TRAVERSE

THE WRITER
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
TT VANG
TT Vang is the author of To Live Here, winner of the 2014 Imaginary Friend
Press Poetry Prize, and co-editor of How Do I Begin?: A Hmong American
Literary Anthology (Heyday, 2011). Soul is a poet and a teacher. She holds
an MFA in poetry from California State University, Fresno and is an editorial
board member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle (HAWC).
ROXY FREEMAN
Roxy Freeman is a freelance journalist and lifestyle writer based in Brighton.
Her articles have appeared in the Guardian, Daily Mail and YOU Magazine
among other publications. Born in 1979 and self-educated for most of her
life, Roxy graduated from The Open University in 2008 and completed her
NCTJ certificate in February 2009. Her most well known novel is Little
Gypsy, published in 2011.
AVA HOMA
Ava Homa is a writer, teacher and editor. Her collection of short stories,
Echoes from the Other Land (TSARbook, Toronto, 2010), was nominated for
the 2011 Frank O’Conner Short Story Prize and secured a place among the
ten winners of the 2011 CBC Reader’s Choice Contest. Homa is well-known
in the Kurdish diaspora and at home. Her writing on Kurdish women’s
issues has served as a basis for discussion at various schools and universities.
FURTHER READS
ECHOES FROM THE OTHER LAND
by Ava Homa (left)
These haunting stories beautifully evoke the
oppressive lives of modern women in the Islamic
Republic of Iran. The weight of traditional attitudes,
the harrassment of the religious establishment,
and the attitudes of men make for a
frustrating, confining, and sometimes unlivable
existence.
GYPSY BOY by Mikey Walsh (right)
Mikey was born into a Romany Gypsy family.
They live in a closeted community, and little is
known about their way of life. After centuries of
persecution Gypsies are wary of outsiders and
if you choose to leave you can never come back.
This is something Mikey knows only too well.
88 TRAVERSE