Photo by Lara Kaur @lara_kaur
Isabella “Isa” Borgeson (she/they) is a queer, mixed race, filipino american poet, educator, and community organizer from Oakland. Their poetry is influenced by their years organizing in the aftermath of super typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda – the strongest storm to make landfall in recorded history.
They have received fellowships and residencies from Voices of Our Nation Art Foundation, Crescendo Literary’s Poetry Incubator, Lambda Literary, and Juniper Writing Institute. They were named AIR Serenbe’s Spoken Word Artist with a commitment to Community and Collaboration (SWACC!) in 2019. In 2020, Isa received the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from Poetry Foundation. In 2025, ONLY Poems named Isa as a Finalist for “Poet of the Year”. Their writing and activism was recently recognized when they were awarded the inaugural Helen Toribio Kapwa fellowship through Mesa Refuge.
Isa aims to use their storytelling to visibilize the impact of climate change on their home(land)s from Oakland to Tanauan.