Health, Healing, and Care
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 (Metropolitan 2024), Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History and Winner of the James Beard Media Award in Food Issues and Advocacy, 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. Myisha Cherry is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. She is also the Director of the Emotion and Society Lab. Her research is primarily concerned with the role of emotions and attitudes in public life. Cherry’s books include UnMuted: Conversations on Prejudice, Oppression, and Social Justice, The Moral Psychology of Anger which she co-edited with Owen Flanagan, and The Case for Rage: Why Anger is Essential to Anti-racist Struggle. In her latest book, Failures of Forgiveness: What We Get Wrong and How to Do Better, Dr. Cherry presents a new and healthier understanding of forgiveness—one that will give us a better chance to recover from wrongdoing and move toward “radical repair.” Her work on emotions and race has appeared in The Atlantic, Boston Review, Los Angeles Times, Salon, Huffington Post, WomanKind, and New Philosopher Magazine. Dr. Cherry is also the host of the UnMute Podcast, where she interviews philosophers about the social and political issues of our day.
Jamilah Pitts is an author, educator, social entrepreneur, and wellness guide whose work centers the liberation, healing and holistic development of communities of the Global Majority. Jamilah has worked and served in various roles and spaces to promote racial justice and healing. Jamilah has served as a teacher, coach, dean, and as an Assistant Principal. She has worked in domestic and international educational spaces, including Massachusetts, New York, the Dominican Republic, China, and in India. As the Founder and CEO of Jamilah Pitts Consulting, Jamilah partners with schools, communities, universities and organizations to advance the work of racial, social and intersectional justice through educator training and coaching. Jamilah is also the Founder of She, Imprints, an organization serving at the intersection of wellness and justice for women and girls of the Global Majority. Jamilah is the author of Toward Liberation: Educational Practices Rooted in Activism, Healing and Love. Jamilah’s written work has also appeared in the Huffington Post, Learning for Justice, and EducationWeek. She has presented to audiences of thousands of educators both within the United States and internationally. Jamilah threads her passion for human rights and social justice into her teaching, writing, scholarship and other artistic pursuits. She sees education and healing as her life’s work and calling, and truly believes that education should be an avenue through which empathy, healing and justice are promoted. Jamilah is also certified as a Yoga Teacher, Reiki Practitioner, Omnoire Retreat Facilitator, and is certified as a Trauma - Conscious Yoga guide. She is a proud alumna of Spelman College where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English. Jamilah also pursued graduate studies at Boston College and Teachers College, Columbia University and holds a Master of Education.
Jezz Chung (they/them) 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.
Bridgett M. Davis (pronounced Brih-jet) 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.
Lee Hawkins is the author of I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free (HarperCollins, January 2025), a critically acclaimed memoir that traces 400 years of his Black American family’s history through slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, and the intergenerational trauma that followed. His book is an introspective journey into his family history, tracing its roots to pre-Revolutionary America. Utilizing genetic testing, investigative reporting, and historical documentation, Mr. Hawkins explores 400 years of his family’s lineage, revealing the intertwined lives of Black and White families, their resilience and sufferings, and the impact of historical trauma. Mr. Hawkins was a 2023–2024 Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism and the 2024 Josephine Albright Fellow of the Alicia Patterson Foundation. He also received the 2024 McGraw Fellowship for Business Journalism and was the 2022–2023 O’Brien Fellow for Public Service Journalism at Marquette University. He is a six-time winner of the National Association of Black Journalists' "Salute to Excellence" Award and was a 2018 USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism National Fellow, for reporting on child well-being.
Dr. Jasmine Brown began writing Twice as Hard: The Stories of Black Women Who Fought to Become Physicians, from the Civil War to the 21st Century when she was twenty-two. A 2018 recipient of the Rhodes Scholarship, she used her time at the University of Oxford to complete the in-depth research and oral histories synthesized in this book. In the spring of 2020, she graduated from Oxford with Merit, earning an M.Phil. in History of Science, Medicine, and Technology. That fall, she began medical school at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently finishing up her ophthalmology residency at Stanford University. Brown leverages her connection to her topic to create a work that is both immensely well-researched and personal. Dr. Brown has been involved in advocacy work for many years. She founded the Minority Association of Rising Scientists at her alma mater and served as its president, working to provide minority students with resources to get involved in research as well as a community to support them along the way. Increasing the number of underrepresented minorities in science and medicine is a lifelong dream of hers, and through her book, public events, and other efforts, she plans to inspire others and make her dream for the future of science and medicine a reality.
