Dhaya Lakshminarayanan is the 2016 winner of the Liz Carpenter Political Humor Award (previously awarded to Samantha Bee and Wanda Sykes). Comedy Central Asia crowned her Grand Prize Winner of “The Ultimate Comedy Challenge” filmed in Singapore. KQED named her one of the twenty “Women to Watch” a series celebrating women artists, creatives and makers in the San Francisco Bay Area who are pushing boundaries. She has opened/featured for or worked with the following: Janeane Garofalo, Marc Maron, Greg Behrendt, Jello Biafra, the late Dick Gregory, Anthony Jeselnik. She has toured with Maz Jobrani and Greg Proops. She has performed internationally in Shanghai, China; Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, and Singapore. Dhaya is also a TV host and storyteller. She hosted the premier year of the Emmy award-winning series "High School Quiz Show" on PBS’s WGBH. She is a frequent comedic storyteller on NPR’s "Snap Judgment." She is currently the host of San Francisco’s monthly "Moth StorySLAM" and has appeared on the "Moth Radio Hour and Podcast."