A poet said his career skyrocketed within the liberal literary scene by taking on minority personas to promote his work to publishers.
Aaron Barry, 29, of Vancouver, experienced the most success when he posed as writers with identities far from his own, even if the poems were blatantly ‘trash.’
His reasoning behind the scheme was simple – to prove the poetry world is more concerned with writers’ identities than the quality of their work.
‘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 began to DailyMail.com.
‘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.
‘Such treatment would leave writers in a state of peril and anxiety, forever having to look over their shoulders while navigating their careers.’
From 2023 to 2024, Barry had managed to fool 30 respected literary journals around the globe and managed to get roughly of 50 ‘nonsensical’ poems published.
He published dozens of pieces as Adele Nwankwo, a ‘gender-fluid member of the Nigerian diaspora,’ including one titled After Coming Out: A Wrestling Promo.’
Aaron Barry (pictured), 29, of Vancouver, experienced the most success when he posed as writers with identities far from his own, even if the poems were blatantly ‘trash.
In May, one of Barry’s personas published an ‘Anti-Poetry’ collection called Echolalia Review (pictured) the following month, containing the works of Nwankwo, Fein and other non-existent poets
‘The CisBoys thought they could gang up on me and put an end to my championship pursuit?’ the poem published in 2023 reads. ‘Hah! I’ve got Toni Morrison books that hit harder than those bozos.
‘Oh, and this would set the crowd ablaze, cause them to whisk in rattle homemade signs (“The Nigerian Nightmare,” “Nwankwo 11:16,” Step on My Balls, Kween Adele!)’
‘The first poem to ever get picked up was the “yah jah gah hah” one,’ Barry told The Free Press in an article published on Wednesday.
He was referring to one of Nwankwo’s poems that was published in the Tofu Ink Arts Press, which has a mission of ‘amplifying the voices of the under-represented.’
The poem kicks off with a Toni Morrison quote about ‘navigating a white male world’ and features lines such as ‘voodoo prak tik casta oyal drip drip.’
‘It was very obviously nonsense. Just fake bad Creole,’ Barry explained to the outlet as he chuckled, baffled that the poem was accepted to begin with.
Another one of Barry’s characters, b.h. fein, whose pronouns are ‘its/complicated,’ was actually nominated for a 2025 Best of the Net Award.
The intro of the award-worthy piece, titled Shakespeare’s C*msl*t, reads: ‘To ?️ or not to ?️ William Shakespeare’s ??? little c*msl*t ??? : that is the question.
One of the people infuriated by Ceylon’s ‘true’ identity was Chris Talbot (pictured), who uses they/them pronouns, a freelance editor and DEI consultant
Another one of Barry’s characters, b.h. fein, whose pronouns are ‘its/complicated’ was actually nominated for a 2025 Best of the Net Award (pictured)
Dirt Hogg Sauvage Respectfully, Claire Brooke Hawksmouth Sky Child, and Eleanor Neveah Mei are some of his other creative guises.
After years of blindsiding publishers, he finally started to pull the curtains down on his ‘prank on the poetry world.’
‘Well, someone had to do it. It was inevitable,’ he dramatically declared on Substack at the start of April.
Although Barry did not share the news as himself, but as another one of his aliases – Jasper Ceylon.
While Ceylon more closely mirrored Barry’s traits, his true identity would not be publicly revealed until months later when The Free Press shared his story.
He said he pulled off his stunt to ‘test the limits of the poetry industry and just how much buffoonery it was willing to permit in the present day.’
Barry (pictured in 2022) has finally started to pull the curtains down on his ‘prank on the poetry world’
Ceylon further detailed: ‘I assumed a series of “attractive” pen names and as these personas sent upwards of fifty poems to English-language poetry journals the world over.
‘These poems featured material that was farcical, inconsistent, inaccurate, prejudiced, and, in some cases, outright nonsensical, spanning every kind of style and subject matter seen in contemporary poetry.’
While they may have varied in tone or content, they all shared one commonality, he said: ‘They were trash.’
‘The worst part: Every single poem got published.’
Ceylon’s shock admission caught instant social media attention, with magazine publishers who got tricked into working with him instantly sounding the alarm.
One of the people infuriated by Ceylon’s ‘true’ identity was Chris Talbot, who uses they/them pronouns, a freelance editor and DEI consultant.
Talbot is the editor of B’K Magazine, which published one of Nwankwo’s poems last year.
‘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 shared 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.’
He published dozens of pieces as Adele Nwankwo, a ‘gender-fluid member of the Nigerian diaspora,’ including one titled After Coming Out: A Wrestling Promo’ (pictured)
Ceylon independently published an ‘Anti-Poetry’ collection called Echolalia Review the following month, containing the works of Nwankwo, Fein and other non-existent poets.
When Barry decided to completely drop the act and no longer hide behind Ceylon, he revealed he caught some flack from some of the editors he worked with.
S.A.B Marcie, yet another fake identity, is a biracial woman who was loosely inspired by Barry’s then-girlfriend.
Marcie published a book called Femoid with the assistance of editor Derek White.
Before The Free Press shared Barry’s feature piece, he decided to tell White the truth – and it did not go over well.
White pulled Femoid from the shelves and allegedly told Barry he’s ‘a terrible person.’
‘I haven’t published a white male author for two years because I don’t want to deal with you guys, and if I had known you were a white male author I would not have accepted the book,’ Barry claimed White told him.
White denied he does not work with white men while talking with The Free Press.
‘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 shared on Instagram (pictured)
‘No, it’s not that I don’t deal with straight white men, but if you looked at the context of the book, for a white man to write this book is absolutely wrong, and it would be unethical for me to publish it,’ the deceived publisher said.
White said that Barry ‘couldn’t even write’ and he only was willing to edit the book ‘under the assumption that [the author] was like the character in the book: an uneducated black woman from Vancouver.’
‘So, I was trying to help her write this book, right? And wasted three months of my life,’ he said, questioning if the former-girlfriend Marcie was inspired by even existed.
The Free Press confirmed that she does in fact exist, although far from ‘uneducated’ the article’s author, River Page, inserted in the piece.
Marcie also wrote another novel, £, flesh, which is not yet published, with an editor who was unbothered by Barry’s admission.
The book is still on track to be released, but it will cite Barry as the author.
Maxwell Rosenbloom, the book’s editor, told The Free Press: ‘I didn’t care. I thought it was funny. The work is very good. That’s what’s important to me.’
Now, Barry is looking ahead to continuing he poetry journey with nothing to hide.
Barry (pictured in 2019) is looking ahead to continuing he poetry journey with nothing to hide
He began his writing career in 2018, dabbling in haiku while recovering from an illness. He also works as an English tutor.
Barry had won local awards and been featured in haiku magazines before he delved into his bombshell ‘experiment.’
‘I don’t care much for being swept up in the so-called “culture war” – that’s small-picture stuff,’ he told DailyMail.com.
‘My interest with this and my other works (which the publisher of my first novel, the de-listed Femoid – which now needs a new publisher – didn’t understand) 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.’
