Malika Booker

Malika Booker is a British-Caribbean poet, and co-founder of the poetry collective, Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. She was the inaugural Poet in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company and was elected a Royal Society of Literature Fellow (2022). Booker received the Cholmondeley Award (2019) for outstanding contribution to poetry, and her poems The Little Miracles won (2020) and Libation (2023) was shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Her poetry collection Pepper Seed (2013) was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre prize for first full collection.

Nikky Finney

Nikky Finney is the author of On Wings Made of Gauze; Rice; The World Is Round; and Head Off & Split, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2011. Her new collection of poems, Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry, was released in 2020. Finney is Carolina Distinguished Professor at USC in Columbia where she is also Director of the Ernest A. Finney Jr. Cultural Arts Center.

Photo Credit: Forrest Clonts

Anastacia-Reneé

Anastacia-Reneé is an award-winning writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDx Speaker and podcaster. She is the author of Side Notes from the Archivist (HarperCollins/Amistad), (v.) (Black Ocean), Forget It (Black Radish) and Here In The (Middle) of Nowhere, forthcoming from HarperCollins/Amistad March 2024. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Hobart, Foglifter, Auburn Avenue, Catapult, Alta, Torch, Poetry Northwest, Cascadia Magazine, The Fight and Fiddle, Ms. Magazine and others. Reneé has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem and Hedgebrook.

Lauren K. Alleyne (Moderator)

Lauren K. Alleyne is the author of two collections of poetry, Difficult Fruit (2014), and Honeyfish (2019); two chapbooks, Dawn in the Kaatskills (2008) and (Un)Becoming Gretel (2022); as well as co-editor of Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry (2020). Her work has appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, The Atlantic, Ms. Muse, Tin House, and The Caribbean Writer, among others. Her poetry was selected for the 2021 Best American Poetry anthology, the Academy of American Poets Poem a Day (2018, 2020, 2021, 2022), and was a finalist for 2019 Best of the Net. Her most recent honors include a nomination for the 2020 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, the longlist for the 2020 Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and the shortlist for the 2020 Library of Virginia Literary Awards. She serves as a professor of English and executive director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University.