Posted on October 3, 2025

A young poet pretended to be ‘a gender-fluid member of the Nigerian diaspora,’ and wrote intentionally bad poems. He says he got 47 of them published. But soon his prank spiraled out of control.

By River Page

07.16.25 

What you’re about to read is a poem. Its title is unmentionable,

but I can tell you it was nominated for a 2025 Best of the Net Award, which

is meant to bring attention to up-and-coming writers in the indie lit scene.

Behold:

A N E XC E R P T O F T H E F E I G N E D P O E T RY.

To? or not to? William Shakespeare’s??? little cumslut??? o: that is the question. I want Billy bard ??? to spank ??? my big ? juicy ?? fanny ??? while he pens ? his sexy ??? sophisticated ???? plays ????. (No X Edward de Vere

????conspiracy??? ¢ here!) If I’m lucky ?, Daddy ????? will dress me up ?? like one of his stage players ?? ??? and ? and ? my ????. I need to Ophelia ?? Q e him inside me! ?????? Do you think ?? he’ll

write a sexy ? ! iambic 2 pentameter 5 slutliloquy ???? for me? His little ???? Tightass ?? Andronicus ???? But it’s as Daddy ??? always says-why express yourself?? when you can undress ? yourself? He he ?? Daddy knows best! ?? So I’ll be a good

little sluttie ??? and stroke ? his pen(i)s ’til his ink ? \?? cums out ????

If you’re worried that I’m about to tell you why this poem is good, and

imply you’re a bumpkin for thinking otherwise, don’t be. The poem isn’t

good. It’s bad, and it’s meant to be.

The author told me so.

This poem was originally published, with a very crude title, in the online

magazine Jake, under the name b.h. fein (pronouns: “it’s/complicated”).

But b.h. fein does not exist. It is one of the many pen names of a straight,

white Canadian man, who recently told me he’s spent the last few years

inventing minority identities, then publishing terrible poems under these

pseudonyms.

He has pretended, he said, to be Dirt Hogg Sauvage Respectfully, author

of poems such as “non-b god or: what deity would be a TERF?,” as well as

Adele Nwankwo, a “gender-fluid member of the Nigerian diaspora,” who

has published dozens of comically bad poems in a wide array of indie

literary magazines across the Anglosphere in the past three years,

including one about a lesbian WWE-style wrestler that features lines such

as:

“You wanna know how I feel after being cheated out of a victory over

Pat Patriarchy at Survivor Series? I’m furious. I’m hot. Ooh, I’m so mad I

could kiss a woman I don’t even like right now!”

In April, the man behind these identities came clean, writing on Substack

that he’d “assumed a series of ‘attractive’ pen names” to “test the limits of

the poetry industry and just how much buffoonery it was willing to permit

in the present day.” He claimed he’d spent two years tricking editors into

thinking that his pronouns or skin color were less “regular” than they

actually are; and in that time, he said 47 of his intentionally bad poems

had been published in numerous indie literary magazines.

His name, he wrote, was actually Jasper Ceylon. When I first spoke to him,

a couple of months back, he laughed when I insisted that this name must

be fake, too—It’s like calling yourself Jared Sri Lanka or something. He told

me that, yes, it was another pseudonym, a tongue-in-cheek homage to

some very distant Sri Lankan ancestry on his mother’s side. His voice was

young, friendly, Canadian; he said that he is white, though his camera was

off. I was talking to a profile picture of a cartoon elephant, with the name

Adele Nwankwo in the corner: Ceylon told me he’d created online

accounts to match all the identities he’d invented, to maintain the

illusion.

Mostly, because he was mad. Several years ago, the man calling himself

“Jasper Ceylon” was trying to break out as a poet, writing under his real

name—which I’ll share in due course—and he noticed that certain

journals had what he described as “really weird, and quite specific

requirements”:

“I just was not in the demographic they would even consider accepting

in some cases. They were openly advocating on their websites for the

voices of the disenfranchised and all of this stuff. I’m like, Wow, it would

probably be a lot easier to get in if I had some sort of connection to one of

these identities.”

Ceylon is far from the first person to argue that English-language

publishing is overrun with what my colleague Coleman Hughes calls “the

new racism”—that is, instead of giving everyone equal opportunities,

regardless of the color of their skin, editors actively perceive certain races

as worthier than others. (This view of the publishing industry has been

disputed.) Nor is he the first person who’s attempted to expose it.

“ I T WO U L D P R O BA B LY B E A LOT E A S I E R TO G E T I N I F I H A D S O M E S O RT O F C O N N EC T I O N TO O N E O F T H E S E I D E N T I T I E S ,” H E

WAG E R E D.

