Kenzie Allen, author of Cloud Missives

Kenzie Allen is the author of Cloud Missives (Tin House, 2024). A poet and multimodal artist, she is the recipient of a 92NY Discovery Prize, the James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, the 49th Parallel Award, and broadside prizes from Littoral Press and Sundress Publications. Her work can be found in Narrative, POETRY, Poets.org, Boston Review, Best New Poets, and other venues. Born in West Texas, Kenzie currently works as an Assistant Professor in Indigenous Literatures and Creative Writing at York University in Toronto. She is a first-generation descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin.

kenzieallen.co
Instagram & X: @cerena

DR. Ghada Alatrash, assistant professor, the School of Critical and Creative Studies | translator

Dr. Ghada Alatrash is Asst. Professor at the School of Critical and Creative Studies at Alberta University of the Arts, Calgary, Canada. Dr. Alatrash’s pedagogy and research are grounded in anti-orientalist, anti-colonial, anti-racism, and feminist frameworks that interrogate and challenge Western hegemonic narratives through an intersectional, transnational, post-colonial lens. Her current research speaks to Syrian art and creative expression as resistance to dictatorship. She is the translator of Huddud's House by Fadi Azzam.

https://www.auarts.ca/about-auarts/faculty-and-staff/dr-ghada-alatrash

X: @ghadaalatrash

jaha nailah avery, author of those who saw the sun: African American Oral Histories from the Jim Crow South

Jaha Nailah Avery is a writer, editor, harpist, and composer. Following law school, she worked in the startup space before launching her professional writing career. Her aim as a writer is to uplift, preserve, and honor Black voices and communities. Her work can be found in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, and Rolling Stone, among others. She is the author of Those Who Saw The Sun, an oral history collection featuring survivors of Jim Crow, and I Heard: An American Journey, a lyrical picture book chronicling 400+ years of African American history.

Linktr.ee/jay_nailah
Instagram: @jay_nailah

Mikael Awake, Author of Playground Moves AND co-Author of dapper dan: made in harlem

Mikael Awake is a literary culture worker and educator. His work has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and Oxford American, and was recently featured in Where Is Africa, Volume 1 (2024). With Daniel R. Day, he co-authored Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem (2019). Awake was a 2022-23 fellow at the Schomburg Center Scholars-in-Residence program, where he worked on Playground Moves, a narrative history of basketball at Rucker Park, forthcoming from Pantheon. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Film and Media Studies at Lafayette College.

www.mikaelawake.com

Fadi Azzam, author, Huddud’s House and sarmada

Fadi Azzam is a Syrian novelist and writer. He is the author of the highly-acclaimed Sarmada, longlisted for the 2012 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Huddud’s House, his second novel, was longlisted for the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. He was the culture and arts correspondent for Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper and his opinion columns have appeared in the New York Times and in newspapers across the Middle East.

http://www.kirkus.us-east-1.elasticbeanstalk.com/book-reviews/fadi-azzam/hudduds-house/

X: @feda3

Hannah bae, journalist

Hannah Bae is a Korean American freelance journalist, nonfiction writer and illustrator who is at work on a memoir about what it takes to build a beautiful adult life after healing from childhood trauma. She is a 2024 grantee in literature for the New York State Council on the Arts, a 2024 juror in nonfiction for The Kirkus Prize, a 2021 and 2022 Peter Taylor Fellow for The Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, and the 2020 nonfiction winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award.

https://www.hannahbae.com/
Instagram @hannahbae

brea baker, author of Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and The Modern Movement for Black Land ownership

Brea Baker is a freedom fighter and writer (in that order) who has been working on the frontlines for over a decade, first as a student activist and now as a writer and national strategist. Brea contributes op-eds and personal essays to ELLE, Harper’s BAZAAR, and Refinery 29 Unbothered. As a sought-after speaker and anti-racism consultant with a B.A. in Political Science from Yale University, Brea believes deeply in political imagination and the need for nuanced storytelling. Her book, Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft & The Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership, will be published June 2024 by One World (an imprint of Penguin Random House).

