Guest Collaborators

Elmira Bagherzadeh is an Iranian new media artist and educator currently living in Joplin, Missouri. She received her bachelor’s in biomedical engineering in Iran in 2011. Bagherzadeh moved to the United States to pursue a degree in Art, Technology, and Emerging Communication at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her works during this period focused on the synthesis of early avant-garde experimental animation and physical computing techniques. Bagherzadeh’s work investigates psychological themes such as perception, consciousness, and mental health. Her short animation Roohangiz was screened in international festivals such as Utah Arts, Genreblast Film Festival, Bange Pouyaei, and 55th Youth Cinema Regional Festival, and received awards in the short-animated film category.

Genny Lim is a second generation Chinese Chukchi American Bay Area native, born and raised in San Francisco to a sewing woman and sewing contractor, where she worked ironing and folding blouses after school. The youngest of seven, she aspired to be ballerina but as the family couldn’t afford lessons, she took refuge in books and writing. She excelled in English and at Francisco Middle School. she and her team took second place in the all-city Debate Tournament. She prepared for a life as a secretary, taking shorthand and typing, but her heart’s desire was in the creative arts. She wrote her first play in a beginning playwriting class at SF State. That play, Paper Angels, went on to become the first Asian American play that aired on PBS’s American Playhouse in 1985. It has been produced throughout the U.S. and in Canada. The historical drama was based on the book, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, co-authored by Lim and the late Him Mark Lai and Judy Yung. It received the American Book Award. Today, Genny is the former SF Jazz Poet Laureate and has collaborated with many musicians, such as Max Roach, Herbie Lewis, John Santos, Jon Jang and Francis Wong. She is the author of five poetry collections, Winter Place, Child of War, Paper Gods and Rebels, KRA!, La Morte Del Tempo and the recipient of the Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award from Pen Oakland. Genny was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Berkeley Poetry Festival in 2022. Genny’s poetry has been featured in multiple dNaga projects, including Invisible Traces.

**Miriam Ching Yoon Louie** is a third generation Korean Chinese American writer and activist. She co-founded the Women of Color Resource Center with Linda Burnham and served as the media coordinator for women worker organizations Asian Immigrant Women Advocates and Fuerza Unida. She is the author of Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take on the Global Factory (2001) and co-author of BRIDGE: Building a Race & Immigration Dialogue in the Global Economy (with Cho, Argüelles Paz y Puente & Khokha, 2004) and of Women's Education in the Global Economy (2000).
Louie’s first novel, Not Contagious—Only Cancer (2016), was published by Rabbit Roar, an Asian radical womanist press, launched with Nguyen Louie, her daughter, illustrator and co-publisher. Louie co-wrote XicKorea: Poems, Rants, Words Together (with Beth Ching and Arnoldo García, 2002) and Ranting Tiger, Thundering Bunny (with Nguyen Louie, 2012). Her articles have been carried in such publications as The Nation, Ms. Magazine, Amerasia and East Bay Express, and in such anthologies as All the Women in My Family Sing and Asian Americans: The Movement & the Moment. Louie drummed with Jamae Sori/SisterSound and Korean Youth Cultural Center.
Trickster Parkinson’s knocked Louie down in 2019 while she was working on her second novel Mosquito Road. Add chronic pain from nerve damage and she walks a path as twisty as scoliosis climbing a mountain’s spine.

Sharon Shao (she/they) is a Bay Area-native actor, musician, and teaching artist. Local credits include Far Country (Berkeley Rep), Chinglish (SF Playhouse), Sleeping Beauty (Panto in the Presidio), The Winter’s Tale, Good Person of Szechwan (CalShakes), The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin (SF Playhouse, SFBATCC featured actress award), Man of God (Shotgun Players), Vinegar Tom (Shotgun Players), The Tempest and Hamlet (Oakland Theater Project). She received her B.A. in Theatre Arts and Psychology from UC Santa Cruz. Offstage, Sharon is passionate about teaching voice and drama, devising original work, and building creative communities here and abroad. IG: @shao_dynasty, sharonshao.biz

Pamela Wu-Kochiyama (Creative Consultant). Born in Asheville, North Carolina and raised in New York, She is a creative consultant, visual arts curator, artivist, theater and concert director. As a multi media theater creative consultant she gently guides the collaborators through their creative process to develop their works from their unique and authentic perspective. She is also a dancer with the Destiny Arts Elders Project.

Ms. Wu–Kochiyama is a co-founder with Claudine Naganuma and was previously the Producing Artistic Director of the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center and the United States of Asian America Arts Festival now in it’s 28th year. She lives in Oakland, California with her partner Eddie Kochiyama and her forever dogs Mimu and Zeruah.