Trisha L. Renken-Sebastian (aka Trisha Lynn) has been a storyteller for as long as she can remember. Encouraged by her various English teachers in junior high and high school in southern California, she dove deep into literature at California State University Fullerton and emerged with a Bachelors degree in English and a deep love of sestinas. It was also during her time at CSUF that she fell hard into the anime and comics fanfiction-writing fandoms, spending many hours in the basement of the humanities building corresponding and collaborating with writers all across the United States and beyond.
After college, Renken-Sebastian decided to hone her interviewing skills by creating her own website (From the Spotlight!), which featured interviews with anime and comics fanfiction authors about their own work and their philosophies. This lead to an invitation to write for Sequential Tart, a monthly webzine staffed and edited entirely by female geeks. An associate editor for the anime section, she was able to conduct interviews with anime and manga creators, which led to a short stint as the assistant editor for Wizard: Anime Insider in New York.
A long and winding road as an executive assistant through the worlds of luxury real estate, rehabilitation centers, family law, and an indie video game startup led Renken-Sebastian to the world of nonprofit organizations where beginning in 2016, she worked at Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota as the administrative assistant for the programs in their Metro Youth and Family Services department. Her work gained her a deeper understanding of how storytelling can not just entertain, but can also help vulnerable people gain access to the community services they need to improve their lives. Coupled with her volunteer work as the co-head of the Invited Participants department for the CONvergence science fiction/fantasy convention in Minneapolis and her years as an assistant and head election judge for the City of Minneapolis, Renken-Sebastian’s dreams were re-invigorated and she decided to switch her career goals towards the community development and nonprofit organization disciplines.
Now in British Columbia, Renken-Sebastian completed a Masters degree in Community Development at the University of Victoria. She hopes to eventually work in either the municipal or provincial government or a nonprofit organization to help young people of colour find their way safely in the world.
Citation Style Guide
I currently use APA Style to call out the sources for my research and literature because it is the format which is preferred by the University of Victoria School of Public Administration. I also manage and store my citations using Zotero, which is a tool which I highly recommend to even undergraduate students and independent researchers and consultants due to its open source nature, its relative ease to use, and the fact that you can upgrade your account to include 2 GB of storage for approximately $20 USD a year.
Social Media Links
I switched to using Mastodon in April 2022, but I’ve had an account there since 2017. It is where I will type out random thoughts which I send out into the universe and have discussions with friends, acquaintances, and strangers about my research projects, anti-racism work, and the process of creating spaces in the world that are dedicated to inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (a.k.a. IDEA). Depending on the topic, there is a good chance that a long thread which I post there may eventually make its way to this blog with additional polish, references, and resources. I consider the threads to be the “first draft” and humbly request that once a thread has been published as a blog article, all linkbacks should go to the post on the blog.
LinkedIn is also an important place for me to place posts, but they will mostly be aimed at promoting my work and less about casual social interactions.