Keisha-Gaye Anderson is a Jamaican-born poet and creative writer. She is the author of the poetry collection Gathering the Waters. Her writing has been published in a number of national literary journals. Keisha holds an MFA from The City College, CUNY.

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is the recipient of the 2015 Barnes and Noble Writer for Writers Award. Arrival, her fourth collection of poetry, will be published by Northwestern University Press in June 2017. Cheryl holds an MFA in poetry from Stonecoast, and is the founder of Calypso Muse and The Glitter Pomegranate Reading Series.

Mercy Tullis-Bukhari is an essayist, fiction writer, and poet. She is Afro-Latina American, Bronx-bred, Garifuna, of Honduran Jamaican descent. Mercy is currently receiving her MFA in creative writing from The College of New Rochelle, and is writing her first novel.

Donna Aza Weir-Soley, PhD, associate professor of English at Florida International University is the author of First Rain and The Woman Who Knew, coeditor (with Opal Palmer Adisa) of anthology, Caribbean Erotic. aka Donna Aza; Aza Weir-Soley

R. Erica Doyle was born to Trinidadian immigrant parents who were spirit-seeing agnostics. Her first book, proxy, was a Lambda Literary Awards Finalist and winner of the Norma Farber Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is a fellow of Cave Canem.