Wendy Pearlman is a scholar of Middle East politics and author of the critically-acclaimed We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, a mosaic of first-hand Syrian testimonials that chronicles the Syrian uprising, war and refugee crisis as well as its follow-up oral historyThe Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora. Wendy lectures around the world in English and Arabic.

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. She candidly shares stories of immigrants and children-of-immigrants.

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. Through Moonlit Música, a bilingual media company she co-founded, she writes narrative scripts and songs for children, adolescent, and adult programming.

A political commentator and contributor to broadcast news outlets, Susan Abulhawa speaks widely about 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.

Born in Harlem to Dominican parents, award-winning filmmaker and writer Raquel Cepeda is 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 and inequality.

Born to Colombian parents and raised in New Jersey, Patricia Engel 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 and author of five books. 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. Her talks consider powerful perspectives on identity and belonging.

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. 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 also 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. Habila divides his time between his native Nigeria and the USA, where he lives with his wife and three children.

Davarian L. Baldwin is an internationally recognized scholar, 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.

“With The Black Period, Hafizah Augustus Geter announces herself as a storyteller, truth seeker, and path finder. With equal parts heart and rigor, this is a work that interrogates as it both mourns and celebrates. Geter's life spans the continents of the earth, but also crosses the lands and oceans of human experience.” -Tayari Jones, Author of An American Marriage 

Hafizah Augustus Geter is a Nigerian/U.S. writer born in Zaria, Nigeria, and raised in Ohio and South Carolina. She is a 2026 Hawthornden fellow in fiction, a 2024 Civitella Ranieri nonfiction fellow,  a Bread Loaf 2021 Katherine Bakeless nonfiction fellow, and a Cave Canem poetry fellow. Her memoir, The Black Period: On Personhood, Race & Origin (Random House), won the 2023 PEN Open Book Award, and a  2023 Lammy Award in LGBTQ+ Nonfiction from Lambda Literary, and was a New Yorker Magazine Best Book, a Good Morning America Anticipated Book, an Amazon's Best of the Month Editor's Pick, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize. ​She is the author of the poetry collection Un-American (Wesleyan), nominated for a NAACP Image Award, finalist for the PEN Open Book Award, and longlisted for a Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize.

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. Priya is an outspoken voice in the conversation around diversity in comics and her work explores race and multiculturalism in America.