Taylor Mali is one of the most well-known poets to have emerged from the poetry slam movement and one of the original poets to appear on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam. A four-time National Poetry Slam champion, he is the founder of the Page Meets Stage reading series in New York City.

Aja-Monet Bacquie

Ross Gay is the author of three books of poems: Against Which, Bringing the Shovel Down, and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. A founding editor, with Karissa Chen and Patrick Rosal, of the online sports magazine Some Call It Ballin’, he is an editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press and a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard. He teaches in the creative writing program at Indiana University.

Mahogany L. Browne is a Cave Canem, Poets House, and Serenbe Focus alumna, playwright, poet, and orgranizer. Publisher of Penmanship Books, she earned her MFA in writing and activism from Pratt Institute and she serves as artistic director of Urban Word NYC.

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is an award-winning nonfiction writer and poet. Her second nonfiction book, Dr Mutter's Marvels, was a New York Times bestseller, and her seventh book of poetry, How to Love the Empty Air, was recently released.