Hi, I’m Aileen.
Join me on my literary adventure of a lifetime!
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About
Aileen Ishmael is a writer who lives in an Afrofuturist world of her own making. It is a place of magic where all things are possible, and a girl can talk to butterflies. When she’s not hanging out in her imaginary worlds, she is teaching her 5th grade students to be proud of their heritage and that books can be their best friends. She is also a fabulous fashionista who has never met a pair of funky boots she didn’t love. As a mixed media artist, Aileen is drawn in by the texture, color and beauty of a piece and strives to recreate these same things in her writing through imagery. Although Aileen has taught students writing her entire career, this is her first foray into writing for an audience. She creates Afrofuturistic worlds in the hopes of engaging her readers in the endless possibilities of their imagination. Aileen was also a 2024 Tin House Summer Workshop member in Portland, Oregon.
Tin House Summer Workshop 2024 member
Reed College, Portland
Shhh! Ayaba is not from Earth like she thinks she is! Oh, and she can talk to butterflies…
You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.
- Maya Angelou
“In order to rise from its own ashes a phoenix first must burn.”
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents
“And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.”
Ray Bradbury
“What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
Norman Vincent Peale
"Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time."
E. P. Whipple