Maya Khankhoje (B.A. English Literature, retired Senior Language Officer, ICAO), has been part of the Montréal Serai team since its inception 35 years ago. Born in Mexico, she was raised in Mexico and India, and settled down in Montréal in 1978. She was a member and juror of the QWF Board, and juror of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Khankhoje has more than 420 publications to her credit: literary and cinema reviews, essays, fiction, and poetry. She has translated two books from Spanish into English and has authored a Spanish/English book for children.

Her work has appeared in diverse publications such as JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) (US), Harper’s (US), Sputnik (USSR), Link (India), Esse (Québec), ICAO Bulletin (Montréal), and Montréal Serai. She has received several awards for her work in French, English and Spanish, and also speaks Portuguese, Italian, Russian, German and colloquial Hindi. Maya is a contributing editor.

Founding editor and publishing manager at Montréal Serai, Lisa Foster has a B.A. in Sociology from Concordia University and a B.Sc. in Genetics and Chemistry from the University of Alberta.  Lisa has many years’ experience in Serai’s design and layout, grant application processes, project compliance and budget compliance. She is a member of Serai‘s Editorial Board.

Samantha-Lee Quinn, better known as Sam, has been part of Montréal Serai from hard print to digital. Her first contribution was a review of Nino Ricci’s book, Testament. She performed with the Serai theatre group in Five or Six Characters in Search of Toronto, and joined the sound crew for The Sulpician Escarpment. For a number of years, Sam kept Montréal Serai’s energy flowing through cyberspace on social media. She is a Serai associate editor.

Himmat Shinhat is a multidisciplinary artist. His creative expression is based on the interweaving of three disciplines – music, creative writing and performance. A composer and professional musician by training, his work has been featured in solo performances, soundtracks for theatre, film, contemporary dance, and performance art. Himmat is president of Montréal arts interculturels (MAI), where he has served on the board of directors since 2018. He has played a leadership role in building and supporting arts infrastructure in Montréal. He is co-founder and past president of Montréal Serai, co-founder and board member of the Festival Accès-Asie, and past president of the Centre culturel et communautaire Henri-Lemieux in LaSalle. He also has a couple of decades of experience as a professional policy maker with the Public Service of Canada, dealing with issues of human rights, refugee protection, immigration, citizenship, and multiculturalism. Himmat is on Serai‘s Advisory Board.

Editor, translator and sometimes journalist, Claudia Itzkowich is particularly interested in history and social and labour rights. Her research and essays on domestic workers have been published in anthologies and newspapers in Mexico and Canada. She was editor of Travesías magazine for 10 years, and writing about places and people is still one of her weaknesses. Her translations include French author Patrick Deville’s La Tentation des armes à feuA History of Infamy by historian Pablo Piccato; and several titles by Antonin Artaud for a selection of works to be published by the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico this year. She has a master’s degree in History from New School University and is a regular contributor to the UN Women’s New York office. Claudia is a Serai contributing editor.

Jody Freeman is a Montréal editor, translator and writer who has been connected with Serai since the late 1980s and joined its editorial team in 2015. She has been devouring books and longing to lie under open skies since childhood. A deep desire for social justice has been a constant throughout her life. She served as a translator in a public-sector union and in her twenties, volunteered in a community group for non-unionized workers while studying history at Sir George Williams University. Jody wrote for Radio Canada International in the early 1990s on special projects, and her poetry has appeared in International Poetry Review, Ruptures: la revue des 3 Amériques, and Montréal Serai. She published a collection of writings and artwork by poet and playwright Michael Morais in 2022 (michaelmoraisart.com). Jody is Montréal Serai‘s senior editor.

Nilambri Ghai was born in India and has a master’s degree in English Literature, with over 30 years’ experience as an educator, writer, and policy analyst. Her career in Canada includes work in the public and not-for-profit sectors in the fields of adult literacy and skills development. Nilambri is a regular contributor, copyeditor, co-editor, and founding member of Montréal Serai, and is on its Editorial Board. She recently published From Johanne to Janaki: Bringing Vikings to Varanasi about the life of a Danish woman who left Copenhagen for India in 1895.

Pasha M. Khan is an Associate Professor and Chair in Urdu Language and Culture at McGill University. He is interested in tales of wonder in languages such as Urdu-Hindi, Punjabi and Persian, as well as literature more broadly, social justice and queer/trans aspects of South Asia, and South Asian/Muslim diasporic history. Pasha teaches courses on Sufism and South Asian cultural history. He is the author of The Broken Spell: Indian Storytelling and the Romance Genre in Persian and Urdu, as well as several academic essays. Pasha is a member of Serai‘s Editorial Board.

Prasun Lala has been involved with Montréal Serai since the early 1990s and is currently an associate editor. He is a professional musician and actor, composing for and performing and acting in local and international productions. He is a research officer at the École de technologie supérieure de Montréal (ÉTS), where he runs a graduate program for scientific communication.

Rola Harmouche is a Serai associate editor and a researcher in Digital Health. Her current work has a growing focus on explainable machine learning in biomedical contexts. She obtained her bachelor’s and her master’s in Computer Engineering from McGill university in Montréal and a doctoral degree in Computer Engineering with a focus on machine learning and medical imaging analysis from l’École Polytechnique in Montréal. Her post-doctoral research at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard Medical School focused on developing and utilizing image analysis and machine learning tools for the characterization of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Dipti Gupta is a teacher, researcher and independent documentary filmmaker. She teaches full-time in the department of Cinema-Communication at Dawson College and part-time at the Fine Arts Department at Concordia University. Dipti worked with Cinemart Foundation (India), a documentary film collective that produced several award-winning social and educational documentaries and short films. She was a festival organizer and director for the South Asian Film Festival in Montréal from 2011 to 2019. She has served as a jury member for the Yorkton Film Festival in Saskatchewan and the Quebec Writers Federation (QWF) for three consecutive years. She currently serves on the board of Teesri Duniya Theatre, a Montréal-based culturally diverse theatre company, and on the Advisory Board of Montréal Serai.