Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed plays at the intersections of pop and politics through a variety of mediums and actions. Motivated by her Bangladeshi and Muslim upbringing in Southern California, she started her career as an activist by creating a political voice for those most marginalized in the backlash of September 11th. In 2004, she founded South Asian American Voting Youth (SAAVY). She continued on to have a twenty year career as an electoral organizer, mobilizing over 500,000 Asian American & Pacific Islanders voters to the polls using in-language culturally competent tools. Essayist, poet, podcaster and screenwriter, her media content developed around creating a counternarrative for the communities that she belonged to – whether youth, Muslim, South Asian or counterculture
Board President, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and the author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016). A former Steinbeck Fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grantee, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, National Parks Arts Foundation, and Poetry Foundation. She has work published in Acentos Review, CALYX, crazyhorse, [Pank], and American Poetry Review among others. Most recently her poem, “Battlegrounds” featured at The Academy of American Poets, Poem-A-Day. She’s coordinated workshops and panels with artworxLA, Latina Writers Conference, and #dignidadliteraria. Learn more at her website.
Ashton Cynthia Clarke is an African American/Afro-Caribbean writer and performance storyteller, currently based in Los Angeles. She has delivered her true, personal stories on stages throughout the So Cal area, in her hometown of New York City, and virtually. Since joining Women Who Submit, she has had work published in five print anthologies and multiple other online and print publications. In addition, she served three terms as Social Media Manager for WWS. After six years of storytelling, Ashton’s favorite project is still the animated short she produced based on her telling of a family member’s childhood in Jamaica: “Titta and the Mango.” Check it out and enjoy on her YouTube channel! Instagram: @ashton.c.clarkeYouTube: https://youtube.com/ashtoncynthiaclarke
traci kato-kiriyama (they+she) – author of Navigating With(out) Instruments (Writ Large Press, 2021); signaling (The Undeniables, 2010); with poetry featured in several anthologies (incl. Penguin Classics; Haymarket Books; Temple University Press); tkk is an audiobook narrator (incl. Bibliophobia; AUDITION; The Swimmers); curator of Nikkei Uncovered: a poetry column; performer/principal writer for PULLproject Ensemble, building the next iteration of their play TALES OF CLAMOR, for Chicago audiences in 2026/2027. Recently commissioned by the Japanese American National Museum to write the closing poem for their new core exhibition opening at the end of 2026, “In The Future We Call Now…” also borrows its exhibition title from tkk’s Navigating…
Sakae Manning, a Choctaw/Nisei two-spirit, centers storytelling on alliances and intersectionality amongst BIWOC. Manning is committed to creating inclusive and intersectional spaces for BIPOC and underrepresented writers. They facilitated strategy and implementation for the most recent Altadena Co-Poet Laureates. For AWP Seattle, they co-produced BIPOC Women/Nonbinary Writers Cultivating Community and Safe Writing Spaces. They co-produced a LAMBDA LIT event amplifying BIPOC LGBTQIA+ writers, and as the Annenberg Community Beach House writer-in-residence, they produced salons featuring BIWOC writers. They are the former social media editor for non-profit Women Who Submit, an AWP Writer-to-Writer Program alum, and an Anaphora fellow. Manning is a board trustee for First Entertainment Credit Union after an extensive career in entertainment global and strategic marketing.
Board Secretary, Noriko Nakada is a multi-racial Asian American who creates fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art to capture the stories she has been told not to talk about. Her memoirThrough Eyes Like Mine, was shortlisted for the 2040 Book Award. Excerpts, essays, and poetry have been published in Hippocampus, Catapult, Linden Ave, and elsewhere. She is an LAUSD teacher and parent as well as a UTLA union organizer. Noriko is represented by Emily Keyes of Keyes Agency.
Suhasini Yeeda is a California Arts Council Emerging Artist Fellow, a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and The Best American Short Stories and Best of the Net nominee. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA from Texas Wesleyan University. Her short stories, essays, criticisms, and book reviews can be found at Ms. Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Indian Review, and more. A full list of her publications can be found on her linktree @suhasiniwrites. Suhasini lives and writes in Los Angeles.