Shanille Martin joined the Writopia team in 2019 as a WriCampia counselor and assistant instructor while studying Creative Writing at Purchase College. Since graduating in 2020, she has been teaching creative writing and debate workshops at camp and at Writopia full-time. Shanille has been published in various magazines and platforms such as Gandy Dancer, Newsweek, Italics Mine, and Submissions Magazine. She is a co-founder of Brown Sugar Literary Magazine, which publishes the marginalized voices of women of color. A former high school debate team captain, Shanille is thrilled to now teach both creative writing and debate at Writopia. She is currently working on her first novel. 

 

Alexia is excited to return to Writopia Lab as the Community Partnership Coordinator for the Bay Area and an instructor. Alexia grew up in Miami but has called San Francisco home for the last twelve years. She’s taught creative writing to children and adults in many settings including universities, high schools, middle schools, libraries, rehabilitation centers, and her favorite, Writopia Lab. She earned her MA in journalism from NYU and an MFA in fiction from the University of San Francisco. She has been working on her first novel for which she received a 2023-2024 Steinbeck Fellowship. Her fiction has been published in Your Impossible Voice, her poetry in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, and her criticism and journalism in Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, and The New Yorker, among other outlets. She was an editor at the literary journal The Brooklyn Quarterly for several years. Her debut novel is forthcoming in fall 2026 from University of Iowa Press. Alexia is passionate about helping new writers find their voices.