Episode 14 - Individualism Over The Status Quo ft. Ayesha Raees

Ayesha Raees identifies herself as a hybrid creating hybrid poetry through hybrid forms. Raees currently serves as an Assistant Poetry Editor at AAWW's The Margins and has received fellowships from Asian American Writers' Workshop, Brooklyn Poets, and Kundiman. Her first book of poetry, "Coining The Wishing Tower" won the Broken River Prize hosted by Platypus Press and judged by Kaveh Akbar, and will be forthcoming in March 2022. Akbar describes her book as: “everything I hope to find when I read a book of poetry—fearless reckoning with unprecedented experience spoken in a singular, deeply and importantly strange lyric voice.” Her VideoPoem "The Memoir.... " was the winner of the Deanna Tulley Multimedia Contest hosted by SlipperyElm at the University of Findlay and has been selected for national and international film festivals including the Midwest Video Poetry Fest & 9th International Video Poetry Festival in Athens, Greece. Ayesha works with a lot of mental health issues. She started a poetry Salon at Asian America Writers' Workshop (which she ran for a year!) to help battle mental health through radical togetherness and active inclusivity.