We warmly welcome Susan Kiyo Ito to the Mesa Refuge Board of Directors!

With dozens of publication credits, Susan is an award-winning writer of fiction as well as a memoirist and performance artist. She is the author of The Mouse Room and co-editor of the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in Growing Up Asian American, Choice, Hip Mama, Literary Mama, Catapult, Hyphen, The Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She currently teaches in the English and Ethnic Studies departments at Mills College.

Susan brings a vast knowledge of current writing industry practices to our board. In addition to being a 2016 Mesa Refuge alum, she is an alum of various writing residencies including the MacDowell Writing Colony and Blue Mountain Center Residency. She has also presented numerous panels at the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) National Conference and is an active member of the Writers Grotto in San Francisco.