Jennifer Baker was named the 2019 Publishers Weekly Star Watch “SuperStar” because her “varied work championing diversity in publishing has made her an indispensable fixture in the book business.” Her essay “What We Aren’t” was also listed as a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2018. Her short story “The Pursuit of Happiness” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for 2017 by Newtown Literary Journal and is featured in the anthology What God Is Honored Here? Jennifer is the editor of Everyday People: The Color of Life—A Short Story Anthology with Atria Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster). Her YA novel Forgive Me Not will publish with Nancy Paulsen Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House) in August 2023. Jennifer is a publishing professional with over 20 years’ experience in a range of roles (editorial, production, media), as well as the creator/host of the podcast Minorities in Publishing. Jenn joined RWW for a Master of Craft Talk in December 2022.

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is also at work on television and film projects. She also has a newsletter, The Audacity and once had a podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda. Roxane joined RWW for a Master of Craft Talk in November 2022.

Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. He is the Libby Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. Laymon is the author of Long Division, which won the NAACP Image Award for fiction, and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. The audiobook, read by the author, was named the Audible 2018 Audiobook of the Year. Laymon is the recipient of 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. Laymon is at work on the books, Good God, and City Summer, Country Summer, and a number of other film and television projects. Kiese joined RWW for a Master of Craft Talk in August 2022.

Ryka Aoki’s first novel, He Mele a Hilo, was published by Topside Press in 2014. She is a two-time Lambda Literary Award finalist for her collections Seasonal Velocities, and Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul. Ryka’s work has appeared or been recognized in publications including Vogue, Elle, Bustle, Autostraddle, PopSugar, and Buzzfeed, as well as the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Ryka has been honored by the California State Senate for “extraordinary commitment to the visibility and well-being of Transgender people.” She has an MFA in creative writing from Cornell University, and is currently a professor of English at Santa Monica College. Aoki joined RWW for a Masters of Craft Talk in May 2022.

Elisabet Velasquez is a Boricua writer born in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She is a mother of two. Her poems are an exploration of her life. Velasquez has performed at Lincoln Center Out Of Doors, Pregones Theatre, Bushwick Starr Theatre, The Bowery Poetry Club, Brooklyn Museum, Museum Of Natural History, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Rutgers University, Williams College, Adelphi University, Pace University, Princeton University, James Madison University, Harvard University and The Amber Rose Slut Walk 2017. Her work has been featured on TIDAL, NBC, Now This, Huffington Post, Latina Magazine, Vibe Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, Centro Voces. She is the winner of Button Poetry's 2017 Poetry Video Contest. She is a 2019 Frost Place Fellow. Her debut novel, WHEN WE MAKE IT was named a book to watch for by The New York Times. You can find it wherever books are sold. Velasquez joined RWW for a Masters of Craft Talk in April 2022.

Lead story architect for Star Wars: The High Republic Daniel José Older is a New York Times best-selling author of the upcoming Young Adult fantasy novel Ballad & Dagger (book 1 of the Outlaw Saints series), the sci-fi adventure Flood City, the monthly comic series The High Republic Adventures. His other books include the historical fantasy series Dactyl Hill Squad, The Book of Lost Saints, the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, Star Wars: Last Shot, and the Young Adult series the Shadowshaper Cypher, including Shadowshaper, which was named one of the best fantasy books of all time by TIME magazine and one of Esquire’s 80 Books Every Person Should Read. He won the International Latino Book Award and has been nominated for the Kirkus Prize, The World Fantasy Award, the Andre Norton Award, the Locus, and more. Older joined RWW for a Masters of Craft Talk in March 2022.

MacArthur Genius Jesmyn Ward is described as the standout writer of her generation. The first woman, the first Black person, and the first person of color to win two National Book Awards for Fiction—joining the ranks of Faulkner, Bellow, Cheever, Roth, and Updike—Ward’s novels Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011) build deep empathy for the human condition, especially for Black folk. Her memoir, Men We Reaped, delves into the five years of Ward’s life in which she lost five young men—to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that follows poverty-born Black people. Men We Reaped won the Heartland Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Ward’s stories are largely set on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, where she grew up and still lives. Ward joined RWW for a Masters of Craft Talk in February 2022.

Electric Literature Editor-in-Chief Denne Michele Norris is a 2021 Out100 Honoree, her writing has been supported by MacDowell, Tin House, VCCA, and the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction, and appears in McSweeney's, American Short Fiction, and ZORA. She co-hosts the critically acclaimed podcast Food 4 Thot, and is hard at work on her debut novel. Follow her on Twitter and IG @thedennemichele. Norris joined RWW for a Masters of Craft Talk in January 2022.

NY Times bestselling writer Morgan Jerkins is the author of This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America, which was longlisted for PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay and a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, and Wandering In Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots. Her third book, Caul Baby: A Novel, was released by Harper Books in April 2021. A recently named Forbes 30 under 30 Leader in Media and a 2021 ASME Next Award winner, Jerkins regularly teaches at Columbia University’s School of the Arts in the Nonfiction department. Born and raised in Southern New Jersey, she’s currently based in Harlem and at work on television and film projects. Jerkins joined RWW for a Masters of Craft Talk in January 2022.

Kima Jones is the founder of Jack Jones Literary Arts, a Los Angeles-based book publicity agency for black and brown writers. In the spring of 2021, Kimajoined Triangle House Literary as an agent where she represents literary fiction, essay collections, memoir, hybrid texts, commercial fiction, poetry, speculative fiction, science fiction, and horror. Kima is at work on her first book, Butch, a memoir, forthcoming from Knopf in fall 2023. Jones joined RWW to deliver a Masters of Craft Talk in 2021.

Linda Villarosa is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, covering race and public health. In 2017, her cover story "America's Hidden HIV Epidemic" was honored with an Excellence in Journalism Award by the NLGJA. Linda's 2018 NY Times Magazine cover story on infant and maternal mortality in black mothers and babies was nominated for a National Magazine Award. Last year she contributed to the Pulitzer-Prize winning 1619 Project. The Association of LGBTQ Journalists inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2020. Linda is writing the book Under the Skin: Race, Inequality and the Health of a Nation for Doubleday. Villarosa joined RWW to deliver a Masters of Craft Talk in 2021.

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and a 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; the collection was also a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is being adapted for television by HBO Max with Tessa Thompson executive producing. Deesha’s work has been listed as Notable in the Best American Essays series, and her writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Brevity, Bitch, and elsewhere. Philyaw joined RWW to deliver a Masters of Craft Talk in 2021.

Joel L. Daniels, also known as Joél Leon, is a performer, author and story-teller who writes and tells stories for Black people. Born and raised in the Bronx, Joel specializes in moderating and leading conversations surrounding race, masculinity, mental health, creativity and the performing arts, with love at the center of his work and purpose. He is the author of Book About Things I Will Tell My Daughter and God Wears Durags, Too. His TED talk on healthy coparenting has been viewed over 1M times, globally. He’s a Creative Director at the New York Times. He lives in Brooklyn and is the father to Lilah and West. Daniels joined RWW to deliver a Masters of Craft Talk in 2021.

Mfoniso Udofia's plays, Sojourners, runboyrun, Her Portmanteau, and In Old Age have been seen at the American Conservatory Theater [A.C.T.], New York Theatre Workshop [NYTW], The Playwrights Realm, Magic Theater, National Black Theatre, Strand Theater Company, and Boston Court. She’s the recipient of the 2017 Helen Merrill Playwright Award, the 2017-18 McKnight National Residency and Commission at The Playwrights’ Center and is a member of the New Dramatists class of 2023. She has worked as a television writer on the third season of Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why and the first seasons of both Apple TV's Little America and Pachinko. She's also working on Amazon's A League of Their Own. Udofia joined RWW to deliver a Masters of Craft Talk in 2021.

Saeed Jones is the author of the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives, winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, the 2020 Stonewall Book Award/Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award, a 2020 Publishing Triangle Award, and a 2020 Lambda Literary Award. He is also the author of the poetry collection Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in Columbus, Ohio with his dog Caesar. Jones joined RWW to deliver a Masters of Craft Talk in 2021.

Vanessa Mártir is a NYC based writer, editor and educator. Vanessa’s work has been widely published, including in The NY Times, The Washington Post, Longreads, The Rumpus, Bitch Magazine, Smokelong Quarterly, the VONA/Voices Anthology, Dismantle, and the NYTimes Bestseller Not That Bad, edited by Roxane Gay. Vanessa is the recipient of a 2019 Bronx Recognizes Its Own (BRIO) Award in Creative Nonfiction, a 2019 AWP Kurt Brown Award in Creative Nonfiction and a 2013 Jerome Foundation Award for T&W Artists. She is the creator of the Writing Our Lives Workshop and the Writing the Mother Wound movement. Mártir joined RWW to deliver a Masters of Craft Talk in 2021.