Prior to joining Ayesha Pande Literary, Serene Hakim worked at Laura Gross Literary Agency in Boston. She has also interned at David Godine Publisher and Chase Literary Agency. Serene holds an M.A. in French to English translation from NYU and a B.A. in French and Women’s Studies from the University of Kansas. She loves to read a variety of genres, but is particularly drawn to fiction with strong female voices, both YA and adult fiction and non-fiction with international themes, and LGBTQ and feminist issues. She is always on the lookout for great YA sci-fi and fantasy, realistic YA, and anything that gives voice to those whose voices are underrepresented and/or marginalized. As a child of Lebanese immigrants, she is especially interested in stories dealing with the Middle East and the variety of immigrant experiences out there.

Eloisa Amezcua is from Arizona. Her debut collection, From the Inside Quietly, is the inaugural winner of the Shelterbelt Poetry Prize selected by Ada Limón. A MacDowell fellow, she is the author of three chapbooks and founder/editor-in-chief of The Shallow Ends: A Journal of Poetry. Her poems and translations are published in New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, and others. Eloisa lives in Columbus, OH and is the founder of Costura Creative.

Monika Woods is a literary agent at Curtis Brown, Ltd. She is a graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course and has worked at Trident Media Group and InkWell Management, where she worked closely with leading voices in contemporary literature. Her interests include literary and compelling non-fiction in food, popular culture, journalism, science, and current affairs. Monika is particularly excited about plot-driven literary novels, non-fiction that is creatively critical, unique perspectives, a great cookbook, and above all, original prose.

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, and translator. He is the author of Cenzontle, which was chosen by Brenda Shaughnessy as the winner of the 2017 A. Poulin, Jr. prize (BOA editions 2018). His first chapbook, DULCE, was chosen by Chris Abani as the winner of the Drinking Gourd Prize published by Northwestern University Press. His memoir, Children of the Land is forthcoming from Harper Collins Publishers. He was born in Zacatecas, Mexico. He holds a B.A. from Sacramento State University and was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. He cofounded the Undocupoets campaign which successfully eliminated citizenship requirements from all major first poetry book prizes in the country and was recognized with the Barnes and Noble “Writers for Writers” award. His work appeared or is featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, People Magazine, PBS Newshour, Fusion TV, New England Review, Gulf Coast, Buzzfeed, Indiana Review, and Southern Humanities Review, among others. He lives in Marysville, California and teaches at the Ashland University MFA program. 

Vanessa Mártir is a NYC based writer, educator and writing coach. She is currently completing her memoir, A Dim Capacity for Wings, and chronicles the journey at vanessamartir.blog. A five-time VONA/Voices and two-time Tin House fellow, Vanessa’s work has appeared in The Butter, Smokelong Quarterly, Kweli Journal, As/Us Journal, the VONA/Voices Anthology, Dismantle, and Roxane Gay's anthology Not that Bad, among others. She is the creator of the Writing Our Lives Workshop and the Writing the Mother Wound Class, which she teaches in NYC and online. When not writing or teaching, you can find Vanessa either on a dance floor, in a gym punching a bag or hiking in the woods. vanessamartir.com

J. K. Fowler is the founder and executive director of Nomadic Press, a community-focused literary and arts non-profit with operations in Oakland, CA, Des Moines, IA, and Brooklyn, NY. He also serves as the Director of Operations at Harm Reduction Coalition, a national advocacy and capacity-building organization that promotes the health and dignity of individuals and communities impacted by drug use. He is a part-time lecturer in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Rutgers University Newark where he teaches on issues ranging from postcolonialism to deviance and the nature of work, and serves on Cogswell College's English and Humanities Professional Advisory Board. He also sits on the board of North Atlantic Books, headquartered in Berkeley. He has been published in a wide range of publications, including Bay Area Reporter, Eleven Eleven, Foglifter, COG Magazine, and elsewhere, has performed across the Bay Area and Brooklyn, and has been featured in a number of radio shows and online podcasts, including KPFA, Fuel My Fiction, StoryCorps, and others. He is the recipient of the 2016 Alameda County Arts Leadership Award and travels this world with a Kelpie named Stella.

Natasha Marin is a conceptual artist whose people-centered projects have circled the globe since 2012 and have been recognized and acknowledged by Art Forum, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, NBC, Al Jazeera, Vice, PBS and others. This year, the City of Seattle and King County have backed BLACK IMAGINATION-- a series of conceptual exhibitions. Black Imagination has engaged (and paid!) black folks from all over the PNW region and the world-- amplifying, centering, and holding sacred a diverse sample of voices including LGBTQIA+ black youth, incarcerated black women, black folks with disabilities, unsheltered black folks, and black children. The viral web-based project, Reparations, engaged a quarter of a million people worldwide in the practice of "leveraging privilege," and earned Marin, a mother of two, death threats by the dozens. As a busy consultant and community builder, Natasha was listed as one of 30 women who "Run This City" by Seattle Met magazine in 2018.

