A.Tony Jerome (they/them) is a black autistic writer, editor, and media production student. A 2016 LAMBDA Literary young Adult Fiction Fellow, they've been published in Baffling Magazine, Freezeray Poetry, and Glass:Poetry, among other places. You can follow them on Twitter at @blackfinalboi. They can be found shoulders deep in their most recent special interest.

Aishatu Ado (she/her) is a Peace Technologist, AI Ethicist & '23 Hurston/Wright speculative fiction fellow who advocates for social justice within technology. As a visual & literary artist, she weaves transformative Afro-feminist cosmovisions & indigenous quantum narratives while channeling ancestral oral traditions and mythologies. Her notable contributions are in anthologies such as "Parables of AI in/from the Majority World " and the literary NFT collection "To Each Their Own Reality" on Soltype. Beyond words, her culinary artistry speaks; her rendition of the Esterhazy Cake is more than a dessert—it's a labor of love. Connect: X: @AishatuAdo | IG: @miss.aishatu

Al-Lateef Farmer (He, Him, His) is an aspiring writer who uses his words to capture snapshots of Black life. Born and raised in Plainfield, New Jersey, he was always captivated by the power of storytelling and was inspired by the works of Spike Lee, Toni Morrison, and August Wilson. Realizing he had a unique perspective on the world, he began to write short stories exploring Black life's nuances.

Alice is the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Shanghai Immortal, the first in a trilogy following the shenanigans of charmingly profane, irreverent, sometimes petulant but always entertaining half hulijing fox spirit Lady Jing. She grew up in Calgary and has lived in Taipei, Paris, Stockholm, Beijing, London, and Hong Kong. These experiences fuel her ongoing fascination with how self-perceived and imposed identity affects our sense of belonging and enjoys exploring these spaces in her stories. When not procrastinating or writing, Alice indulges in her Hobonichi and kawaii sticker addiction. She lives in North London, UK. Find her at @ay_chao on Twitter and Instagram.

National Geographic Explorer and Fulbright alumna, Alyea Pierce (she/her) uses multi-disciplinary art forms, such as poetry and audio to examine folklore traditions across the African diaspora. She is a researcher who recently contributed to National Geographic’s podcast series Into the Depths, and was featured on episode 1 of National Geographic's The Soul of Music—Overheard’s four-part podcast series. Pierce has performed internationally, as well as at numerous TEDx events. Her poetry has been published online and in print, including the Guardian, New York Daily News, Obsidian, Caribbean Writer, and Routledge to name a few. She is a lecturer for the English department at Rutgers University.

Angelique V. Nixon (she/her) is a Black Queer writer, scholar, and activist. Born and raised in the Bahamas, she is currently based in Trinidad and Tobago. Her research and creative work are available widely; she is author of the poetry and art chapbook Saltwater Healing and scholarly award-winning book Resisting Paradise: Tourism, Diaspora, and Sexuality in Caribbean Culture. Angelique is sought after speaker and facilitator on intersecting issues related to social and climate justice, migration, and sexual and LGBTQI+ rights, among others. Angelique is fiercely committed in all her work to intersectional queer feminist praxis, decolonial politics, climate and environmental justice, and Black liberation. Follow her on Instagram @sistellablack.

Anupa Mistry (she/they) is a writer and documentary producer, born in northern England to parents from the Gujarati labouring diasporas of colonial East Africa. She lives in Toronto, a short walk from Lake Ontario, on the present-day treaty lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit. These geographies guide Anupa’s writing practice, which explores how the works of brown and black artists in Toronto form alternate maps of reading and living in the city. For a decade she worked as a music critic, editor, and occasional talking head with The FADER, Pitchfork, and Red Bull Music Academy. Her writing has appeared in Maisonneuve, Hazlitt, NYMag, The Globe & Mail, and The Guardian. As a filmmaker she looks for stories connecting culture, human ingenuity, and radical histories.

Atena O. Danner is a cultural worker imagining Black liberation, engaged in boundless curiosity. She is an Anaphora Writers Residency Fellow, a Hurston/Wright Writers Week alum, an ‘In Surreal Life’ Surreal Scholar, and has been a featured reader for Guild Literary Complex Presents Exhibit B series and Chicago Poetry Center. Atena is grateful to have work published online, in anthologies, and her own book of poetry. In their home north of Chicago, near the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires and other Native nations, Atena lives with her partner, pets and 2 free Black children. Her book, ‘Incantations for Rest’ was released in 2022.

c.r. glasgow (doc/she/we) is a non-binary, queer, first-generation Caribbean-American interdisciplinary healing artist. c has received fellowships and support from UCross, Anaphora, The Watering Hole, VONA, Hugo House, and others. doc has been the recipient of VONA’s 2021 Haitian Heritage Scholarship. c’s work has a 2023 nomination for Best of the Net and their chapbook, the Devils that raised Us, was longlisted at Frontier Poetry. c’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Lawrence Press, Rigorous Magazine, Lion’s Roar, Obsidian, Torch Literary, and other cross-genre spaces. Follow c on Twitter: @fearlesscrg and IG: @garudagin.

Caitlyn Hunter was the inaugural Emerging Black Artist in Residence at Chatham University (2021-2022). She is a doctoral candidate at Duquesne University where she researches African American literature and Black Food studies. She is currently writing both a collection of short stories and a culinary memoir around her maternal ancestry. Her first book, Power in the Tongue (Tolsun Books) debuted in 2022. Her work appears in Midnight & Indigo, Lost Balloon, and elsewhere. Caitlyn can be found most days in her hometown of Southern Maryland either twerking to Beyoncé in her backyard or birdwatching blue herons.

Carole Hsiao//蕭 后 琳 (she/her) is the first-born daughter of Chinese refugees. Through her work as an artist and community educator, she focuses on notions of silence and silencing, inspired by her grandmothers. Her creative work examines the roots of self-silencing, a result of internalized messages carried through her lineage and reinforced by a lifetime of surviving within systems of oppression. She explores the place of culture and language in critical and creative ways. As an educator, her work has centered around interrupting the culture of the educational institutions so the student voice can be in the foreground. She currently loves the color blue. Instagram @smooth__jade

Born in Mexico, at the age of 4, Catalina Rios (she,her) immigrated to Detroit, Michigan. She found her voice through poetry while advocating for immigrant rights. Catalina’s poems have been published and anthologized in Love & Other Futures,, Anhelo Anhelo, Riverwise Magazine, Mag 20/20 and more. She was selected to be featured in America’s Emerging Poets 2018 Series for Z Publishing House and is a Watering Hole fellow. She is the host of Detroit Hustle Podcast highlighting stories of hustle in her city. And, she loves visiting the Detroit river and taking walks in Belle Isle, especially during sunset.

Charissa Annice (she/her) is a native Detroiter and current New Yorker. While her day-to-day work has focused on promoting economic and social justice through education and equal opportunities to work, she has been writing with various workshops and on her own for almost an equal amount of time, highlighting the beauty of how people in tough situations find liberation and love. Some of her stories have been published in midnight & indigo and the Santa Fe Writer’s Project Quarterly and have been workshopped during her time as an Anaphora Arts fellow. You can find her online on Instagram and Threads @griefgrimegorgeous.

Chiyeung (he/him) is a writer from Queens, NY. He currently lives in Philadelphia with his spouse and three cats. His work explores the power of absence and memory. Chiyeung is currently a fiction editor at JMMW journal and his work has appeared in Ghost Parachute, Flash Frog, and elsewhere. He is an alum of the Tin House and Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. He is currently at work on a novel and short story collection. In his spare time, Chiyeung loves cooking new recipes, rescuing stray cats, and losing in Street Fighter. You can find him on Twitter @chiyeung.

Darina Mayfield (she/her) is a writer, editor, and lifetime New Yorker. As the founder of Gerry Dean Editorial, a book coaching and literary editing company, Darina supports LGBTQ+ narratives and writers of color. She is a graduate of the University of Washington’s creative writing program and is currently working on her first essay collection—testifying to the harsh truths of standing in the space between grief and transformation after loss. You can find Darina at home in Upstate New York with her loving husband Harold and cats Biff and Frank or browsing the shelves of a used bookstore.

Derrick Reaves (he/him) is a multi-genre writer. A shy and sensitive kid, he was usually found either plopped in front of the box TV in the living room or earnestly scribbling in one of many journals. Encouraged by teachers throughout his teens, Reaves began a stint at New York City’s (now defunct) “Next Magazine” as a weekly columnist before “retiring” to corporate life. Emboldened by the self-exploration and determination of the 2020 BLM movement, Reaves re-engaged his creative passion, earning selections to the Hurston/Wright and two Anaphora Arts Fellowships as well as the Yale Writers’ Residency. His writing honors ancestral ties, exploring trauma and celebrating marginalized voices. He resides in NYC with his partner, a designer. Find Derrick at Twitter: @The_D_Dayze and IG: @d_dayze.

Ebbie Russell (they/them) is a Black queer femme multidisciplinary writer exploring themes of grief, blood and chosen kin, and community longing. Rooted in Black Feminism and Afrofuturism, their poetry, memoir, visual and performance art explore how dance can heal intergenerational trauma and chronic illness. Ebbie will queer a dancefloor or a dream whenever possible. They dream of writing spells and chants that renew their black glitter militant hope that we will rise against the oppression of scarcity (capitalism) and sanctions (carceral states). Their poetry appears in the anthology From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast (2023).

Ema Bell (she/her) earned degrees in Biology and Cardiovascular Perfusion before shifting gears into writing. She is an alum of the Vermont Studio Center and her poetry has appeared in the Lavender Review and the Cordite Poetry Review. She has also performed at Da Poetry Lounge in Los Angeles. Ema attended The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College Workshop and was selected to be in Master Class with Myriam Gurba at the Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference. Ema is working on her first sci-fi novel and holds an MFA from CalArts. She is getting over her fear of water so she can do outrigger canoeing in the off season. She lives in Los Angeles with her partner and their dog McLovin.

