Deepa Rajagopalan – Organizer, Host, Curator
Deepa Rajagopalan is a writer, engineer, and entrepreneur. She holds a certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Guelph’s Creative Writing program. She has worked in Information Technology and Management Consulting at Deloitte and Accenture.
Before moving to Canada, Deepa lived in Saudi Arabia, India and the US. She currently resides in Guelph, Ontario.
You can follow her on Instagram at @deerajagopalan
Bianca Marais – Organizer, Host, Curator
Bianca Marais is the author of two novels, If You Want to Make God Laugh and Hum If You Don’t Know the Words. She holds a Certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies where she now teaches creative writing.
Before becoming an author, she started a corporate training company and volunteered with Cotlands, where she assisted care workers in Soweto with providing aid for HIV/AIDS orphans and their caregivers. She champions the Own Voices movement in her country of birth, South Africa, where she runs various programs through the Eunice Ngogodo Own Voices Initiative to encourage and empower women of colour to tell their own stories.
She also hosts the podcast, The Shit No One Tells You About Writing.
Learn more about Bianca at http://www.biancamarais.com
Ana Rodriguez Machado – Curator, Occasional Host
Ana Rodriguez Machado lives and writes in Toronto. She holds an MFA from the University of Guelph. In 2016, her poem “Conversations about home in Havana” was shortlisted for the PEN Canada New Voices Award and longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize.
Learn more about Ana at https://anaro.ca/.
