Sarah Gambito

Sarah Gambito (Co-Founder and President of the Board) is the author of Matadora (Alice James Books) and Delivered (Persea Books). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, The Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, The New Republic, Field, Quarterly West, Fence and other journals. She holds degrees from The University of Virginia and The Creative Writing Program at Brown University. A recipient of grants and fellowships from The New York Foundation for the Arts, Urban Artists Initiative and The MacDowell Colony, she is Assistant Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Fordham University.

Joseph Legaspi

Joseph O. Legaspi (Co-Founder and Vice-President of the Board) is the author of Imago (CavanKerry Press), winner of a Global Filipino Literary Award. A graduate of New York University’s Creative Writing Program, his poems appeared and/or are forthcoming in American Life in Poetry, World Literature Today, PEN International, North American Review, Callaloo, Bloomsbury Review, Poets & Writers, Gulf Coast, Gay & Lesbian Review, and the anthologies Language for a New Century (W.W. Norton) and Tilting the Continent (New Rivers Press). A recipient of a poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, he resides in Queens, NY and works as Assistant to the Administrator at The Pulitzer Prizes.

Vikas Menon

Vikas Menon (Secretary of the Board) has published poems in journals such as TriQuarterly, Bitter Oleander, Brooklyn Review, Catamaran, Toronto Review, APA Journal, and Monolid, among others. His work is forthcoming in the first anthology dedicated to South Asian American poetry, Writing the Lines of Our Hands. He received his M.F.A (Poetry) from Brooklyn College in 1997, where he studied with the poets Allen Ginsberg and Louis Asekoff. He received his M.A. in Literature from St. Louis University in 1993.

Jennifer Chang

Jennifer Chang (Co-Chair, Advisory Board) is the author of The History of Anonymity (Georgia, 2008).  Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, The Nation, A Public Space, and she has reviewed poetry for The Believer, Boston Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. The recipient of fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo, she serves as a contributing editor to Shenandoah and teaches in the MFA program at Bowling Green State University.

Oliver de la Paz

Oliver de la Paz (Co-Chair, Advisory Board) has taught at Arizona State University, Gettysburg College, Utica College, and he currently teaches creative writing at Western Washington University. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, his work has appeared in journals such as Quarterly West, The Asian Pacific American Journal, North American Review, and elsewhere. His book of prose and verse, Names Above Houses, was a winner of the Crab Orchard Award Series and published by Southern Illinois University Press. His second book, Furious Lullaby, is the editor’s selection for 2007, published by Southern Illinois University.



Purvi Shah

Purvi Shah (Consultant), winner of the inaugural SONY South Asian Social Services Award in 2008, is a content expert in issues related to violence against women, language access, policy advocacy, and media including non-profit film and website communications. A Kundiman fellow herself, her debut book of poetry, Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press 2006), garnered the Many Voices Project prize and was nominated for the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Members’ Choice Award in 2007. She currently supports Kundiman's development, including leading its Kavad 9/11 project, Together We Are New York. In addition, she is currently consulting on projects related to gender violence while teaching literature courses at Hunter College and working toward a second collection of poetry. You can reach her at purvis@kundiman.org.