As part of my practice as an artist and social justice oriented community-weaver, I work with writers, performers, social justice leaders, educators, and small arts organizations to:
- Define flexible intentions and goals, then to shape and share stories that animate their mission.
- Illuminate intersections that are present among, and that impact the experiences, of participating readers, communities, audiences, visitors.
- Tend to and learn from the gaps between project design and implementation, core intentions, and impacted communities.
- Approach projects with curiosity and an anti-racist, root-centered perspective in order to address and avoid damaging cultural violence that is often reproduced in media spaces.
My experience working in theatrical dramaturgy, visual and developmental editing, program and fundraiser design, proposal and grant writing, publicity and media marketing, as well as alum/community/artist/public relations has been cultivated with organizations such as the Unicorn Authors Club, Narrative Initiative, Couerage Theatre Company (Los Angeles), the Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture at USC (Los Angeles), Kaya Press (Los Angeles), Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater (New York), Thesaurus Linguae Graecae at the University of California, Irvine, rivulet, and Sarah Lawrence College’s annual Poetry Festival (New York).
I have also worked with individuals and small teams on project visioning and planning, as well as messaging, editorial, and media engagements. For example, I have managed publicity and media for Duncan Ryuken Williams (Soto Zen priest, USC Professor of Religion and East Asian Languages and Cultures, and the Director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture), meanwhile taking part in building months-long campaigns to enact Dr. Williams’ collaborative projects, book tour events, community work and interfaith activism, and public protests in the US. Some of my collaborations with Dr. Williams include May We Gather (in partnerhsip with Dr. Funie Hsu, Chenxing Han, and Patricia Wakida), Sutra and Bible (in partnership with Kaya Press and the Japanese American National Museum), and the 2019 monograph American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Harvard University Press) for which I managed publicity and media messaging. Since 2018, I've also worked with Dr. Williams in a small team to edit essays published in outlets such as Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and Lion’s Roar, then adapting these essays for newsletters and social media.