www.breabaker.com
Instagram: @freckledwhileblack

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, author of My Parents’ Marriage: A Novel

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is the author of the children’s picture book BLUE: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky (Knopf), illustrated by Caldecott Honor Artist Daniel Minter. BLUE was honored with the 2023 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award® and nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Brew-Hammond also wrote the young adult novel Powder Necklace (Atria), and edited RELATIONS: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices (HarperVia). Her newest novel for adult readers is My Parents' Marriage (Amistad). Every month, she co-leads a writing fellowship whose mission is to write light into darkness. Learn more at nanabrewhammond.com.

NanaBrewHammond.com
IG & FB: @nanaekuawriter
X: @nanaekua

rio cortez, author of golden ax and the river is my ocean

Rio Cortez is the the author of the poetry collection Golden Ax, which was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award in poetry and the PEN Open Book Award. She is also the New York Times bestselling author of picture books The ABCs of Black History, and the forthcoming The River Is My Ocean and The Blue Velvet Chair. Born and raised in Salt Lake City, she now lives, writes, and works in Harlem, New York.

riocortez.com
Instagram: @OhReallyRio

DéLana R. A. Dameron, author, redwood court and how god ends us

DéLana R. A. Dameron is an artist whose primary medium is storytelling. Her first book of fiction is Redwood Court (Random House, February 2024), a Reese Book Club pick. She is a graduate of New York University’s MFA program in poetry and holds a BA degree in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her debut poetry collection, How God Ends Us, was selected by Elizabeth Alexander for the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, and her second collection, Weary Kingdom, was chosen by Nikky Finney for the Palmetto Poetry Series. Dameron is also the founder of Saloma Acres, an equestrian and cultural space in her hometown in South Carolina, where she resides.

Edwidge Danticat, author of We’re Alone: Essays and everything inside: STORIES

Edwidge Danticat is the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. She received her B.A. in French Literature from Barnard College and her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Brown University. She is the author of seventeen books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection, Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist, The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; the novels-in-stories, The Dew Breaker, Claire of the Sea Light, and The Art of Death, a National Book Critics Circle finalist for Criticism. She has written seven books for children and young adults, a travel narrative, After the Dance, and a collection of essays, Create Dangerously.

Her memoir, Brother, I'm Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She is the editor of The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, The Beacon Best of 2000, Haiti Noir, Haiti Noir 2, and Best American Essays 2011. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, a 2018 Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow, a 2018 winner of the Neustadt Prize, a 2019 winner of the Saint Louis Literary Award, a 2020 United States Artist Fellow, a 2020 winner of the Vilceck Prize, and a 2023 winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Her story collection, Everything Inside, was a 2020 winner of the Bocas Fiction Prize, The Story Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Prize.

Her essay collection We're Alone is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in Fall 2024, and a novel, The Once and Future Dead, from Knopf in 2025.

https://afamstudies.columbia.edu/content/edwidge-danticat

susan muaddi darraj, Author of behind you is the sea AND a curious land

Susan Muaddi Darraj is an award-winning writer of books for adults and children. She won an American Book Award, two Arab American Book Awards, and a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. In 2018, she was named a USA Artists Ford Fellow. Her books include her linked short story collection, A Curious Land, as well as the Farah Rocks children’s book series. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing at Harford Community College and the Johns Hopkins University. Her new novel, BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA, was published in January 2024 by HarperVia. It received praise from The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Ms Magazine, and it was named a Best Book of 2024 by The New Yorker and Apple Books.

www.SusanMDBooks.com
Instagram & X: @SusanDarraj

Yohanca delgado, contributing Author, the best american short stories and the best american science fiction and fantasy

Yohanca Delgado's recent fiction appears in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Paris Review, One Story, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere. Her recent essays appear in TIME, The Believer, and New York Times Magazine. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from American University and is a recent Stanford University Wallace Stegner fellow in fiction and and a National Endowment for the Arts fellow.

