Meet Shirin Subhani

Shirin works on building collective synergy and community around stories of courage, creativity and change, as well as creative approaches to parenting and growing children and youth with special needs, specifically, those on the autism spectrum.

Shirin’s work in community service for women has given her insight into opportunities for the creative growth of people in personally challenging situations. Additionally, her personal role as a mother to two young boys, one of whom has autism, gives her an empathetic perspective towards nurturing early creativity.

Through Flying Chickadee’s zine and book projects, she practices her own creativity through her love for editing and community building. She is passionate about the opportunities for change created in the bridges between different cultures, and is hopeful that this publishing and storytelling platform will encourage many to share their stories. Shirin has edited Thrive! Falling in Love with Life, and has written and performed in Seattle's Yoni-ki-Baat.

Born in an Indian-Muslim family, then married into an Indian-Hindu one, and now a naturalized American, Shirin is passionate about relinquishing the boundaries of these identity labels and simply being one’s innate, loving self.

  Meet Shahana Dattagupta

Shahana works as a creativity catalyst, strategist and storyteller. The domains of her work include architecture, visual art, creative writing, Indian classical music and theater.

Shahana believes that creativity is at the heart of a thriving and purposeful human existence, and that its conscious practice can heal, empower and transform both in the personal and in the collective. Her discovery that “present” storytelling can be used as a generative device for one’s life, work and impact on humanity is the basis of all her endeavors. Through Flying Chickadee’s zine and workshops, Shahana delights in guiding others past their fears to their innate creative power, and witnessing together, their creative and entrepreneurial projects birth not only something new and valuable for the world, but also their own inner lights and thriving lives.

Among Shahana’s published works are Thrive! Falling in Love with Life, Ten Avatars,  and an international-prize-winning essay, Touching a Single Life. She is currently working on a book on creativity and its practice, and she also blogs at Reflections and Revelations. Her 5 years of work with the viral and socially transformative project Yoni-ki-Baat (Seattle) as director, story-coach, writer and performer inspired much of her current sense of agency. 

Shahana considers Seattle the place of her rebirth, and after a decade in her picturesque womb, 'home' has come to be associated with both India's vigorous monsoons and Seattle's incessant rain, both the lights of Diwali and the warmth of Thanksgiving, and both the Tricolor on August 15th and The Star Spangled Banner on July 4th. She still tears up inexplicably about the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. And she really does believe that love is always the answer.