A straight, white poet pretended to be “a gender-fluid” Nigerian named Adele Nwankwo, along with other similar personas, to get his intentionally awful work published. Poet Aaron Barry wrote poems that were blatantly “trash,” exposing the systematic racism against white writers in the literary scene.
Aaron Barry told Daily Mail that his writing career skyrocketed within the pro-DEI literary scene after he took on minority personas — such as “gender-fluid” Nigerian Adele Nwankwo, b. h. fein, S. A. B. Marcie, and Jasper Ceylon — even if his poems were obviously “trash.”
The 29-year-old writer, who was able to dupe 30 literary journals around the world from 2023 to 2024, noted that he got roughly 50 of his “nonsensical” works published, proving that the poetry world is more interested in the identities of authors rather than the quality of their content.
“My thinking was that, if the industry — from small magazines to full-on publishing imprints — could get away with showing a clear preference toward certain groups and, in that same vein, a clear bias against other groups,” Barry, who hails from Vancouver, said.
“Then there was nothing to say that such power couldn’t be abused in the future, whether it be to adhere to shifting trends or politics, or to discriminate against additional demographics,” the poet continued.
“Such treatment would leave writers in a state of peril and anxiety, forever having to look over their shoulders while navigating their careers,” he added.
Barry had also won local awards and was featured in haiku magazines, with his “b.h. fein” persona — whose pronouns are “its/complicated” — even being nominated for a 2025 Best of the Net Award, Daily Mail reported.
The award-winning piece in question, titled, “Shakespeare’s Cumslut,” now has an editor’s note explaining it is a prank:
Editor’s Note: In light of recent news, JAKE has updated the author’s name and biography to reflect the values of his editorial process and the places where it disconnects from the author’s. He believes removing it from the record would be problematic in archiving the mag, and sees artistic value beyond the cruel joke intended by Mr. Barry. It’s a piece of satire, and JAKE took it as such. Even though the target was different than the author intended, JAKE knows the Author is dead anyways, and is free to interpret the comedy how he wants. Below is the poem as it originally appeared (at some point the code broke, but this is most reflective of the original manuscript). JAKE had also nominated the poem for Best of the Net, but has elected to remove it from the collection, as he doesn’t wish to encourage others like Barry to talk down on their own process in the way he has.
Another one of his pieces, titled, “After Coming Out: A Wrestling Promo,” read, “The CisBoys thought they could gang up on me and put an end to my championship pursuit?” adding, “Hah! I’ve got Toni Morrison books that hit harder than those bozos.”
“They were trash,” Barry told Daily Mail of his work, adding, “The worst part: every single poem got published.”
Eventually, Barry came clean with his true identity, revealing his “prank on the poetry world,” and receiving backlash from some of the editors he worked with.
Chris Talbot, who uses “they/them” pronouns and is the editor of B’K Magazine — which published one of Nwankwo’s poems last year — was reportedly “infuriated” upon learning of Barry’s true identity.
“There’s a white cis man, Jasper Ceylon, pretending to be a host of marginalized individuals in order to get published as them,” B’K Magazine wrote on Instagram.
“He thinks it makes him clever and is trying to prove that publications will print anything as long as it comes from a marginalized person,” the magazine further lamented.
Today, Barry, who works as an English tutor, is looking to continue his poetry under his real name and identity, telling Daily Mail, “I don’t care much for being swept up in the so-called ‘culture war’ — that’s small-picture stuff.”
“My interest with this and my other works,” the writer added, “is to explore ideas of artistic freedom and what you might call non-denominational creative liberty.”
“In the end, I hope people will see from this that there’s room for all types of writing and narratives in today’s literary world, if only we’d stop being so adversarial and moralistic about things,” Barry said.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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