Al-Lateef Farmer is an educator, imaginator and a native of the West End of Plainfield, New Jersey. He is currently working on a novel-in-stories and a short story collection centered on the complexities and nuances of Black life and love. He has been a fellow with VONA (Summer 2023), RWW Winter Writers Retreat (2024), and Kimbilio Retreat for Black Fiction Writers. Al-Lateef has enjoyed a 20-year career in Higher Education working with New Jersey's Educational Opportunity Fund and currently resides in South Jersey with his wife, Sharea.

Darina Mayfield (she/her) is a writer and editor from New York. She's a graduate of the University of Washington’s writing program, an alumna of the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and a 2024 Winter RWW Storyteller of Color Fellow. Her work has been published by the Hudson Valley Writers Guild, where she is a regular contributor. Darina is the founder of Gerry Dean Editorial, a literary editing company supporting writers of color and LGBTQIA+ writers. She’s also an editorial assistant for the literary magazine Under The Gum Tree. Currently, Darina is working on her debut memoir where she testifies to the harsh truths of standing in the space between grief and transformation after loss.

Marchaé Grair (they/she) is a storyteller, spiritual director, teacher, and facilitator engaging hearts and minds at the intersections of spirituality and collective liberation. 

Marchaé’s writing examines life through anecdotes about being spiritual, Black, queer, nonbinary, disabled, and polyamorous. They are currently working on essays about identity and a queer, young adult romance novel loosely based on their life.

SG Huerta (they/he/el) is a queer Xicanx writer, editor, and activist. A 2023 RWW Fellow and 2024 Tin House Winter Workshop alum, they spend their time freelancing and working on the masthead of Abode Press, ANMLY, just femme & dandy, and Split Lip Magazine. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks and the nonfiction chapbook GOOD GRIEF (fifth wheel press 2025). Their work has appeared in The Offing, Honey Literary, Infrarrealista Review, and elsewhere. They also write about all things trans/literary in their newsletter, trans poetica. Find them at sghuertawriting.com, or in Texas with their partner and two cats, working towards liberation for oppressed and colonized peoples everywhere.

Amber Joseph-Zorn (she/her) is a writer and educator originally from New York City. Before earning an MFA in creative writing at Rutgers-Camden, she taught social studies and English in New York City public schools for over a decade. Her work explores race, place, class, and afterlives, and has been supported by Tin House and the Key West Literary Seminar. Her writing can be found in the Brooklyn Rail, Kweli Journal and elsewhere. She currently lives in Philadelphia. Books have and will keep on changing her life. IG:@amber.rojo.

Ana Luiza Pio (she/her) has been writing through life since she was gifted her first journal, as a kid. She feels her affinity for words and deep interest in the nuances of human experience have carried her through many transitions and rebirths, guideing her towards herself. Her work reflects the desire to know and accept herself fully, and this seeking has allowed her the vulnerability to own and share the thoughts, stories, and reflections that have molded her into a version of herself she once prayed for.

Belinda Bellinger (Be/they/fam) is a performing artist, poet, educator, and organizer who curates liberatory learning spaces. They desire a world where Black folx enjoy pleasure in their body while being well-cared for. Their work centers the art of illuminating what is hidden that barricades our most aligned self. They are working on a poetic biomythology that discusses how secrets control family. They hold a Bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College and a Single-Subject Teaching Credential in English from Loyola Marymount University. They enjoy dreaming, ancestor communion, and photosynthesizing and live in Oakland, CA, with their clever starseed and punctual canine.

Claudia (she/her/ella/elle/elles/they) is a genderfluid femme born and raised in Boriken but based in Brooklyn since 2017. For as long as she can remember she has been a storyteller. They are also a mother, partner, daughter, sister, friend, advocate for social justice and overall lover of liberation learning to embody her internal experience without shame or guilt. Writing is a way to express not only the internal experience but also to document the memories of those in community with them. They write to cherish the people who crossed paths with her in this life. 

