Fatima Ahmed is currently pursuing a M.Ed in Education for Change with a dual specialization in Indigenous Education and Social Justice Education. She is simultaneously working as a Grade 5/6 English stream teacher for the Kativik School Board.
Sukanya is a passionate writer and storyteller, focused on spotlighting the South Asian and 2SLGBTQ+ communities. She is of Tamil descent, born and raised in Ontario. She spends her time crocheting and thinking about time travel when she probably should be doing some actual writing.
Born & raised in Pakistan, Zahra Babrawala has been writing poetry & prose as form of escape since childhood. Her favourite authors stretch from Shakespeare to Khalid Husseini. She hopes to publish her works one day, freeing them from the long confines of her private journals.
Raj Bharaj is a Punjabi writer and a visual artist currently dipping her hands in pottery. Her writing & artistic practice are deeply rooted in a rich culture and ancestors. Throughout her life, she has been able to assemble special and rare memories with her grandmother, along with other matriarchs. From these bits & pieces, her wish is that the songs uttered from her heart will honour and remember them.
Suzanne Fernando is an artist interested in social justice and community development based out of Scarborough, Ontario. Her short story “Idinthikarai” is forthcoming in Living Hyphen 2: Healing Across Generations. She has performed her poetry at the University of Toronto, Artbar, 6city Café, R.I.S.E and Firefly Creative Writing.
Krystal Kavita Jagoo, MSW, RSW, is passionate about equitable outcomes for all, as can be seen from her writing, facilitation, and consulting work. Jagoo is working on her collection of personal essays, “They Colonized Even My Tongue,” thanks to the support of Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council grants.
Born in India, Rana Khan lived and worked in the Middle East for two decades before moving to Canada in 2008. A passionate believer in the power of sharing our stories, Rana has recently compiled and edited an anthology of mental health narratives of South Asian women titled “The Stories Around Us”.
Natasha Khan is an aspiring nature photographer. Wishing to be able to add commentary to her images, she escapes both into the world and away from the world when in her photographic element. She wants her images to take people on this journey with her- to love and appreciate the beauty all around them. Natasha’s images seek to capture a moment of beauty in time for those who are unaware of, ignore or are too busy to see or maybe don’t want to see nature’s secrets. Her goal is to inspire them to care and protect our sacred spaces.
Diwali Luharia is a writer, visual artist and voiceover artist. Born and raised in Scarborough, Ontario, with parents from Surat, Gujarat and Nairobi, Kenya, Diwali seeks and sees identity in everything. Diwali’s submission is a painting called “Community Care” inspired by the year of connection with the group of women in Owning Our Stories. This image has gone through several iterations with the key themes being cross-pollination of ideas, awareness and protection, and deep knowing. The images attached can be provided in higher resolution and are of the full image and two close ups.
Sumaiya Matin is a writer, social worker/psychotherapist, and previous advisor for the Ontario government where she worked on a wide range of public policy files, including anti-racism. Sumaiya is also the author of “The Shaytan Bride: A Canadian Bangladeshi Memoir of Desire and Faith” published by Dundurn Press. A versatile writer and passionate storyteller, she is interested in fiction and non-fiction genres to learn, understand, share, and further the human narrative.
Paige Pinto is an occasional writer of prose and poetry. She has a masters in 18th-century literature from the University of Cambridge and is now passionate about de-colonizing her own writing. She co-edited and contributed to the romance anthology “You Hit Me with Your Car and Other Love Stories.” You can follow her non-literary creative adventures on Instagram @grandprix.fixe
Sri Prasad is a soon-to-graduate Masters student in healthcare with an avid love of the creative arts. She is deeply passionate about centering equity and diverse perspectives in her writing. She is delighted to have been part of this incredible writer’s circle! You can find her on Twitter at @sriative.
Neetha Raman has been associated with the literary world for as long as she can remember, engrossed in Shakespeare, Christie, Conan Doyle, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Wodehouse right from her teens. She has written for several Indian dailies and various diasporic magazines and is now working on her third manuscript. She lives in Toronto with her husband and works for a media company.
Saher Shaikh is a Toronto based writer from Pakistan. She writes creative non-fiction, short stories and is currently working on her debut novel. Her creative work has been shared in the Intersections/Cross-sections Ryerson Conference, Ars Medica, HELD magazine, The Quilliad and in Toronto Writers Collective anthology, Front Lines.
Nita Shori is a teacher, mentor, facilitator, community worker and a creative writer of South Asian descent, wishing to create authentic literature representing the multi-layered identities of our world today. She is driven by discussions on equity and mental well-being and is hopelessly in love with ink-pens, coffee and rain.
Owning our Stories 