Award-winning Authors
Our speakers are award-winning authors whose ideas and advocacy have changed minds, moved hearts, and opened doors. With clarity and compassion, they engage audiences on the issues shaping our world and spark the kinds of dialogue that lead to real change. Whether addressing institutions or communities, they don’t just start conversations or raise awareness—they help build the roadmap forward.
Andrea Freeman
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History
Winner of the James Beard Media Award in Food Issues and Advocacy
Andrea Freeman is an award-winning law professor, Fulbright Scholar, and national and international expert on the intersections of race and food policy, health, and consumer credit. She pioneered the theory of food oppression, which examines how food law and policy, influenced by corporate interests, disproportionately harms marginalized communities
danielle Evans
Winner of the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
Winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize
Winner of the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize
Winner of the Hurston-wright Award for Fiction
Winner of the Paterson Prize for Fiction
Danielle Evans is the author that Roxane Gay calls the “ finest short story writer working today.” She is an Associate Professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and a faculty affiliate in the Center for Africana Studies. Danielle’s work explores agency, performance, and the possibilities of the space between the public self and the private self. She is fascinated in the gap between what happened and how we talk about it—how that gap operates in the space of an individual life, in the space of a family, and in the space of a country.
Amirta Chakrabarti Myers
Winner of the Julia Cherry Spruill Prize
Winner of the Phillis Wheatley Book Prize
Winner of the George C. Rogers Jr. Book Award
Winner of the Anna Julia Cooper - CLR James Book Award
Amrita Chakrabarti Myers is an award-winning archival historian, writer, educator, and community-based organizer. She is currently the Ruth N. Halls Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, where she is also the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History. A speaker with more than twenty years of experience, Dr. Myers gives keynotes and presentations at women’s rights organizations, corporations, academic societies, universities, and literary festivals. Her topics range from her scholarly work on enslaved and free Black women to the contemporary issues of misogynoir, systemic racism, gender bias, microaggressions, unconscious bias in the workplace, the long history of policing in the United States, and more. Regardless of the venue, her talks help reveal our history and dismantle the unjust systems holding us all back.
Bridgett M. Davis
Michigan Notable Book Award Winner
Bridgett M. Davis is a writer and independent filmmaker. She is the author of two acclaimed memoirs and two novels. She is also the writer and director of the 1998 award-winning feature film Naked Acts, newly restored and re-released domestically and internationally in 2024 to much acclaim. Bridgett’s work advocates for Black women and their stories. She is Professor Emerita in the Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions at Baruch College.
Tony Keith Jr.
Winner of the Odyssey Award for Audiobook Excellence Winner
Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest Winner
Contributor to Regional Emmy Award-Winning Documentary Series
Winner of AERA DIVISION B OUTSTANDING BOOK AWARD
Tony Keith Jr., PhD is an award-winning Black American gay author, poet, spoken word artist, and Hip-Hop educational leader. 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, and in schools and communities around the world. Tony serves as founder and CEO of Ed Emcee Academy, where he resides in his Washington DC hometown with his husband, Harry Christian III.
Ismar Volić
Winner of the Euler Prize
Ismar Volić is a Professor of Mathematics and the Co-Founder and Director of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy at Wellesley College. An established author and scholar, he has delivered more than three hundred lectures in over twenty countries. Ismar advocates for mathematics as a relevant and vibrant discipline to pursue today. His research, education, and outreach currently focus on topics that lie at the intersection of mathematics and democracy.
Susan Abulhawa
Arab American Book Award Winner
Palestine Book Awards Winner
International bestselling author and poet Susan Abulhawa speaks about Palestine and the importance and power of storytelling, particularly for marginalized communities. Susan is one of the most widely read Arab authors and the most widely read Palestinian author in the world, according to reach and sales. The founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, a non-profit organization dedicated to upholding the Right to Play for Palestinian children under occupation and in refugee camps outside of Palestine, Susan also advocates for animal rights organizations. When she is not writing, she is a widely recognized political commentator and frequent guest on news programs.
