Jesse Mechanic is a columnist, essayist, and artist based in New York’s Hudson Valley. His work has been published in Mother Jones, In These Times, Huff Post, Truthout, World Post, and The Overgrown, among other publications. He is author of The Last Time We Spoke and Don't Be AF*#cking Marshmallow.

Jesse is known for his in-depth coverage of human rights abuses and systemic inequality and he is committed to working diligently to dismantle the inequitable, violent, and oppressive systems that define our world.

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Bianca Mabute-Louie is a Sociology PhD candidate at Rice University, where she researches the intersections of race, religion, and politics. She is published in top academic journals, including Social Forces, Socius, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and Sociology of Religion, as well as in public outlets like LA Times and Elle Magazine.

Bianca is the author of Unassimilable: An Asian Diasporic Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century. In this hard-hitting and deeply personal book, a combination of manifesto and memoir, scholar, sociologist, and activist Bianca transforms the ways we understand race, class, American respectability, and the concept of assimilation and its impact on Asian American communities from the nineteenth century to present day.

Bianca website

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Kristin T. Lee is a writer whose work has appeared in Christianity Today and Sojourners, and a primary care physician serving Boston's Chinatown community. She writes about faith, culture, books, and solidarity at The Embers. Kristin's passion is highlighting literature written by Asian and BIPOC authors via book reviews and reading groups on Instagram @ktlee.writes. Her work is informed by her experiences as an adoptive mother, host to refugees, and friend to those affected by incarceration.

Kristin's book - We Mend with Gold - will be released on April 7th! Please pre-order or request it from your local library!

Kristin's website

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Lena is an author and a licensed psychotherapist certified in Imago Relationship Therapy. She has been published in The Washington Post and Huffington Post. She has also been interviewed for a variety of publications including Self Magazine and Glamour Magazine.

Lena self-published her first book - My Daddy is a Hero - and traditionally published her second book - The Facebook Narcissist. In this episode, we talk about all things related to publishing from agents to publicists and more.

Lena's website

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Jinwoo is a Korean Canadian novelist whose debut Oxford Soju Club won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award. The novel is about Korean spies of three different nationalities: North, South, and American. A tale of deception, espionage, and identity - it is quite apt for these times.

We talk about parenting our mixed race children, pride in our shared Korean culture which has survived war and occupation, and how to stay on track as a writer.

Jinwoo website

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Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer. She is the co-author of Brothers of the Gun, an illustrated collaboration with Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham, which was a NY Times Notable Book. Her memoir, Drawing Blood, received global praise and attention. Her animated films have won two Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award.

Molly’s reportage has been published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. She was the 2019 artist-in-residence at NYU’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies in 2019, a New America fellow in 2020, and the winner of the Bernhardt Labor Journalism Award in 2022. In 2023, she was a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Molly's third book, ⁠Here Where We Live is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund,⁠ will be released by One World/Random House in April 2026. Please PRE-ORDER if you'd like to support her work and artistry!

Molly website

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We are so excited for another inspiring and heart-opening conversation with Yumi!

Yumi is a second-generation Japanese-Okinawan-American interdisciplinary artist and the author of several ⁠books⁠ including her latest eBook: ⁠Spells for Transforming Limerance into Liberation⁠.

Yumi reminds us that we are creative, playful, and imperfect beings.

⁠Yumi's website⁠

Yumi's recommended tool: ⁠Brick⁠

⁠Leah's website

Dr. Jaiya John was orphan-born on ancient Indigenous Anasazi and Pueblo lands in the high desert of New Mexico, and is an internationally recognized ancestral Baba, freedom worker, medicine poet, and keynote speaker.

Jaiya is the founder of Soul Water Rising, a global rehumanizing mission to eradicate oppression. The mission has donated thousands of Jaiya’s books in support of social healing, and offers grants to displaced and vulnerable youth. He is the author of numerous books, including Daughter Drink This Water, We Birth Freedom at Dawn, Fragrance After Rain, and Freedom: Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution. Jaiya writes, narrates, and produces the podcast, I Will Read for You: The Voice and Writings of Jaiya John, and is the founder of The Gathering, a global initiative and tour reviving traditional gathering and storytelling practices to fertilize social healing and liberation.

Jaiya is a former professor of social psychology at Howard University, and has spoken to over a million people worldwide and audiences as large as several thousand. He holds doctorate and master’s degrees in social psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow with a focus on intergroup and race relations. As an undergraduate, he attended Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he studied Tibetan Holistic Medicine through independent research with Tibetan doctors and trekked to the base camp of Mt. Everest. He is a Lewis & Clark College Distinguished Alumni Award recipient.

Jaiya's Indigenous soul dreams of frybread, sweetgrass, bamboo in the breeze, and turtle lakes whose poetry is peace.

Jaiya Website

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