Faithna Geffrard is a Haitian American writer raised in south Florida. Her parents’ tales of Haiti inspired a desire to create her own stories. A fan of all fiction, Faithna seeks to write speculative fiction that explores the themes of nature, family, horror, and the unknown. Her writing interweaves the lyricism of Haitian-Creole with the legacy of Black writers that have come before her. She is also fascinated with history and can be found in the corner of a bookstore collecting books about world events. When not reading or writing, she is cooking and thinking about food. Her essay “Eating Memories of My Mother” can be read in We Have Food At Home. She can be found on IG @faithnawritehere.

Felix Bankston (they/them) is a Seattle-based writer working on their debut novel. Felix has been writing stories since they could hold a pen and centers their prose on Black and queer identity, as well as personal experience growing up in Detroit. While they do not yet have current works published, Felix received Honorable Mention for a Reading Rainbow storybook submission in 1st grade and won 3rd place at their elementary school spelling bee. Felix describes themself as a hard introvert and chronically soft-spoken. They currently work at a nonprofit serving vulnerable adults impacted by homelessness. When they are not shaking their fist at the clutches of late-stage capitalism, they can be found reading, writing, and laying on the floor. Their Instagram is @xfilesthemesong.

Freddy Jesse Izaguirre (he/him) is a writer from El Salvador of Náhuat descent. His work has been featured in the Houston Review of Books, GEN, PAPER, LEVEL, among others. During the mid ‘80s, Freddy Jesse and his family left El Salvador for the Pacific Northwest. He grew up in Washington State, and navigated undocumented life in the U.S. until 2017—when he became a naturalized citizen. Currently, he lives in NYC with his partner and their cat, Fifi. You can follow him on IG @pursuingarete & @freddyjesse via Twitter/X.

Hiba Akhtar (she/her) is a South Asian Muslim writer living in Los Angeles. She has a Master’s Degree in Women’s and Gender Studies from Rutgers University, where she studied South Asian feminisms and nurtured her love of social impact work. Hiba worked as a journalist, researcher, and communications professional in the nonprofit space supporting global women’s health. She now works as a writer for the tech industry. Hiba is a certified yoga instructor and plans to use trauma-informed yoga teaching as a tool to encourage women and nonbinary people of color to get and stay in their bodies. She is an east coast native in love with the sunshine of Southern California, and can be found at @hibapics on Instagram.

Jacob Moniz (he/him) is a writer and visual artist from California. He holds degrees from UC Santa Cruz, NYU, and the University of Notre Dame. His writing has appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Whisky Blot, and Southeast Review, among other journals and publications. He received a grant from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame to fund a multimedia arts project based on his family history in São Miguel, Azores. He has since been selected as a 2023-2024 Fulbright Student Researcher to continue work on this project at the University of the Azores in Portugal.

Jada Reid is a poet/fiction writer from St. Louis, Missouri, with a degree in English & African American Studies. Her stories in verse explore siblinghood, intuitive knowledge, and the rich tapestry of family histories. They are a 2023 LAMBDA Literary Fellow and has worked closely with Jacqueline Woodson, Mahogany Browne, Candice Iloh, and John Murillo. Through their art, they hope to inspire young adults to embrace their intuition, cherish the bonds of queer kinship, and explore their family ghosts & histories. She seeks to create stories that empower and uplift, stories that reflect the beauty and complexity of the human experience, and stories that remind us all of the magic and wisdom within.

Jade Wilburn (she/her) grew up in Rochester, NY where she constantly pleaded to go to the bookstore with her pocket money. She's currently a 2023 We Need Diverse Books mentee diligently revising a novel manuscript. Her work can be found in Fiyah Magazine, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror Volume Three edited by Paula Guran and more. Her short story “Blood Ties” (Fiyah Spring 2021) was nominated for the inaugural Utopia Awards. When she’s procrastinating, she can be found playing Sims or trying to coax her lemon tree to grow. Follow her on Twitter @JadeWrites

Jeané D. Ridges (they/name) was born and bloomed in the southeast of the land the United States occupies, and it remains where they reside being nourished by the wonder of this world, soul filling food, and expansive tales. Their poetic storytelling can be discovered in Anathema: Spec from the Margins, Apparition Lit, Neon Door, and Worlds of Possibility—including its first anthology. They're a 2022 Voodoonauts Fellow and Tessera Editorial Mentee, and, in 2023, they joined the khōréō magazine team as a copyeditor and became the Southern Esesu Endeavor’s inaugural Maya Angelou Fellow. @jdridges (bsky/twitter).

