sasha torchinsky

writer / artist / musician

Sasha Torchinsky is a queer writer, artist & musician born and raised on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueum), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations (Vancouver, BC). Their work has appeared in the publications Filling Station, Storm Cellar and Contemporary Verse 2 among others. Their poems have been included in the anthologies Not Your Best 2 (Knife Fork Book, 2021) and He/She/They/Us: Queer Poems (Pan Macmillan, 2024). They were long listed for the 2020 PRISM International Creative Non-Fiction Prize and runner-up for the 2021 Red Hen Press Benjamin Saltman Poetry Prize. They were selected to be mentored by Jaye Simpson as part of the Room Magazine 2022 Mentorship Program and by Betsy Warland as part of the 2022 Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. Their full length poetry collection Inner Witness is forthcoming.

They create music under the name Feygele (a Yiddish word that means “little bird” and is also a pejorative term for a homosexual). They create both acoustic folk music and experimental electronic synthwave.