Spotlight on nat raum and fifth wheel press
By Kelsey Hyeri Ko, written April 2026
On a crisp morning in early April 2026, I sat down with nat raum of fifth wheel press at Sophomore Coffee in Baltimore’s Old Goucher neighborhood. raum, who walks in wearing a baseball cap ironically emblazoned with “Parkville Dad” across the front, has a casual steadiness about them. I find them fresh off the heels of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference & Bookfair, which found its home in Baltimore this past March for the first time since 2003, and welcomed over 10,000 writers into the city for a weekend.
During AWP, raum had organized several off-site events, including a queer “literary circus” themed event called Balancing Act. When I walked into Club Car for the event last March, every seat was packed, and the energy from poets and audience members alike was palpably jubilant, a celebration of queer joy and art.
In that month, raum had also organized a reading event associated with Fruitcake, the queer reading series that they launched a few years ago. After being struck with excitement during their experiences reading in Philadelphia’s queer poetry scene, they had a conversation with a connection at Ottobar about bringing something like that to Baltimore. The rest was history. The reading series is now in its third year.
When there’s a call to create a space for queer writing in Baltimore, raum makes it happen. And even in the aftermath of organizing multiple events in March, raum talks about hitting the ground running in returning to their own writing and ongoing projects. As we nurse our coffees, they tell me how AWP being in town impacted their writing practice.
“I didn’t do a whole lot of writing in March,” raum says. “It was so chaotic with AWP being in Baltimore. But this April I’m doing the 30/30 Project by Tupelo Press, which is writing 30 poems in 30 days, so I’ve jumped fully back into it. I don’t really have anything that I’m writing towards in particular. I’m just playing around, and that’s been really fun.”
Writing as a practice that infuses both playfulness and fun, as well as consistency and discipline—it’s something I’m struck by throughout my hour-long conversation with raum. As I explore their relationship to writing, they rattle off more of the various writing challenges they’ve participated in and created for others, whether it’s the Aurelie 30 or the Randomizer, a generative writing workshop that they created to gamify the creative writing process.
“It’s very loosely based on the Food Network show The Tournament of Champions, where they spin the wheel and make the dish. You spin the one for the prompt, you spin the one for the form, and you spin the one for a wild card—and that’s gotten me writing in form a lot lately,”raum says. “A huge thing that my master’s program taught me was: How can we make constraints fun? How do constraints inform our writing?”
The catalyst for fifth wheel press, a small press that raum founded in 2019 for queer and trans artists, is in this spirit of constraints actually leading to more creativity. Originally founded by raum as a photobook press for photographers, Baltimore-based fifth wheel press has since published everything from monographs and zines to chapbooks and anthologies.
“I was trying to get a book published, and I was just sending my work out to various publishers, and they all rejected me,” raum says. “I was desensitized to rejection at this moment, but then I kind of was like, ‘Okay, who are these people publishing?’ I did a deep dive into who photography publishers were really circling in on in the year 2019, and I felt like it was just all cishet white dudes.”
After this experience of trying to get a seat at the table, raum decided to build their own creative outlet to elevate marginalized voices, based right out of Baltimore.
“It was very much like, if you can’t beat them, join them,” raum says. “If there’s not a space for work like mine, like my friends’ [work], it needs to exist.”
raum holds an MFA in creative writing & publishing arts from the University of Baltimore now, but they didn’t always necessarily expect to make writing the heartbeat of their creative life. While they’ve always enjoyed writing stories all throughout their childhood and into high school, when it came to pursuing their undergraduate studies, they decided to hone in on photography. After they graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2018, they found their way back to writing after experiencing creative burnout.
“The only thing I really could do at the time was write. Anything visual was just off the table. I was so burnt out, I had no interest in engaging with my art practice,” raum says. “I've always felt like I can just pick up writing anywhere and just do it. It’s not like photography, where I have to pick up my camera, do lighting, get the film developed. It just felt like a way to be creative without pushing myself to. That’s the really special thing about writing. You can do it on pen and paper, you can do it on a laptop, you can do it anywhere.”
Writing: a flexible medium that can ebb and flow with where you are, shaped and influenced by circumstances.