Jessica June Cato (she/they) is a writer, poet, Lead Astrologer and Editorial Fellow at The Poetry Lab, a community learning space for creative writers. Her work has been published by Nightingale & Sparrow, Sampaguita Press, Querencia Press, and Chicanx Writers and Artists Association. Her debut poetry chapbook, Through The Red Door's Open Maw, is available now with Beyond The Veil Press. Her favorite things include making memes, writing workshops, Nintendo switch, and her two small poodles. You can find her on socials talking about Astrology For Poets, her series of articles, videos and workshop on astrology, poetry, and the ways they intertwine @jessjunewrites.

Joyia Manón (she/her) is a Mental Health Counselor with an affinity for supporting others with improving their emotional wellbeing. In her downtime, she writes fiction to maintain her own happiness. She recently released her debut novel: Imani’s Heart: Book One in the Tiwa Series. When she’s not writing, reading other people’s novels, or spending time with her two sons, you can find her learning as much as she can about African Traditional Religions or collecting fabric and sewing patterns to occasionally put together new pieces. Born and raised in Sacramento, CA, as an adult Joyia has lived wherever she feels like in the United States. Find out more at IG @JManonwriting.

K.M. Veohongs (@kmveohongs, she/her) is a mixed-race Thai American speculative fiction writer living in New England. Her work has been published in Translunar Traveler’s Lounge and multiple anthologies, including the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Mother: Tales of Love and Terror. She is a recipient of the 2023 Ignyte Community Award through her work with the Flights of Foundry speculative creator convention. K.M.’s alter ego is a veterinarian who can charm goats.

Kat had her first life battle at 4 years old when she boycotted the library for making her return books she wanted to keep forever. She won. She now loves celebrating the nuanced lives of diverse youth in fiction. She won the F(r)iction Magazine literary competition judged by award-winning author Charlie Jane Anders. She was long-listed for the Voyages YA Summer Prose competition. She was thrilled to receive a We Need Diverse Books grant for writing for youth. She has been a Kimbilio Fellow, a Tin House Fellow and is a proud RWW returning retreater. She is an entertainment writer and creative director in Hollywood. Also, she supports libraries but still sticks out her tongue at them all.

Kei is a disabled agender writer, anti-disciplinary artist, and scholar of Kanaka Maoli and Black descent. They are a runaway academic who taught courses in media history, gender studies, and visual culture. Kei was a 2022 Queer|Arts literature fellow, and their works have been published in poetry and academic journals and shown in gallery space. They practice writing as a daily ritual of translation, moving between image and word to sculpt language. Kei is currently writing their first novel: a work of visionary fiction about a Black creative family whose choices about who and how to love reshape chronological time, and whose small secrets cause unintended consequences for far futures.

Kelly Macías (she/her) is a writer, researcher, and storyteller based in Los Angeles who will always be proud of growing up in Baltimore. Her writing has appeared in Prose Online, The Sunlight Press, Newsweek, The Baltimore Sun, and elsewhere. She is a 2023 Anaphora Arts fellow and has received recognition for her work from BlogHer Voices of the Year, NYC Midnight (fiction), and Stories Books and Café. She is an alumnus of the 2019 Yale Writers’ Workshop. When she isn’t engaged in her daily mindfulness meditation practice, or somewhere in the world dancing Argentine tango in a pair of Chuck Taylors, Kelly can be found on IG at @kelmacias.

Kenya Collins (she/her) is a dramatic screenwriter and novelist passionate about creating uniquely compelling characters and unforgettable, thought-provoking stories. She was selected as a Black List x Women In Film Feature Residency Semifinalist (2022) and an Austin Film Festival Semifinalist with her first feature-length horror screenplay, First Blooded. Kenya was also selected as a 'Top 50' Semifinalist in the ISA Fast Track Fellowship Competition (2022) and as a participant in the Stowe Story Labs Narrative Lab (2023) with her first drama television pilot, The Saint. In April 2023, Kenya was selected to participate in the Yale Writer’s Workshop with her speculative fiction novel, If Ever We Meet, her current work in progress.

Kimberly Jae (she/her) is an award-winning, Pushcart nominated, and published Crip Poet ranked among the top 30 slam poets in the world by PSI in 2018. In 2019, she had a stroke becoming disabled, developing a language-based disability called Aphasia, which affects her ability to speak, read and write. Undaunted, she has since won multiple fellowships, national and international slam competitions and has multiple publications. Her first full length manuscript, Baptism, was shortlisted for the Sexton Prize in 2021. In 2022, she was the winner of the Visionary Arts Poetry Prize. She can be found everywhere @iamkimberlyjae.

