NEELANJANA BANERJEE is a writer and editor based in San Francisco. Originally from the Midwest, Banerjee moved to the Bay Area in 2000 to take a job with AsianWeek newspaper, the nation’s only pan-Asian Pacific American, English language news weekly. She spent three years there as reporter, managing editor and then editor-in-chief, covering issues from local Chinatown politics to the violent backlash after September 11th to the emerging Asian Pacific American spoken word scene.

In 2003, Banerjee joined Pacific News Service, a non-profit media organization, where she became the managing editor of the youth media project YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia, one of the first media outlets dedicating to giving young people their own voice. At YO!, Banerjee works closely with young people to help them produce their own media and tell their own stories. Along with her work as an editor, Banerjee works as a freelance journalist for publications like Audrey Magazine and other independent media. She is a contributing editor to Hyphen magazine, an Asian Pacific American magazine based in San Francisco.

She is in her final few months of completing her MFA in Creative Writing: Fiction at San Francisco State University. Her poetry and fiction have been published in the South Asian sex writing anthology Desilicious, the online journal Suspect Thoughts, the Asian Pacific American Journal, A Room of One’s Own, Nimrod and Ellipsis. She has been featured at the APAture festival for emerging artists in San Francisco and the Kriti South Asian Literary Festival in Chicago. In 2006, she taught an eight week writing workshop at Asian American arts organization Kearny Street Workshop, along with co-teaching an intensive week long class about the intersections of words and music at Eagle Rock School in Colorado.