The Larger Conversation: Migration and Memory

Sarah Thankam Mathews is the author of All This Could Be Different, which was shortlisted for the 2022 National Book Award in Fiction. It was also a New York Times Editor's Choice and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Vogue, Vulture, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Slate, and Buzzfeed. Mathews grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States at seventeen. 

Sneha Shrestha, also known as IMAGINE in the art world, is a Nepali artist who incorporates her native language and meshes the aesthetics of Sanskrit scriptures with Newari festival influences. She has shown her meditative works in several exhibitions, commissioned works and public walls around the world from Kathmandu to Boston. Her painting "Devi" was recently acquired by the Worcester Art Museum and her show Mindful Mandalas was on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Currently her interactive installation "Love and Maya" is on view at the Boston Children's Art Museum. Her newest work is a thirty-foot sculptural piece commissioned by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum currently on view. She was recognized by WBUR as one of the 25 millennial artists of color impacting Boston. Shrestha’s work is held in the private collections of Facebook, Google and Fidelity Investments. Sneha established Nepal’s first Children’s Art Museum to provide a creative space where children and youth can develop 21st century skills through project based art experiences. Sneha received her Master’s from Harvard University. Besides creating larger than life murals and paintings, Sneha passionately supports Asian art by working as the Arts Program Manager at the South Asia Institute at Harvard.

Susan Chinsen (she/they) is a community connector with expertise in engaging Asian American and Pacific Islander communities--using arts and culture to build community. Currently, she is a Creative Producer at ArtsEmerson. She established the annual Boston Asian American Film Festival in 2008, where she continues to serve as the Festival Director uplifting diverse intersectional stories and experiences. Additionally, she has worked as an engagement consultant for PBS documentaries "The Chinese Exclusion Act" and "Plague at the Golden Gate." She is on the board of directors at MASSCreative, South Cove Community Health Center, a Steering Committee member of API Arts Network, active member of Asian American Film Festival Organizers and Programmers; and past ArtsEmerson Community Curator, Boston Creates Chinatown Neighborhood Co-Lead, Boston Neighborhood Fellow at The Boston Foundation, and a Steering Committee member with the Tisch College at Tufts University Community Research Center.

As a former Managing Director of the Chinese Historical Society of New England, she has advocated and supported the documentation and storytelling of Chinese living in New England. She is an ABC, African Born Chinese, and has enjoyed researching her family’s immigration paths across various continents. She grew up in Greater Boston and now with a partner is raising two children here.

Heidi Shin is a public radio + podcast producer based in Boston, who is especially interested in the stories of immigrant communities and the inevitable connections between stories from abroad and our lives here in the US. Among many adventures, she’s been diving with elderly mermaids on Jeju Island, trailed a group of Catholic nuns that reunites families separated at the US Mexico border, and interviewed a North Korean film director with his leading lady. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, The Washington Post, California Sunday Magazine, Snap Judgment, 70 Million, the BBC, and PRX The World. She also co-created and produced WGBH/The Ground Truth Project's "The New American Songbook," a podcast about immigrant musicians whose awards include an ONA, a Webby, and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Heidi also teaches at the PRX Podcast Garage and Harvard University’s Sound Lab and organizes Boston’s Sonic Soiree.