In 2015, Michael Derrick Hudson, a middle-aged white librarian in

Indiana, saw his poem “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers,

Poseidon, Adam and Eve” rejected by publishers 40 times. This inspired

him to try submitting it under the pen name Yi-Fen Chou. After that, his

poem was promptly published and included in that year’s annual Best

American Poetry anthology. When he was found out, Hudson was accused

of “yellowface.”

Yellowface is also the name of R.F. Kuang’s award-winning satirical 2023

novel, which follows a white plagiarist who steals the work, and Asian

identity, of a Chinese author whose book she is editing. (Many reviewers

noted the parallels between Kuang’s novel and Hudson’s story, although

there’s no evidence the latter plagiarized.)

According to Ceylon, this preference for minority voices disadvantages

those who society sees as most privileged—namely, white men. Statistics

are hard to come by, but anecdotes are plentiful. As novelist Joyce Carol

Oates tweeted in 2022:

“A friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors

to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good;

they are just not interested. this is heartbreaking for writers who may,

in fact, be brilliant, & critical of their own ‘privilege.’ ”

Now, three years later, we have a president who has declared that DEI

mandates are over and white men deserve civil rights protections, but it’s

much harder to change an industry, and a culture, than it is to change the

occupant of the White House. For now, there are still plenty of young,

straight, white men who feel publishing’s obsession with identity politics

has kept them boxed out—and they’re angry about it. This is the story of

one of these men, whose obsessive quest to expose what he saw as the

absurdities of the publishing industry quickly spiraled out of control.

“The first poem to ever get picked up was the ‘yah jah gah hah’ one,”

Ceylon told me, when we first spoke. He was referring to one of two poems

he published under the name Adele Nwankwo in a print edition of Tofu

Ink Arts Press, a publication dedicated to “amplifying the voices of the

under-represented and marginalized.”

Ceylon was shocked that the poem—which begins with a Toni Morrison

quote about “navigating a white male world” and contains lines like

“voodoo prak tik casta oyal drip drip”—was accepted. “It was very

obviously nonsense,” he laughed. “Just fake bad Creole.” (Tofu Ink Arts

Press didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

Ceylon told me he was inspired by various literary hoaxes, including the

1943 Ern Malley hoax, where conservative writers James McAuley and

Harold Stewart published many, many parodies of modernist poetry, to

make fun of a genre they found superficial and stupid. He also mentioned

the more recent so-called Grievance Studies Affair, where the academics

Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose published a

number of bogus papers in academic journals between 2017 and 2018—

including one that claimed dogs engage in rape culture, and another that

included passages from Mein Kampf rewritten in modern jargon. They,

like Ceylon, were trying to prove that in their intellectual sphere, you

could get anything published if its politics were progressive, even if it was

bad.

He was shocked that the poem was accepted. “It was very obviously nonsense,” he

laughed. “Just fake bad Creole.”

Ceylon walked me through his process of creating elaborate characters

with over-the-top biographies and terrible writing styles. According to

him, whenever editors asked to meet on Zoom or record his voice for

readings of the poems, he could just brush them off with comments like,

“Oh, I don’t like the sound of my own voice.” When they asked for

pictures, it was easy to just decline.

In April, Ceylon decided it was time to reveal his hoax. He wanted to

promote Echolalia Review, a 168-page book filled with his prank poetry

that he independently published earlier this year. So, he wrote the “big

reveal” Substack post and, to drive traffic to it, wrote an email to one of

the people he’d tricked. (This person uses they/them pronouns.) Their

name is Chris Talbot, and they are a freelance editor and DEI consultant.

Talbot’s website states that they charge “white, cis, and abled” authors $10

per page for freelance editing services, while they only charge black,

indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), gender variant, or disabled

authors $5. For their DEI consulting work, Talbot charges different rates

based on the demographic makeup of a company’s C-suite: Organizations

whose leadership is more than 50 percent BIPOC, gender variant, or

disabled get a steep discount.

Talbot is also editor of The B’K Magazine, which published one of Adele

Nwankwo’s poems in 2024; Ceylon figured they’d be sure to make some

noise, were they to find out Nwankwo wasn’t real. So, he said, he posed as

a fictional Vancouver-based poet called “Luna” who was emailing Talbot

to say that she’d seen Ceylon being kicked out of a poetry meet-up for

bragging about tricking poetry magazines.

Soon, there were posts on B’K Magazine’s various social media accounts

denouncing him for taking a $10 token payment reserved for

“marginalized creatives only.” Per its submission guidelines, white men

do not qualify to be paid for their work, because the magazine doesn’t

“make enough cash” to pay everyone, so the $10 is reserved for “racially

and ethnically marginalized,” “gender variant, and disabled” submitters,

“because these creatives are the least likely to be paid for their published

works or equitably for their day jobs.” Ceylon told me he donated the $10

Talbot gave him to a charity. B’K Magazine did not respond to a request

for comment.

