In the second part of our CBAW Loves podcast on Who is Wellness For?, Seema & Amelia invite back Dr. Nisha Gupta and Tarfia Faizullah, and welcome Raychelle Heath to our virtual roundtable! The discussion begins with the question, “How are you thinking about wellness?” More topics include yoga, meditation, and how we can take the wellness practices that we need with respect.

Don't forget: We want to hear from you! Read the book and send in your thoughts to [email protected] or share them on social media using the #CBAWLOVES hashtag. We will read or play your comments on a future episode!

About Our Guests Dr. Nisha Gupta is an associate professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia, where she works as an arts-based phenomenological researcher, creativity scholar, and liberation psychologist. She disseminates research about lived experiences of psychological and sociocultural phenomena as art for social advocacy and community healing. Her work as a researcher, artist, and educator seeks to embrace the creative process as a vehicle for building solidarity across difference, evoking empathy and compassion, and fostering joy and empowerment. Nisha was also trained clinically as a psychotherapist for eight years, with a focus on trauma therapy as well as liberation psychotherapy with queer people of color. She received her education at New York University (M.A.) and Duquesne University (Ph.D.), and has a background in the advertising industry prior to her career in psychology. Nisha’s arts-based phenomenological research projects include: “ILLUMINATE” a phenomenological short film about the experience of being in the LGBTQ closet, for which she received the 2020 Annual APA Division 5 Distinguished Dissertation Award in Qualitative Methods; and “DESI EROS,” a series of surrealist folk art paintings about reclaiming erotic power among women from the South Asian Diaspora, which was featured on the NPR-affiliated podcast “The Academic Minute.”

Tarfia Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, REGISTERS OF ILLUMINATED VILLAGES (Graywolf, 2018) and SEAM (SIU, 2014). Tarfia’s writing appears widely in the U.S. and abroad in the Daily Star, Hindu Business Line, BuzzFeed, PBS News Hour, Huffington Post, Poetry Magazine, Ms. Magazine, the Academy of American Poets, Oxford American, the New Republic, the Nation, Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket, 2019), and has been displayed at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere. The recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, three Pushcart prizes, and other honors, Tarfia presents work at institutions and organizations worldwide, and has been featured at the the Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh, the Library of Congress, the Fulbright Conference, the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, the Radcliffe Seminars, NYU, Barnard, UC Berkeley, the Poetry Foundation, the Clinton School of Public Service, Brac University, and elsewhere. Tarfia’s writing is translated into Bengali, Persian, Chinese, and Tamil, and is part of the theater production Birangona: Women of War.

Raychelle Heath is a poet, artist, teacher, yoga and meditation instructor, podcaster, and digital nomad. She holds a BA in languages from Winthrop University and an MFA in poetry from the University of South Carolina. While she primarily writes poetry, she considers herself a storyteller. She uses her poetry and her podcast to tell the multifaceted stories of black women in the world. She also explores her experiences with the culturally rich communities that she has encountered in her travels. Her work has been published by Travel Noire, Fourth Wave, Yellow Arrow Journal, The Brazen Collective, and Community Building Art Works. She currently works as curriculum director, sanctuary coach, and facilitator for the Unicorn Authors Club. She also regularly facilitates workshops for BIPOC Writing Party and The World We Want workshops."