ON EMPOWERED DEFIANCE

MALAINA KAPOOR is an Indian American human rights activist. She previously served as a fellow at PEN America, advocating for international human rights, press freedoms, and election integrity. She also served on the management team of a refugee resettlement organization and was the producer of In Deep, a nationally syndicated public affairs radio broadcast program. Kapoor has received national awards for her poetry, personal essays, and short stories. She collaborated with Sola Mahfouz on Defiant Dreams: The Journey of an Afghan Girl Who Risked Everything for Education (Ballantine Books).

SAFIYA SINCLAIR was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of the poetry collection Cannibal and the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award in Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in the poetry category, and the Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize in poetry. Cannibal was also selected as one of the American Library Association’s Notable Books of the Year, was a finalist for the PEN America Literary Awards and the Seamus Heaney Centre’s Poetry Prize, and was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. How to Say Babylon: A Memoir (37 Ink) is her latest work.

SOLA MAHFOUZ was born in Afghanistan and immigrated to the United States in 2016 to attend college. She is currently a quantum computing researcher at Tufts University Quantum Information Group. In her free time, she focuses on reading and studying different styles of fiction, as well as writing about the rugged homeland she has left behind. She lives in Boston.