Nonprofit Publishing Since 1982
2024 Board of Directors
Working Board
Anahid Kassabian - President
Published music scholar, special emphasis, Middle East.
James and Constance Alsop Chair Emerita
University of Liverpool
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Dr. Nancy Barceló – Outgoing President
Former President, Northern New Mexico College
Former Vice Provost for Equity and Diversity at the University of Minnesota.
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Dr. Norma Cantú - Secretary
Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University
Past President of the American Folklore Society
Aida Hurtado
Distinguished Professor and Luis Leal Endowed Chair
Department Chair and Senior Advisor to the Dean, Division of Social Sciences
Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara
Lupe Gallegos-Diaz
Co-Chair, Latinxs and the Environment Initiative
Division of Equity Inclusion
University of California, Berkeley
Board Chair,
Diana Harris
Former IT professional at University of Iowa, College of Engineering
Board member of Miracles in Motion
Advisory Board
Jewelle Gomez
Author and Playwright
Former Director of NYC Arts Commission
Margo Okazawa-Rey
Professor Emerita, San Francisco State University
Equity and Diversity Consultant
LeAnne Howe
Eidson Distinguished Professor in American Literature English
Director of the Institute of Native American Studies
Anahid Kassabian is a retired academic, activist, and film programmer. She taught primarily at Fordham University and University of Liverpool, where she was James and Constance Alsop Chair. Her scholarly areas of interest were film music, background music, sound studies, women’s studies, and Middle East studies, and she was also active in her union on the negotiating team, doing casework, and serving as diversity officer. She worked with the Liverpool Arab arts Festival for a number of years, And she’s been a lifelong supporter of Aunt Lute books in a variety of ways.
Anahid Kassabian
Norma E. Cantú
Award winning poet and author, Dr. Norma Elia Cantú was born in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas to a Tejana mother and a Mexicano father. She began her academic career fifty years ago as a teaching assistant at what is now Texas A&M University, Kingsville, where she earned her MA in English. She earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska and taught at what is now Texas A&M International University in Laredo, at the University of Texas, San Antonio and the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She currently serves as the Norine R. and T. Frank Murchison Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University in San Antonio, where she teaches courses in Latinx Studies, Folklore, and Creative Writing. Her creative writing focuses on the US-Mexico Border and includes her novels Canícula and Cabañuelas as well as a poetry collection, Meditación fronteriza. Her most recent publication is the anthology Chicana Portraits: Critical Biographies of Twelve Chicana Writers.
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Photo: Sara Blanco
Lupe Gallegos-Diaz, is currently the Director of the Chicanx Latinx Student
Development and Co-Director of the Latinx and the Environment campus initiative at the University of California, Berkeley. She also teaches as a Lecturer in the Chicano Studies Program/Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Her teaching areas include - Chicanx Latinx culture and identities; student and leadership development; community engagement and culturally relevant fundraising. Throughout her academic pursuits, she has been committed to advising and advocating for issues that address educational and economic social justice needs for Chicanx Latinx students and communities of color.
Lupe was born and raised in San Mateo County and lives now in Berkeley California. Lupe continues to serve in various leadership and advisory roles for a number of national and local organizations such as – National advisor of the Mexican government in higher education-IME; Chair, of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies; and the national administrative coordinator for Mujeres Activas en Letras Y Cambio Social (MALCS) a Chicana
Latinx and Indigenous academic and professional organization; and they are currently the Co-Chair of the UC Chicano Latino Alumni Association (UC CLAA) the collective ten UC campuses. In the bay area Lupe currently serves as President for the Chicana Latina Foundation and Co-Chair of Latinos Unidos de Berkeley and member of the East Bay UCB Chicanx Latinx
Alumni Association.
Mrs. Gallegos-Diaz has a Bachelor’s of Science in Sociology from Santa Clara
University; Master from the University of California, Berkeley in the School of Social Welfare; Certificate of Fundraising from the University of San Francisco and a Certificate of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies PhD department from University of California, Berkeley.
