Who are the Course Leaders?

Ilona Yusuf is a poet and printmaker. Her poems have been published in book form (Picture This, 2001), and thereafter in literary journals, most recently in The Atlanta Review (2014). Ilona freelances for various magazines, writing on art and literature and has worked as an editor for the Alhamra Literary Review and as a guest editor for the Canadian poetry journal Vallum.

Noorulain Noor is a clinical researcher at Stanford University and the Associate Editor of Papercuts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in ARDOR literary magazine, The Bangalore Review, Apeiron Review, Clapboard House, and other journals. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes on the broad themes of identity, multiculturalism, and the immigrant experience.

Zakia Rubab Khwaja is a Masters in English from the University of Rochester, NY. Prior to moving to the US, she worked in microfinance and her writing is informed by her experience working in poverty-stricken areas with marginalized communities within Pakistan and abroad. Her poetry has appeared in the award-winning Grey Sparrow Journal, the Alabama Literary Review, Pearl, Controlled Burn, Ellipsis…Literature and Art,  to name a few. In Pakistan, her poems have been published by the Pakistan Academy of Letters. Her work was nominated by Grey Sparrow Journal for Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net series. Zakia was also accepted to participate in the Yale Writers’ Conference 2014.