Kashiana Singh

2024- Present

Kashiana has contributed to Matwaala's efforts to increase the visibility of South Asian poetry with hosting the new books showcase in 2024, and connecting Matwaala with SWIMM and SAI for the tenth anniversary celebrations. Her infectious positive spirit is a gift, and she hopes things to happen today rather than tomorrow.

Kashiana is a poet, an immigrant, a corporate leader, and a grandmother navigating life with one foot in legacy and the other in whatever’s waiting around the corner. She swears by her TEDx mantra, Work as Worship, balancing boardroom chaos with poetic grace (and occasionally wondering if coffee counts as a sacrament).

Her chapbook, Crushed Anthills (Yavanika Press), takes readers on a 10-city poetic journey, while her full-length collections, Woman by the Door (2022, Apprentice House Press) and Witching Hour (2024, Glass Lyre Press), lean into life as a birthing house with poetry that navigates resilience, belonging, and transformations—like parallel playing the board room leader, family storyteller and bedtime poet for her grandson.

From her home in North Carolina, Kashiana wears more hats than she has closet space for: Managing Editor of Poets Reading the News, President of the North Carolina Poetry Society, Co-Program Director for the Matwaala Collective, and Vice President in the healthcare services industry. But it’s the roles like “poet-grandma” and “everyday wonder-seeker” that keep her grounded. (And let’s be honest, her grandson gets the best poetry edits.)

As part of the Matwaala community, Kashiana channels her many lives into one purpose: amplifying underrepresented voices and creating poetry that navigates the messy, beautiful intersections of identity, politics, and ecology. It’s a work that makes space for tears, hope, and the occasional celebratory chai, all while finding echoes of her voice alongside a growing chorus of others.

These days, Kashiana is leaning into presence—slowing down, soaking up the lessons of her parent’s legacy, and finding joy in the now. Because, let’s face it, life is one big poetic draft, and she’s always ready for the next stanza.