2021–2022 WNBA Authentic Voices Fellows

Shipra Agarwal was a doctor who scrawled poetry between patients. Then, she studied creative writing at Harvard. Now, she is revising That Thing We Don’t Talk About, a novel-in-stories shortlisted for the First Pages Prizes ’22. Her work is published/forthcoming in Witness, FlashFlood, Janus Literary, and an anthology.

She is an assistant fiction editor at Identity Theory, and will soon be the writer-in-residence at Sundress Academy for the Arts. Born in a small town of India, Shipra now lives in Arizona, and tweets from @ShipAgarwal. 

Akanksha Aurora is a Los Angeles-based writer and comedian from Mumbai, India. From code-switching and assimilation to dating and mental health, Akanksha’s writing explores and brings levity to all dimensions of her experience as a young immigrant. Akanksha does standup all over LA, and has also performed internationally in Toronto and Mumbai.

When she’s not saying embarrassing things on stage or pretending to write at an overpriced coffee shop, Akanksha enjoys hobbies that cater to her introverted writer roots like puzzling, audiobooks and swiping left on himbos. 

Jae Carey began writing as a way to leave a trace of all she knows about her background for her child. As a trans-national and trans-racial adoptee, she wanted to pass on a kind of origin story or at least a glimpse of her searching. She wrestled with form, content, traveled to Korea, and opened herself to everything from therapy to oracles to numerology in her quest.

Her work as a birth and death doula has also been a source of practice, inspiration and insight. She lives in New York City.

Jenna Mayzouni is an Arab American Muslim writer. She has lived across the Midwest and the SWANA region, and now currently resides in California. Her writing focuses on the narratives of BIPOCs, immigrants, and trauma, with a keen interest in intrapersonal family dynamics. She previously worked as a domestic violence advocate, and her passion for storytelling was reignited during the pandemic.

Her story in the Authentic Fellows Anthology will be her first major creative fiction publication. While not writing, Jenna runs an Instagram book page @woc_lit, dedicated to highlighting women of color authors across the world. 

Jenise Miller is an Afro-Panamanian poet, writer, and urban planner from Compton, California. She is a California Arts Council Artist Fellow, recent PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, and Tin House and VONA workshop alumna. She created and edits the KCET Artbound article series, “Compton: Arts and Archives,” and coordinates the History of Compton Arts Project through Sepia Collective.

A Pushcart-nominated poet, her writing is featured in her poetry chapbook, “The Blvd,” the Acentos Review, Boom California, Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, and the forthcoming essay anthology, “Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California.”

Shaina A. Nez is a Diné mother, writer, and doctoral student. She is Táchii’nii born for Áshįįhi. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Yellow Medicine Review, Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World from Woodhall Press, Chapter House Magazine, and Abalone Mountain Press. She is an alum from Tin House and a recipient of the 2021 Open Door Career Advancement Grants for BIPOC women writers. 

She lives in Bloomfield, New Mexico, with her daughter and is a Diné College Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing. 

Leah Nicole Whitcomb (Twitter: @leahnwhitcomb) is a writer and interdisciplinary artist from central Mississippi. Her work focuses on Black girlhood, cultural issues, and the Deep South. She co-hosts the Hoodoo Plant Mamas podcast where she discusses Black spirituality, community, and growing up in Mississippi.

A 2020 VONA alum, her writing has been featured in Root Work Journal, The Rumpus, An Injustice! Mag, and elsewhere. Currently, Leah is working on her memoir exploring purity culture in the Bible Belt.

Learn more about the WNBA Authentic Voices Fellowship