Discipline/Field: Prose Writer

Based: Los Angeles, CA

About: Suhasini Yeeda is a first-generation queer Indian American from Dallas, Texas. She is the owner of NITI Communications, an independent consultancy dedicated to uplifting QTBIPOC small businesses and creatives. Her writing focuses on themes of grief and loss, intergenerational conflict, intersectional feminism, and class privilege among Asian American communities. She is a California Arts Council Emerging Artist Fellow.

Project Title: What We Do Not is a collection of essays and a meditation on the complex women in Yeeda’s South Asian family lineage, some seen through her own perspective, others recalled based on passed down stories she overheard as a child. She addresses the way South Asian diasporic women are often portrayed in mainstream media—that they are weak, voiceless, and controlled by their men. In her essays, the Indian American protagonist is pushing in her own way to find a space to become her own woman. Her reflections on the societal limitations of her time and the way in which they impact her as a writer and person are intersectional and include ways in which race, sex, and class impact a first-generation woman of color.  

At Yefe Nof she will finalize a manuscript to send to agents and gain representation. Ultimately, she hopes the theme of liberation from limitations will inspire other members of her community to carve out their own versions of womanhood.

Relevant Links: @suhasiniwrites on Instagram and Twitter; suhasiniwrites.com; niticommunications.com