Mia Nakano is a freelance media artist rooted in Oakland, CA. Her focus is on visual and multimedia artistic practices, archives, digitizing, front and backend design, and making tintypes.

Her work has been published in Colorlines, the Kathmandu Post, and Democracy Now!. Nakano has contributed to numerous organizations including the Smithsonian, Salon.com, and the de Young. She is the founding photo editor of Hyphen magazine and the LGBTQ section creator.

Nakano is a board member of Banteay Srei, whose work is dedicated to ending sexual exploitation of young Southeast Asian women in Oakland. She is on the leadership team of the Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality (AACRE) network. Her work is shaped through her experiences as a proud 4th generation japanese american, queer woman of color, daughter of a single mother, and sister of a deaf adult. She is a self-taught artist, who advocates strategic and ethical use of media arts to make social change.

She believes in doing what you love as much as possible and that no meal is complete without cheese.