Lupe Gallegos-Diaz
Diana Harris
Diana, now retired, was an IT professional at University of Iowa central computing facility, College of Business, College of Engineering. When at the University of Iowa, she was a member of the Council on the Status of Women (CSW), 2005-2008; president 2007-2008; CSW Herstory committee 2006-2015; CSW Unwelcome Behaviors Committee 2006-2009. Other campus activities included: Engineering Staff Advisory Council 2005-2011; chair 2010-2011. Diana was on the board of the Johnson County Dog Park Action Committee 2005-2009; president 2007-2009. From 2010-2016, she was on the board of the Miccio Foundation. After retiring Diana joined the UI Retirees Association (UIRA) as a board member and newsletter editor, 2018-2021. Since 2016 Diana has volunteered many hours with Miracles in Motion, where she has been PATH (Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship) Certified Therapeutic Riding Instructor since 2020.. She has received the following Awards--Uiowa Outstanding Staff Award 2007; the Jean Y. Jew Women’s Rights Award (UIowa) 2014; and UIRA President’s Award 2023.
"I became a writer so I could go off in all directions, meet new people, write about what I’ve hungered to know.” As a 2010-2011 William J. Fulbright Scholar, LeAnne Howe lived in Amman, Jordan to research her forthcoming novel, Memoir of a Choctaw Indian in the Arab Revolt, 1917, set in Bilaad ash Sham, and Allen, Oklahoma.
LeAnne Howe is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation and writes fiction, poetry, screenplays, creative non-fiction, plays, and scholarship that primarily deal with American Indian experiences. In 2012, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, and she also received the 2012 USA Ford Fellowship in the Literature category. Her short fiction has appeared in Kenyon Review, Fiction International, Callaloo, Story, Yalobusha Review, Cimarron Review, Platte Valley Review, and elsewhere, and has been translated in France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark. She has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale Writers Residency, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts.
Her first novel, Shell Shaker (Aunt Lute Books, 2001), received an American Book Award in 2002 from the Before Columbus Foundation. The novel was a finalist for the 2003 Oklahoma Book Award, and awarded Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year, 2002. Equinoxes Rouge, the French translation, was the 2004 finalist for Prix Medici Estranger, one of France’s top literary awards. Evidence of Red (Salt Publishing, UK, 2005) won the Oklahoma Book Award for poetry in 2006, and the Wordcraft Circle Award for 2006. Howe’s second novel, Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story (Aunt Lute Books, 2007), was the Hampton University’s Read-In-Selection for 2009-2010. Her most recent book, Choctalking on Other Realities (Aunt Lute Books, 2013), is now available to pre-order. In 2011, Howe was awarded the Tulsa Library Trust Award for her work as an American Indian writer in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
To read more about Howe’s many accomplishments and accolades in university classrooms, theater stages, and—of course—on the written page, visit LeAnne Howe’s website.
LeAnne Howe
Margo Okazawa-Rey
Margo Okazawa-Rey, Professor Emerita San Francisco State University, is an activist and educator working on issues of militarism, armed conflict, and violence against women examined intersectionally. She has long-standing activist commitments in South Korea and Palestine, working closely with Du Re Bang/My Sisters Place and Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling, respectively. She also is a founding member of the International Women’s Network against Militarism and Women for Genuine Security, serves on the International Board of PeaceWomen Across the Globe in Bern, Switzerland, and is President of the Board of Directors of Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID). Her recent publications include “Nation-izing” Coalition and Solidarity Politics for US Anti-militarist Feminists, Social Justice (2020); Gendered Lives: Intersectional Perspectives, Oxford University Press (2020); “No Freedom without Connections: Envisioning Sustainable Feminist Solidarities” (2018) in Feminist Freedom Warriors: Genealogies, Justice, Politics, and Hope, Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Linda Carty (eds.). She was a founding member of the Combahee River Collective.
Jewelle Gomez
Jewelle Gomez is an American author, poet, critic and playwright.
She lived in New York City for 22 years, working in public television, theater, as well as philanthropy, before relocating to the West Coast. Her writing—fiction, poetry, essays and cultural criticism—has appeared in a wide variety of outlets, both feminist and mainstream. Her work centers on women's experiences, particularly those of LGBTQ women of color. She has been interviewed for several documentaries focused on LGBT rights and culture.
