I always make sure my critiques give the writer space to grow, and come from a place of love and truly seeing the merit within the work.
PS: Did working so closely with other writers change the way you approach your own creative writing?
GP: That’s a very interesting question, because it has and it hasn’t! I believe every artist has their own unique approach to creating, but I have been given a new array of questions to ask myself during my writing. I now consider my audience more thoughtfully, the impact my piece could have, and how it could bring people together and possibly even make a positive change. If I write about an experience I have had, even hardships I’ve gone through in my personal life, perhaps someone could read that piece and feel heard, seen, and connected.
PS: Finally, how would you define kindness now—not as an ideal, but as something messy, human, and lived in daily life?
GP: I actually wouldn’t call kindness itself messy; I would name it the stable and clean thing that houses itself with steady, unbreakable walls, and remains still even in chaos that thunders above. To me, true kindness isn’t loud, seeking attention, or even recognition. It’s putting in that extra effort to smile at someone, to leave a thoughtful message, or to tell them they’re doing a good job even when life is taxing, the smile strained, the thumbs that typed the message shaking, and the praise leaves insecure lips. True kindness doesn’t demand; it waits in patience. It recognizes and accepts the perfect imperfections that make people. It is consistent even when the world is not. True kindness accepts the mess and recognizes the spots where it is clean. It is unconditional in every sense of the word, and it refuses to shift and change with the tides; it simply remains steady and there. I think the messiness is everything outside of that kindness.