Episode 48 with author Sharmin Akter

Daz is a Filipinx artist from San Diego, California and is currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. https://www.daznyc.com/home

She has attended art schools her entire life including San Diego School of Creative Performing Arts High School (SDSCPA) and the sister middle school, San Diego Creative Performing Media Arts (SDCPMA) in which her focus was visual arts. She has also attended CSSSA, the California State Summer School for the Arts program which is a rigorous, preprofessional, summer-long training program hosted at Cal Arts University. Here, she studied in drawing, painting, and video editing. https://www.daznyc.com/home

Post-adolescent years, she moved to New York City to pursue her BS in Business at Pace University and soon transferred to CUNY School of Professional Studies. Through her time in New York, she had discovered her love for heels dancing at the women's empowerment studio, SassClass NYC. https://www.daznyc.com/home

After abandoning painting for almost four years, the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd BLM Movement had inspired her to start creating again. Daz now currently works as a freelance artist and graphic designer. https://www.daznyc.com/home

Nancy Hightower has written essays on spirituality and politics, mental health, as well as the MeToo movement. Her essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared in journals such as Joyland, Entropy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn storySouth, Sundog Lit, Breadcrumbs, Drunk Monkeys, Spry, Fearless She Wrote, Huffington Post, and Sojourners, among others. Her debut novel, Elementarí Rising (2013) received a starred review in Library Journal and was chosen as Debut of the Month.

Her poetry collection The Acolyte (Port Yonder Press, 2015) offers a feminist interpretation of biblical narratives, and she is currently working on a memoir about growing up in the evangelical South. She is on the board of directors for Epiphany Magazine.

On the academic side, she received a PhD in English/Creative Writing from the University of Denver and taught the rhetorics of the fantastic, uncanny, and grotesque in art and literature at the University of Colorado and went on to be the art columnist for Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s Weird Fiction Review. She currently teaches classes on science fiction, digital storytelling, literary studies, and American Literature at Hunter College in New York City.

Check out their latest work: @pandemicnewyork

Follow Nancy Hightower here:

Website: http://www.nancyhightower.com

Twitter:https://twitter.com/NancyHightower?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nancyehightower/?hl=en

Photo Credit: April Obholz Bergeler

SABRINA CINTRON @stardazedtrail and linktr.ee/stardazedtrail is an Illustrator & comics artist from Connecticut with a passion for storytelling. They landed her first professional illustration job as a penciler on Somos Arte's indie comic book La Borinqueña #1. Since then, they worked on other projects including John Leguizamo's FREAK COMIX, Somos Arte and DC Comics' RICANSTRUCTION Anthology and Radix Media's FUTURES SERIES: A Point of Honor.

Lissa Ng Sang is the founder of Mentally VR, podcast Host for Como e' la cosa Series on Instagram, member of the Canadian Hispanic Congress and co-author the One Young World’s project “I have a dream” first edition book. Check out there site here https://www.lissang.com/

Maria Alexandra Jeres is a Data Analytics Apprentice at COOP | Adult ESOL Educator.

Carolina Páez is an Freelance 2D Animator and Character Designer at Spindlehorse.

You can follow them at @caroropaez across all social media platform

Feifei Kong is a Mechanical Engineer, certified PIIT28 Trainer (Pilates Intense Interval Training), and Dancer (Heels - Latin - Pole - Ballroom). Check them out: Instagram: @flex.by.feifei https://www.instagram.com/flex.by.fei...Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flex.by.feifei