II. The soul bursting open like a dark star

Mia Ayumi Malhotra is the author of Mothersalt (Alice James Books, 2025) and Isako Isako (Alice James Books, 2018), a California Book Award finalist and winner of the Alice James Award, the gold Nautilus Book Award for Poetry, the National Indie Excellence Award, and the Maine Literary Award. She is also the author of the chapbook Notes from the Birth Year (Bateau Press, 2022). Her work has received the Hawker Prize for Southeast Asian Poetry and the Singapore Poetry Contest prize, and she is a Kundiman Fellow and founding member of The Ruby SF, a gathering space for women and nonbinary artists. Malhotra lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she teaches poetry and writes about sacred music and the interior life.