According to Ceylon, this preference for minority voices disadvantages those who

society sees as most privileged—namely, white men.

Ceylon’s strategy worked. Talbot’s complaints on social media brought

attention to his work. Within two weeks this controversy inside the indie

literary scene was being discussed outside of it, including on popular

podcasts like Blocked and Reported. But Ceylon’s elaborate marketing

campaign wasn’t over. He told me he’d written two novels, both under

another pen name. One had just come out; the other was due to be

published later this year, and to promote it, he wanted to merge his vast

web of identities with his real name: a big, bombastic reveal and a launch-

party dream.

I suggested he reveal his real name sooner, and preferably to me. He said

he’d think about it.

The next day, he sent me an email. “I spoke to the head editor at the

publishing house for the [first] novel, and they dropped the project

because I was a white male author,” Jasper wrote. “I’ll give you the

exclusive on my real name and past credentials. I’ve got nothing to hide

now.”

I looked into the camera on my phone, and he looked into his. At last, the

man with a million names had a face—a pale, boyish one that looked

younger than it was. He was clean-shaven, with a tuft of curly brown hair,

sitting in a cramped, slightly disheveled bedroom. A guitar hung on the

wall. His name, he told me, is Aaron Barry, and he’s my age, 29. (To prove

this, he sent me his ID.) He explained that he is an English-language tutor

from Vancouver who began writing contemporary haiku in 2018, when he

was in his early twenties and recovering from an illness. “I didn’t have

much stamina for anything else,” he said.

“ H E WA S C L E A N – S H AV E N , W I T H A T U F T O F C U R LY B R OW N H A I R , S I T T I N G I N A C RA M P E D, S L I G H T LY D I S H E V E L E D A G U I TA R H U N G O N T H E WA L L . H I S N A M E , H E TO L D M E , I S A A RO N BA R RY,” W R I T E S R I V E R PAG E .

Shortly thereafter, he went on, he dropped out of college at Simon Fraser

University to become a writer, publishing in various haiku magazines

under his real name, winning a local award, and integrating himself with

the Vancouver poetry scene. In addition to his poetry, Barry also

published a series of comedic-prompt books for writers that included

challenges like “Brokeback Mountain. But Ennis and Jack are both

insecure about their masculinity, so the camping trip is just plain

uncomfortable.”

Barry’s work—at least, the work published under his own name—

culminated with his self-published debut collection, eggplants &

teardrops, in 2022. The book received an honorable mention at the Haiku

Society of America’s Merit Book Awards a year later, but by then, Barry

said, he was ready to write other kinds of poetry—rather than just haikus

—and he felt locked out of certain publications on account of his race and

gender. Hence the poetry prank.

Barry claims he’s concerned for the future of poetry. “People can’t engage

with it,” he said. “They’re almost intimidated by it, or they’re just

confused by it. And this exclusionary attitude only contributes to that

further. It’s a shame.”

He turned his attention to novels. During his years of hoaxing, he said he

wrote two, under the pen name “S.A.B. Marcie”—an amalgamation of his

name and his then-girlfriend’s. Both novels were accepted for publication,

and the first, Femoid, came out May 15, with indie publisher Calamari

Archive. Barry told me he didn’t receive an advance but, rather, had an

informal agreement to receive royalties. (I’ve seen emails that confirm

this.)

Femoid follows the tumultuous inner life of the internet-addicted Savoy, a

biracial woman loosely based on Barry’s ex-girlfriend. Throughout the

editing process—which was all done over email—Barry maintained that

the book was based on his experiences. He justified this to himself (and

me) by maintaining that a fictionalized version of himself, called Avery,

does appear in the book. But he told me his editor, Derek White, clearly

thought the author’s identity was closer to the biracial, female character’s.

At last, the man with a million names had a face—a pale, boyish one that looked

younger than it was.

Barry’s second novel, £, flesh, will now be published under his real name

later this summer by McBussy Publishing, a small indie publisher; it’s

about a group of college students who murder their economics professor.

After he and I first spoke, Barry came clean about his straight, white male

identity to both publishers, because he knew this story was going to be

coming out. He told me the editor of his upcoming second novel, Maxwell

Rosenbloom, didn’t care.

Rosenbloom confirmed this: Yes, he said, Barry had written to him “as the

Marcie persona”—”writing like his characters, using emojis, etc.” But

when Rosenbloom found out Barry’s real identity, he said, “I didn’t care. I

thought it was funny. The work is very good. That’s what’s important to

me.”

“Artists are always putting on a persona,” he added.

But White, who’d edited Barry’s debut novel, pulled Femoid off the

shelves. “He told me I was a terrible person,” Barry said. “He said, ‘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.’ ”

What DEI Isn’t

White’s anger was audible through the phone when I called him. “No, it’s

not that I don’t deal with straight white men,” he said, “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.”

