Danez Smith is the author of Don't Call Us Dead and [insert] boy, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lamda Literary Award. They are a Ruth Lilly/Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow. a two-time World Poetry Slam finalist, a member of the Dark Noise Collective, and a 2017 NEA poetry fellow.

Fatimah Asghar is a nationally touring poet, photographer, and performer. She has received fellowships and residencies from Fulbright, Millay, the University of Michigan, and Kundiman. Her work has appeared in many journals. Her chapbook After is a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award.

Paul Tran is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and historian. They received fellowships from Kundiman, VONA, Poets House, Lambda Literary, Napa Valley, Home School Miami, and the Vermont Studio Center. In 2015, they placed Top 10 at both the National Poetry Slam and Individual World Poetry Slam.

Patricia Smith's books are Incendiary Art, Gotta Go, Gotta Flow, Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (2013 Lenore Marshall), and Blood Dazzler (2008 National Book Award finalist). A 2014 Guggenheim fellow and two-time Pushcart winner, she is a professor at CUNY and in Sierra Nevada's MFA program.

Angel Nafis is the author of BlackGirl Mansion. With poet Morgan Parker, she is The Other Black Girl Collective, an internationally touring Black Feminist poetry duo. Nafis was a recipient of the 2016 Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and a 2017 NEA.