Emerging Critics

Karen Chalamilla

Karen Chalamilla is a writer and researcher whose work investigates the intersection of art, pop culture, and political identities – including gender, sexuality, race, and class. Writing from a feminist perspective, she centres Black and African cultures, bringing forward narratives often overlooked in mainstream discourse. Her work has been featured in prominent publications such as Gal-dem, The Republic Magazine, African Arguments, The Floor Magazine, AMAKA, TewasArt Africa, Africa Podfest,and The Citizen.

Michelle Chan Schmidt

Michelle Chan Schmidt (she/her) is a writer from Hong Kong. Senior assistant fiction editor at Asymptote and 2023 Editorial Fellow at Full Stop, her words have appeared/ are forthcoming in The Cleveland Review of Books, La Piccioletta Barca, Public Books, Words Without Borders, and others. The 2025 recipient of the ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship for Poetry from Hong Kong, she is translating The Opposite of Sound by Tang Siu Wa from Chinese into English.

Diya Isha

Diya Isha is a writer based in New Delhi, India. She holds a BA in Philosophy from Ashoka University, where she also completed a second major in English and a minor in Creative Writing. Her essays, criticism, and reportage have appeared in Asymptote, The Caravan, The Telegraph Online, The Swaddle, The Wire, and Scroll.in, where she is a regular contributor to the Books & Ideas vertical.

Mary Karmelek

Mary Karmelek is a writer from Buffalo, NY whose work touches upon art, architecture, cultural heritage, cities, and the body. Her fiction and criticism has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Public Seminar, Hyperallergic, Newsweek, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and an MA in English Literature from Fordham University, and is currently completing her first novel. She lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Veeda Khan

Veeda Khan is a writer living in New Jersey. She was the 2024 recipient of the Academy for American Poets’ Enid Dame Memorial Prize. Her work has appeared in Washington Square Review, Zone 3 and elsewhere. 

Thuy Chi Le

Thuy Chi Le is a PhD candidate in English at Brown University. Her research interests are poetry and poetics, postcolonial literature, and critical theory. Chi holds degrees from the University of Chicago and Cornell University, where she was an MFA student in poetry and worked as a lecturer for two years. She lives in Providence, RI.

Vika Mujumdar

Celine Nguyen

​Celine Nguyen is a software designer and writer from California. She studied history at the V&A Museum/Royal College of Art in London, and computer science and design at Carnegie Mellon University. Her criticism has appeared in ArtReview, The Atlantic, The Believer, the Cleveland Review of Books, and the LA Review of Books. Her newsletter personal canon is about literature, design and technology.

Spencer Williams

Spencer Williams is the author of TRANZ (Four Way Books, 2024). Her work has been featured in LitHub, Bright Wall/Dark Room, and IndieWire, among others. She is currently a PhD candidate in poetics at SUNY, Buffalo.

Lauren Yu-Ting Bo

Lauren Yu-Ting Bo is a mixed-Taiwanese writer and critic, primarily exploring multiracial identity, Taiwanese culture and politics, and the impacts of migration and translation. She has written for Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Asymptote, Ploughshares Blog, The Brooklyn Review, and elsewhere. She currently resides in St. Louis, Missouri.