Patrice Gaines is an author and veteran journalist. Her best-selling autobiography Laughing in the Dark details her journey from heroin user, abused woman and convicted felon to award-winning journalist.

Most recently, she co-authored “Say Their Names: How Black Lives Came to Matter in America.” (2021)

As a Washington Post reporter, Ms. Gaines was on a team named as a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She has received residencies at both Yaddo and MacDowell artists’ communities.

She has written commentary for National Public Radio and feature articles and essays for numerous publications, including Essence, Yes! and the New York Times magazine. She received a Soros Justice Media Fellowship to write a series about the impact of incarceration on the Black community. Ms. Gaines is a longtime justice advocate and abolitionist.

Nawaaz Ahmed was born in Tamil Nadu, India. Before turning to writing, he was a computer scientist, researching search algorithms for Yahoo. His debut novel 'Radiant Fugitives’ (2021) was a finalist for the 2022 Pen/Faulkner Award and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and was longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the Aspen Literary Prize. He holds an MFA from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is a former Kundiman and Lambda Literary Fellow, as well as the recipient of residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Djerassi, and VCCA. He currently lives in Brooklyn.

Bronx, New York native, Roya Marsh is a nationally recognized poet, performer, educator and activist. She is the author of dayliGht (MCDxFSG, 2020) and works feverishly toward Queer Liberation and dismantling white supremacy. Roya is the co-founder of the Bronx Poet Laureate initiative, a PEN America Emerging Voices Mentor, 2021 faculty with Lamda Literary's Writer's retreat for Emerging LGBTQ+ Voices and the awardee of the 2021 Lotus Foundation Prize for poetry.

Roya’s work has been featured in numerous places including, The Academy of American Poets, Poetry Magazine, the Village Voice, Nylon Magazine, Huffington Post, The Root, Button Poetry, Carnegie Hall, The Apollo Theater, Lexus Verses and Flow, NBC, BET and The BreakBeat Poets Vol 2: Black Girl Magic(Haymarket 2018).

Find out more & help to support Black futures at BLKJOY.COM

Louise K Waakaa’igan, Anishinaabekwe poet, is enrolled at Odaawaa Zaaga’Iganing (Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation) in northern Wisconsin. She published her first collection of poetry, This is Where, in 2020 through Willow Books, Aquarius Press. Louise is the recipient of the 2017 PEN Poetry Prize for her first-place poem This is Where. Her work has been previously published in The Sentences That Create Us, Drop a Kite, PEN America, 21 Mythologies, The Moon Magazine, 27th Letter, Words in Gray Scale, and Doors Adjacent.

Since being released from incarceration in 2019, Louise has been an active member of her community, both on her tribal homeland, but in her writing community as well. She is an advocate for truth, justice, and evolution of self. She is currently working on her second collection of poetry.