Dr. Stephanie Han

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Woman. Warrior. Writer. Devi S. Laskar

Meet December’s Woman. Warrior. Writer. Devi S. Laskar!

How did you come to author your life?

I credit my stubborn streak. I’ve been writing for a very long time. In 2010, through no fault of my own, I lost the bulk of my work. I had to start over. Although many people discouraged me from pursuing a writing life (in light of the real world problems that plagued my family and me) a few encouraged me to keep going — including my family. I have built back my writing life word by word, determined that no one was going to make decisions for me ever again.

Devi S. Laskar is a poet, novelist, essayist, photographer, artist, former newspaper reporter and TarHeel basketball fan. She is the author of award-winning The Atlas of Reds and Blues. Her second novel, Circa was published by Mariner Books and selected as the June 2022 Goop Book Club pick (founded by Gwyneth Paltrow). Her third novel, Midnight, At The War will be published by Mariner in  2024. She holds degrees from Columbia University, University of Illinois and UNC-CH. A native of Chapel Hill, N.C., she now lives in California with her family. You can learn more at devislaskar.com and follow her on IG and Twitter: @devislaskar

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Woman. Warrior. Writer. Sun Yung Shin

Meet November’s Woman. Warrior. Writer. Sun Yung Shin!

신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin was born in Seoul, Korea and was raised in the Chicago area. She is a poet, writer, and cultural worker. The author of six collections and children’s books and the editor of three anthologies, her most recent book is The Wet Hex (Coffee House Press). She lives in Minneapolis where she co-directs the community organization Poetry Asylum with poet Su Hwang. You can learn more at: www.sunyungshin.com

How did you come to author your life?

An important part of authoring my life began with writing poetry when I was 22 or 23. I had always had a strong sense of self as a child, and a sense of wonder at the presence of our inner lives. Until poetry, I didn’t have the best (for me) means to express my inner life and explore the conditions of my life, especially as a Korean American immigrant, very much an Other in American society, mostly surrounded by silence. Poetry is a needle piercing the fabric of silence, leaving a trail, leading with flashes of light. 

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Woman. Warrior. Writer. Kate Murayama

Meet October’s Woman. Warrior. Writer. Kate Murayama!  Kate Maruyama’s novel, Harrowgate was published by 47North. Her novella Family Solstice named Best Fiction Book of 2021 by Rue Morgue Magazine is out from Omnium Gatherum. Her novella Halloween Beyond: The Gentleman’s Suit is out this October from Crystal Lake, and her literary novel Alterations is upcoming from Running Wild Press.

How did you come to author your life?

I have always written, from novel to screenplay to novel to stories to novels. But it seems every time I sit down to write, I’m writing toward the question of love in all its human varieties. The questions keep me going: What do we do when our beloved dies but doesn’t leave? How far will we go to keep them with us? (Harrowgate) How can ancestral greed come before familial love and what does a loving innocent child do, caught in the crosshairs? (Family Solstice) How do we make peace when a friend slips away? (Halloween Beyond) Alterations examines how going against love can have repercussions through three generations of a family. Lifelong friendship is the question my next work is pushing toward.

Kate Murayama’s website provides resources and articles on allyship, whiteness, and privilege.

This is an excellent resource and a solid demonstration of how we might try to share and learn from each other.  Intersectionality as put forth by scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is a key to changing the lives of women as a collective.

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Woman. Warrior. Writer. Natashia Deón

Meet September’s Woman Warrior Writer Natashia Deón!

Natashia Deón is a two-time NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literature, a practicing criminal attorney, and author of the critically acclaimed and widely-reviewed novels, The Perishing and GRACE, named a Best Book by The New York Times and awarded Best Debut Novel by the American Library Association’s Black Caucus. A PEN America Fellow, Deón has also been awarded fellowships and residencies at Prague’s Creative Writing Program, Dickinson House in Belgium, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Professor of creative writing at Yale, UCLA, and Antioch University, her essays have been featured in The New York Times, Harper’s, The Los Angeles Times, Buzzfeed and other places. Deón founded REDEEMED, a criminal record clearing and clemency project that pairs professional writers and lawyers with those who have been convicted of crimes.

How did you come to author your life?

I came to author my life first as a lawyer and then again as a PEN America Fellow while I was completing my first novel GRACE. As a Fellow, I began teaching creative writing for 826LA and in high schools throughout Los Angeles. That fellowship changed the course of my life immeasurably.

Follow Natashia’s links & socials for updates on her writing, activism and life!  www.natashiadeon.com@natashiadeon (IG, Twitter, FB)

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Woman. Warrior. Writer. Marie Myung-Ok Lee

Meet August’s Woman.Warrior. Writer. Marie Myung-Ok Lee!

Marie Myung-Ok Lee is an acclaimed Korean-American author of Somebody’s Daughter and The Evening Hero—a novel that focuses on the future of medicine, immigration, and North Korea. Lee has widely published across news outlets, won fellowships to Yaddo/Macdowell, is a founder of the Asian American Writer’s Workshop, and teaches at Columbia University.

How did you come to author your life?

Even while growing up in a Christian household in an all-white rural area I knew I was Buddhist-leaning non Christian at age 9, about the same time I declared I was going to be a writer for a living.  At 9, I started meditating even though I didn’t have the words for what I was doing. But I just knew doing both writing and meditating every day would lead to…something. Also, parenting my intellectually disabled, medically fragile son for 20+ years, I just show up for him, including for all the disasters and emergencies, Interestingly he has started communicating–at the same time my 18-years-in-the-making novel is finally coming out. You can’t do everything in a day, but you can commit to doing what ever “it” is, daily, like writing, parenting, being present. 

About The Evening Hero as a Buzz PICK Good Morning America Book Club selection Marie Lee says: “I think this is a good illustration go what doing something every day, even without promise of reward, can do.”

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Woman. Warrior. Writer. Lisa Kwong

Meet July’s Woman. Warrior. Writer. Lisa Kwong!

A native of Radford, Virginia, Lisa Kwong is AppalAsian, a member of the Affrilachian Poets, and the author of Becoming AppalAsian(Glass Lyre Press). Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets, A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, and other publications. She teaches at Indiana University and Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington, Indiana.

To preview Kwong’s poems, check out these links:

http://www.stilljournal.net/lisa-kwong-poetry.php

http://www.stilljournal.net/lisa-kwong-poetry2021.php

How did you come to author your life?

I belong to many different communities; I also don’t belong anywhere sometimes. I’ve been the daughter of laborers in a room of professors’ and doctors’ kids or the “fat” one in a group of petite Asian women. I know the pain of being unseen, unheard, and misunderstood.

Through writing, I want to honor my family, to make sense of being an Asian from Appalachia, to celebrate, to mourn, to heal. I hope that my work can inspire others to be proud of who they are and where they come from. Writing gave me a voice when I didn’t have one. I hope it can help others to speak up for themselves, too.

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