Award-winning Authors
Annabelle Tometich went from medical-school reject to line cook to journalist to author. She spent 18 years as a food writer and restaurant critic for The News-Press in her hometown of Fort Myers, Florida. Her first book, The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony (2024, Little Brown) was called “sweet, sharp” by The New York Times and won the 2025 Southern Book Prize for Nonfiction. Tometich’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, USA Today, Catapult, the Tampa Bay Times, and many more outlets. She has won more than a dozen awards for her stories, including first place for Food & Travel Writing at the 2022 Sunshine State Awards. She (still) lives in Fort Myers with her husband, two children, and her ever-fiery Filipina mother.
Andrea Freeman is an author, law professor, and Fulbright scholar. She is a national and international expert on the intersections of race and food policy, health, and consumer credit. Much of her work explores her pioneering theory of food oppression, which examines how food law and policy, influenced by corporate interests, disproportionately harms marginalized communities. Freeman is the author of Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch, Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History and Winner of the James Beard Media Award in Food Issues and Advocacy (Metropolitan 2024), and Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice (Stanford University Press 2019), in addition to book chapters, law review articles, and op-eds. Skimmed is currently in development for a documentary with Topic Pictures.
Patricia Engel is the author of five works of fiction. Her most recent book, a short story collection titled The Faraway World, was a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, longlisted for The Story Prize, and named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year, and a Boston Globe Best Book of the Year. Her novel Infinite Country, a New York Times bestseller, won the New American Voices Award, a Florida Book Award, was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. It was also named a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year, a Reese’s Book Club pick, an Indie Next pick, Entertainment Weekly’s #1 Best Book of the Year, and more. Patricia has been awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and an O. Henry Award. Her books have been translated into many languages and selected as an NEA Big Read. Born to Colombian parents and raised in New Jersey, Patricia is a graduate of New York University and earned her MFA at Florida International University. She is a Professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami.
Hafizah Augustus Geter is a Nigerian-American poet, writer, and literary agent born in Zaria, Nigeria, and raised in Akron, Ohio, and Columbia, South Carolina. Her debut memoir, The Black Period: On Personhood, Race & Origin, (Random House, 2022) won the 2023 PEN Open Book Award, the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Nonfiction in addition to being a 2023 Chautauqua Prize Finalist, a New Yorker Magazine Best Book of 2022, a Good Morning America Anticipated Book, and an Amazon's Best of the Month Editor's Pick. Hafizah serves on the Brooklyn Literary Council and as the poetry committee co-chair for the Brooklyn Book Festival. She is a Cave Canem poetry fellow, a VONA/Voices nonfiction fellow, a Bread Loaf 2021 Katherine Bakeless nonfiction fellow, a 2018 92Y Women in Power Fellow, and the recipient of an Amy Award from Poets & Writers. She's previously worked at Cave Canem, Poets House, and PEN America, and served on the board of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts.
Omkari L. Williams is the Gold Nautilus award-winning and bestselling author of Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World (Without A Bullhorn). Her book helps readers identify their “activist archetype" and map a personal action plan for engaging in small, change-making activities with potentially big impacts.
Nicholas Buccola is a political philosopher who specializes in American political thought. He is also a writer, lecturer, and teacher, and author of One Man’s Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle over an American Ideal (Princeton University Press in October 2025). His previous books include The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America( Princeton University, 2019), which won the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction, and The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty (New York University Press, 2012).
Gloria Muñoz is a Colombian American writer, translator, and advocate for multilingual literacy. She is the author of This is the Year, Your Biome Has Found You, and Danzirly, which won the Ambroggio Prize and the Gold Medal Florida Book Award. Her other honors include an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellowship, Hedgebrook Fellowship, being a Macondista, Highlights Foundation’s Diverse Verse Fellowship, Lumina’s Multilingual Writing Award, and a part of Las Musas. She is proud to be St. Pete's first Latina poet laureate. She holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and the University of South Florida. A proponent of cross-disciplinary collaboration, Gloria has worked alongside botanists, musicians, dancers, historians, classicists, visual artists, conservationists, and neuroscientists. Through Moonlit Música, a bilingual media company she co-founded, she writes narrative scripts and songs for children, adolescent, and adult programming. Notable clients include The New York Times, Comedy Central, hulu, Rebel Girls, Apple tv, Google, FX, and Hatch, for which she has developed beloved sleep story characters, including Mari Mariposa, a bilingual butterfly with a passion for community building.
Bridgett M. Davis is the author of the memoir Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy, published by Harper Books in spring 2025. This moving memoir examines the vivacious life of Bridgett’s older sister Rita. It is full of joy and heartbreak, family history and American history, and uses Rita’s life as a lens to examine the persistent effects of racism in the lives of Black women. Her first memoir, The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life In The Detroit Numbers, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a 2020 Michigan Notable Book, named a Best Book of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews, BuzzFeed, NBC News and Parade Magazine, and featured as a clue on the quiz show Jeopardy!. The upcoming film adaptation will be produced by Plan B Entertainment and released by Searchlight Pictures. Davis is also the writer and director of the 1998 award-winning feature film Naked Acts, newly restored by Milestone Films and released in 2024 to critical acclaim, and screening in theaters across the US as well as international venues.
