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Sasha LaPointe is from the Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribe. Native to the Pacific Northwest, she draws inspiration from her coastal heritage as well as her life in the city. She writes with a focus on trauma and resilience, ranging topics from PTSD, sexual violence, the work her great grandmother did for the Lushootseed language revitalization, to loud basement punk shows and what it means to grow up mixed heritage. With strange obsessions revolving around Twin Peaks, the Seattle music scene, and Coast Salish Salmon Ceremonies, Sasha explores her own truth of indigenous identity in the Coast Salish territory.

She is the author of the memoir Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk. Her collection of poetry, Rose Quartz will be published by Milkweed in Spring, 2023.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

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Neema Avashia was born and raised in southern West Virginia to parents who immigrated to the United States from India. Her essay collection, Another Appalachia, attempts to reconcile her nostalgia for the place she grew up with the troubling realities of unemployment and addiction that confront the state today, while exploring how the lessons she learned in childhood continue to shape her identity in the present.

Avashia has been a history and Civics teacher in the Boston Public Schools since 2003, and often writes opinion pieces and commentary regarding her experiences as an educator. Her essays have appeared in The Bitter Southerner, Catapult, Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Neema Avashia appeared first on E.B. Bartels.