Krishana Davis is a storyteller -- centering her writing Black voices from her hometown of Baltimore. A former journalist, Krishana turned to sci-fi to reimagine the world as it could be. She has spent more than a decade building media campaigns for brands, nonprofits, and political orgs. Her commitment to creating inclusive and culturally relevant campaigns led Krishana to be named to PRWeek’s 2023 40 under 40 list. Krishana is a proud HBCU alum of Morgan State University and has a MPA from The University of Baltimore. Now living in metro Atlanta with her husband and two kids, Krishana can often be found twirling 7 feet high on an aerial hoop. @KrishanaDavis

Krishna Han (he/him) is a queer, Asian, non-native English speaker, world traveler, and new U.S. citizen. Born and raised in Cambodia, he went to graduate school in Japan and has worked internationally since 2007. In addition to his day job, Krishna is an amateur artist in drawing, sketching, painting, crafting, and more recently, writing in English. He finds excitement in capturing the world in unique expressions with beauty and nuance. Currently, he is working on a debut coming-of-age manuscript entitled The Knot: An Anthropology of Self, which narrates his memories as a Cambodian child in the 1980s & early 90s, born just after the fall of the Pol Pot Regime in a country and family of traumatized survivors. It is a journey of finding freedom, independence, and forgiveness rooted in critical understanding, love, and compassion.

Kristen Reynolds (she/her) writes and theorizes about the transformative power of Black speculative art. She’s been writing since she was a pre-teen and has dabbled in everything from screenwriting to poetry. Her work considers how Black women navigate survival, love, and rage in technologized dystopias. As a child, she consumed a steady diet of horror films, and she is now leaning more into her love of the genre as an adult. She’s currently exploring tropes within the genre that can be reworked to emphasize the emotional and physical impact of technology on people’s lives.

Leo Aquino (he/they) is a multidisciplinary storyteller, financial coach, and award-winning journalist covering anti-capitalist personal finance. Leo has spoken to dozens of Americans about how policies like student loan forgiveness, abortion access, and anti-trans legislation affect their daily lives and wellbeing. In 2022, Leo founded @queerandtranswealth, an organization dedicated to the economic empowerment and collective liberation of queer and trans communities. Leo cherishes time spent absolutely doing nothing and his beloved skin care fridge.

Lin Flores (she/they) lives and works in Salt Lake City, Utah as a full-time poet and creative writing student. They are an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of New Orleans and a reader for The Bayou Magazine. Her debut poetry collection, Reflections While Living in Utah, was a bestseller for both 2021 & 2022 at Under The Umbrella—Utah’s LGBTQ+ bookstore. In 2023, Lin won the Andrea Saunders Gereighty / Academy of American Poets Award. When Flores isn’t writing, she is volunteering her time with Plumas Colectiva, a collective of Latinx poets & artists. You can catch Lin in a coffee spot likely laughing to herself or making a new friend with a barista. Keep up with Lin @lincpoetry.

Lyndon Nicholas (he/him/his) is a Brooklyn-based writer with an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York. His fiction work is upcoming or published by The North American Review, Promethean, PREE, The Dillydoun Review, The Stonecoast Review, and Hungry Shadow Press. He was awarded a 2023 Periplus Fellowship, is the winner of the City College of New York’s Stark Short Fiction Prize, and was a finalist for the Kurt Vonnegut Prize in Speculative Fiction from the North American Review. He is currently working on a collection of short stories, a novel, and making friends with the neighborhood birds. You can find him on Instagram at @ezlbreezy.

M Shelly Conner, Ph.D. (she/her) is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas where she co-directs the MFA Program for Writers. Her novel everyman (Blackstone Publishing) received the silver 2022 Nautilus Award for Fiction. Her webisode Quare Life debuted at the 2018 Outfest in LA, Newfest in NY, and festivals in Seattle and Atlanta. Shelly uses her experiences as a dapperqueer woman to examine race, gender, sexuality and sustainable living practices and their intersections in her creative work. When not writing or teaching, Shelly can be found DIYing, gardening and woodworking on her homestead with her wife Tiffany and pup Whiskey.

Marchaé Grair (they/she) is a storyteller, spiritual director, teacher, and facilitator engaging hearts and minds at the intersections of spirituality and collective liberation. Their writing examines universal experiences through the perspective of being spiritual, Black, queer, nonbinary, disabled and polyamorous. Marchaé writes essays about family, identity, and belonging. Their piece, “Holy: A Polyamorous Blessing” was featured in “Held: Blessings for the Depths,” an anthology published by enfleshed. Marchaé will always feel like a Midwesterner at heart but lives in Boston with their family, friends, and fur babies. Connect with them at @marchaegrair on Instagram.

Mariah M. (they/them) is a queer Diasporic African cultural worker & creative based in Greensboro, NC (ancestrally of Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation). They are the inaugural artist-in-residence at The Beautiful Project (c. 2023) as well as a two-year Watering Hole fellow (c. 2017, 2019). Mariah moves with the knowing that their identity as an artist is inseparable from their role in community. As an aspiring anarchist & practicing abolitionist, they write to challenge, escape & build the world we live in. You can find them talking to a tree about our future or indoors dancing under red lights. They have poems published by the Neighbor News Pan-African News Service of Oakland & voicemail poems.