www.yohanca.com
Instagram & X: @yodelnyc

jaquira diaz, AUTHOR OF I AM DELIBERATE AND ORDINARY GIRLS

Jaquira Díaz is the author of Ordinary Girls, winner of a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, a Lambda Literary Awards finalist, an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, an Indie Next Pick, a Library Reads pick, and finalist for the B&N Discover Prize. Ordinary Girls was optioned for television and is currently in development. Her debut novel, I Am Deliberate, is forthcoming fall 2025. She lives in New York and teaches at Columbia University.

www.jaquiradiaz.com
Instagram: @jaquiradiaz

Hannah Giorgis Yohannes, staff writer at the atlantic and contributor, A Mind to Silence and other stories: The Caine Prize for African Writing

Hannah Giorgis Yohannes is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she has reported on subjects such as the history of Black television in the United States and the expansive visions of African artists working across multiple disciplines. Her cultural criticism and reporting have appeared in publications including the New York Times magazine, The Guardian, Travel + Leisure, and Pitchfork, as well as books such as Black Futures. Hannah’s story in Addis Ababa Noir, set in Ethiopia’s capital city, was short-listed for the 2022 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. Since 2022, she has been a juror for the Peabody Awards.

http://hannahgiorgis.com
Instagram: @hannahgiorgis

kaitlyn Greenidge, Author of LIBERTIE AND We Love you charlie freeman

Kaitlyn Greenidge's debut novel is We Love You, Charlie Freeman (Algonquin Books), one of the New York Times Critics' Top 10 Books of 2016. Her writing has appeared in the Vogue, Glamour, the Wall Street Journal, Elle, Buzzfeed, Transition Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Believer, American Short Fiction and other places. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and the Guggenheim Foundation. She is currently Features Director at Harper’s Bazaar as well as a contributing writer for The New York Times. Her second novel, Libertie, is published by Algonquin Books and out now.

www.kaitlyngreenidge.com
Instagram: @kaitlyn_greenidge_author

thayer hastings, phd candidate, anthropology, CUNY Graduate center

Thayer Hastings is a PhD Candidate in the Anthropology Department at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City with a focus on political anthropology and Middle East Studies. His current dissertation project explores the politics of contemporary Palestinian life in the militarily occupied city of Jerusalem from the convergence of intimacy and bureaucracy.

X: @ThayerHastings

alejandro heredia, Author of loca

Alejandro Heredia is a writer from The Bronx. He has received fellowships from LAMBDA Literary, Dominican Studies Institute, UNLV's Black Mountain Institute, and elsewhere. He received an MFA from Hunter College. His debut novel LOCA will be out February 2025 from Simon and Schuster.

www.aleheredia.com
Instagram: @aleherex

JP infante, author of on the tip of your mother’s tongue AND Aquí y Allá: un retrato de la comunidad Dominicana en Washington Heights

JP Infante is the author of On the Tip of Your Mother’s Tongue and Aquí y Allá: un retrato de la comunidad Dominicana en Washington Heights. He is the winner of PEN’s Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and Thirty West’s Chapbook contest. His writing has appeared in Kweli, The Poetry Project, Rigorous, A Gathering of the Tribes, and elsewhere. He has been awarded scholarships and fellowships from the NY State Writers Institute, PEN America and The Center for Fiction. He holds an MFA from The New School.

infantejp.com
Instagram and X: @infantejp

amina iro, associate editor, legacy lit, Hachette book group

Amina Iro is an Associate Editor at Legacy Lit. She started her publishing career as an Editorial Assistant at Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, where she worked on titles by esteemed authors such as Cicely Tyson and Zora Neale Hurston. A writer and performance poet originally from Prince George’s County, MD, Amina was a 2020 Fellow for the Watering Hole Winter Writer’s Retreat. She has performed at venues in the US, England, Nigeria, and South Africa. Amina is a graduate of the First Wave program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she studied Neurobiology and English Creative Writing. She is interested in nonfiction books with brave motifs that invite readers to the juncture of identity and social change and create new awareness through crucial, yet overlooked connections. In particular, she is passionate about social science, psychology, and narratives from women and people of color, as well as fiction, poetry, and literature that illuminate the many facets of Black and queer life.

