On Girlhood, Craft, and Writing in Community

This October, join AAWW for a captivating virtual evening as we delve into the intricate tapestry of girlhood, craft, and the power of writing in community. This event brings together three remarkable voices, author of BIG GIRL Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, author of THE WOMAN WHO CLIMBED TREES Smriti Ravindra, and author of the forthcoming THE WAY YOU MAKE ME FEEL: INTERRACIAL LOVE IN BLACK AND BROWN Nina Sharma, to explore the unique intersections of identity, creativity, and the transformative nature of storytelling in their own lives.
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Ph.D., is the author of the novel Big Girl, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and winner of the 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award for First Novel. Her previous books are the short story collection, Blue Talk and Love, winner of the 2018 Judith Markowitz Award for LGBTQ Writers and The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association. In her writing, she considers the links between language, imagination, and bodily life in Black queer and feminist experience. Her stories and essays have appeared in Best New Writing, The Kenyon Review, Callaloo, Feminist Studies, American Fiction, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, TriQuarterly, GLQ: Lesbian and Gay Studies Quarterly, American Literary History, The Scholar and Feminist, American Quarterly, Public Books, Ebony.com, TheRoot.com, BET.com, and others. A BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick and a New York Times Paperback Row selection, Big Girl was named a best summer books pick by Time, Essence, Vulture, Ms, Glamour UK, Goodreads, Booklist, She Reads, The Root, Library Reads, and others. Her work has earned support and honors from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, Millay Arts, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the Mellon Foundation, the Center for Fiction, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Born and raised in Harlem, NY, she is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University and lives in Washington DC.
Smriti Ravindra is a Nepali-Indian writer. She is a Fulbright scholar and holds an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University. Her fiction and journalism have been published globally including the US, India, and Nepal. The Woman Who Climbed Trees is her first novel. She currently resides in Mumbai, India.
Nina Sharma’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Electric Literature, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Longreads, and The Margins, among other publications. She received her MFA in writing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts and has been awarded residencies from Vermont Studio Center and St. Nell’s Humor Writing Residency. Nina is formerly the Programs Director at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and with Quincy Scott Jones she co-created Blackshop, a column that thinks about allyship between BIPOC people, featured on Anomaly. A two-time Asian Women Giving Circle grantee for her workshop, “No Name Mind: Stories of Mental Health from Asian America,” she currently teaches at Barnard College and Columbia University. Nina is a proud co-founder of Not Your Biwi Improv. Her debut collection of personal essays, THE WAY YOU MAKE ME FEEL: INTERRACIAL LOVE IN BLACK AND BROWN is forthcoming on Penguin Press.
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Founded in 1991, Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) is devoted to creating, publishing, developing and disseminating creative writing by Asian Americans, and to providing an alternative literary arts space at the intersection of migration, race, and social justice.