A graphic novelist and Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of California-Irvine, Sherine Hamdy speaks nationally and internationally on the role of comics as a teaching tool and on social justice and representation in comics. She has led a seminar at Seattle Children’s Hospital, delivered the keynote address at DePauw University’s undergraduate conference in Science, Technology, Medicine and Society, and spoke on about social justice and comics at St. John’s University and Swarthmore. Sherine writes out of a desire to contribute to more honest depictions of Arab and Muslim Americans. Her young adult graphic novel, Jabs, illustrated by Myra El-Mir (forthcoming) tells the coming-of-age story of an Egyptian-American girl living in Long Island and struggling with her first year of college. In 2017, she published a graphic novel co-authored with Coleman Nye called Lissa: A Story of Friendship, Medical Promise, and Revolution (University of Toronto/EthnoGRAPHICS). This story draws on Sherine’s work on Muslim ethics and health care practices in Egypt, as well as Coleman Nye's research on women in the U.S. who test positive for the BRCA cancer gene.
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. A graduate of Western Michigan University’s PhD program, Kai was the recipient of the university’s Gwen Frostic Creative Writing Award in Fiction for her short story, “While We Live.” 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.
Priya Huq is a Bangladeshi Texan cartoonist living in New York who speaks widely on issues related to the comics industry, art, race, culture, identity and their intersections. Her appearances include the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, Emerald City Comic Con, and New York Comic Con. In her talks, Priya focuses on practical advice for marginalized artists and cartoonists. Audiences will learn how trauma affects an artist's brain and techniques for creating after trauma. Priya is an outspoken voice in the conversation around diversity in comics and her work explores race and multiculturalism in America. Priya draws and writes diverse comics, often in watercolor for all ages on a variety of topics and genres. Her comics work has been featured in The Nib, as well as in anthologies such as Habibi: A Muslim Love Story Anthology and Dirty Diamonds. Priya's first book, Piece by Piece: The Story of Nisrin's Hijab (Abrams ComicArts, 2021), is a young adult graphic novel featuring a fourteen-year-old girl, Nisrin, who begins to grapple with her cultural identity and sense of place in the world after a racist assault.
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 provides writing workshops and talks about hope to those who have experiences sexual assault. She also helps mothers cultivate strategies to maintain their creative practice.
Dr. Matthew Salesses is the author of eight books, most recently The Sense of Wonder, the national bestseller Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping (a Best Book of 2021 at NPR, Esquire, Library Journal, Independent Book Review, Chicago Tribune, Electric Literature, and others), and the PEN/Faulkner Finalist and Dublin Literary Award longlisted novel Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear. He also wrote The Hundred-Year Flood; I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying; Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity; The Last Repatriate; and Our Island of Epidemics (out of print). Forthcoming is a memoir, To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time (Little, Brown). He speaks widely on grief and adoption.
Layla F. Saad is the author of the ground-breaking Me and White Supremacy, an anti-racism education workbook that was initially offered for free in an Instagram challenge and in a self-published digital workbook in 2018 (downloaded by 100,000 people in the space of six months). Me and White Supremacy debuted on the New York Times and USA Today bestsellers lists. It is also an Amazon, Wall Street Journal, Indie, and Pacific Northwest bestseller. Most recently, she has adapted it for young adult audiences. Layla is an East African, Arab, British, Black, Muslim woman who was born and grew up in the West, and lives in the Middle East. Layla has always sat at a unique intersection of identities from which she is able to draw rich and intriguing perspectives. Her work is driven by her powerful desire to become a good ancestor; to live and work in ways that leave a legacy of healing and liberation for those who will come after she is gone. She also speaks openly about her late in life diagnosis of AuDHD.