As an English Professor and writer, D. Aliesh (she/her) educates readers about love, life, and how everyone experiences both. She’s published 3 books. Looking back, she states that they really need to be edited, but she loves their imperfections, because it’s proof she’s constantly growing. She’s built a universe of around 80 characters who would’ve never come to fruition, if she’d  never published those 3 imperfect books. Party of Gifts, Jocelyn and Gift Givers, gave her the bravery to call herself a writer. Outside of writing YA, she also creates poetry, and songs. Writing is therapy, which is why she’s looking forward to engaging in this retreat; lovingly calling it group therapy.

Dawn Raftery (she/her) is a storyteller, truth teller, and nonprofit executive with a passion for justice and joy. As a kid, her favorite word was why. It’s no surprise she spent over a decade in journalism, elevating community voice and holding the powerful accountable. Based in the Chicago area, Dawn is vice president of communications at the Shriver Center on Poverty Law. In her creative writing, she explores feminist rage, patriarchal violence, racial inequity, and cultural othering, often within a fairy-tale framework. Dawn is known as a brazen bibliophile, swanky sipper, fancy bag lady, and proud pup parent. She wants to be Xena: Warrior Princess when she grows up. 

elle roberts (they/them) is an indianapolis-based facilitator, artist, and writer carrying a sharp oyster knife like Zora Neale Hurston. they join a great chorus of Toni Cade Bambara's "clairvoyants, clairaudients, clairfeelants, and clairdoents" in calling for an end to the israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of Palestine and Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and the diaspora for 75 years and over 6 months.

Heena Shah (she/her) is a writer and researcher living on occupied Ohlone land, in Oakland, CA. Her writing explores care work, grief, and first generation desi identity. Her research centers the experiences and expertise of Black and brown communities; and she has had the honor of interviewing and hearing the stories of mothers struggling to feed their families in CA, domestic workers fighting for fair pay and better working conditions across the U.S., and informal settlement residents organizing for basic human rights in Kenya. Heena is a mama to two beautiful babies and loves experimenting with watercolor, going to stand-up comedy, and gathering for a delicious meal with beloved community. *Photography by Alexis Madrigal.

Heidi Lepe (she/her/ella) is a Honduran and Mexican-American writer born and raised in West Los Angeles, California. Heidi unashamedly embraces her dual ethnic roots writing and theologizing from her embodied experiences as a Latina and child of immigrants. She seeks to center the spirituality, liberation, and wellness of Latinas and the Latine community in the U.S.. Heidi is a collaborator of HipLatina, a Latina led news and media page amplifying stories that empower the Latinx/e community. Her inspiration is drawn from authors, theologians, and poets like Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, bell hooks, Mikki Kendall and more. 

Hien Nguyen (she/her) is a speculative fiction writer who hails from the Midwest, but has ping ponged across the coasts. By day she is a social science researcher and by night she writes about Vietnamese ghosts, monsters, and mythology. She is interested in the uplifting and haunting forms of human connection, and how SFF writing can lay those bare. Hien’s work has been published by Speculative City, All Worlds Wayfarer, and others. An indoor cat disguised as a human, Hien enjoys going bird watching with her significant other, binging K-pop variety shows, and absorbing hot pot broth like a sponge. Her debut novel, a young adult horror thriller, TWIN TIDES comes out Fall 2025 from Delacorte Press.

Kris Cho (any pronouns) is an artist and educator based in the Boston area. Their work is heavily influenced by their experiences growing up as a queer Korean American in Mid-Missouri, engaging with themes of grief, desirability, and the digital. Cho's artistic pursuits cover a variety of mediums, including photography and performance poetry. Their writing, storytelling, and artistic background often overlap with their passion for digital media and community. They currently teach performance poetry at the John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, where they are a writer-in-residence.

Lisbeth White (she/her) is an eco-abolitionist writer and ritualist living on S’klallam and Chimacum lands in Washington State, whose creative ethos orients at the crossroads of healing justice, ancestral earth technologies, and mythopoetics. She has received support for her work from VONA, Tin House, and Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference writing workshops, as well as residencies with SeaSalted Honey and Blue Mountain Center. She is the author of the poetry collection, American Sycamore (Perugia Press, 2022), and co-editor, along with Tamiko Beyer and Destiny Hemphill, of the anthology Poetry as Spellcasting: Poems, Essays, and Prompts for Manifesting Liberation and Reclaiming Power (North Atlantic Books, 2023). *Photography by Sarah Wright

Liz Márquez (she/her) is an Ecuadorian American bilingual educator and writer based in Houston, TX. As a daughter of immigrants and first-generation college graduate, she writes to pursue healing and wholeness, both for herself and the Latine community to which she belongs. Her words often explore faith and spirituality through a decolonized and mujerista lens. Her poems have appeared in The Acentos Review, sin cesar magazine, Latin@ Literatures, and more. She is also a 2023 VONA fellow and recipient of the 2021 La Raíz Poetry Prize.

