THE BROWN ORIENT
  • About
    • Press
    • Nominations
  • Literary Journal
    • Issue Archive
    • Submissions
  • Blog
  • Donate

About

Learn the roots of The Brown Orient as told
through our driving purpose, and meet the
people behind the organization.

Mission

The Brown Orient was founded in response to the dire underrepresentation endured by creatives from South Asia, Southeast Asia, Southwest Asia, and Central Asia. In the midst of mainstream media's popularization of the idea that East Asia is representative of Asia in its entirety, and consequently results in a conscious erasure of Asia's diverse voices, we utilize contemporary art and literature to weave our resistance into something tangible. We refer to these less acknowledged Asian regions as Brown Asia, an often challenged terminology that is in fact a concrete attempt to reclaim the word that holds more depth than mere association with the stigma that we also fight against: the word that speaks volumes about our color, culture, and collective strength. Our name puts our primary purpose to simpler, perhaps thought-provoking, terms: calling the Orient (a term often associated with East Asia, although it should not be) brown, as a means of metaphorical reclamation.

In commitment to this promise of uplifting marginalized talents, we choose to exclusively feature writers and artists who identify as a woman or as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, who remain sidelined even within their immediate communities. The Brown Orient is a creative space dedicated to the silenced, the inspired, the enraged. 

Through art and literature, we aim to spark conversations that lie on the intersection of race and gender, championing equality for brown-skinned Asian women and queer folks by ensuring a platform that is founded solely to host their bold artistic expression.

Although we began as a humble literary and art journal, The Brown Orient has managed to slowly become something greater. To date, we now identify as an arts organization spearheading various projects and activities aimed at uplifting Brown Asian women and LGBTQIA+ folk through contemporary art and literature. Aside from the semiannual release of our journal issues in print and digital formats, we are also an independent press that shall publish micro-chapbooks on prose and poetry. We are an online community based on Facebook, moderating and curating opportunities for connection and collaboration among Brown Asian women and queer creators. We are a blog that exclusively publishes high quality work that convey the realities of the culture and current sociopolitical climate of the Asian regions that we cater to through cultural criticism and literary journalism. We are a collective in pursuit of partnerships with other like-minded Asian groups in creating collaborative projects such as a forthcoming four-part series on Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Western Asia.

Masthead

Elizabeth Ruth Deyro​
Founder, Editor-in-Chief,
​& Creative Director
is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, essayist, editor, and creative from Laguna, Philippines. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Rust + Moth, Hypertrophic Literary, Jellyfish Review, The Tempest, and The Poetry Annals, among other places. Her poems have been hosted in three exhibitions in London and the Philippines. She has also been profiled in Maudlin House, Luna Luna Magazine, follow the halo, TERSE., and Mentor Menu MNL. She is a columnist for Half Mystic and an editorial staff at VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. She is the editor and publisher of RECLAIM / RESIST ​anthology series. Read more about her at elizabethruthdeyro.weebly.com.

Umang Kalra
​
Poetry Editor
is an Indian poet whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cotton Xenomorph, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Moonchild Magazine, Vagabond City, and others. She is currently studying History.

Andrea Salvador
​
Fiction Editor
lives somewhere in Asia, specifically a country with thousands of islands and constantly humid weather. She is a self-proclaimed writer with a liking towards creating lists, watching sci-fi movies, and rearranging her bookshelf. 

Ritul Madhukar
​
Creative Nonfiction Editor & Community Manager
is a reader, writer and wallflower from New Delhi, India. As much as she enjoys being the life of the party, she's mostly found zoned out, thinking about nothing and everything. Her most treasured talents include her insanely detailed knowledge of Harry Potter and Shakespeare and knowing the lyrics to every single Coldplay song in existence. She loves the smell of coffee, old worn-out books and the night sky. Her bucket list is not very elaborate - just attend a Coldplay concert, see the Northern Lights, and find some peace.

Synequeen Alasa-as
​
Community Manager
is a Filipina American from Mindanao, Philippines. She lives in California where she lives for community advocacy. She holds a B.A from UC Berkeley, where she lead and contributed to {m}aganda magazine. You can find her current work synequeen.wordpress.com.

Chiara Amisola​
Co-Art Director
is an incoming college freshman at Yale University from Manila, Philippines. In love with language be it in the form of logical code or creative prose, she heads Developers' Society, Line Break, and Labandera. She also does design work for Metro Manila Pride, Silakbo PH, and Lucent Fair among others. Her work can be found on her personal site.