renée jarvis, literary agent at Triangle House Literary

Renée Jarvis is an agent at Triangle House Literary. Born and raised in New York City, she graduated from Brooklyn College with a BFA in Creative Writing. She previously worked as an assistant and agent at MacKenzie Wolf Literary and spent two years as a writing teacher at the non-profit organization Legal Outreach, finally joining Triangle House in 2021. As an agent, she primarily seeks to represent writers who illuminate culture and history, craft story rich with intrigue, and add to our understanding of the human condition through artful writing.

https://www.triangle.house/
Instagram: @renoiriste

kima jones, literary agent, triangle house literary and author, butch, a memoir

Kima Jones is the founder of Jack Jones Literary Arts, a book publicity agency for black and brown writers. In 2019, Kima founded Culture, Too—a mentorship conference for black and brown cultural critics, and in the spring of 2021, Kima Jones joined Triangle House Literary as an agent. Kima is at work on her first book, Butch, a memoir, forthcoming from Knopf.

kimajones.com
Instagram: @thesweatbtwn
X: @kima_jones

crystal hana kim, author of the stone home AND If you leave me

Crystal Hana Kim is the author of The Stone Home (April 2024) and If You Leave Me (2018), which was named a best book of 2018 by over a dozen publications. She is the recipient of the 2022 National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award, nominated by Min Jin Lee. She is also a 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize winner. Her work has been published in The Paris Review, Guernica, ELLE, and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor at Apogee Journal and lives in Brooklyn, New York with her family.

www.crystalhanakim.com
Instagram & X: @crystalhanak

iwalani kim, associate agent at sanford j. greenburger associates

Iwalani Kim is seeking adult upmarket and literary fiction and select nonfiction. In fiction, she loves coming-of-age narratives, family dramas, and stories that challenge systems of power. She is often drawn to a strong sense of voice and/or place, whether the storytelling is grounded in realism or engages with a speculative element. She gravitates toward lush prose, wry humor, irreverent characters, and a sense of yearning. Iwalani is also looking for narrative nonfiction such as memoir, cultural histories, and cultural criticism. She would love to work with writers that are engaging with history, design and architecture, sociology, and anthropology, especially from a leftist angle. Some of her favorite authors include Raven Leilani, Ling Ma, T Kira Madden, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Samanta Schweblin, and Asali Solomon, and she would love to consider any manuscripts in a similar vein. She is passionate about championing the work of underrepresented authors and would especially love to work with Pacific Islander writers.

Samuel Kọ́láwọlé, author of the road to the salt sea

Samuel Kọ́láwọlé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. His work has appeared in AGNI, New England Review, Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, Gulf Coast, Kweli, Washington Square Review, Harvard Review, Image Journal, and other literary publications. He has received numerous residencies and fellowships and has been a finalist for the Graywolf Press Africa Prize, shortlisted for UK’s The First Novel Prize, and won an Editor-Writer Mentorship Program for Diverse Writers from The Word for Diversity. He studied at the University of Ibadan and holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing with distinction from Rhodes University, South Africa; is graduate of the MFA in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts; and earned his PhD in English and Creative Writing from Georgia State University. Kọ́láwọlé teaches fiction writing full-time at Pennsylvania State University, where he is an Assistant Professor of English and African Studies. His novel The Road to the Salt Sea will be published by Amistad/HarperCollins in July 2024.

megha majumdar, author of a burning

Megha Majumdar is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel A Burning, which was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, and the American Library Association's Andrew Carnegie Medal. It was named one of the best books of the year by media including The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, Vogue, and TIME Magazine. A 2022 Whiting Award winner, she lives in New York.

www.meghamajumdar.com
X: @MeghaMaj
Instagram: @megha.maj

Ayana Mathis, Author of the unsettled AND The twelve tribes of hattie

Ayana Mathis is the author of THE TWELVE TRIBES OF HATTIE (Knopf, 2012) and most recently, THE UNSETTLED (Knopf, 2023) which was named a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book of 2023, a best of 2023 by The New Yorker, Publisher’s Weekly, an Oprah Daily Best Novels of 2023, and a Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2023. The New York Times calls it, “Poignant, heartbreaking."

