Aisha Hamid is a poet and writer from Lahore, Pakistan. She was shortlisted by the Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize for Women, 2019, and received an honorable mention by The Berlin Writing Prize 2019. She is a Poetry Reader at The Adroit Journal, a fellow at Qalambaaz 2023, Pakistan’s first screenwriting lab, and an alum of the South Asian Write Beyond Borders mentorship program, 2021, and the LUMS Young Writers’ Workshop ’19. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Vallum Magazine, The Aleph Review, Yoda Press, and elsewhere. Her writing centers around South Asian women’s lived experiences, their agency and the multiple meanings it holds for them, as well as mental illness, generational trauma, and sisterhood.

Frank Garland is a playwright and performer, originally from Seattle.

He graduated in 2020 with a BA in English and a minor in Theater from Harvard University. He loves improv comedy and roleplaying games and all things playing pretend. His plays have been staged and workshopped in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, and often explore themes of escapism and performativity and the ways the people we pretend to be reveal things about the people we are. He spends his free time reading fantasy novels and listening to old union songs.

Elliot Schiff is a playwright and comedian from Los Angeles, California. Based in Chicago, Elliot has two pet rabbits.

 

 

 

 

Tiana Williams is a writer, filmmaker, and performer from Kansas City, Missouri. She earned a BFA in filmmaking from Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri in 2018. Since graduating, Tiana has found herself dipping into different industries from education to business administration trying to find where she fits. Ultimately, nothing compared to her love for writing and she was compelled to answer the call to create. Tiana has always found a sense of security on the page. Writing helps her understand herself and the world better. In her work, Tiana aims to stir empathy with complex characters that remind us we are more alike than different, and therefore encourage social change. She believes art is a great instrument to not only provoke us to do better, but also to invite us to find joy and spread it. When Tiana isn’t musing over the perfect word pairing, she can be found somewhere cackling at her own jokes…then writing it down – lol.