Nicole Morris (she/her) is a working-class, mixed-Black girl poet and essayist who is originally from Los Angeles, California. Poetry and prose inform all aspects of her life as a mother, scholar, and educator. Her writing reckons with the intersections of motherhood, grief, identity, coloniality, resilience, and melanated liberation. Nicole’s poems have been published in Glass Poetry and Banshee Press (Dublin), and she was a nonfiction finalist in the 2024 Disquiet International Literary Prize. She lives in the West of Ireland, where she is finishing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Galway.

Rajani Gudlavalleti (she/they) is a writer, facilitator, and organizer. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and grew into herself in Baltimore, Maryland. To offer and evolve her work, she draws from experiences as a second-gen South Asian Telugu-American dark-skinned fat depressed queer woman of color, and the first U.S.-born person in her family. Within and beyond movement work, Rajani is a spouse, daughter, sibling, friend, and caretaker of a parent, house rabbits, and plants. She is a 2018 Gardarev Center Fellow for creative nonfiction. Rajani shares her writing on Substack: rajanigudlavalleti.substack.com. They are published in The Baltimore Sun, Panorama, and A Side of Rice. 

Saliym Cooper (he/him) is an orange soul and founder of a mobile bookshop called Brevity. This itinerant third space was the basis of his graduate dissertation at Kingston University in London. He facilitates writing workshops and also creates on-the-spot-typewriter poetry. His poems, public speaking, and book business have taught him to construct poems, ask questions, and give books from an intuitive place, one that gives all humans the words to decipher their liberation. 

Takiyah Kai (she/her). Brooklyn native - born to Dee Dee of Brooklyn - and Hylton of Clarendon, Jamaica, granddaughter to Minnie and Robert of South Carolina. Representing ancestors who know, love, and protect her, though many of them she cannot name. Bio's like this one, activate a part of Takiyah that has had to resist the feeling that she needs to justify her own existence, yet it is always speaking her own words that ground her. And so, she is simply a believer in the power of words, a mother, an educator who believes in liberation through literacy, a lover of Beyonce,  a tree hugger and a writer who, lately, can be found trying to teach herself to twerk to songs on the Cowboy Carter album in a bathroom mirror located in Charlotte, North Carolina. *Photography by Tyrone Aikins.

Tanya Leah Young (she/her) is a Jamaican American writer from New York currently residing in North Carolina. She’s been writing both short stories and poetry ever since she was a child and continues to be an avid reader. Her current work is a celebration of resilience, identity, and the power of ancestral wisdom healing generational trauma. Writing has always been the thread connecting her to her ancestors. At her core, she’s the culmination of their stories and hopes; writing is how she pays homage to the women who came before her. When she’s not reading or writing, she’s busy gardening, and spending time with her husband and puppy. You can find her on Instagram at @_Leah_Hamilton

Tyrone Fleurizard (he/him) is a Haitian-American writer. Grounded in his lived experience as a child of immigrants, he attempts to experiment with form to complicate narratives of race and identity. In this way, his work is interested in socio-political revision, familial inheritance, and the things we cannot disinherit no matter how hard we try. His work has appeared in The Audacity, Inside Higher Ed, and elsewhere. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, he is currently based in Oakland, California. 

Zia Wang (she/her) is Indian American and part of the third generation of her family from East Africa. Born in Zambia, she came to the United States at age 6 and has been traversing the boundaries of language and identity ever since. She is an alum of VONA and Bread Loaf workshops and is a member of a Decolonizing Poetry collective. Her poetry, which explores the intergenerational trauma of British colonization, has been published or is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Drunken Boat, SWWIM, Meridian, Allium, and Honey Literary among others. Her work was also selected as a runner-up in the New Orleans Review Poetry Contest 2023. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two daughters and an orange cat.