A LIFE IN PRACTICE
Making a Place for the Work
For nearly a decade, I searched for a proofing press. I eventually found a Vandercook SP-20 in the Santa Cruz Mountains and, over the next several years, built a printing studio around it. Today, the studio holds the Vandercook, a guillotine paper cutter, and a Takach etching press, with plans to also build a home studio and capacity to create engraving plates for the etching press.
During maternity leave with my first child, that desire to print also took shape as Barahm Press, a micropress supporting artists and writers of color through digital editions and chapbooks. We are preparing our second digital folio and printing our first chapbook series, Field Notes.
The studio and the press have grown alongside family life and other work. Building them has been a gradual commitment: making space for my own practice and helping other writers and artists bring their work into the world.
Building a Practice Around My Values
After more than 20 years in resource mobilization, and following the birth of my second child, I founded Veridian Collective. I wanted more room to choose the work I took on, deepen relationships, and let my values guide the everyday decisions of a consulting practice.
Now in its second year, Veridian is a solo consulting firm supporting organizations with strategic fundraising. Across my career, I have helped raise nearly $200 million for organizations in California, Minnesota, and New York.
I am also beginning to bring printmaking into this work. Our first collaboration is with Feed Black Futures, an Oakland-based food sovereignty organization. We are exploring a Korean oral history project with Korean American Community Services in San Jose, too.
These collaborations bring together interests that have long been part of my life: gathering resources, working with language and images, and helping community stories take form.
Returning to Poetry
After a decade away from writing, I am making room for poetry again.
This return builds on an earlier body of work, including publications in Boston Review and with Finishing Line Press, as well as poems in publications supported by Duke University Press and Temple University Press. Fellowships and residencies with Naropa University, Poets House, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and Kundiman have offered spaces for writing and connection along the way.
Returning means rebuilding a rhythm of reading, drafting, and spending time with unfinished work. Alongside printmaking and the work of a small press, poetry is becoming a sustained part of my life again—and helping shape what I want to make next.