Kristienne Amante
Art Editor
is a tired illustrator based in Quezon City, Philippines. She loves expressing her excessive feelings through art, and has a passion for children's storybook illustration. She is a self-proclaimed jack of all trades when it comes to visual art. She also bets you can't pronounce her name right the first few tries.

Robyn Saquin
Layout & Graphic Designer
is an artist and designer who draws most of her inspiration from Philippine design, comic books, and nature. She is a fan of birds and flowers. You can see more of her works at Behance.

Kat Mercado
Graphic Designer

Amika Sethia
Poetry Reader
is a high school student from India. Her work has been previously published in Delhi Poetry Slam, The Eunoia Review, L’Éphémère Review, and others. When she isn’t writing, you can find her in the depths of a mystical book, or dreaming too much.

Amrita Chakraborty
Poetry Reader
is a Bangladeshi-American writer located in New York. Her work has been published in The Rising Phoenix Review, Vagabond City, The Olivetree Review and Winter Tangerine, and is forthcoming from The Poetry Annals. She has also self-published a small chapbook entitled Incarnate. When she is not writing, and often when she is supposed to be writing, Amrita can be found hunting down the city's best ramen place, amateur stargazing and throwing colorful fabric mice around for her cat, Lily. You can see more of her work on Medium.

Samannaz Rohanimanesh
Fiction Reader & Blog Correspondent
is Scheherazade's kindred spirit; her compatriot. Growing up in Tehran − this historic yet modern metropolis with all its intensity and passion − molded the naïve character of a young girl who wanted to change the world so badly, she could not go to sleep at nights, thinking how she could carve her mark somewhere out there. Art became the answer to all her agitations and the reward was a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at Florida International University, with a concentration on video arts. Yet, that didn’t sufficiently equip her with desired tools to present the Elysium she came from: The Middle East. Since she had been freelancing for a number of magazines in her undergrads, she decided to follow the path of a professional journalist and hence American University became her destination. Find her work at naazbuzz.com.

Christina Yoseph
Fiction Reader
is an emerging writer of Assyrian and Greek descent. She lives with her illustrator-musician girlfriend in California, and her essays and poetry have been featured in The Brown Orient, RaceBaitR, Sukoon, and more. You can find more of her work at christinayoseph.com.

Kiran Watwani
Creative Nonfiction Reader
makes things for viewing/reading/listening/thinking pleasure. She dreams in collage, thinks in cinema, lives in literature, and works in shorts.

Ritul Madhukar
Creative Nonfiction Reader
is a reader, writer and wallflower from New Delhi, India. As much as she enjoys being the life of the party, she's mostly found zoned out, thinking about nothing and everything. Her most treasured talents include her insanely detailed knowledge of Harry Potter and Shakespeare and knowing the lyrics to every single Coldplay song in existence. She loves the smell of coffee, old worn-out books and the night sky. Her bucket list is not very elaborate - just attend a Coldplay concert, see the Northern Lights, and find some peace.

D. Sohi
​
Blog Correspondent
is a British Indian writer, blogger and status quo-flouter caught between two worlds. An extroverted introvert, she is obsessed with Star Wars, books and has a (scarily) vivid memory of anime and cartoons of the late 90s/early 2000s. She hopes that reaching the quarterfinals of the ScreenCraft 2017 Cinematic Short Story competition is the promise of the rise to fully-fledged authorship. If not, writing will always be free therapy. Shuffle over to her Twitter at your peril.

Srishti Uppal
​Blog Correspondent
is a sixteen-year-old writer, reader, blogger, artist, and nerd from India. She sees herself as an optimistic who likes to bring out the best in herself, and in others. She is an ambassador for PostcardsForPeace, and is the founder and health of a mental health programme called Life is Life. She is an editor for Culaccino Magazine. She believes strongly in the strength of the written word, in the power of nerds, and in the ardent need for world peace and harmony, and will go to great lengths to promote the same. She aims to obtain her Ph.D in psychology and make therapy more accessible and affordable. She can often be found fangirling, petting dogs, and sniffing new books, and working on her own Y/A novel in between.

Roch Molina
​Blog Correspondent
is a writer hailed from Catanduanes, Philippines. She loves tea, books, and learning new languages. Now that she is 21, she dreams of becoming a centenarian.
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • About
    • Press
    • Nominations
  • Literary Journal
    • Issue Archive
    • Submissions
  • Blog
  • Donate