2024 ROOTED & WRITTEN KEYNOTES
Susan Kiyo Ito
Susan Ito began reading at the age of three, and writing stories at the age six. She is the author of award-winning memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in The Writer, Growing Up Asian American, Choice, Hip Mama, Literary Mama, Catapult, Hyphen, The Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is a MacDowell colony Fellow, and has also been awarded residencies at The Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook and the Blue Mountain Center. She has performed her solo show, The Ice Cream Gene, around the US. Her theatrical adaption of Untold, stories of reproductive stigma, was produced at Brava Theater She is a member of the Writers’ Grotto, and teaches at Mills College/Northeastern University and Bay Path University. She was one of the co-organizers of Rooted and Written, a no-fee writing workshop for writers of color. She lives in Northern California.
She will be in conversation with Dominic Lim.
(Image Credit: Emma Asano Roark)
Eirinie Carson
Eirinie Carson is a Black British Londoner and writer living in California. She is a mother of two children, Luka and Selah. A member of the Writers Grotto in San Francisco, Eirinie is a frequent contributor to Mother magazine, and her work has also appeared in Mother Muse and You Might Need To Hear This, with an upcoming piece in The Sonora Review’s Fall edition. Eirinie contributes to her local paper, The Argus Courier, via a column, Eirinie Asks. She mostly writes about motherhood, grief and relationships and the release of her first book, The Dead Are Gods (from on Melville House, 2023) was a critically acclaimed Spring release, with Oprah Daily, Shondaland, People Magazine and the Washington Post sharing rave reviews on their platforms. Most recently, Eirinie was asked to be a featured author at 2023 Texas Book Festival, and is also the Program Coordinator for the Mesa Refuge, a writers residency out of Point Reyes Station, California.
She will be in conversation with Danny Thiemann
2024 ROOTED & WRITTEN MODERATORS
Dominic Lim
Danny Thiemann
Danny Thiemann
Dominic Lim’s debut novel, All the Right Notes, was named a 2023 best book by USA Today, Harper’s Bazaar, Goodreads, Library Journal, and Entertainment Weekly, which called it “a swoony, joyful rom-com to take readers into a love story worthy of a Broadway stage.” His second novel, Karaoke Queen, is out on September 17, 2024. He is a memb
Dominic Lim’s debut novel, All the Right Notes, was named a 2023 best book by USA Today, Harper’s Bazaar, Goodreads, Library Journal, and Entertainment Weekly, which called it “a swoony, joyful rom-com to take readers into a love story worthy of a Broadway stage.” His second novel, Karaoke Queen, is out on September 17, 2024. He is a member of the Writers Grotto and co-hosts the long-running Babylon Salon reading and performance series in San Francisco. Dominic holds a Master of Music from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, is an alumnus of Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, and has sung with numerous professional early music and choral ensembles. A proud member of Actors’ Equity Association, he has performed Off-Broadway and in regional productions throughout the U.S. He works as a paralegal for a Bay Area biotech company and lives in Oakland with his loving and supportive husband, Peter, and their whiny cat, Phoebe.
Danny Thiemann
Danny Thiemann
Danny Thiemann
Danny Thiemann is the recipient of the 2021 Nelligan Prize for Fiction from the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado University for his short story “One Bad Night in San Jose, Costa Rica”, a recipient of the 2020 Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction for his short story “Echolocation for Mixed Race Runaways” published in the Bellingham Rev
Danny Thiemann is the recipient of the 2021 Nelligan Prize for Fiction from the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado University for his short story “One Bad Night in San Jose, Costa Rica”, a recipient of the 2020 Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction for his short story “Echolocation for Mixed Race Runaways” published in the Bellingham Review, a recipient of the New York City based Table4 Foundation New Writer Award for his short story “Gotham, Mexico”, a recipient of a Madalyn Lamont Award for fiction from the American University in Cairo, and his work has appeared in the New Delta Review, Bosque Magazine, and the Beloit Fiction Journal. He is currently an associate attorney in the International program at Earthjustice.
2024 ROOTED & WRITTEN SEMINAR FACULTY
Roberto Lovato
Roberto Lovato is the award-winning author of Unforgetting (Harper Collins), a “groundbreaking” memoir The New York Times picked as an “Editor’s Choice.” Newsweek listed Lovato’s memoir as a “must read” 2020 book and the Los Angeles Times listed it as one of its 20 Best Books of 2020. Lovato is also an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In addition to receiving a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, journalist Lovato has reported on numerous issues—racism, criminal justice, psychedelics and health, violence, terrorism, the drug war and the immigration and refugee crisis—from across the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and France, among other countries. His essays and reports from around the world have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Guernica Magazine, The Believer, the Boston Globe, Foreign Policy magazine, The Rumpus, the Guardian, and other national and international publications.