Mariam Sardar (she/her) is a Brooklyn-born native and Pakistani Muslim woman. A daytime attorney and all-the-time storyteller, her writing centers the intersections and dual-identities of the children of the South Asian diaspora. Her work has been featured in Roots Wounds Words’ inaugural anthology and COUNTERpult showcase series. Mariam is currently working on her first collection of essays. Recently, Mariam returned to her motherland in hopes of connecting with the roots that shaped the identities of the generations of women that raised her. Outside of writing, Mariam can be found consuming copious amounts of iced coffee and defending her top-5-dead-or-alive rap roster to anyone who will listen.

Michelle Linh Nguyen (she/her) is a senior researcher in the tech industry, creative writer, and hopeless romantic. Previously a Medium blogger on diversity & inclusion in tech, Michelle’s writing has evolved into speculative fiction including critiques of capitalism, highlights of different generational belief systems, romance, dystopias, and fantasy. Other themes include family relationships, friendships, and self-discovery. Her non-fiction personal blogs have been featured in UX Magazine and The Startup on Medium. Her creative work has been featured in Kundiman's Northeast Regional Group Summer Reading Event. Follow her on Instagram @mich.linh.

Nailah Mathews (they/them) is a Brooklyn-based nonbinary Black poet to whom books and Black lives matter. Their poetry has been featured in Lolwe, Hennepin Review, Lucky Jefferson, New Note, Rigorous, Hoxie Gorge Press, and the Black Lesbian Literary Collective among others. A poet first, their body of work is preoccupied with matrilineal trauma, queerness, uncanny Black girlhood, racial isolation, radical theology, and decolonization. They are a 2022 Periplus Fellow and a 2023 Anaphora Arts resident. When not writing, they are either ankle deep in other people’s stories or wrangling Olive and Martini, their two very bad cats.

Nancy Yeang (she/her) is a storyteller bearing witness to this life as a first gen Khmer American. She finds solace and freedom in writing, and brings to light the things that are supposed to be unspoken. Her pieces focus on what it means to carry on her culture when it’s in the intersection of violence, love, sometimes mistaking the two for each other, while living in colonized America. Her professional life has involved writing in various industries, including newspapers, communications, and marketing. Her personal life has involved teaching yoga, doing muay thai, modeling, walking her dogs, and spending time with her husband and friends. Catch her Instagrammed life at @nancyyeang

Naomi Scherelle (she/they) is a living witness. She is a Chicago-born, Mississippi-blooded spirited healer, writer, educator, and alchemist cultivating soft places for Black folks to land. In 2021, Naomi released a chapbook titled The Clearing: A Black Girl Collecting Her Bones. Naomi architects curriculum rooted in self-exploration and compassion while centering the ancient art of storytelling. As the Director of Critical Consciousness for Vocal Justice, Naomi leverages intergenerational wisdom and abolitionist teachings to cultivate programming for educators and students. Naomi is the creator of 4ColouredGurlz Wellness, an ode to Black folks and a declaration that comfort and joy are a colored girl's birthright. Look for Naomi throwin’ it in a circle on IG @NaomiScherelle.

Nathalie Flo is an earth-loving, afro-indigenous bruja from the Bronx. Her work merges vulnerability, spirituality, and magicking the mundane. Their work was featured in the PoetLinc anthology after a 9 month mentorship with Aziza Barnes, Jon Sands and José Olivarez. They use their work in the spiritual and physical realm to invigorate black beings and bring unity in every way they can; that often looks like reminding people of the soil, the sand, and the sacredness they hold. You can explore their little gay world on substack and instagram (flo.glo).

Phiroozeh (she/her) is a queer Pakistani writer, authenticity coach and writing teacher living on stolen Coast Salish lands (aka. Vancouver, Canada). She writes about the things that she doesn’t always want to write about but that needs to be spoken aloud: the intersections of chronic illness and queerness and artist-ness in brown immigrant families. As an authenticity coach and writing teacher, Phi helps people to stop living in the “shoulds” of others’ expectations and to live in their truth. Phi’s writing has been published in several anthologies and zines. She is the editor of “Black Elder Voices: Reflecting Our Journeys”, an anthology by her elder writing students. @decolonizingaunty

Phương Uyên Huỳnh Võ is a poet from Anaheim, California and Sài Gòn, Việt Nam. Her work has been featured in diaCritics, Acid Verse, and others. In her free time, Phương likes to play piano and sing songs on repeat. She currently resides in Long Beach, CA, land of the Tongva and Kizh people, and can be found on Instagram at jasminegreentea96.

Born in the US to Cuban parents, R Cielo Cruz was raised by a single mother in a multi-racial community in North Miami. Cruz draws deeply from this experience, as well as their close ties to the Caribbean, in their writing. Stories and essays by Cruz have been published in Black Warrior Review, Colorlines, hipMama, Bridge the Gulf Project and the anthology Mamaphonic. Cruz is a 2017 & 2020 VONA Voices Fellow. They were a Paper Machine artist in residence in October 2022 and produced Paper Portals: A Braided Spellbook this past summer as a result. They live in New Orleans and have an MA in Latin American studies. Find on social media @r.cielo.cruz.writer

Reema Rao-Patel (she/her) is a Konkani American writer from Chicago. She is a two-time Best of the Net 2024 nominee and longlister for The Masters Review Anthology XII Prize and The Masters Review 2022 Summer Short Story Award. She has received support from Tin House, the Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, and the Key West Literary Seminar. Her short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Los Angeles Review, Witness, The Lumiere Review, Flash Frog, and elsewhere. She is working on her first short story collection, and in between drafts, teaching both her pup and baby to roll over. She can be found at @finding_reemo (TW), @reema.rp (IG).

