“All cities are like you anyway. Everything is cells and bodies.” So begins Maya McOmie’s poem “Leaving Town,” and the inspiration for the title of Ohio Migration Anthology, Volume Two.

The Ohio Immigrant Alliance published the second volume of the Ohio Migration Anthology, “(Everything Is) Cells and Bodies,” in 2023.  Volume 2 broke ground with the project’s first play—”Three Countries, One Mother” by Neema Bal and Katie Beck, and first trilingual story—an illustrated memoir by high school student Shirley Betzaida Lopez Sanchez, ”Mi Triste Infancia / My Sad Childhood / A nchwinqlale ky’ixk’oj” in English, Spanish, and Mam.

Editor and OHIA Director Lynn Tramonte writes, “All of our contributors, all of the people whose stories they share, and all of our readers have one thing in common. We may come from different lands, socioeconomic backgrounds, religions, and ‘races’—whatever that means—but we are all just people:: cells and bodies.” Read more here.