2024 ROOTED & WRITTEN CORE FACULTY
Vanessa Hua- Fiction
Vanessa Hua is the author of the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors Pick. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, California Arts Council Fellowship, and a Steinbeck Fellowship, as well as honors from the de Groot Foundation, Society of Professional Journalists, and the Asian American Journalists Association, among others. She was a finalist for the California Book Award, Northern California Book Award, and New American Voices Award. Previously, she was an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program and elsewhere. Her novel, El Nido, is forthcoming.
Grace Loh Prasad- Memoir
Grace Loh Prasad is the author of The Translator’s Daughter (Mad Creek Books/The Ohio State University Press, 2024), a debut memoir about living between languages, navigating loss, and the search for belonging. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Literary Hub, Longreads, Guernica, Brevity, The Offing, Oldster Magazine, KHÔRA, and elsewhere. A member of the Writers Grotto and the AAPI writers collective Seventeen Syllables, Prasad lives in the Bay Area.
Xandra Castleton- Screenwriting
Brazilian American screenwriter, script consultant and filmmaker Xandra Castleton’s scripts have served as the basis for feature, television and documentary projects that include an Emmy Award-winning profile of John Waters and have premiered at the Tribeca, Sundance, AFI and Rotterdam film festivals. Her first feature as writer/producer was Full Grown Men, a Sundance Channel Audience Award winner and Critic’s Pick in the LA Weekly (“ lyrical and funny”), it stars Judah Friedlander, Alan Cumming, Amy Sedaris and Debbie Harry. Critic Bilge Ebiri called it “…a lovely, bewitching film with a lot on its mind.” An adjunct professor at the California College of the Arts and the University of San Francisco, Xandra returned to producing briefly in 2013 to co-create the scripted documentary, Stand Up Planet, with Hasan Minhaj, Michele Buteau and the godfathers of TV comedy - Norman Lear and Carl Reiner.
Shikha Malaviya- Poetry
Shikha Malaviya is a poet, writer & mentor. She was born in the UK, but grew up in Minnesota and India. Her book of historical persona poetry, Anandibai Joshee: A Life in Poems (HarperCollins India, 2023) is a unique retelling of the life of India's first female medical doctor and the first Indian woman to study medicine in the United States. Shikha’s previous book of poems, Geography of Tongues, explores the notion of place, history and legacy in immigrant lives through personal experience. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and featured in Catamaran, PLUME, Prairie Schooner, SWIMM & other fine publications. Shikha has been a featured TEDx speaker and was selected as Poet Laureate of San Ramon, California, 2016. She is passionate about poetry & social change and involved in the poetry community through events/initiatives such as: crowdsourcing a poem on solar energy with Greenpeace India; organizing ‘100 Thousand Poets for Change’ events, and more. Shikha is co-founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, a mentorship-model literary press and is currently a Mosaic America Fellow, where she has conducted creative writing workshops as well as collaborated on and performed in the dance drama, Beautiful Dark, addressing colorism in Asian culture.
Tara Dorabji- Essay
Tara Dorabji is the author of the novel, Call Her Freedom, The Books Like Us Grand Prize Winner, which is available for pre-order at Simon and Schuster. She is the daughter of Parsi-Indian and German-Italian migrants. Her documentary film series on human rights defenders in Kashmir won awards at over a dozen film festivals throughout Asia and the USA. Tara's publications include Al Jazeera, The Chicago Quarterly, Huizache, and acclaimed anthologies: Good Girls Marry Doctors & All the Women in My Family Sing. She lives in Northern California with her family and rabbit.
Brad Balukjian
Brad Balukjian
Brad Balukjian
Brad Balukjian
Brad Balukjian
Brad Balukjian is a Filipino-Armenian American whose lifelong passion is exploring island ecosystems, as both a biologist and a journalist. He is a former editor at Islands magazine, is a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences, and is the founder of the Manumanu Project, an educational outreach initiative working with fi
Brad Balukjian is a Filipino-Armenian American whose lifelong passion is exploring island ecosystems, as both a biologist and a journalist. He is a former editor at Islands magazine, is a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences, and is the founder of the Manumanu Project, an educational outreach initiative working with fifth graders in Tahiti. He has been published in Discover, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Natural History, Rolling Stone, Slate, and many others, and has written two narrative nonfiction books, The Wax Pack and The Six Pack.