Henry Goldkamp has lived against the Mississippi his entire life. His work appears in many journals, most recently Cutbank, Xavier Review, glitterMOB,Permafrost, Notre Dame Review, and The Cape Rock. Last year (2017) his work was nominated for a Pushcart and two Best of the Nets. He is the recipient of the Ryan Chighizola Award for poetry from University of New Orleans, and his Bad Beach manuscript was named a finalist in Yemassee’s 2018 Chapbook Contest. His short story "The Manner of Your Scramble" was awarded the Richard Cortez Day Prize from Humboldt State University. His public art projects have been covered by Time and NPR.

A.J. Alana Ka'imi Bryce is a musician and multimedia artist. As creative director of Trans-Genre, a transgender artists showcase, and publisher of Trans-Genre Press, he has produced CDs, and published queer/trans people of color–centered books by Ryka Aoki, Kit Yan, Helen Klonaris, and Amir Rabiyah.

Kima Jones has received fellowships from PEN Center USA Emerging Voices, Kimbilio Fiction, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and was included on the inaugural Bitch 50 list in 2017 as a "shape-shifter who pushed pop culture to be more representative, inspiring, and meaningful for communities who are typically ignored by mainstream media." The Los Angeles Times called Kima "2018's literary breakthrough" and "an important new voice on the national stage." She has been published at Poets and Writers, GQ, Guernica, NPR, PANK and the Rumpus and in the anthologies Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, Her Own Accord: American Women on Identity, Culture, and Community and the New York Times Best Seller, The Fire this Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward. Her short story "Nine" received notable mention in Best American Science Fiction 2015, and her hybrid poem "Homegoing AD" appears in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017. She serves as an advisory board member for the Rumpus, the Anisfield-Wolf Fellowship and the World Play Literary Festival. Kima founded Jack Jones Literary Arts in March 2015 and works as lead strategist on all publicity campaigns and is especially proud of her work on the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry winner, Olio, by Tyehimba Jess; the 2017 PEN America Robert W. Bingham Emerging Fiction Prize winner, Insurrections, by Rion Amilcar Scott; and the 2017 Midland Authors Award winner in Adult Fiction, Know the Mother, by Desiree Cooper. Kima divides her time between Los Angeles and New York. She writes poetry and prose.

Arisa White is a Cave Canem fellow and the author of You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, Black Pearl, Post Pardon, Hurrah’s Nest, and A Penny Saved. With funding from the City of Oakland, Post Pardon was adapted into an opera. As a 2013-14 recipient of an Investing in Artists grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation, Arisa self-published dear Gerald, a collection of epistolary poems addressed to her estranged father, and then traveled to Guyana to give him a copy of the book. Her debut collection, Hurrah’s Nest, won the 2012 San Francisco Book Festival Award for poetry and was nominated for a 44th NAACP Image Award, the 82nd California Book Awards, and the 2013 Wheatley Book Awards. Member of the PlayGround writers’ pool, her play Frigidare was staged for the 15th Annual Best of PlayGround Festival. She has received residencies, fellowships, or scholarships from Headlands Center for the Arts, Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, Rose O’Neill Literary House, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Hedgebrook, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Prague Summer Program, Fine Arts Work Center, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Arisa’s poetry is featured on the album WORD with the Jessica Jones Quartet.

Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán is the author of _Antes y después del Bronx: Lenapehoking_, winner of the New American Press Chapbook Contest; and the editor of an international queer Indigenous issue of _Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought_. A Brooklyn College M.F.A., he is an American Studies Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University. A community organizer for over two decades, his award-winning poetry and nonfiction appear in over a hundred seventy publications in twenty nations in Africa, the Américas, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Pacific. Places of publication include Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, Austria, Barbados, Canada, England, France, Hawai'i, Hong Kong, Ireland, Morocco, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Scotland, South Africa, St. Croix, Sweden, and Wales. The author of a second poetry collection, _South Bronx Breathing Lessons_, he is completing _Yerbabuena/Mala yerba, All My Roots Need Rain: mixed-blood poetry & prose_ and _Heart of the Nation: Indigenous Womanisms, Queer People of Color, and Native Sovereignties_.

Sarah Rafael García was born in Brownsville, Texas and raised in Orange County, California. She started writing after her father's passing in 1988. She obtained a Bachelors of Science in Sociology at Texas State University, is bilingual in Spanish and knows enough Mandarin to speak to pre-k students and taxi drivers in China. She has lived in Beijing and has traveled to various countries including a three-month backpacking adventure in Australia. She is an active writer, blogger, community educator and published author who strives to advocate for human rights. Since the publication of Las Niñas, A Collection of Childhood Memories in 2008, she has continued to share her writings and community outreach by founding Barrio Writers in 2009, a reading and writing program aimed to empower youth through creative writing, higher education and the cultural arts and Wild Womyn Writers in 2010, community workshops that create spaces that help womyn explore their creative spirits, free themselves from societal restrictions and learn to embrace their natural instincts. Most recently, her essay “Crossing Borders” was published in Connotation Press in April 2011. Her writings, workshops and lifestyle promote community empowerment, cultural awareness and global sharing.