“A question my work is asking of the reader is do you want to be healed and how? How do you heal? Who do you walk alongside when you walk with your community?”

“Diasporic writers must use our privilege for good, especially the privileges we did not ask for but are nonetheless afforded by the nature of being in diaspora in the West.”

“More than ever before, except for maybe when I was a kid, I allow myself to get to the blank page with excitement, hope, ambition, but not that much expectation or pressure.”

“Writing was something that i held tight and as free of institutional compressions and extraction as i could, but in that grip, it wasn’t growing.”

“I think I largely write for myself to stay alive, and I bring all of my friends and selves into the room when I write.”

“Our younger selves need us to do this work. They are waiting on us to feel our anger deeply. They are waiting on us to free their shame.”

“I approach the page every time knowing I choose to speak, I choose to share my truth, and there is always space, time, and an audience that are seeking and needing voices like mine.”

“The richness and sensitivities in our stories lead the call to offer care and dignity to one another. When we honor each other’s stories, we lay the groundwork for the world we dream of and believe in.”

“Once I stopped externalizing my need to have my aspirations validated, I could put all of that energy back into the work.”

“How can we wrap our heads around loss when it is an ongoing process? How can we find joy in the aftermath of or during survival?”

“I have tried not writing about my women, my identity, etc., but that never works out. Instead I’m leaning into it, generating poems about deshi womanhood.”

“For me, writing is intense somatic work; art is about restoring, playing, and opening up.”

“The body is one of the best ways to express yourself, existing within the push and pull to exist in its natural state or change to your liking.”

“That is how the short story feels to me — tightly constructed narrative where details inevitably get shuffled around with some that get left behind.”

“I can only keep writing and hope that whatever comes out reaches anyone else who needs to hear the same words.”