Brad Balukjian
MK Chavez
MK Chavez
Brad Balukjian
MK Chavez
MK Chavez is an art monster, writer, and educator. Chavez’s writing explores mixed-race
identity, social justice, environmental resilience, horror cinema, magic, ritual, and the creative
process. Chavez’s work has been recognized with the Pen Josephine Miles Award, the San
Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award, and the Ruth Weiss
MK Chavez is an art monster, writer, and educator. Chavez’s writing explores mixed-race
identity, social justice, environmental resilience, horror cinema, magic, ritual, and the creative
process. Chavez’s work has been recognized with the Pen Josephine Miles Award, the San
Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award, and the Ruth Weiss Maverick Award.
Chavez’s literary offerings include Dear Animal, Mothermorphosis, the lyric essay chapbook, A
Brief History of the Selfie, and Virgin Eyes. Recent work can be found on the walls of the art
installation Manifest Differently.
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Jesus Francisco Sierra is a Cuban writer who settled in San Francisco and grew up in the Mission District. His work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Los Angeles Review of Books, Gulf Stream Literary Journal, The Bare Life Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, The Caribbean Writer, The Acentos Review and Lunch Ticket among others. He holds an MFA f
Jesus Francisco Sierra is a Cuban writer who settled in San Francisco and grew up in the Mission District. His work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Los Angeles Review of Books, Gulf Stream Literary Journal, The Bare Life Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, The Caribbean Writer, The Acentos Review and Lunch Ticket among others. He holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and is currently at work on his first novel.
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Jenny Qi
Jenny Qi
Jesus Francisco Sierra
Jenny Qi
Jenny Qi is the author of Focal Point, winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award. Her essays and poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Sierra Magazine, Tin House, and elsewhere. She has been supported by organizations such as the San Francisco Foundation, the Crested Butte Center for the Arts, the Center for Cultu
Jenny Qi is the author of Focal Point, winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award. Her essays and poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Sierra Magazine, Tin House, and elsewhere. She has been supported by organizations such as the San Francisco Foundation, the Crested Butte Center for the Arts, the Center for Cultural Innovation, and the Brown Handler Residency. She is working on a hybrid collection titled Liminal Bodies and a memoir in essays in conversation with her late mother’s memoirs of the Cultural Revolution and life in Las Vegas. She holds a PhD in Biomedical Science from UCSF.
Lisa Marie Rollins
Lisa Marie Rollins
Lisa Marie Rollins
Lisa Marie Rollins
Lisa Marie Rollins
Lisa Marie Rollins is a writer, director and new work developer. She has been a writing resident with Hedgebrook, Djerassi, CALLALOO London, VONA and more. She received a Wallace Gerbode Playwright Award for a commission of her new play KARA and is the recipient of multiple grants & awards for her playwriting and theater making work. Sh
Lisa Marie Rollins is a writer, director and new work developer. She has been a writing resident with Hedgebrook, Djerassi, CALLALOO London, VONA and more. She received a Wallace Gerbode Playwright Award for a commission of her new play KARA and is the recipient of multiple grants & awards for her playwriting and theater making work. She is a Member of Stage Directors & Choreographers and Dramatist Guild. Selected directing & dramaturg credits include Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, New York Stage and Film, Berkeley Repertory Theater’s Ground Floor, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Arizona Theater Company, and Hedgebrook Women’s Play Festival. She leads THE IRIS LAB, a new creative incubator and residency space for global majority & equity minded theater makers located at University of California at Santa Cruz.
(Image Credit: Ronald Price, Jr.)
Lisa Marie Rollins
Khan Wong
Khan Wong
Lisa Marie Rollins
Khan Wong
Khan Wong has a past as a poet, cellist, arts funder and internationally known hula hooper. His debut novel, The Circus Infinite, was published by Angry Robot Books in 2022. It was longlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Best Novel category, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His next novel, Down in the Sea of Angels, will be published by Angry Robot in 2025.