Rise (they/them) queer, Black, genderfluid, disabled writer, poet, and artist on Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Odawa land. (Chicago). They write to create home, embrace rage and love and further their commitment to their imagination. Imagination to directly say what needs to be said when the actual story is too hard to tell. Rise is deeply invested in disability justice, access, centering wellness for Black queer folk, trauma education, and rest. When not doing the most, you can find them daydreaming and hanging with their support pup, Jelly Ferocious. You can find them on Instagram at @riotous_roots.

Rise is pictured standing from the chest up in front of a wooden wall and green plant. They have on a light pink shirt, rose gold hoop earrings and necklace. Their hair is in a puff with a black and beige leopard print headwrap and they are smiling.

Sarah Drepaul is a nyc native. She creates new knowledge about the simultaneous resistance to and persistence of memories at the site of the body by merging poetry and filmmaking. Sarah works to build trust with the images in our sublime as sacred knowledge, queering the notions behind archival as the truth. Her work has been shown at 12Gates Gallery (Philadelphia), King Manor Museum (NYC), Queer Women of Color Film Festival (San Francisco, CA), Chaya’s Chatpati Mela (Queens, NY) and more. Her work has been supported by the VelvetPark Media Writing Residency (BK). She is driven by the healing capabilities of art — and how vulnerability is essential for our collective liberation.

Seren Kilig (any/siya) is, at heart, a Filipino storyteller with a love for the perverse. With prose influenced by authors, poets, and songwriters alike, Seren can often be seen spending their free time listening to entire albums on repeat or perusing online art galleries. Usually both. They’ve been awarded fellowships from Periplus ('22), Lambda Lit ('23), and Roots. Wounds. Words. (‘24). Talk to them on socials @SerenKilig.

Shingai Njeri Kagunda (they/she) is an Afrosurreal/futurist storyteller from Nairobi, Kenya with a Literary Arts MFA from Brown. Shingai’s work has been featured in the Best American Sci-fi and Fantasy 2020, Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2021, and Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2020. They have work in or upcoming in Omenana, Fantasy magazine, FracturedLit, Khoreo, Africa Risen, and Uncanny Magazine. Their debut novella & This is How to Stay Alive was published by Neon Hemlock Press in October 2021 and won the Ignyte Award for best novella in 2022. She is the co-editor of Podcastle Magazine a Hugo nominated zine, and the co-founder of Voodoonauts, a Black Speculative fiction summer workshop.

Shirley Huey is a Chinese American (Toisanese-Cantonese) writer, editor, and poet from San Francisco. She is an alum of VONA/Voices, KSW's Interdisciplinary Writers Lab, and the Writers Grotto's Rooted & Written. Her writing is forthcoming and/or has appeared in such publications as Catapult, Panorama Journal, sparkle + blink, Endangered Species and Enduring Values: An Anthology of San Francisco Area Writers and Artists of Color, and Fried Eggs & Rice: A Series by Writers of Color on Food, among others. When she’s not wandering around in search of neighborhood treasures or working on her fried rice game.

Shrien Alshabasy (she/her/hers) is a first generation Egyptian-American from Brooklyn. She is writing a YA Fantasy novel, Filomena & the Fool, where a beloved tarot card figure, the Fool, helps Filomena discover magic after her mother’s death. Together, the two embark on a spiritual and magical journey throughout New York that reintroduces Filomena to a world beyond the one she sees and unlocks the magic of healing within her. Shrien is a Girls Write Now mentor and has been published in Generations Journal, Chronogram Magazine, Huffington Post, York Literary Review, Beacon Ink, and the SUNY Open Access Repository. She can be found people-watching at Washington Square Park.

Sloane Kali Faye (she/her) is a writer, sociologist, and visual artist. Her writings have appeared in various publications including Salon, Al Jazeera, The BBC, Black Enterprise, and AfroPunk. She also received The OpEd Project’s Write to Change the World scholarship. Faye has been an Aspen Words Fellow, and also received two scholarships from The Aspen Institute to develop her forthcoming hybrid poetry and comic memoir, Wicked Wild. She resides in Harlem, New York, but lives in her own world when illustrating to the tunes of her musical superheroes Kid Cudi, Fiona Apple, and Beyoncé. Follow her on Twitter @SloaneKaliFaye.

