masthead

Emma Zhang

Co-Editor-in-Chief

Emma Zhang lives and writes in San Jose, California. A California Arts Scholar and Alliance of Young Artists and Writers National Best in Grade Winner, her writing has been recognized by the Adroit Prizes, the Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest, the American Mathematical Association, and the Bay Area Creative Foundation, and appears in Peach Mag, Kissing Dynamite, Vagabond City Lit, among others. Aside from writing, she enjoys earl gray lattes, Borges’s short stories, math, and biology.

Daisy Newbury

Editor

Daisy Newbury is a college freshman with a passion for storytelling. She enjoys reading and writing short fiction, primarily magical realism and prose. She doesn’t limit herself to the page, often accompanied by her camera, her paintbrush, or her saxophone. Outside of writing, Daisy enjoys animating, puppetry, and solving puzzles. Her favorite website is Wikipedia and her favorite animal is the octopus.

**Ari Ochoa Petzold**
*Podcast Team Member*
Ari Ochoa Petzold (they/xe), is a writer in process that likes dancing to old music and history, one of their goals in mind is to bring to the world stories about the human condition told through the intersectionality of being queer and latine. Find more of xyr work in the JUVEN Press, Healthline Zine, Graveyard Zine, #Enbylife, Hooligan Mag and at Instagram in @Ari_gibberish.

Celina Naheed

Co-Editor-in-Chief

Celina Naheed is an Iranian-American poet and artist from Atlanta, Georgia. Her work has appeared in the Lumiere Review, Aurora Journal, Words Without Borders, and others. She is the founding editor of the Qafiyah Review, a literary magazine for Middle Eastern North African writers and artists. She was a finalist for Georgia Youth Poet Laureate, and has been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In her free time she enjoys watching old movies, sketching and going down Spotify rabbit holes.

Sara Nath

Editor

Sara Nath is an Indian-American high school senior and writer from Northern Kentucky. Her poetry has won regional honors in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and in 2022, she was accepted into Kentucky’s Governor’s School of Arts for Creative Writing. Aside from poetry, she enjoys essays and journalism, and their potential to ignite change — as part of the Kentucky Student Voice Team, she is involved in educational justice journalism. Beyond that, Sara loves to read, play the piano, code, paint, and dissect song lyrics.

Zara Seldon

Co-Editor-in-Chief

Zara Seldon is a Pakistani-American poet from Los Angeles, California. She is the founder of her school’s feminist writing club, and a participant in the Get Lit SLAM poetry universe. In her free time, she is either singing in her local choir, or spamming her friends in all caps until they respond. Her work has been featured in the Between the Lines: Identity and Belonging anthology.

Tony Pan

Editor

Tony Pan is a Chinese American poet and photographer based in New York. His work has been published in Phillips Exeter Academy The Summer Times. He is currently an editor for his high school newspaper. He writes mostly poetry and journalism while also experimenting with other forms of writing. Besides writing, he enjoys exploring new hobbies. In his free time, he loves street photography, traveling, and watching thrilling crime scene documentaries of the past. He is also an avid lifter and rows for his school and in his community.

Fiona Jin

Co-Editor-in-Chief

Fiona Jin is a writer in the Chicago Metropolitan Area. A 2024 YoungArts Winner with Distinction in Writing (Poetry) and Winner in Writing (Spoken Word), Her work can be found in the Lumiere Review and is anthologized in CHERRY MOON: Emerging Voices from the Asian Diaspora (GASHER Press 2023). Outside of writing, she loves to paint.

Kate Choi

Podcast Director

Kate K. Choi is a Korean-American writer and a student at Yale University. She was a 2021 YoungArts Writing Finalist, and her work has also been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Seoul International Women's Association, and Ringling College, among others. Additionally, she has work published or forthcoming in Diode Poetry Journal, The Incandescent Review, fingers comma toes, and elsewhere. She edits for The Metaphysical Review and is excited to join Aster Lit as their new Podcast Director! In her free time, she loves collecting dark chocolate, refreshing her podcast feed, and listening to classic rock.

Alumni Team Members

Caroline Gao

Co-Founder + Co-Editor in Chief

Caroline is a Chinese American writer and high school senior from Oregon. Her work has been recognized nationally by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the Goi Peace Foundation, the New York Times, Oregon Humanities, Novelly, and the Between the Lines: Peace and the Writing Experience Anthology. In her free time, she enjoys K-pop, crochet, anime, Animal Crossing, language learning, and long walks.