2024 ROOTED & WRITTEN LEADERSHIP TEAM
Sabina Khan-Ibarra, Co-Director of Rooted and Written
Rowena Leong Singer, Co-Director of Rooted and Written
Rowena Leong Singer, Co-Director of Rooted and Written
Sabina Khan-Ibarra writer/poet and teacher. She is currently working on completing her chapbook, new vocabulary, and her novel, The Poppy Flower. Her poetry, short stories and creative nonfictions have been published in various journals and anthologies, including Non-White and Women, Taboos and Transgressions, both published within the pa
Sabina Khan-Ibarra writer/poet and teacher. She is currently working on completing her chapbook, new vocabulary, and her novel, The Poppy Flower. Her poetry, short stories and creative nonfictions have been published in various journals and anthologies, including Non-White and Women, Taboos and Transgressions, both published within the past two years. She worked as a Communications Director at MuslimARC (Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative) for ten years and is still a member. Sabina has taught Creative Writing in SFSU and now teaches at the Grotto. She lives in Half Moon Bay, California with her husband, two children and two cats, Twyla and Aslan.
Rowena Leong Singer, Co-Director of Rooted and Written
Rowena Leong Singer, Co-Director of Rooted and Written
Rowena Leong Singer, Co-Director of Rooted and Written
Rowena Leong Singer is a Chinese-Filipino writer who is published in The New York Times, Black Warrior Review, Narrative Magazine, and KQED’s Perspectives. She is the grand prize winner in literary fiction for the Book Pipeline Unpublished Contest, a semifinalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship Contest, and a fellowship recipie
Rowena Leong Singer is a Chinese-Filipino writer who is published in The New York Times, Black Warrior Review, Narrative Magazine, and KQED’s Perspectives. She is the grand prize winner in literary fiction for the Book Pipeline Unpublished Contest, a semifinalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship Contest, and a fellowship recipient for the International Literary Seminar Fiction Contest, inaugural Rooted & Written Conference, and Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Summer Writers’ Conference. She received her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, where she was awarded the Barry Hannah Merit Scholarship in Fiction. She is an associate editor at CRAFT and a member of The Writers Grotto. Find her on Instagram at @rowenaleongsinger.
(Image Credit: Andria Lo)
Nate Olivarez-Giles, Team Lead, Outreach
Christl Rikka Perkins, Team Lead, Onboard Management
Christl Rikka Perkins, Team Lead, Onboard Management
Nate Olivarez-Giles is a fiction writer. His day job is scripting, UI / social / marketing writing at Apple. For a decade before that, he was working in journalism at The Wall Street Journal, Wired, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. He has a BA in Journalism and Mexican American Studies from the University of Arizona. In 2024
Nate Olivarez-Giles is a fiction writer. His day job is scripting, UI / social / marketing writing at Apple. For a decade before that, he was working in journalism at The Wall Street Journal, Wired, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. He has a BA in Journalism and Mexican American Studies from the University of Arizona. In 2024, his focus is short story submissions to actually get some fiction published, and fiction MFA applications, where he plans to write his debut novel's manuscript.
Christl Rikka Perkins, Team Lead, Onboard Management
Christl Rikka Perkins, Team Lead, Onboard Management
Christl Rikka Perkins, Team Lead, Onboard Management
Christl Rikka Perkins is a Black/Japanese writer and teacher living in Oakland, CA. She was a freelance writer and teacher in China for 8 years. She was published in American Fiction 17, Half and One and God’s Cruel Joke. Christl has been an active member of WriteNow!-SF Writers Workshop and was published in Essential Truths: The Bay Area
Christl Rikka Perkins is a Black/Japanese writer and teacher living in Oakland, CA. She was a freelance writer and teacher in China for 8 years. She was published in American Fiction 17, Half and One and God’s Cruel Joke. Christl has been an active member of WriteNow!-SF Writers Workshop and was published in Essential Truths: The Bay Area in Color. She is a member of the Writers’ Grotto and a fellow of the Writers Grotto-SF’s Rooted & Written. Christl earned her BA in International Relations from SFSU, her MA in Government & Politics from University of Maryland, College Park, her Certificate in Fiction from UCLA Extension’s Writers Program and her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles.
2024 ROOTED & WRITTEN ADVISORY BOARD
Roberto Lovato, Program Founder
Roberto Lovato, Program Founder
Roberto Lovato, Program Founder
Roberto Lovato is the award-winning author of Unforgetting (Harper Collins), a “groundbreaking” memoir The New York Times picked as an “Editor’s Choice.” Newsweek listed Lovato’s memoir as a “must read” 2020 book and the Los Angeles Times listed it as one of its 20 Best Books of 2020. Lovato is also an Assistant Professor of English at th
Roberto Lovato is the award-winning author of Unforgetting (Harper Collins), a “groundbreaking” memoir The New York Times picked as an “Editor’s Choice.” Newsweek listed Lovato’s memoir as a “must read” 2020 book and the Los Angeles Times listed it as one of its 20 Best Books of 2020. Lovato is also an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In addition to receiving a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, journalist Lovato has reported on numerous issues—racism, criminal justice, psychedelics and health, violence, terrorism, the drug war and the immigration and refugee crisis—from across the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and France, among other countries. His essays and reports from around the world have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Guernica Magazine, The Believer, the Boston Globe, Foreign Policy magazine, The Rumpus, the Guardian, and other national and international publications.
