Bawany, Sara: - Sara Bawany is an award-winning published poet, a freelance editor, and a clinical social worker based in Austin, Texas. Centering her writing around her experience and identity as a Muslim woman while exploring overlapping themes of faith, diaspora, and resistance, she began sharing her work publicly on her Instagram page (@sara.bawany) in 2016, garnering several thousand readers, and she compiled and published her work into her first book in September 2018 titled: "(w)holehearted: a collection of poetry and prose" which won Daybreak Press Publishing's "Best Poetry Book" award. Her second book, "quarter life crisis" will be published in 2023. She was selected as a finalist in Button Poetry's 2021 Annual Chapbook Contest and her work has been featured on TEDx, ACLU TX, Muslim Youth Musings, Voyage Dallas Magazine, Arlington Literary Journal, and Brown Girl Magazine. She has spoken and performed at more than 100 different engagements both in her social work capacity and as a poet. Sara has a small freelance editing business that aims to empower and strengthen writers who seek her assistance. She is an instructor at BEAM Academy where she teaches Muslim youth about the intersection of poetry and Islam, and serves as the Process Manager at House of Amal, which is a collaborative writing space meant to empower and support Muslim writers. She is a first-year MFA Poetry student at Texas State University and is a copyeditor at Porter House Review, Texas State University's online literary journal. You can access her work at www.sarabawany.com.