Lived Experience and Perspective

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. 

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.

Dr. Wendy Pearlman (she/her) is a scholar of Middle East politics and author of the critically-acclaimed We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, a breath-taking mosaic of first-hand Syrian testimonials that chronicles the Syrian uprising, war and refugee crisis.

Born in Harlem to Dominican parents, Raquel Cepda is an award-winning journalist, cultural activist, podcaster, and documentary filmmaker who travels widely to speak to diverse audiences about Latina identity, social justice, gentrification and inequality.

Hafizah Augustus Geter is a Nigerian-American poet, writer, and literary agent. In debut memoir, The Black Period: On Personhood, Race & Origin, “Geter sets down a powerful vision of Black life in the United States by intertwining dual origin stories: her own (she is the daughter of an African American man and a Muslim Nigerian woman) and the nation’s, with its history of Native genocide and African enslavement." -The New Yorker

Dr. Matthew Salesses (he/him) 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. He speaks and writes on his adoptee experience and Asian-American masculinity.

"And maybe there is no nation or citizenry; they're just territories mapped in place of family, in place of love, the infinite country."

Patricia Engel is an award-winning, internationally acclaimed author and the daughter of Colombian immigrants. Engel has received critical acclaim for her works, which often explore themes of identity, displacement, and the experiences of Latinx individuals in the United States and abroad.

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.

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. In her talks, Priya focuses on practical advice for marginalized artists and cartoonists.

Akemi Johnson is the author of Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa. Thought-provoking and timely, Night in the American Village is a vivid look at the enduring wounds of U.S.-Japanese history and the cultural and sexual politics of the American military empire.

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.

A political commentator and contributor to broadcast news outlets, Susan Abulhawa speaks widely on the subjects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the power of storytelling, particularly for marginalized communities.