Andrea Hairston (she/her) is a novelist, playwright, and L. Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor Emerita of Theatre and Africana Studies at Smith College. Novels: Archangels of Funk; Will Do Magic For Small Change, a New York Times Editor’s pick and finalist for the Mythopoeic, Lambda, and Otherwise Awards; Redwood and Wildfire, Otherwise and Carl Brandon Award winner; Master of Poisons on the 2020 Kirkus Review’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy; and Mindscape, Carl Brandon Award winner. Her short fiction appears in So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Visions of the Future; New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color; Trouble the Waters and Lightspeed Magazine. Plays and essays appear in Lonely Stardust.

Jamil Jan Kochai (he/him) is the author of The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories, a finalist for the 2022 National Book Award and a winner of the 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize and the 2023 Clark Fiction Prize. His debut novel 99 Nights in Logar was a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Best American Short Stories. His essays have been published at The New Yorker, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Kochai was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and a Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He teaches creative writing at California State University, Sacramento.

Nadia Owusu (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based writer and urbanist. Her memoir, Aftershocks, was selected as a best book of 2021 by over a dozen publications, including Time, Vogue, Esquire, and the BBC, and has been translated into five languages. It was a New York Times Editors’ Choice pick, named one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year, and selected by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai for her Literati book club. Nadia is the winner of a Whiting Award in nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Orion, Granta, The Paris Review Daily, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Bon Appétit, Travel + Leisure, and others. She teaches creative writing at Columbia University and at the Mountainview MFA program and is the Director of Storytelling at Frontline Solutions.

porsha olayiwola is a native of chicago who writes, lives and organizes in boston, where she is the current poet laureate. olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator and curator who uses afro-futurism and surrealism to examine historical and current issues in the black, woman, and queer diasporas. she is an individual world poetry slam champion and the founder of the roxbury poetry festival. porsha olayiwola is currently teaching in her role as assistant professor of poetry at Emerson College. she is the author of i shimmer sometimes, too. her work can be found in or forthcoming from with triquarterly magazine, black warrior review, the boston globe, essence magazine, redivider, split this rock, the nba, the academy of american poets, netflix, wilderness press, the museum of fine arts and elsewhere.

Camille U. Adams, Ph.D. is the author of How To Be Unmothered: a Trinidadian memoir, forthcoming on June 3rd, 2025 from Restless Books and currently available for preorder. She was a finalist in the Restless Books Prize in New Immigrant Writing in 2023. Camille has an MFA in Poetry and a doctorate in Creative Nonfiction.  She’s been awarded Best of The Net—nonfiction 2024, has received five Pushcart Prize nominations and three Best of the Net nominations. Her writing has also been recognised as a notable essay in Best American Essays 2022. Camille’s awarded fellowships include an inaugural Tin House Reading Fellowship, an inaugural Granta nature writing workshop fellowship, a McKnight Doctoral Fellowship, and several others. Camille is also a Tin House alum, and served as a juried reader for T.H. for two consecutive years.

Camille Hernandez is the city of Anaheim’s third Poet Laureate (2024-2026). She is a Black and Filipina author moving through the world as a kapwa womanist. Equipped by her matriarchal cultures and motherhood journey, Camille writes and leads from the fluid depths of tenderness, protection, and intuition. Camille was an inaugural fellow of Roots.Wounds.Words. Storytellers of Color Retreat and a current fellow of The Watering Hole. She authored the biomythography book The Hero and the Whore. Her poems are published in So to Speak, Braving the Body, and Health Promotion Practice. She’s the editor of Anaheim Poetry Review.

Celeste Chan is a writer and artist, schooled by Do-It-Yourself culture and immigrant parents from Malaysia and the Bronx, NY. She creates, collaborates, and curates to amplify voices within marginalized communities. For ten years, Celeste co-directed Queer Rebels, a queer and trans people of color arts project. She's presented at colleges across the country and shared work at national and international festivals. A Periplus mentee, Celeste facilitated Queer Ancestors Project youth workshops, and served on Foglifter Literary Journal’s Board. Recently, she completed an Artist Residency at SF Public Library. She’s currently writing her family memoir. 

Elizabeth DeHaan is a Jamaican-Guyanese-American writer, poet, and the creative force behind enovaturient.com, a lifestyle blog highlighting world news, mental health, dating and everything in between. She has had her work published in Spoken Black Girl and been a contributor to XONecole.com Wit & Grace Magazine, Travel Under the Radar, and Black + Well. In her day to day, she works as an Executive Assistant at Alight, an INGO working with displaced communities. She is a certified yoga instructor, and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. 

Faithna Geffrard is a Haitian American writer from South Florida. She uses words to examine the horrifying and humorous. She is an alumna of Roots. Wounds. Words., the Wild Seeds Retreat, and VONA. Her writing has been featured in Panorama Journal, The Missing Slate, Little Old Lady, Raising Mothers, and more. Her short story “No Ponyboy” was nominated by Susurrus Magazine for a Best Small Fictions Award. This February Faithna will attend the Tin House 2025 Winter Online Workshop.

Jane Wong is the author of the memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, out now from Tin House (2023). She is also the author of two books of poetry: How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James 2021) and Overpour (Action Books 2016).

