The Peak: Catalysts

Sarah Gouda is a writer and speechwriter who hails from Ohio. She is currently the Deputy Director of Speechwriting for Zohran Mamdani in the Office for the Mayor for New York City. In the past, she served as the speechwriter to the president at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and as the Deputy Director of Speechwriting to Vice President Kamala Harris in the Biden-Harris administration. Outside of political speeches, Gouda has written for Teen Vogue, Rookie, Reductress, Gothamist, Splinter, Barrelhouse, Chicago Sun-Times, Epiphany, and Shenandoah. She received an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College, where she was a Truman Capote fellow. Shenandoah’s special features editor, Nadeen Kharputly, interviewed the writer to discuss how she approaches craft in both her creative writing and in her day-to-day work as a political speechwriter.

Moffat Takadiwa is a contemporary Zimbabwean artist who repurposes post-consumer waste such as bottle caps, toothbrushes, keyboard keys, and clothing buttons, and transforms them into large-scale sculptures, tapestries, and installations. Takadiwa’s work has been exhibited all over the world, and his most recent exhibit, Recoded Memories, is currently on view at the Art Museum and Galleries at Washington and Lee University from October 24, 2025 to May 31, 2026. Shenandoah’s Special Features Editor, Nadeen Kharputly, interviewed the artist to discuss how his work embodies language, narrative, colonial and postcolonial history, environmental justice, and memory.

In 2019, Ghazala Hashmi, a former English professor, became the first ever Muslim and Indian American State Senator in Virginia. In another historic feat, she won the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor in June 2025 and will appear on the ballot for the statewide election this coming November. Shenandoah’s Special Features Editor, Nadeen Kharputly, sat down with Senator Hashmi for a conversation about her early life, her career in education, her transition to a political career, and how literature has shaped her life—and her desire to make life better for her constituents.