Poetry/Writing: Karisma has been writing since she was eight years old; her first poem was a rap song whose opening couplet read “The United States are groups of plates/Joined together by love and hate,” then promptly delved into class differences and police brutality. She was an intense child.

At age fifteen, her personal narrative was one of the 1% of stories chosen for inclusion in what became a New York Times bestselling anthology: Ophelia Speaks.

She earned her B.A. in English with a Creative Writing: Poetry concentration from UCLA in 2005. She can be reached at: Karisma.Rodriguez@gmail.com.

Art: Karisma has been drawing since she was five years old. Inspired by Disney’s The Little Mermaid, she started out drawing many mermaids. A young perfectionist, most of her drawings would have their hands behind their backs and no faces. Hands were hard and once she’d done such a good job drawing the bodies, heads, and hair, she was too scared to mess up the drawings with potentially askew facial features. Her teachers thought is was strange.

One day she was walking past an art gallery in San Diego when she saw a painting of a family…with no faces! She quickly realized the subjective nature of art: if you agree that it’s incomplete, your teacher shrugs; if you declare that it’s incomplete, your work gets hung in a gallery.

These days, she mainly draws portraits, but also occasionally plays with watercolor, collage, and other mixed media. Her email address has not changed in the last few paragraphs.