Joel Christian Gill is the Inaugural Chair of Boston University’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Narrative and Associate Professor in the CFA School of Visual Arts. He is also a cartoonist and historian who speaks nationally on the importance of sharing stories. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir Fights: One Boy's Triumph Over Violence, cited as one of the best graphic novels of 2020 by The New York Times and for which he was awarded the 2021 Cartoonist Studio Prize. His newest work is the graphic novel of Ibram Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Ten Speed Press 2023). Gill has dedicated his life to creating stories to build connections with readers through empathy, compassion and, ultimately, humanity.
Tony Keith Jr., PhD is an award-winning Black American gay poet, spoken word artist, and Hip-Hop educational leader from Washington DC. Or, you can just call him an “Ed Emcee”. He is the debut author of How the Boogeyman Became a Poet (Odyssey Award for Audiobook Excellence Winner) and Knucklehead (February 2025), both published by HarperCollins. A multi-year fellow of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Tony has featured performances at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington National Cathedral, Historic Lincoln Theatre, Bus Boys & Poets, and in schools and communities around the world including South Africa, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago and many more. His poem Black Man On Fire won first prize in the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest and his performance of Code Switched is featured in the award-winning documentary series Talking Black in America and published in the book Centering Possibility in Black Education.
Helon Habila is an acclaimed Nigerian novelist, poet, and a professor of Creative Writing at George Mason University. He speaks nationally and internationally on the subjects of immigration, art and activism. He has delivered at the DeGraaf Lecture at Hope College and has spoken at the Abantu Lit Fest in South Africa. Habila’s first novel, Waiting for an Angel, received the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book He also authored Measuring Time, which was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Dublin IMPAC Prize and won the Virginia Library Foundation Prize for fiction. His third novel, Oil on Water, won many prizes including the Pen/Open Book Award; Commonwealth Best Book, Africa Region; and The Orion Book Award. To illuminate the long history of colonialism—and unmask cultural and religious dynamics—that gave rise to the conflicts that have ravaged the region to this day, Habila wrote The Chibok Girls, a nonfiction account of the girls abducted by Boko Haram. His latest novel, Travelers, examines the lives of African immigrants in Europe and inscribes unforgettable signposts―both unsettling and luminous―marking the universal journey in pursuit of love and home. In addition to being a novelist, Habila has written award-winning poetry and short-story collections, including Prison Stories which won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2001.
Kai Harris is a writer and educator from Detroit, Michigan, who uses her voice to uplift the Black community through realistic fiction centered on the experiences of Black girls and Black women. Kai's publication credits include Guernica, Lit Hub, The Everygirl, and The New York Times Book Review. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, What the Fireflies Knew, won the 2023 Phillis Wheatley Book Award in Fiction, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and was selected as a Marie Claire Book Club pick, amongst other honors. In addition to fiction, Kai has published poetry, personal essays, and peer-reviewed academic articles on topics related to Black girlhood and womanhood, the slave narrative genre, motherhood, and Black identity.
Ladee Hubbard is the author of two novels: The Talented Ribkins which received the 2017 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and the 2018 Hurston-Wright Award for Debut Fiction, and The Rib King (2021). The Last Suspicious Holdout (2022), her collection of short stories, explores the relationships between friends, family and strangers in a Black neighborhood over fifteen years. She is a recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, The Berlin Prize and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship. She received a BA in English from Princeton University, a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a PhD in Folklore and Mythology from the University of California, Los Angeles.
John Jennings is a professor, author, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times Bestseller, 2018 Eisner Winner, and winner of the Hugo Award for his co-adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s dystopian novel The Parable of the Sower. As Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside (UCR), Jennings examines the visual culture of race in various media forms including film, illustrated fiction, and comics and graphic novels. He is also the director of Abrams ComicArts imprint Megascope, which publishes graphic novels focused on the experiences of people of color. Jennings is co-editor of the 2016 Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art (Rutgers) and co-founder/organizer of The Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. He is co-founder and organizer of the MLK NorCal’s Black Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco and also CAAMCon at The California African American Museum in Los Angeles. John is currently at work on My Superhero Is Black with acclaimed producer Angélique Roché. The book will illuminate some of the most important Black creators and characters through Marvel Comics history.
Allissa V. Richardson, PhD is an assistant professor of journalism at USC Annenberg. She researches how African Americans use mobile and social media to produce innovative forms of journalism — especially in times of crisis. Richardson is the author of Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism (Oxford University Press, 2020), which won the 2022 Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture, Tankard Award from Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and the 2021 International Journal of Press/Politics Hazel Gaudet-Erskine Best Book Award. Richardson’s research is informed by her award-winning work as a journalism innovator. She is considered a pioneer in mobile journalism (MOJO), having launched the world’s first smartphone-only college newsrooms in 2010, in the U.S., Morocco and South Africa. Richardson won the National Association of Black Journalists’ prestigious Journalism Educator of the Year (‘12) award for her international work.
Susan Abulhawa speaks widely on the subjects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the power of storytelling, particularly for marginalized communities. Susan is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, a non-profit organization dedicated to upholding the Right to Play for Palestinian children under Israeli occupation and in refugee camps outside of Palestine. Susan is one of the most widely-read Arab authors. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, is a multigenerational family epic spanning five countries and more than sixty years. With an unflinching look at the Palestinian question, it was translated into thirty languages and became an international bestseller. Her latest novel, Against the Loveless World, won the Arab American Book Award.