David Chen

Co-Founder + Co-Editor in Chief

David Chen is a Chinese-American writer from Minnesota and senior in high school. His work has been recognized nationally by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and YoungArts, and is in or forthcoming at Kissing Dynamite, the Blue Marble Review, the Renaissance Review, Novelly, and elsewhere. His work also appears in the Between the Lines: Peace and the Writing Experience Anthology. In his free time, he enjoys taking walks in the woods, doing mock trial, and cooking.

Danju Zoe Liu

Co-Founder + Editor in Chief

Zoe is a writer from Utah and student at UPenn. A three-time Scholastic Gold Medalist, she has also won numerous Scholastic silver medals and regional keys and is an alumni of the Adroit Summer Mentorship Program in Spoken Word. Like the others on this list, she’s been published in the Between the Lines: Peace and the Writing Experience Anthology. She loves all kinds of writing and dabbles in poetry, personal essays, short fiction, and scriptwriting. Outside of creative writing, she loves theatre and debate as well as dancing alone in her room and falling asleep on video calls with friends at 2 a.m.

Madeleine Russell

Co-Founder + Managing Editor

Maddy is an award-winning poet from Orlando, Florida and a student at Middlebury College. She has been recognized numerous times by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards since her freshman year of high school. She has also been published in the Between the Lines: Peace and the Writing Experience Anthology. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys listening to new music and watching Forensic Files.

Elizabeth Shvarts

Co-Founder + Managing Editor

Liz is a Russian-Jewish American from Staten Island, New York, and a student at Yale. She’s a writer and spoken word poet who’s performed and spoken at venues such as the Apollo and United Nations. An NYC Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador and finalist in Climate Speaks, her work has been highlighted by PBS, the Grist Magazine, The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and more. Additionally, Liz is a National YoungArts Finalist in Play/Script for 2021. When she’s not writing or performing, she enjoys biking, baking and vibing.

**Adan Zia**
*Associate Editor*
Adan is a Pakistani writer based in Lahore and specializes in prose writing. She is currently finishing her O'levels and soon will be enrolling in an A'levels program. Her work has been published in the Between the Lines: Peace and the Writing Experience Anthology. When she’s not immersed in coursework, she enjoys sketching and watching anime or movies.

**Lily Smith**
*Associate Editor*
Lily is a high school student and writer in Des Moines, Iowa. Her work has been recognized in the 2022 Between the Lines: Identity and Belonging Anthology. Outside of writing, Lily is involved in various school activities, plays violin, and is Taylor Swift’s biggest fan.

Drew Shinozaki

Co-Founder + Managing Editor

Drew is a Japanese-American writer and UC Berkeley student. Her most notable work has been published in Exposition Review, Vol. III: "Orbit", in which she was nominated for the PEN Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. An honorable mention recipient from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, she has been featured in multiple anthologies, including the Between the Lines: The Peace and Writing Experience and other literary magazines. When not writing, Drew loves teasing her friends, astrology, and watching anime.

**Ruo Wei Lim**
*Associate Editor*
Ruo Wei is a Singaporean writer and current undergraduate at the University of York studying English Literature. In her free time, she loves to encounter art in all its serendipitous beauty and binge-watch video essays on Youtube. She writes for The Yorker and edits for Symposia Magazine, founded by one of her close friends and peers, and contributes to various other publications. She writes to save herself, to enter into dialogue with storytellers whom she believes are a vital life force now more than ever (which is what all writers say).

Hesandi Jayasekara

Co-Founder + Editor

Hesandi is a Sri Lankan writer currently attending the University of York, where she tries to cope with being an English major while trying to write and read for fun at the same time. Her work has been published in the Between the Lines: Peace and the Writing Experience Anthology, and less formally on her blog which she updates when the mood strikes her. When she's not working on approaching deadlines, she enjoys listening to the same song on repeat, watching reruns of Community, and working on her book.

**Syriana Poteat**
*Associate Editor*
Syriana is a Black-American in her Jr. year of high school. She tends to write prose works but she also does a bit of poetry and script-writing. She has been published in the Between The Lines: Identity and Belonging anthology and is currently working on a novel. Other than writing, her hobbies include knitting, painting, drawing, and making jewelry.

Celine Kraitem

Co-Founder + Editor

Celine is a half-Lebanese, half-Palestinian writer and student at the Lebanese American University. Despite her concentration on writing prose, she dabbles in other forms of writing. Her work has been published in the Between the Lines: Peace and the Writing Experience Anthology. When she’s not battling with the guilt of not writing, she’s either drowning in school work, creating scenarios in her head while staring at the ceiling, reading, trying to learn 4 different languages at once, or vibing to Hozier.