Literary Arts Emergency Fund Panelists 2022


Joseph O. Legaspi is the author of the poetry collections Threshold and Imago (CavanKerry Press), and the chapbooks Postcards (Ghost Bird Press), Aviary, Bestiary (Organic Weapon Arts) and Subways (Thrush Press). He co-founded Kundiman, a national nonprofit serving writers and readers of Asian American literature.

Steph Opitz is VP of Partnerships at Zibby Books and is a visiting instructor at the University of Minnesota. She is founder of The Loft Literary Center’s Wordplay book festival and serves on committees for the National Book Foundation, PEN America, and LitNet. She has curated literary events around the country—as literary director of the Texas Book Festival, fiction co-chair of the Brooklyn Book Festival, and on the programs team for the PEN World Voices Festival, among others.

Sara Ortiz is the Interim Literary Director for the San Antonio Book Festival. She is a reader for Kirkus Reviews and the former program and festival director for The Believer and Black Mountain Institute. Ortiz has spent 15 years building a career rooted in the literary arts, working and consulting for a wide variety of literary institutions and organizations, including Penguin Random House, Scholastic Inc., Disney Publishing Worldwide, The Believer, Texas Library Association, American Short Fiction, and McNally Jackson Books, among others.