2018 Director & Mentors 
of GKA's Summer Writing Studio

MARGARET ZHANG | Director

Margaret Zhang used to go by Mar-gar-gar. She likes to waste gas, write poetry, and wander the streets of Chinatown. She has had the privilege of participating in the Tin House Poetry Workshop and The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, among others. Read her work in Salt Hill Journal, SOFTBLOW, DIALOGIST, Gigantic Sequins, and other journals. She currently lives in Philadelphia, where she is an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania.
Favorite Writers: Ocean Vuong, Kelly Link, Li-Young Lee

​

Christina Im is a Korean-American writer and rising freshman at Princeton University. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The Blueshift Journal, The Adroit Journal, YARN, and Strange Horizons, among others. In addition, she has been recognized for her work by Hollins University, Bennington College, Princeton University, the National YoungArts Foundation, the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, and the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program. Her poem "Meanwhile in America" was selected by Natalie Diaz for inclusion in Best New Poets 2017. She gets very invested in cooking shows and takes pretty good pictures of the sky.
Favorite Writers:  Ada Limón, Ocean Vuong, Jenny Zhang

 CHRISTINA IM | Poetry & Prose

LILY ZHOU | Poetry

​Lily Zhou is a rising freshman at Stanford University. Her writing has been recognized by the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Poetry Society of the UK, the National YoungArts Foundation, Gannon University, and Columbia College Chicago. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2017, Tin House, Sixth Finch, Vinyl, Waxwing, The Adroit Journal, and NightBlock. She has been nominated twice for Best of the Net.
Favorite Writers:​ Alexander Chee, Ocean Vuong, Lo Kwa Mei-en

Devanshi Khetarpal lives in New York. She is a rising sophomore at New York University where she is majoring in Comparative Literature with a minor in Creative Writing. She is the editor-in-chief of Inklette Magazine, a poetry reader for The Blueshift Journal and a staff writer for Washington Square News. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Transom, Aainanagar, Vayavya, Souvenir, and Drunk In A Midnight Choir among others. Her poetry collection, Small Talk, is forthcoming from Writers Workshop, Kolkata, this year. She is currently working on a collection of essays on places she has travelled to. 
Favorite Writers: Maurizio Cucchi, Elena Ferrante, Pier Paolo Pasolini ​

DEVANSHI KHETARPAL | Poetry

SAFWAN KHATIB | Poetry

Safwan Khatib will be a senior at Columbia University in the fall, where he in the department of Classical Studies. He is the recipient of the 4x4 Poetry prize, the Columbia Core Scholars award, and the 2017 Adroit Prize for poetry, selected by Safiya Sinclair. He is spending the summer at home in Indianapolis, working on poems one at a time and on an essay on the work of revision in the university.​
Favorite Writers: Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson, Frank Bidart

​Rona Wang is a math major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her writing is forthcoming or published in Winter Tangerine Review, Teen Vogue, and The Adroit Journal. This autumn, Half Mystic Press will publish her debut fiction collection, Cranesong. 
Favorite Writers: Jenny Zhang, Rebecca Solnit, Claudia Rankine.

RONA WANG | Prose

KATHRYN HARGETT | Poetry & Prose

​
​Kathryn Hargett is an undergraduate at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is the recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and the UAB Honors College, and her work has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and Pushcart Prize. Her writing has been recognized by Princeton University, the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, the National YoungArts Foundation, the Alabama Writers Forum, the Poetry Society of the United Kingdom, and others. She is the editor-in-chief of TRACK//FOUR, a literary magazine for people of color, and reads for Winter Tangerine. Her work has been published by or is forthcoming from Anomaly (FKA Drunken Boat), The Adroit Journal, The Miami Rail, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere.
Favorite writers: James Baldwin, Tracy K. Smith, Kaveh Akbar

​Kristin Chang (http://kristinchang.com/work) lives in NY and reads for Winter Tangerine.  Her work has been nominated for Best New Poets, Bettering American Poetry, and Best of the Net.  She is a 2018 Gregory Djanikian Scholar (selected by The Adroit Journal), a recipient of a 2019 Pushcart Prize, and a Resist/Recycle/Regenerate fellow with the Wing On Wo Project in Manhattan Chinatown, where she teaches paper-making workshops as anti-gentrification resistance and community building.  Her debut chapbook “Past Lives, Future Bodies” is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press (October 2018).   
Favorite Writers: Helen Oyeyemi, Eugenia Leigh, Hala Alyan

KRISTIN CHANG | Poetry

ERIN JIN MEI O'MALLEY | Poetry

​Erin Jin Mei O’Malley is the Managing Editor of The Ellis Review, and her work appears or is forthcoming in The Ellis Review, DIALOGIST, Rust + Moth, and others. She has received a fellowship from the Lambda Literary Foundation and nominations for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. You can find her at www.explorationsoferin.com.