Sophia Russell (she/her) developed a love for writing as an undergrad at Cornell University, where she wrote music and art reviews as well as a weekly column on the Arts and social justice issues for the Cornell Daily Sun. After graduation, she worked at magazines like BusinessWeek and Entertainment Weekly before attending the University of Houston Law Center. Sophia lives with her family and practices law in Austin, Texas. During the retreat, Sophia will workshop her manuscript, Kweku’s Daughters. The novel was inspired by Sophia’s paternal grandmother and tells the story of Amma, who, years after leaving Ghana, grapples with maternal ambivalence when her daughters travel to America to live with her.

Souri Somphanith (she/her) is a first-generation Laotian American, writer, and San Francisco Bay Area resident. She works in academic publishing and holds an MA in Literary and Cultural Studies from CMU. As a kid, she got her start writing haunted house stories and The X-Files fanfiction on yellow legal pads. Souri’s interest in the unknowable continues in her work today, making use of cautionary tales, folk wisdom, and animist ways of knowing to bridge the emotional gap between the past and present (and future). Just diaspora kid stuff! When she isn’t writing, Souri knits, collects library cards, and thinks about writing. Find her online at Twitter: @SouriSomphanith.

Susan Li (she/her) is a Chinese American writer with ancestral roots in Toisan, Guangdong. Her writing explores race, family, girlhood, and ghosts. In 2023, she was a resident at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and Tin House Summer Workshop. Her nonfiction earned an honorable mention in the Gulf Coast Barthelme Prize judged by Kelly Link and was a finalist in The Sewanee Review’s Nonfiction Contest judged by Alexander Chee. She serves as an Editorial Assistant for Guernica and lives in New York City. Susan is also a birder and amateur wildlife photographer. Bird memes are her favorite. Follow her on Instagram @susan.li and on Twitter @bysusanli.

TASHE (she/her/hers), possibly the only person in a waiting room not on her phone is a Buffalo, NY native, set forth to tell Black stories. Her poetry appears in Obsidian journal and has placed in the Top 20 of the North Carolina State University Poetry Contest. Her play, Soul Food Buffet, earned an actor table read. Tashe is intrigued by ancestry tests, and is a biography and documentary fan. Music is her religion, and muse. The mother of three is a three-time HBCU graduate who works as a freelance writer. Tashe is adapting Soul Food Buffet to a screenplay and working on a short story collection, including “Cousin to a Butterfly” and “Common Thread.”

Tonia Dixon, currently, stretched between her career as a college professor and writer has published poetry in two anthologies, Passager for older writers over 50, Spoil the Children, and The Elevation Review, Fall 2023, Black Womxn. She can often be found exploring the depths of silence and listening deeply to strangers. She will strike up a conversation anywhere with strangers offering unsolicited compliments and directions. She is an avid fan of bell hooks and reads The New York Times just about every day. She is anxious more than she would like to be and discharges anxiety with a pen on the page or her fingers against the keyboard. Tonia feverishly writes now as if a clock is counting down on her life after losing her mother and sister in 2021. She insists she has much to say. She lives in Baltimore with her son and his dog.

Tzynya Pinchback is a disabled mermaid writing the Black woman body in nature, in illness, and in joy as a deliberate act. Her chapbook, “How to make pink confetti”, was selected for the Dancing Girl Press reading series for women poets in 2012. Her poems appear in various print and online publications. A finalist for the 2020 inaugural post of Plymouth Poet Laureate, she was writer-in-residence for Cordial Eye Gallery & Artist Space 2020 Joy Residency and is a poetry editor for The Deaf Poets Society. She is a Disability & Inclusion Champion, and Plymouth Disabilities Commission member. Tzynya lives in a teacup on a pond in New England. Find her on Twitter @Tzynya and IG @wild_and_flower.

Vina Orden (she/her/siya) is an immigrant on Lenape land (New York City). Her writing about Filipinx culture and community has appeared in The Margins (the digital magazine of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, where she was a 2022 Open City Fellow in community journalism), Asian Journal, The FilAm, hellapinay, Hyperallergic, and elsewhere. She supports and amplifies other emerging Asian American writers as an editor at Slant’d magazine. Vina is working on her first novel for young adults and was recently a participant in Tin House’s 2022 YA Workshop and a 2022 Kweli Sing the Truth! Mentee. She just celebrated one year as a breast cancer survivor. @hyffeinated (Instagram, Facebook)

Whitney French (she/her) is a Toronto-based writer, multidisciplinary artist, and publisher. She is a self-described Black futurist, middle-child trouble maker, who explores memory, loss, technology, and nature in her works. Whitney French is the editor of the award-winning anthology Black Writers Matter (2019) and the editor of Griot: Six Writers Sojourn into the Dark (2022). Her writing has appeared in ARC Poetry, GEIST, the Ex-Puritan, Carousel, CBC Books, Quill and Quire, and elsewhere. French is now the co-founder and publisher of Hush Harbour, the only Black queer feminist press in Canada. Language is her favourite collaborator. Follow her on Instagram (@whitneyfrenchwrites)