Meet the Team
Literary Namjooning is a labor of love run by writers of color, all bound by the love for words and literature. This is our way of giving back to the literary community, and we hope you enjoy the pieces we publish!
Our Editors
Hema Nataraju
Hema Nataraju is an Indian-American writer, mom, and polyglot currently based in Singapore. Her work has most recently appeared in Best Small Fictions'22, Barrelhouse, Five South, Booth, Wigleaf, 100-word Story, and Ruby Literary, among others. She is a Submissions Editor at Smokelong Quarterly and she tweets as m_ixedbag. Check out Hema's published work here.
Lakshmi Iyer
Staring at the stars, decoding the teenage world of her kids and, working five days a week are ways Lakshmi spends her time. When she is not watching Korean or Chinese dramas, she is conjuring up worlds in her head that become her next book.
Lakshmi is the author of the children’s book, “Why Is My Hair Curly?” and a women's contemporary fiction "HINDSIGHT". Find out more on her website lgiyer.com
Melissa Llanes Brownlee
Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, writes tiny, usually about Hawai'i. She plays the ukulele, tries to play the guitar, loves playing video games during her free time and camps during her holidays. Read Hard Skin from Juventud Press and Kahi and Lua from Alien Buddha. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.
Our Readers
Jenny Wong
Jenny Wong is a writer, traveler, and occasional business analyst. She resides in Canada near the Rocky Mountains. Her favorite places to wander are Tokyo alleys, Singapore hawker centers, and Parisian cemeteries. "Shiftings & Other Coordinates of Disorder" is her debut chapbook (Pinhole Poetry, 2024). Find out more about her writings, short poetry films, and travels at https://opencorners.ca/about.
Find her on X, Bluesky, and YouTube @jenwithwords
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Sumitra Singam
Sumitra Singam is a Malaysian-Indian-Australian coconut who writes in Naarm/Melbourne. She travelled through many spaces, both beautiful and traumatic to get there and writes to make sense of her experiences. Her work has been published widely, nominated for a number of Best Of anthologies, and was selected for Best Microfictions 2024. She works as a psychiatrist and trauma therapist and runs workshops on how to write trauma safely, and the Yeah Nah reading series. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). You can find her and her other publication credits on Bluesky: @pleomorphic2 & sumitrasingam.squarespace.com