Azura Tyabji and Diya Abbas

Azura Tyabji (13th Cohort) is the author of two collections, Stepwell (Poetry Northwest, 2018) and Dear Azula, I Have a Crush on Danny Phantom (2021). She was the 2018-19 Seattle and West Coast Youth Poet Laureate. She writes from her perspective as a Black and Indian-American woman using writing to imagine an empathetic and liberatory future. Currently, she studies Creative Writing and Sociology as a 13th cohort First Wave scholar.

Diya Abbas (14th Cohort) is a first-generation Pakistani American poet from the Midwest. They are the 2022 George B. Hill Poetry Prize winner and the 2020 St.Louis Youth Poet Laureate. Her work can be found in The Offing, BahrMag, Button Poetry, Illumination Journal, and others. Diya is a First Wave and FLAS Scholar at the University of Wisconsin Madison studying Creative Writing and Psychology.