Gloria 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 and she enjoys working with other writers and creatives.

Kristen is The New York Times best-selling author of Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019), as well as a queer fiction and essay writer and a social media genius. Kristen’s unique voice focuses on humor writing, LGBTQ issues, and Florida.

Bridgett is the author of the critically-acclaimed memoir The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers, a New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Pick” and an Entertainment Weekly “Must Read.” She has been invited to speak at numerous venues about her memoir and its historical context. She teaches creative and film writing at Baruch College, CUNY.

Matthew is a novelist, scholar, and Korean adoptee who has written and spoken widely on the subjects of adoption, race, Asian masculinity and parenting. His acclaimed first novel,The Hundred-Year Flood, was an Amazon Bestseller and, among other honors, a Best Book of the season at Buzzfeed, Refinery29, and Gawker.

Jezz Chung is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores personal and collective change through the lens of race, gender, trauma, disability, and neurodivergence. They’ve been recognized internationally by Spain’s El País, Portugal’s Público, Vogue, Teen Vogue, Logo TV, and Made of Millions. You can listen to their podcast with Deem Journal titled Dreaming Different and read their debut collection of poetry, prose, and practices titled This Way to Change: A Gentle Guide to Personal Transformation and Collective Liberation. Jezz has lived in Georgia, Texas, California, and is now based in Brooklyn, New York. They provide professional development talks and workshops on wellness, creativity, communication, and carerr development.

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, won the 2023 PEN Open Book Award. Hafizah is also the author of the debut poetry collection Un-American, nominated for a 2021 NAACP Image Award, a finalist for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, and longlisted for the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize.

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.

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. He received his MFA from Boston University and his BA from Roanoke College.

Kai Harris is the author of the acclaimed debut novel What the Fireflies Knew (Tiny Reparations, 2022), a Silicon Valley 2023 Read, A Marie Claire Book Club pick as well as being an NAACP Image Award nominee and longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. She is a writer and educator from Detroit, Michigan, who uses her voice to uplift the Black community through realistic fiction centered on the Black experience.

Ladee is an award-winning author and scholar. Her critically-acclaimed novel, The Talented Ribkins, was awarded the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for the Debut Novel and the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, among many other honors, and garnered her an appearance on Seth Meyers.

Born in Harlem to Dominican parents, award-winning filmmaker and writer Raquel Cepeda is a filmmaker, music expert, and the author of Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina (Atria, Simon & Schuster). Bird of Paradise is equal parts memoir about Cepeda’s coming of age in New York City and Santo Domingo, and detective story chronicling her year-long journey to discover the truth about her ancestry. The book also looks at what it means to be a hyphenated American-Latina today. Raquel travels widely to speak to diverse audiences about Latina identity, social justice, gentrification, inequality, and discovering your story through writing and filmmaking.

Susan Abulhawa speaks widely on 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.

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers is an award-winning historian, journalist, activist and commentator whose work examines the intersections of race, gender, power, and freedom, specifically focusing on the lives of enslaved and free black women. Amrita is the author of the award-winning Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston as well as The Vice President’s Black Wife: Resurrecting Julia Chinn, published by Ferris & Ferris in October 2023.

Kathryn Hulick is a freelance journalist who covers AI and computing for Science News and Science News Explores. She's also the author of books for young people or anyone who is curious. Her book The UFO Files (Quarto, 2025) combines a sci-fi story with scientific explanations of the marvels found on board an alien spacecraft. Her book Welcome To The Future (Quarto, 2021) is about how technology could change the world, and Strange But True (Quarto, 2019) uses critical thinking to explore the science behind paranormal mysteries. She provides talks and workshops for professionals in STEM and other fields on how to effectively convey information through storytelling.

Award-winning journalist Danyel Smith is author of the critically-acclaimed Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop (One World / Penguin Random House, April 2022). Danyel is also creator/host of the popular Black Girl Songbook, a podcast that centers the sounds and stories of black women (Spotify Original).

Akemi Johnson is the author of Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa. A former Fulbright scholar in Okinawa, Akemi has written about the island, along with issues of race, identity, history, and culture, for The Nation, NPR, and other publications.

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, writing, art and activism. 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.

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. He enjoys helping audiences discover their voice and empowering them to use it.

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.

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.