Our Team
Hetvi Desai
Hetvi Desai is The Veranda’s Screen Writing Group’s Lead Coordinator. She graduated in May from Purdue University, majoring in Psychological Sciences and minoring in English and Creative Writing. She is a research assistant in Purdue University and writes stories and poetry during her spare time. She loves reading sweet fictional stories with happy endings. When she isn’t reading or writing, she is trying out new recipes and using her family and friends as guinea pigs.
Find me on Instagram @the_writers_block15 and on Twitter @HetviWriter
Sravani Hotha
She/Her
Sravani writes contemporary South Asian fiction for children and adults as well as science fiction and fantasy based on Indian mythology. Her writing has appeared in Duende Literary, Dragon Poet Review, and Fuss Class News. She juggles many fictional universes in her brain and enjoys the sound they make when they hit the floor. Her dream, apart from being an established author, is to leave her cushy corporate job to open her own bookstore where she can sit back in a cushy loveseat sipping tea and falling into her favorite stories.
She can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @SravaniWrites.
Rachana Kolli
Rachana Kolli studied Creative Writing and Biological Sciences at Northwestern University. She is currently trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life which shouldn’t be surprising considering her disparate fields of study. So far she’s considered founding a book shop co-op with her best friend, writing bespoke Murder Mystery parties, and becoming a small-town mayor—please reach out if you can make any of these happen! When she’s not having a blast as the Fiction Editor of Masalazine, she is organizing her absurdly large Spotify library, working as a tutor and copyeditor, and resisting the urge to ballroom dance in a pandemic.
She can be found on Twitter as @RachanaKolli and on Instagram as @rachana.kolli.
Ashanka Kumari
She/Her
Ashanka Kumari is The Veranda’s Book Club Lead Coordinator, teacher-scholar-editor in rhetoric and composition, and proud Meowma to two fierce felines. She is an Assistant Professor of English, Global Human Rights Fellow, and Director of Writing at Texas A&M University - Commerce. She recently published the co-edited collection Mobility Work in Composition and her writing has appeared in a plethora of academic journals, books as well as journalism across media. When she’s not reading, writing, or absorbing pop culture, she’s cooking up a storm, trying new flavors and sharing them with everyone she loves.
Aishwarya Manoharan
She/Her
Aishwarya Manoharan dreams of a day when all she does is read, and write in her own cafe-bookshop. In the meantime, she will be disguised as a business student from Detroit. From the days she spent polishing off book after book in her elementary school to now, Aishwarya has been fascinated with stories and loves that she gets to be a part of telling them with The Veranda. She delights in words and the worlds we weave with them and hopes to one day publish a book of her own. When she is not writing or businessing (it should be a word), she is binging Netflix, attempting to paint, or throwing back glasses of wine with her friends.
Catch her on Instagram as @aishtm and twitter as @therealaishtm.
Ash S.N.
She/Her
Ash was born in Dubai, and grew up in California. She is currently pursuing Bachelors in Graphic Design and Advertising, while completing a minor in Photography. She loves words like she loves rain, enjoys singing, and creating art. Currently, she works as a part of the marketing management team for an American design company called Deluxe. Ash loves to travel and hopes to capture the world in the way she sees it through her camera some day. She is an architecture enthusiast, and especially loves temple-hopping when she visits Kerala. Ash hopes to see more works from South Indian communities in the literature world soon. She enjoys works of Arundhati Roy, Anita Nair, Kamala Das, Elif Shafak, Amy Tan, and such. Ash identifies as a non-binary bisexual and considers herself as an active gay/queer member of the LGBTQ community. She joined the admin design team under The Veranda in hopes of sharing her passion for reading and writing with others.
She can be found on Instagram under @ka_._li and Twitter @sand_bruja.
Fatima Shah
Fatima Shah is a charming and hilarious human and a gushing fountain of uncontrollable joy and angst, who finds meaning in life through writing, visual art, and learning literally anything. Her work focuses on whatever she happens to be trying to understand at any given time, which can include both everything and nothing. If that's too vague for you, that's too bad. She is the Non-fiction Editor for Masalazine and the writer of many very popular books, none of which have been written yet.
If you must find her, she sometimes ventures onto Twitter and Instagram as @jasminegeekface.
Priya Sirohi
She/Her
Priya is the Founder & Lead Coordinator of The Veranda, as well as Editor-in-Chief of Masalazine, our literary magazine. She started this community after watching yet another show misrepresenting South Asians, and decided to find writers who could change how South Asian characters get written. Other passionate wordsmiths joined her, and now we hang out on our virtual veranda with all of you talking shop about books, community, and writing. Priya enjoys painting, hiking, reading, watching Korean dramas, hiking, napping, and hiking. When she’s not being a wood nymph in the forests of upstate New York, she is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Ithaca College.
Also, I need a new job, so if you’re hiring, here’s my email: priyasirohi.rhetoric@gmail.com