PREETI VANGANI and JENNY QI first met as inaugural Rooted and Written Fellows at the San Francisco Writers Grotto in 2019, the same year that Preeti published her debut poetry collection, Mother Tongue Apologize. Their shared experience of writing through grief after mother-loss as young women bonded them, and they became close friends. Both were subsequently awarded a Brown Handler Residency and a McCormack Writing Center Fellowship (formerly Tin House).