TQL S2E9 - Tanzila "Taz" Ahmed

Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is a political strategist, storyteller, and artist based in Los Angeles. She creates at the intersection of counternarratives and culture-shifting as a South Asian American Muslim 2nd-gen woman. She’s turned out over 500,000 Asian American voters, recorded five years of the award winning Good Muslim Bad Muslim podcast and made #MuslimVDay cards for a decade.

Her essays are published in the anthologies, New Moons, Pretty Bitches, Whiter, Good Girls Marry Doctors, Love Inshallah, and in numerous online publications.

She’s published poetry collections Emdash and Ellipses (2016) & The Day The Moon Split in Two (2020), is featured in Tia Chucha’s Coiled Serpent (2016) and her poetry has been commissioned by the Center for Cultural Power, PolicyLink, the Garment Worker Center, KPCC’s Unheard LA, and more.

In July 2023, her first solo visual art show “Aunties with Deadly Stare” was exhibited at LA Artcore and her art has been shown in various exhibits including the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in the Acts of Faith exhibit and the Smithsonian APA Center’s “H-1B” exhibit.

A protest sign she designed for the 2017 Women’s March sits in the permanent archives of the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Her latest poetry collection “Grasping At This Planet Just to Believe” will be published April 2024 with Writ Large Projects.

• Website [www.tazzystar.me]

• Etsy Shop [https://www.etsy.com/shop/TazzyStarShop]

• New Poetry Book OUT NOW - "Grasping at this Planet Just to Believe" [https://www.writlargeprojects.com/shop/p/tanzila-ahmed-grasping-at-this-planet]