Susan Kiyo Ito, Founding Member
Roberto Lovato, Program Founder
Roberto Lovato, Program Founder
Susan Ito began reading at the age of three, and writing stories at the age six. She is the author of award-winning memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in The Writer, Growing Up Asian American, Choice, Hip Mama, Literary Mama, C
Susan Ito began reading at the age of three, and writing stories at the age six. She is the author of award-winning memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in The Writer, Growing Up Asian American, Choice, Hip Mama, Literary Mama, Catapult, Hyphen, The Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is a MacDowell colony Fellow, and has also been awarded residencies at The Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook and the Blue Mountain Center. She has performed her solo show, The Ice Cream Gene, around the US. Her theatrical adaption of Untold, stories of reproductive stigma, was produced at Brava Theater She is a member of the Writers’ Grotto, and teaches at Mills College/Northeastern University and Bay Path University. She was one of the co-organizers of Rooted and Written, a no-fee writing workshop for writers of color. She lives in Northern California.
Aditi Malhotra, Founding Member
Roberto Lovato, Program Founder
Aditi Malhotra, Founding Member
Aditi Malhotra is a writer, independent journalist and spoken word artist from India based in Oakland, California. She is a professional juggler of many editorial hats. Currently, she’s writing a community health guidebook on epilepsy and seizures at Hesperian Health Guides. Her news writing and narrative nonfiction from India and the Uni
Aditi Malhotra is a writer, independent journalist and spoken word artist from India based in Oakland, California. She is a professional juggler of many editorial hats. Currently, she’s writing a community health guidebook on epilepsy and seizures at Hesperian Health Guides. Her news writing and narrative nonfiction from India and the United States have appeared in Huffington Post, PBS Newshour, theAtlantic.com, Hechinger Report and Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Aditi's words and work are inspired by the intersections of gender and migration, mental health and education, food and identity, and books!
Eirinie Carson
Jesus Sierra, Founding Member
Aditi Malhotra, Founding Member
Eirinie Carson is a Black British Londoner and writer living in California. She is a mother of two children, Luka and Selah. A member of the Writers Grotto in San Francisco, Eirinie is a frequent contributor to Mother magazine, and her work has also appeared in Mother Muse and You Might Need To Hear This, with an upcoming piece in The Son
Eirinie Carson is a Black British Londoner and writer living in California. She is a mother of two children, Luka and Selah. A member of the Writers Grotto in San Francisco, Eirinie is a frequent contributor to Mother magazine, and her work has also appeared in Mother Muse and You Might Need To Hear This, with an upcoming piece in The Sonora Review’s Fall edition. Eirinie contributes to her local paper, The Argus Courier, via a column, Eirinie Asks. She mostly writes about motherhood, grief and relationships and the release of her first book, The Dead Are Gods (from on Melville House, 2023) was a critically acclaimed Spring release, with Oprah Daily, Shondaland, People Magazine and the Washington Post sharing rave reviews on their platforms. Most recently, Eirinie was asked to be a featured author at 2023 Texas Book Festival, and is also the Program Coordinator for the Mesa Refuge, a writers residency out of Point Reyes Station, California.
Jesus Sierra, Founding Member
Jesus Sierra, Founding Member
Jesus Sierra, Founding Member
Jesus Francisco Sierra is a Cuban writer who settled in San Francisco and grew up in the Mission District. His work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Los Angeles Review of Books, Gulf Stream Literary Journal, The Bare Life Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, The Caribbean Writer, The Acentos Review and Lunch Ticket among others. He holds an MFA f
Jesus Francisco Sierra is a Cuban writer who settled in San Francisco and grew up in the Mission District. His work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Los Angeles Review of Books, Gulf Stream Literary Journal, The Bare Life Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, The Caribbean Writer, The Acentos Review and Lunch Ticket among others. He holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and is currently at work on his first novel.
ROOTED & WRITTEN FOUNDERS
