Alicia Craven is the director of Seattle Arts & Lectures' Writers in the Schools (WITS) program. She has worked in creative writing instruction and youth publishing for ten years and taught creative writing internationally in Thailand, Ecuador, and Ethiopia.

Ramiza Shamoun Koya writes fiction and creative nonfiction and is the director of youth programs at Literary Arts in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in publications such as Mutha magazine, Washington Square Review, and Lumina, and she has just completed a novel entitled The Royal Abduls.

Janine Joseph is a poet, librettist, and educator. She is the author of Driving Without a License, winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize and finalist for the 2017 Oklahoma Book Award. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oklahoma State University.

Kima Jones has received fellowships from PEN Center USA Emerging Voices, Kimbilio Fiction, Yaddo, and The MacDowell Colony. She is an MFA candidate in fiction and Rodney Jack Scholar in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She works as a book publicist in Los Angeles.

Desireé Dallagiacomo is an award-winning writer, performer, and educator. She is the program director and lead teaching artist at Forward Arts, a youth spoken word and social justice writing nonprofit in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and she is a multitime US poetry slam finalist.