Akilah Wise, PhD, is a writer, journalist, and researcher. Her reporting on public health and medicine has appeared in NPR, Boston Globe, The Nation, and Fortune, among other publications. Her fiction has appeared in midnight & indigo and was honorably mentioned by Texas Observer. Her novel-in-progress, Daughters of the Dahomey, has been recognized with residencies and grants from the Hambidge Center and the de Groot Foundation. At Mesa, she continued work on her magical realist YA novel, which tells the story of an underachieving Black girl who discovers her magical gifts and bloodline after the death of her abusive mother. You can learn more about Akilah Wise here.