Gia Kagan-Trenchard is a senior manager with The Freewrite Project in Prison and Justice Writing at PEN America. She is also a writer, theater artist, and attorney. Her work has been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry, TEDx, and at The Public Theater. Her first play, In Spite of Everything, toured internationally as part of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival. Her first collection of poems, Murder Stay Murder, is available on Penmanship Books.

She received her J.D. from Hofstra Law in 2014. She was awarded the Charles H. Revson Law Student Public Interest Fellowship and the Bergstrom Child Welfare Law Fellowship, and is a recipient of awards from both Equal Justice Works and the Public Justice Foundation. She was also awarded a postgraduate fellowship to serve LGBTQ asylum seekers and help train law students in the Hofstra Asylum Clinic.

She continues to facilitate training sessions on working with clients who have experienced trauma. She has presented training sessions to attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center, New York Immigration Coalition, Immigrant Justice Corps, Newark Asylum Office, National Habeas Institute, Legal Aid Association of California, as well as for law schools and service organizations throughout the country.

Kagan-Trenchard is currently an adjunct professor at New York Law School’s Asylum Clinic. She also hosts a weekly creative writing workshop/support group for trauma workers, “These Rooms Don’t Know Our Names.”