The Daily Dose

A first-generation American of Caribbean descent, Susan DeFreitas is the author of the novel Hot Season, which won a Gold IPPY Award, and the editor of Dispatches from Anarres, an anthology of short fiction in tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin (forthcoming 2021). Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been featured in the Writer’s Chronicle, the Huffington Post, the Utne Reader, Story magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Portland Monthly, and High Desert Journal, along with many other journals and anthologies. A former green tech blogger and environmental journalist, she divides her time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Portland, Oregon, and has served writers as a freelance editor and book coach since 2009.

Aya de León directs the Poetry for the People program in the African American Studies Department at UC Berkeley, teaching poetry and commissioning writers to address the climate emergency. Kensington Books publishes her award-winning feminist heist series, which includes SIDE CHICK NATION, the first novel published about Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. In May 2020, Aya will publish her first children’s chapter book, EQUALITY GIRLS AND THE PURPLE REFLECTO-RAY, about a girl who uses her superpowers to confront the president’s sexism. In 2021 Kensington will publish A SPY IN THE STRUGGLE, about FBI infiltration of an African American eco-racial justice organization. Aya’s work has also appeared in Ebony, Guernica, Writers Digest, Bitch Magazine, VICE, The Root, Ploughshares, and on Def Poetry. Aya organizes elementary school students for the climate movement, and has written about it for Mutha Magazine. She also delivered the 2019 Afro ComicCon keynote address on Afro-Futurism as a call for Black people to join the climate movement and save the future. Aya is at work on a YA black/Latina spy girl series for teens called GOING DARK. She is an alumna of Cave Canem and VONA. Visit her online at ayadeleon.com, on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, where she writes about race, class, gender, culture and climate action.

Vijaya Nagarajan is currently the Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of Theology/Religious Studies and in the Program of Environmental Studies at the University of San Francisco. She writes and teaches on Hinduism, gender, ritual, ecology, climate, the commons, energy, and ethics. She is active in the American Academy of Religion and in environmental movements in the United States and in India.  Her book, Feeding a Thousand Souls: Women, Ritual and Ecology in India— An Exploration of the Kolam, is a deep exploration of a popular women’s ritual art, the kolam, and the multiple ways in which beauty embodies ethics. Her website is feedingathousandsouls.com.

Mary DeMocker’s book, The Parents’ Guide to Climate Revolution: 100 Ways to Build a Fossil-Free Future, Raise Empowered Kids, and Still Get a Good Night’s Sleep, is a 2019 Oregon Book Award finalist and has been recommended on NPR and in The New York Times. DeMocker is co-founder and former creative director of 350 Eugene, with whom she led art-centered protests featured on PBS NewsHour, ArtCOP21, and in an Avaaz video shown to world leaders. She has written for The Sun, Spirituality & Health, EcoWatch, The Oregonian, and Common Dreams, and been quoted by CNN and The Washington Post. For photos of the author’s block-long art installation to protest Oregon’s proposed fracked-gas export pipeline, visit marydemocker.com.

Elizabeth Stark, a novelist (Shy Girl: FSG, Seal Press, finalist for the Ferro-Grumely and Lambda Literary Awards) and award-winning and distributed filmmaker (most recently, narrative feature film Lost in the Middle: Best Feature, Broad Humor 2019, a Festival Favorite, Cinema Diverse), co-hosts the podcast Story Makers Show, and co-directs and teaches at Sonoma County Writers Camp and Book Writing World. She lives with her partner, Angie Powers, their two middle-school kids, and their dog, in Sebastopol, CA, when they aren’t being evacuated due to fires.

Angie Powers‘ first feature film Lost in the Middle, debuted as the opening film of the 14th Annual Broad Humor Film Festival in Los Angeles, and is also an official selection of Cinema Diverse, the Palm Springs LGBTQ Film Festival. Angie has an M.F.A. in English and Creative Writing from Mills College, where she won the Amanda Davis Thesis Award for her novel, The Blessed. Certified by the Professional Program in Screenwriting at UCLA, she is the co-director and co-writer of the short Little Mutinies (distributed by Frameline and an official selection of the Palm Springs International Short Fest) and was a quarter-finalist for the Nicholl Fellowship and at Blue Cat Screenplay Competition for Little Mutinies. Twice she made it into the second round of consideration for Sundance Labs and was a CineStory Foundation semi-finalist. She wrote and directed the short Hot Date, and The Truth About Love and Panic, a comedy about anxiety, both of which premiered at the Frameline Film Festival. She teaches Book in a Year. She also serves on the board of her kids’ public charter school.

Sally Morton was born and raised in Wyoming but has lived in the Bay Area for the past eight years. She has just relocated to Philadelphia to work full time in the 2020 election with the Sunrise Movement: a movement of young people to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process. They unite to make climate change an urgent political priority. Outside of climate organizing, Sally’s other passion is hospital chaplaincy, offering emotional and spiritual support to patients ranging from emergency room visits to people battling end of life illnesses. She will be posting every Friday with relevant news articles about climate change politics, initiatives, breakthroughs and more!

Florencia Manóvil is a Buenos Aires-raised, Bay Area-based queer screen director and writer. Her past and current filmmaking projects include the web series Dyke Central <dykecentral.com>, and can be found in full on her website, mynahfilms.com. Florencia also works as an interpreter and translator for social justice organizations all over the US, and is the parent of a spirited teen. Passionate about feminism and environmental activism from an early age, she recently started a personal blog <florenciawrites.blogspot.com>, and looks forward to contributing to Daily Dose on a regular basis.

Sabina Khan-Ibarra is a writer and an educator. She is a recent San Francisco State University Graduate with an MFA in Creative Writing, where she now teaches Creative Writing. Sabina is working on her novel, The Poppy Flower, and her poetry collection, Crossing Oceans, and Climbing Mountains. She is on the Board of Directors for Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative; their mission is to provide racial justice education and resources to advance racial justice to Muslims. She is also the founder of Muslimah Montage, an online space showcasing Muslims of all backgrounds, in hopes of highlighting the amazing work Muslim women are doing. Sabina currently resides in Northern California with her husband and two children.