Her first novel, THE TWELVE TRIBES OF HATTIE, was a New York Times Bestseller, the second selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0, a 2013 New York Times Notable Book, NPR Best Book of 2013, and was long listed for the Dublin Literary Award and nominated for Hurston/Wright Foundation's Legacy Award. Mathis’s essays and criticism have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, T Magazine, The Financial Times, Rolling Stone, Guernica and Glamour. Currently pursuing her Masters of Divinity at Union Theological Seminary, Mathis’s most recent nonfiction explores the intertwining of faith and American literature in her five- part New York Times essay series “Imprinted By Belief”.

Her work has been supported by the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Bogliasco Foundation. She was a 2020-2021 American Academy in Berlin Prize Fellow. Mathis received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and went on to become the first African-American woman to serve as an Assistant Professor in that program. She currently teaches at Hunter College in the MFA Program. 

 https://www.ayanamathis.com/author

tracie morris, author of human/nature poems & handholding 5 kinds: Sonic, textual engagements

Tracie Morris (MFA, Poetry, Hunter College, CUNY, PhD, Performance Studies, NYU, Dr. Morris was the inaugural Distinguished Visiting Professor of Poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop before joining the Workshop as its first African-American tenured Professor of Poetry. She is currently also a Visiting Professor of Practice at Brown University. Tracie has presented innovative poetry, performance art and theory in over 30 countries and is the author/editor of 11 books. She is a Guggenheim Poetry Fellow. Tracie is a Cave Canem alumna and former board member and designated a Master Artist of the Atlantic Center for the Arts. 

traciemorris.com

Roma Panganiban, literary agent, Janklow & Nesbit Associates

Roma Panganiban began her publishing career at The Gernert Company before joining Janklow & Nesbit in 2019. She works with writers across the adult and children’s markets.

Roma's taste leans literary, but she is open to a broad range of fiction, including novels and collections that embrace genre elements—speculative, historical, mystery, sci-fi, fantasy—as well as those that defy categorization altogether. She values prose that is thoughtful, clear, clever, and beautiful; compelling, idiosyncratic voices; and fresh, unexpected perspectives, particularly those of writers from underrepresented communities.

Roma is also interested in narrative nonfiction that reorients our understanding of history, culture, science, society, education, and ourselves, whether by established experts or fiercely curious upstarts, as well as creative nonfiction that appeals equally to the heart, mind, and sense of humor.

https://www.janklowandnesbit.com/people/roma-panganiban

emily raboteau, author of Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against ‘the Apocalypse’

Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, and parenthood. Her most recent book is Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against ‘the Apocalypse.’ Since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has focused on writing about the climate crisis. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, Raboteau’s writing has recently appeared and been anthologized in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Nation, Best American Science Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and elsewhere. She serves as nonfiction faculty at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference and is a full professor at the City College of New York (CUNY) in Harlem, once known as “the poor man’s Harvard.” She lives with her family in the Bronx.

www.emilyraboteau.net
Instagram & X: @emilyraboteau

meredith simonoff, LITERARY AGENT, The Gernert company

Meredith joined The Gernert Company in 2022 after ten years as an agent at DeFiore and Company, preceded by six years at the Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency. Her tastes encompass literary and crossover fiction, creative nonfiction, and the occasional illustrated work. She inclines toward bold, humane storytelling that rivets the heart and sharpens one’s ability to make sense of the world. This especially includes works as geographically, historically and emotionally specific as they are resonant, as well as literary-leaning narratives that incorporate ‘genre’ elements to electric result.