White noted that the book makes use of the N-word (when I asked Barry

about this, he said: “It was used ironically. It was necessary for the

authenticity of the story”), and said he’d felt deceived by Barry—who had

told him, over email, that the pseudonym “S.A.B. Marcie” was necessary

in case of doxxing.

When I asked White if he was under the impression that Barry’s biracial

ex-girlfriend had written the book, he snapped: “I wasn’t under the

impression, this is what he told me outright. He completely lied to me

about his identity.” (In response to this allegation, Barry said: “Yeah, I

essentially had to operate under this persona—that’s what having a pen

name is, and I thought someone who championed running a press that

published pseudo-anonymous works would be okay with that.”)

White also claimed that Barry “couldn’t even write” and that he’d agreed

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.”

When I asked White if he thought it was harder for white men to get

published than it was 20 years ago, he told me: “I don’t think so. If you

look at my catalog, I’ve published plenty of white guys, so I don’t know

why he needs to. . .,” White paused.

“I mean, some of us are just trying to do the right thing. I’ve published

too many white guys. I do ignore submissions because, if you know

what it’s like in the publishing world, I receive tons of submissions, and

they’re usually white guys, and it’s just not interesting. I mean, I am a

white guy, so I’m just interested in other material and other people’s

viewpoints.”

He added: “You can call it affirmative action. You can call it what you

want. I was trying to give someone a chance. I think it’s harder for black

women to get published.”

As for the black woman who inspired the novel, White said: “This actual

Marcie—his girlfriend—he’s exploiting her. If she even exists.”

To this allegation, Barry responded: “She gave me permission to do this.”

For the record, the “actual Marcie” is real, and I was able to confirm her

identity via a WhatsApp conversation that included a “proof-of-life” video.

She is indeed a black woman from Vancouver, although she didn’t strike

me as “uneducated.”

She told me that she’d received a copy of Femoid before it was removed

from circulation, adding, “I haven’t actually finished reading the entire

book.”

“But from what I have read, I would say that the parts that are genuinely

my experience are written respectfully,” she said. “Of course, there’s

plenty of content that isn’t quite me or mine, but that’s just how fiction

works.”

In our penultimate conversation, I asked Barry if he felt he had to take on

the persona of a biracial woman in order to get a novel about one

published.

“Absolutely,” he said, adding that White had “confirmed it” by pulling

Femoid after learning the author’s true identity.

But what has he achieved?

Australian writer Matthew Sini, who interviewed Barry in the guise of

Jasper Ceylon on his literature podcast Getting Lit, told me: “Ceylon’s

project reveals a growing rot at the heart of publishing.”

“Vogueish privileging of increasingly arcane identity categories,” he said,

“not only hurts the arts in general terms, it hurts budding artists,

especially those who are from ‘marginalized’ groups . . . The soft bigotry of

low expectations quite often cosigns these writers to an embarrassing

spectacle of publishing undercooked and poorly constructed work. The

Echolia Review project has proven that identity fetishization in the poetry

world literally comes at the expense of the art form.”

Others aren’t as enthused. Alex Perez, associate editor at the publishing

imprint Panamerica, would be a natural ally for Barry; he has criticized

the state of identity politics in the publishing industry, and has been

lamenting “the lack of masculine fiction” for years. But when I asked

Perez what he makes of Barry’s prank, he said:

“I just find the whole thing sad. From the magazines publishing

anything if it’s written by the ‘correct’ writers to Jasper’s experiment. It

seems like the literary world will forever be stuck in this performative

identity loop, the same battles being fought over and over again.”

In other words, the culture war never ends.

While researching this piece I found myself thinking about a 20-year-old

book: Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, about a black classics

professor who, in order to get a book deal, pretends to be a white liberal’s

idea of an oppressed minority: an African American vernacular-speaking

man from a drug-and-violence-ridden broken home. (A few years ago,

Erasure was adapted into the film American Fiction.)

I emailed Everett, with a link to the Substack Barry wrote under the pen

name Jasper Ceylon, and asked what he thought of this real-life literary

hoax.

“I feel bad for Jasper Ceylon that her/his peak career achievement is a

gotcha moment,” he wrote. “Pranks are funny sometimes, but that’s all

they are. Perhaps Jasper Ceylon can start a journal and publish poets with

‘regular’ names. It should be good as she/he is clearly a judge of fine

poetry.”

Yesterday, I called Barry and told him this piece was about to come out.

There was excitement in his voice. The fictitious web he’d spun for

himself over the past two years was about to be completely unraveled. “I

think every writer who uses pen names gets at least one great chance to—

let’s say—reconcile your personas and re-emerge as yourself,” Barry told

me. “I choose to have the web unravel. I’d like to be myself again.”

https://www.thefp.com/p/white-man-who-pretended-to-be-black-poet