Mia Ayumi Malhotra is a poet, editor, and the author of Mothersalt (Alice James Books, 2025) and Isako Isako, a California Book Award finalist and winner of the Alice James Award, Nautilus Gold Award for Poetry, National Indie Excellence Award, and Maine Literary Award. She is also the author of the chapbook Notes from the Birth Year, winner of the Bateau Press BOOM Contest. Mia holds degrees in creative writing from Stanford University and the University of Washington, and her work has received the Hawker Prize for Southeast Asian Poetry and the Singapore Poetry Prize. A frequent musical collaborator, Mia sings in the Choir of St. Paul’s Burlingame, and her commissioned texts have been performed as choral anthems throughout the United States and in the United Kingdom. Currently she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family, where she is a founding member of The Ruby SF, a gathering space for women, transfeminine, and nonbinary artists. Mia teaches poetry in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.