Some of the prizes and honors Meredith’s clients have been nominated for or have received include The Booker Prize, The Story Prize, the PEN Jean Stein Award, the “5 Under 35” honor by the National Book Foundation, the Whiting Award, the National Book Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the National Book Critic Circle’s John Leonard Best First Book Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the NYPL Young Lions Award, the LA Times Book Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the Stonewall Book Award, and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. Among Meredith’s clients are Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Jessamine Chan, Alejandro Heredia, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, Dantiel W. Moniz, Nadia Owusu, Brandon Taylor, Cecily Wong, and Leni Zumas.

Born in New York City and raised in New Jersey, Meredith graduated from Yale University. She is proud stepmom to two daughters.

https://www.thegernertco.com/home-page-the-agency

delia selina taylor, editor, riverhead books

Delia Selina Taylor is an editor at Riverhead Books (a subsidiary company of Penguin). She has edited works by Brit Bennett, Akwaeke Emezi, Danielle Evans and others.

Taylor is also a writer. Her work is largely concerned with voicelessness, myth, and the performativity of race and gender. She is both a Kimbilio and Kweli Fellow and her writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and Tin House Summer Workshop. She is working on a novel. Taylor lives in Brooklyn and is a proud dog-mom.

https://www.penguin.com/riverhead-overview/

vincent toro, author of hivestruck and tertulia

Vincent Toro is a Boricua poet, playwright, and performer. He is the author of three poetry collections: Hivestruck, Tertulia, and Stereo.Island.Mosaic., which won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. He has received the Caribbean Writer’s Cecile De Jongh Poetry Prize, Repertorio Español’s Nuestras Voces Playwriting Award, a Poet’s House Emerging Poets Fellowship, a New York Council for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and a New Jersey State Council for the Arts Writer’s Fellowship. He is Assistant Professor of English at Rider University, a Dodge Foundation Poet, and a poetry editor for Kweli Literary Journal.

http://www.grito.org/vincent-s-bio.html

Renée Watson, author of skin & bones

Renée Watson is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. Over the past decade she has authored fifteen young adult books, which have collectively sold more than a million copies. She received a Coretta Scott King Award and a Newbery Honor for Piecing Me Together and high praise for 1619 Project: Born on the Water. Watson is on the Council of Writers for the National Writing Project and is a member of the Academy of American Poets’ Education Advisory Council. She is also a writer-in-residence at The Solstice Low-Residency MFA Creative Writing Program. Renée splits her time between New York City and Portland, Oregon.

www.reneewatson.net
X: @reneewauthor
Instagram: @harlemportland

Tyriek White, author of we are a haunting

Tyriek Rashawn White is a writer, musician, and educator from Brooklyn, NY. He is the author of WE ARE A HAUNTING (Astra House, 2023), winner of The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. The novel was also longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, and a finalist of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction. In 2024, he was named a National Book Foundation '5 Under 35' honoree.

He has received fellowships from Callaloo, New York State Writers Institute, and Key West Literary Seminar, among other honors. He is currently the media director of Lampblack Literary Foundation, which seeks to provide mutual aid and various resources to Black writers across the diaspora. He holds a degree in Creative Writing & Africana Studies from Pitzer College and has earned an MFA from the University of Mississippi.

Crystal Wilkinson, author of praisesong for the kitchen ghosts AND Perfect Black

Crystal Wilkinson, a recent fellowship recipient of the Academy of American Poets, is the award-winning author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a culinary memoir, Perfect Black, a collection of poems, and three works of fiction—The Birds of Opulence, Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. She is the recipient of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, an O. Henry Prize, a USA Artists Fellowship, and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. Named Kentucky’s Poet Laureate from 2021 to 2023, she has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, The Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, The Hermitage Foundation and others. Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, STORY, Agni Literary Journal, Emergence, Oxford American and Southern Cultures. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is Bush-Holbrook Professor in Creative Writing.

https://www.crystalewilkinson.net/
Instagram:@crystalwilki