Joanna Volpe (she/her)  is a literary agent and the president of New Leaf Literary & Media, where she represents a broad range of fiction and non-fiction. Joanna works with incredible talent such as Tracy Deonn, John Picacio, Leigh Bardugo, Gabby Rivera, Daniel José Older, Holly Black, Samira Ahmed, Veronica Roth, Amerie and the packager Electric Postcard Entertainment, to name a few. Joanna seeks unique and diverse perspectives, and she has a soft spot for speculative and/or fantastical storytelling. You can find her on Instagram at @JoSVolpe. Photo cred: Henry Stampfel

Kat Boyd is proud to have completed recent fellowships and workshops with Kimbilio Fiction, Roots.Wounds.Words and Tin House. She has been a Grub Street Short Story Incubator  participant and longlisted for the Ploughshares Emerging Fellows and the Voyages YA Summer Prose competitions. She is proud to have been awarded a Tin House First Novel Residency for 2024 and is currently prepping that novel for submission.

Kelly Macías (she/her) is a writer and storyteller based in Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared in Prose Online, The Sunlight Press, Newsweek, The Baltimore Sun, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships and artistic residencies through SeaSalted Honey, Roots Wounds Words, and Anaphora Arts and has received recognition for her work from BlogHer Voices of the Year, NYC Midnight, 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.

Laia Bové (she/her/ella) is an Afro-Catalan former professional athlete living with a chronic illness. Having gained valuable insights into the benefits of self-care and slowing down, she is dedicated to sharing accessible and sustainable yoga and meditation practices to help people create a more harmonious life. As a writer and creative, Laia is passionate about supporting other creatives and innovators and fostering a genuine community dedicated to finding balance while staying productive and inspired.

Lori L. Tharps is an award-winning author, journalist, and speaker. A self-described storytelling evangelist, Tharps is a recognized voice in the areas of race, identity politics and African-American culture. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Glamour and Essence magazines. In 2021, Lori moved with her family to the south of Spain, where she launched Reed, Write & Create, a podcast and platform that celebrates and supports BIPoC stories and storytellers. The Reed, Write, & Create podcast was named Best Literary Podcast by the Black Podcasting Awards in 2023. A graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Lori is the author of several critically acclaimed books including, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America and Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain.

Melania Luisa Marte is an American writer, poet, and musician from New York living between Texas and The Dominican Republic. Marte's debut collection of poetry, PLANTAINS AND OUR BECOMING is published by Tiny Reparations, an imprint of Plume and Penguin Random House. You can follow her journey on social media: @MelaTocaTierra.

Nikesha Elise Williams is a two-time Emmy award winning producer and an award-winning author. Her books have garnered awards and accolades from Library Journal, The National Association of Black Journalists, The Black Caucus of the American Library Association, and the Florida Authors and Publishers Association. Nikesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, a DeGroot Foundation Courage to Write Grantee, and producer and host of Black & Published podcast Her forthcoming novel, The Seven Daughters of Dupree was acquired by Scout Press and will be published January 27, 2026. Nikesha's work has also appeared in The Washington Post, ESSENCE, and VOX. She lives in Florida with her family.

Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks,profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review. She teaches poets and writers at the Stonecoast MFA at the University of Southern Maine.

Rashi Rohatgi was a 2023 RWW fiction fellow. She is the Indo-American-Norwegian author of two prize-winning novellas – Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow (2020), about Indian teenage revolutionaries in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War, and Sita in Exile(2023), a Hindu mythology-inspired story of an autistic mother and her pet mongoose in the Norwegian Arctic – and the translator of the first English translation of the seminal Mauritian labor-consciousness novel Blood-Red Sweat/Lal Pasina (2023). Her writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Midnight Breakfast, The Toast, and other venues. She has read and edited for several journals and presses, including Abode, The Rumpus, and Waxwing.  

Reema Rao (she/her) is a Konkani American fiction writer from Chicago, the unceded homelands of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations. In 2024, she was named winner of the Larry Brown Short Story Award from Pithead Chapel and awarded the inaugural Jennifer Weiner Fellowship by Blue Stoop. A Best of the Net finalist, a Wigleaf Top 50 longlister, and a Pushcart Prize nominee, her work appears in Witness, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. She lives with her husband, son, and dog.

Known as the first literary agent to represent marginalized creators in the digital publishing space, Saritza is a self-proclaimed geek who loves escaping into worlds and stories from all walks of life. Her love of great storytelling is what has driven her work in the publishing industry for the past 18 years, and her passion for amplifying queer and BIPOC voices is what continues to drive her today. An avid romance, fantasy, and science-fiction reader, Saritza is a strong advocate of traditionally underserved and underrepresented communities. She enjoys fresh voices in YA and adult genre fiction. 

SG Huerta (they/he/el) is a queer Xicanx writer, editor, and organizer. A 2023 Roots. Wounds. Words. Fellow, 2024 RWW Writer-in-Residence, and Tin House alum, they spend their time freelancing and editing poetry for Abode Press. 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 Tejas with their partner and two cats, working towards liberation for oppressed and colonized peoples everywhere.

Vanessa Mártir, a multi-genre writer, editor, and educator, is the founder of the Writing Our Lives Workshop and the Writing the Mother Wound Movement. She is a 2021 Letras Boricuas fellow, and her work has been widely published, including in The NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Longreads, The Rumpus, and the anthologies Not That Bad, edited by Roxane Gay and So We Can Know, edited by Aracelis Girmay. When she's not writing or teaching, you can find Vanessa hiking an old growth forest or putting her hands in the earth.