[2] An executive board member of the Organization of Women Writers of Africa (OWWA),[11] an NGO co-founded in 1991 by Jayne Cortez and Ama Ata Aidoo "for the purpose of establishing links between professional African women writers",[12][13] Ismaili helped plan and participated in the conference "Yari-Yari Pamberi" held in October 2004 at New York University and the Schomburg Center.
[2] In 2005, an opera based on a collection of her poetry, Elegies for the Fallen, with a score by composer Joyce Solomon-Moorman, was performed at the Borough of Manhattan Community College,[2] and in 2006 a staged reading of Ismaili's play, Rice Keepers, was held at the American Museum.
[1] About her 2014 book, Autobiography of the Lower East Side: A novel in stories, David Henderson said: "This well established poet makes a brilliant debut in fiction with these complex, poetically detailed, interrelated stories of Blacks from Africa, the Caribbean and the USA who converge and form an artistic community in the early 1960s in the most easterly regions of Alphabet City.
"[14] Reviewing the book in the Huffington Post, Melody Breyer-Grell wrote: "Autobiography of the Lower East Side enveloped this reader to such an extent that every other task was put on hold until its completion.
[2][16] She is First Vice President of Pen & Brush, an "international nonprofit organization providing a platform to showcase the work of professional emerging and mid-career female artists and writers",[17] founded in 1894.