E. Ethelbert Miller is a literary activist and the board chair of the Institute for Policy Studies. He was inducted into the Washington, DC Hall of Fame in 2015.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and Americanah, as well as the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck. She also speaks at events around the world, including two TED Talks: “The Danger of a Single Story” and “We Should All Be Feminists”—which has now been published as a book. Adichie has received numerous accolades, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Orange Prize (now the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction), and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of the New York Times bestseller Between the World and Me and the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. A former Village Voice writer, Coates is an Atlantic National Correspondent, where he has written many influential articles, including “The Case for Reparations.” Among his many honors includes the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, the George Polk Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Coates was previously the Martin Luther King Visiting Associate Professor at MIT, and is currently the journalist in residence at the School of Journalism at CUNY.