Patricia engel
Winner of the John Dassos Prize for Literature
Winner of the New American Voices Award
Winner of the Florida Book Award
Winner of the Dayton Peace Prize
Winner of the International Latino Book Award
Winner of an Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal for Literary Fiction
Patricia Engel is the author of five works of fiction, including Infinite Country, a New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club pick. 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.
joel christian gill
Winner of the Cartoonist Studio Prize
YALSA 2021 Great Graphic Novels for Teens
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. Joel has dedicated his life to creating stories to build connections with readers through empathy, compassion and, ultimately, humanity.
Omkari L. Williams
Nautilus Book Awards, Gold Winner
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
Winner of the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction
Nicholas Buccola is a philosopher, writer, lecturer, and teacher who specializes in the area of American political thought. Nicholas is the Dr. Jules L. Whitehill Professor of Humanism and Ethics in the Department of Government at Claremont McKenna College.
Helon Habila
Winner of Pen/Open Book Award
Winner of the Commonwealth Best Book Award, Africa Region
Winner of the Orion Book Award
Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book
Winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing
An acclaimed Nigerian novelist, poet, and a professor of Creative Writing at George Mason University, Helon Habila speaks nationally and internationally on the subjects of immigration, art and activism. 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. Helon divides his time between his native Nigeria and the USA, where he lives with his wife and three children.
Kai Harris
Phillis Wheatley Book Award in Fiction
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. In addition to fiction, Kai has published poetry, personal essays, and peer-reviewed academic articles on topics related to Black girlhood and womanhood, mental health, the slave narrative genre, motherhood, and Black identity. Kai now resides in the Bay Area with her family, where she loves to hike and visit the beach—and where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Santa Clara University.
John Jennings
Hugo Award Winner
Two-time Eisner Award Winner
John Jennings is an author, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times Bestseller, and Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside. A remarkable visionary and Black culture champion, 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.
Annabelle Tometich
Winner of the Southern Book Prize for NonFiction
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 before her first book, The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony was published. She has also 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.
Gloria Muñoz
International Literacy Association Book Award winner, YA Fiction
Winner of the Ambroggio Prize
Winner of the Gold Medal Florida Book Award
Gloria Muñoz is a Colombian American writer, translator, and advocate for multilingual literacy. She is proud to be St. Pete's first Latina poet laureate. 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.
Allissa V. Richardson
Journalism Educator of the Year
Winner of the Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture
Winner of the Tankard Award
Winner of the International Journal of Press/Politics Hazel Gaudet-Erskine Best Book Award
Winner of the Frank Luther Mott/Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award for the Best Book on Journalism and Mass Communication
Allissa V. Richardson is an AI and reparative journalism visionary, award-winning author, and scholar of race, media, and activism. 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. An assistant professor of journalism at USC Annenberg, she also leads The Second Draft Project, which corrects the historical record for people who have been misrepresented or maligned in mainstream media.
ladee hubbard
Winner of an arts and letters Literature award
Winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence
Winner of the Hurston-Wright Award for Debut Fiction
Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award
Recipient of the Berlin Prize
Ladee Hubbard is a fiction writer and professor at Tulane University. Her 2017 debut novel, The Talented Ribkins, won multiple awards. She is an expert in African American history, culture, literature, and performance. As a resident at the American Library in Paris, she presented on writing and marginalized women in literature.
Hafizah Augustus Geter
Winner of the PEN Open Book Award
Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Nonfiction
Amy Award Recipient
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. Through her writing, she encourages conversations about identity, race, and intersectionality. Hafizah is a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit, where she represents a diverse range of literary fiction and narrative nonfiction writers. She serves on the Brooklyn Literary Council and as the poetry committee co-chair for the Brooklyn Book Festival. Hafizah lives with her wife in Brooklyn, New York, where she is at work on her next books.