This ethos seems to carry over to raum’s work with fifth wheel press, which has indeed been everywhere this year, expanding and shifting in new ways. Throughout the month of June, they’ve released a free microchapbook every day in celebration of Pride Month, modeled after the summer microchapbook series from Ghost City Press. Earlier this year in March, they launched a new annual awards anthology called Monarch to recognize the best new queer writing and art published by literary magazines and independent presses.
“Monarch is like the queer Pushcart Awards,” raum says. “I was thinking about the Lambda Literary Awards and how they’re amazing in the recognition they provide for queer books, but there’s not really anything for people who are publishing in literary magazines and journals. I worked with a really phenomenal team of basically eight of some of my best friends. We’re taking the year off from single-author collections, and that’s led me to be a little bit more open about the kind of projects that I’m trying.”
raum is a poet, but in many ways, they are also a true multidisciplinary artist. Whether it’s providing freelance services editing manuscripts for other writers or creating the arts calendar and writing pieces for the Baltimore Beat, their footprint extends beyond the queer-focused writing spaces they’ve created. They create zines through their project Ramen Zine Distro. They have a background in marketing and continue to offer and use their skills in design and photography for their creative projects and freelance clients. Many of the promotional materials and cover art for their projects, they’ve designed.
It’s no surprise then that raum also approaches their writing and editing process in this multidisciplinary way. As an editor, raum views it from a lens more akin to that of a museum curator.
“I really see the value in things as they are. I’ll occasionally offer an edit to a writer, but I really do tend to publish work that I feel is ready to be published, which I think goes into that curator mentality versus editor mentality,” raum says. “Sequencing the anthology is so much fun. I take a list of everything that is like being published, and I think: What are we working with here? What are the themes? What are the vibes? What is the form? And then it all just kind of flows together from there.”
There’s this reverent nature to the way raum talks about writing—this feeling of trust and intuitiveness that is tangible in how they approach their own work, and that of others. The process of editing and creating an anthology is about feeling, curating, showcasing, uplifting. The process of writing is as natural and instinctual as breathing.
“I trust my own vision so much as a writer. I really stand behind my work. . . . So I’m very inclined to trust a writer in the way that they present something. This isn’t necessarily how I would have done it, but I understand why they are doing it,” raum says.
We chat briefly about the commodification of art and the way in which capitalism has turned creativity, which is such an essential part of human nature, into profitable side hustles. It lingers with me—the way that they talk about their writing with such a sense of confidence in the midst of all of this, the rat race that we live in. I can’t help but feel curious about it. They describe the periods of time in which they’ve received rejection after rejection, and while it feels like a “slog” at times, raum says that they don’t internalize them. Yet as a writer, there’s this tension in the fact that finding a platform for your art also means opening yourself up to a world of rejection. What’s their secret?
“I have just always written because I don’t know anything else,” raum says simply. “My creative self is a huge part of me, and I think that is ultimately where that confidence comes from. Knowing that no matter what happens professionally, I’m doing this for myself.”
I’m brought back to how we first began our conversation by talking about how constraints can sometimes help creativity come more easily. Perhaps then, facing the constraints of rejection means cultivating a deep, unwavering knowing that your work matters, regardless of what others say. Or maybe, such as in the genesis of fifth wheel press, that constraint can also motivate you to create new spaces for voices that need to be uplifted. After all, doesn’t queerness exist in juxtaposition to that which is conventional, or that which boxes you, aligning you with the status quo? The greatest radical act then could be that in the face of a world telling you “No,” writing and writing and writing anyway, and perhaps even opening doors for others along the way.
Learn more about fifth wheel press at fifthwheelpress.com and nat raum on Instagram and X @gr8earlofhell, Bluesky @gr8earlofhell.bsky.social, and on their website at natraum.com.
Kelsey Hyeri Ko is a Korean American writer, creative, and psychotherapist based in Baltimore. Her work and words have appeared in The Atlantic, Baltimore Magazine, and Maryland Matters. You can find them at kelseyhko.com or on Instagram @stringtheoretical.
nat raum (b. 1996) is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They hold a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a MFA from the University of Baltimore. They are the author of origin trilogy, journal of various worries, and many others.
*****
Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women-identifying writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we LUMINATE a path for women-identifying creatives this year by purchasing one of our publications or a workshop from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, for yourself or as a gift, joining our newsletter, following us on Facebook or Instagram, or subscribing to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.