Chloe Miller, co-founder
Chloe Yelena Miller lives in Washington, D.C., with her family. She is the author of Perforated (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2026), Viable (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2021) and Unrest (Finishing Line Press, 2013). She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College (poetry) and a BA from Smith College (Italian language and literature). She has received residencies from Bread Loaf, A Room of Her Own and Vermont Studio Center and has received three DC Arts and Humanities grants for her writing.
Shasta Grant, co-founder
Shasta Grant is a writer and editor based in Indianapolis. She is the author of When We Were Feral (Regal House, 2026) and Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home (Split Lip Press, 2017). Her stories and essays have appeared in cream city review, Epiphany, Heavy Feather Review, wigleaf, and elsewhere. She won the 2015 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest, selected by Ann Patchett. She was selected as a 2020 Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow and the 2016 SmokeLong Quarterly Kathy Fish Fellow. She has received residencies from Hedgebrook and The Kerouac House. She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and is the Coordinating Editor at SmokeLong Quarterly.
Sitara Mazumdar, Art Intern
Sitara Mazumdar is currently a high school junior at BASIS DC. When she’s not debating or practicing a violin concerto, she can be found working on her sketchbook, drafting a novel, or looking for her good pen. An enjoyer of the odd, the whimsical, and the macabre, she believes in the transformative power of unbridled creativity in all of its forms.
Ok, but who are we really?
We are writers, readers, mothers, editors, teachers — and friends for almost twenty years. We met in 2003, at a reading in Slonim during the first weeks of our MFA programs at Sarah Lawrence College. We probably both had glasses of white wine and were looking around the room nervously for a friendly face. And we found that face in each other and have been friends ever since! Over the years, we’ve continued to share work with each other (despite writing in different genres), presented at conferences together, attended AWP together, and perhaps more importantly, we’ve seen each other through life changes including getting married, becoming mothers, moving cross country or across the world. We’ve celebrated each other’s wins, and supported each other through the inevitable disappointments that come with the writing life. In short: we are each other’s community. And now we want to invite you to join our community too. We launched Brown Bag Lit with the hope of creating a warm and inviting community of writers - one welcome to writers of all stages and ages. We hope you’ll join us.