Meher Manda, Writer
Meher Manda is a poet, short story writer, and journalist from Mumbai, India currently exploring the literary possibilities in New York City. She is a recent graduate of the MFA in Fiction program from the College of New Rochelle and the founding editor-in-chief of the college's first MFA curated literary journal, The Canopy Review. As a teaching artist, she has taught poetry and writing workshop to undergraduates at the College of New Rochelle, and has interned with Community-Word Project in a fifth grade classroom in Astoria. She specializes in teaching writing workshops that are centered around individual narratives and stories. At the moment, she is working on her debut prose poetry collection which aims to tackle the complexities of the Indian feminine experience. As a poet, Meher has performed with Poet's Country, Poets & Writers, Boundless Tales, and Dead Rabbits and was a micro-resident poet at The Strand Bookstore for the Poetry Society of New York.
TAP Work:
Meher entered the TAP 2017-18 cohort as a writer, and was paired up with mixed media artist Ro Garrido to present her lesson plan and teaching path. She interned with CWP at PS. 17 Henry David Thoreau School at Astoria with Teaching Artists Alex Velozo and Maria Schirmer.
Most Memorable TAP Moment:
"My experience with TAP was an expansive, illuminating look into the possibilities of artistic pedagogy; how intrinsic principles can be taken and moulded into measurable classroom outcomes. I entered the program wanting to learn lesson planning, but walk away with the knowledge of integrated, scaffolded teaching paths. I'm amazed at how much ambition TAP has given me as a teaching artist; every class I now enter, I want to inspire grand, evocative work from my students. At TAP, I have met wonderful people, some of whom I'm lucky to count as my dear friends, and I have only gained respect for the differences in our lived experiences."
Check out more about Meher here:
Check out Meher's Lesson Plan she created in her CWP residency.
Interested in TAP? Find out more about our 2018-19 Program.
See more of our 2017-18 Graduates in the 2018 TAP Anthology!