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.

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.

Dr. Safiya U. Noble is the David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair of Social Sciences and Professor of Gender Studies, African American Studies, and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is the Director of the Center on Resilience & Digital Justice and Co-Director of the Minderoo Initiative on Tech & Power at the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2). Dr. Noble is the author of the best-selling book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. In 2021, she was recognized as a MacArthur Foundation Fellow for her ground-breaking work on algorithmic discrimination. She is recognized as a thought leader in the technology policy space and speaks to the impacts of technological advances on society, health, and climate.

Dr. Davarian L. Baldwin is an internationally recognized urbanist, cultural critic, historian, and public advocate. He is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Founding Director of the Smart Cities Research Lab at Trinity College. A foremost expert on Black social movements and African American history, he is often called upon to consult on everything from the politics of reparations to the global impact of the Harlem Renaissance. His academic and political commitments have focused on global cities and particularly the diverse and marginalized communities that struggle to maintain sustainable lives in urban locales. Baldwin is the award-winning author of several books including In The Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities (2021), Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (2007), and Land of Darkness: Chicago and the Making of Race in Modern America (forthcoming from Oxford University Press).

Gloria Muñoz is a Colombian American writer, translator, and advocate for multilingual literacy. A leading writer in the climate fiction and ecopoetics spaces, 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. 

Her writing has been anthologized most recently by A24 and has appeared in American Poetry, MagazinePuerto del Sol, VIDA Review, Acentos Review, Lumina, the Rumpus, Yes Poetry, Juke Joint, Best New Poets, Sweet, Burrow Press, Cosmonauts Avenue, Entropy, Wildness, Cagibi, and elsewhere. Muñoz is also the author of the chapbook Your Biome Has Found You. 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. 

Sequoia Nagamatsu is the author of the National Bestselling novel, HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK (2022) and the forthcoming GIRL ZERO (William Morrow/HarperCollins and Bloomsbury UK), as well as the story collection, WHERE WE GO WHEN ALL WE WERE IS GONE (Black Lawrence Press). A recognized climate fiction author, he uses his fiction writing to spark conversations about issues that impact society. He was educated at Grinnell College (BA) and Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (MFA), and he teaches creative writing at Saint Olaf College and the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA program. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, the writer Cole Nagamatsu, their cat Kalahira, their real dog Fenris, and a robot dog named Calvino.