About

Isaiah Yonah Back-Gaal (he/they) is a poet, editor, drag queen, climate organizer, and Dua Lip stan.

They write about ecological collapse and political organizing, drag and Jewish ancestry, Yiddish, kinship, geese, grief, queer family, and in the words of Donna Haraway, “the arts of living on a damaged planet.”

As an organizer they have worked with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Sunrise Movement, JVP, and more. Currently they work as the Climate and Safe Energy Campaign Manager of Waterkeeper Alliance. In 2023 the were awarded an Abolition and Freedom Dreams fellowship to develop and facilitate a series of poetry workshops for community organizers and activists.

Isaiah received an MFA in Creative Writing from the Ohio State University, where they served as Managing Editor of the award-winning literary magazine, The Journal, taught undergraduate writing classes, and were awarded a University Fellowship. Isaiah was guest editor-in-chief of Seventh Wave Magazine, publishing a digital anthology, “On Queer Family,” in 2025.

You can read their poems “Mating Pairs,” nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and “At the river there once was a glacier, now there are seashells,” in swamp pink, and their poem “dor,” finalist for the Fugue Poetry Prize.

You can also check out their review of Wo Chan’s “Togetherness” in the Cleveland Review of Books.

At night, Isaiah can be found onstage as the drag queen Mona Schewitz, belting Yiddish socialist standards at bars and fundraisers across the tri-state area.