Join AAJA-LA for an interactive panel discussion and workshop about the intersection between poetry and journalism. Our lineup of talented panelists will share how their work in both fields informs the other. We'll then jump into a mini writing workshop for a hands-on experience on how each of us can insert a journalistic perspective into our creative writing and how we can use creativity in our journalism.

SPEAKERS

Jireh Deng (she/they) is a writer born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California. Her words appear with the Asian American Writer's Workshop, podcast "VS", Edsurge, Level Ground's "Blooming in the Whirlwind", and YouthSpeaks's anthology "Between my Body and the Air". She has performed with the San Francisco Public Library, the Human Rights Campaign, TEDx, amongst others. A journalist, she is the 2021-2022 student board representative of the Asian American Journalist Association's Los Angeles Chapter and currently an editorial pages intern at the LA Times.

Beena Raghavendran is a journalist and playwright based in Brooklyn, NY. By day, she is an engagement reporter at ProPublica, where she focuses on crowdsourcing for local investigations. In her spare time, she writes and performs plays. Her debut solo show that she wrote during the pandemic, "Meera's Kitchen," premiered in June 2021 at the Cincy Fringe Festival. Beena also runs AAJA's young professionals network, Yung AAJA. Prior to ProPublica, she was an education reporter at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. She grew up outside Cincinnati, Ohio.

Born and raised in San Francisco, Shirley Huey is a Cantonese-speaking freelance writer, researcher, and consultant who writes about food, culture, race, and place. A graduate of UC Berkeley and NYU Law, Shirley (she/her) has read her prose and poetry throughout the Bay Area, including at the Eves @ the Beat reading series, APAture's Literary Arts Showcase, Quiet Lightning, Bay Area Generations, and Oakland Asian Cultural Center. Her writing has been featured in such publications as Berkeleyside, Catapult, Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, and Essential Truths: The Bay Area in Color. Shirley is a co-founder of Lunchbox Moments, a zine presenting stories on Asian American identity through the lens of food. She is a proud alum of VONA, Kearny Street Workshop's Interdisciplinary Writers Lab, and SF Writers Grotto's Rooted & Written program.

Noor Hindi (she/her) is a Palestinian-American poet and reporter. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Hobart and Jubilat. Her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Literary Hub, and Adroit Journal. Her debut collection of poems, Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow. is forthcoming from Haymarket Books (2023). Visit her website at noorhindi.com.

Simmi Aujla (she/her) is a writer based in the Bay Area. She is an alum of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto fellowship program, Tin House Summer Workshop and VONA / Voices of Our Nation, where she studied genre fiction. Simmi is a Brown alum and former journalist, with experience at Politico, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press.