Akhila Bandlora is co-president of Creative Youth of Arizona. Above all else, she is a poet. Akhila believes poetry is more than a creative practice, and rather it's a way of carefully considering the world & people around you. Right now, her favorite poems are "How to Draw a Perfect Circle" by Terrance Hayes and "Orange" by Wendy Cope.
She's a freshman at Princeton University. In high school, she served on the City of Phoenix's Youth Arts and Culture Council, tested the quality of nearly all the water bodies near her home, and story-mapped the small business in her community.
Akhila is excited by cookies, the growth of plants, and cold brew coffee. She makes really good blackberry jam. Her favorite emojis are 🎃🧚🏾♂️🥰👀🦑🐛🐙🦎🐳🐋☀️🌈🌦!
She's a freshman at Princeton University. In high school, she served on the City of Phoenix's Youth Arts and Culture Council, tested the quality of nearly all the water bodies near her home, and story-mapped the small business in her community.
Akhila is excited by cookies, the growth of plants, and cold brew coffee. She makes really good blackberry jam. Her favorite emojis are 🎃🧚🏾♂️🥰👀🦑🐛🐙🦎🐳🐋☀️🌈🌦!
- Heather Laurel Jensen is co-president of Creative Youth of Arizona. She has been creating art and writing poetry since she was a child. For her, getting involved in Arizona's creative community was a natural growing point from her own generative practice.
- Originally from Mesa, Heather currently lives in Tucson, where she attends the University of Arizona Honors College as a double major in Neuroscience and Creative Writing. She served as the National Student Poet of the Southwest in 2018 and has received four national medals from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards for her photography, poetry, and short stories. More about Heather and her work can be found on her website, heatherlaureljensen.com.
- Heather is tangentially related to a former U.S. Ambassador to Finland. So far, this has not impacted her life, besides serving as a useful fun fact. Among friends, she is known to be generally over-excited about fried pickles. Heather doesn't believe in ghosts, but that didn't stop her from once staying overnight at a haunted hotel, where she tragically experienced no paranormal activity. She is a Capricorn and her favorite possession is her rug.