Jeevika Verma
Jeevika Verma joined NPR's Morning Edition and Up First as a producer in February 2020. During her time there, she's produced a variety of stories ranging from , and . Verma also contributes to arts and poetry coverage for NPR's culture desk, and is always trying to get more poets on air. She leads the Morning Edition diversity council and works on DEI efforts across the network to help NPR live up to its mission.
Verma came to Morning Edition from WNYC's The Takeaway where she produced national segments in addition to supporting the daily live show. Originally from India, she got her master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, where she spent months producing long-form works of narrative journalism on the opioid crisis, power struggles within the South Asian community and the mental health of couples struggling with addiction. Prior to that, she worked in marketing, public relations and publishing. Her first stint at NPR was actually a corporate communications and media relations internship in 2017. Verma is a part-time tarot reader and full-time poet. She also spent the last few years as a freelance writer for several publications and created some independent zines.
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In her fourth collection, poet Bianca Stone unites vulnerability and humor to tackle the heavy question of what it means to be alive. -
Marilyn Hacker and Karthika Nair were under lockdown in Paris only miles apart from each other. A Different Distance compiles the almost daily poems they wrote from March 2020 to March 2021. -
For over 60 years, poet and activist Sonia Sanchez has helped redefine American culture, politics and education. She is this year's winner of the Gish Prize, a $250,000 lifetime achievement honor. -
Chinese American poet Jane Wong's new collection, How Not to Be Afraid of Everything, grapples with fear and anger at her family's silence about what they suffered in China's Great Leap Forward. -
Victoria Chang traces her family history through letter writing in her book, Dear Memory. In an NPR interview, she talks facing micro and macro aggressions and staying silent, just like her parents. -
Ashley M. Jones is Alabama's youngest and first Black poet laureate. Her new book Reparations Now! discusses America's history of Black oppression, and asks for more than monetary repairs. -
If you, like many people, are getting through the dragging months of the pandemic by being Very Online, you'll find poet Leigh Stein's new book is a perfect encapsulation of that experience. -
Maggie Smith's new poetry collection considers the human tendency to search for universal truths — but she looks for those truths in things we can see every day, as ordinary as rosebushes and rocks. -
Poet Adrian Matejka used to be a DJ — and when he got stuck in pandemic-induced misery, it was music that lifted him up and helped him finish writing his latest book, Somebody Else Sold the World. -
In her latest collection, Chinese American poet Muriel Leung considers what it means to assimilate, and ultimately heal, against the collective memory of grief and vulnerability.
