Neal Thompson is director of author and publishing relations at Amazon, where he oversees the Amazon Literary Partnership (grant funding for authors and literary organizations) and outreach to the writing community. Neal is a former journalist and is the author of four nonfiction books.

Hieu Minh Nguyen is a Kundiman fellow, a poetry editor for Muzzle magazine, and the author of the poetry collection This Way to the Sugar. His poems have appeared in publications Devil's Lake, the Southern Indiana Review, Guernica, the Paris-American, Indiana Review, and elsewhere.

Lauren Bullock is a multiracial writer, performer, and community organizer. She has competed in many national poetry slam events including appearing on final stages for the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI). Currently she writes for Black Nerd Problems and is a FreezeRay poetry editor.

Alex-Quan Pham is a twenty-year old trans femme. They think and write about race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, love, desire, and violence. Their work has been featured in Poetry, Jonathan, and the Offing.

Chrysanthemum Tran is an emerging queer & trans Vietnamese American poet based in Providence, Rhode Island. In 2016, they became the first transfeminine poet to ever reach finals stage at the Women of the World Poetry Slam, and was awarded "Best Poet" at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational.