Lolita Stewart-White is a poet, playwright, and filmmaker from Liberty City, Florida. She is a Pushcart nominee and winner of the Paris American Series Prize. Her collection, black frag/ments, was selected by poet Ashley M. Jones as the winner of Hub City Press’s BIPOC Poetry Reader Series Prize. Stewart-White’s work has been featured in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, Callaloo, and the African American Review. Her poem “Healing” was featured in the awa

Nimalah Baaith-Ducharme’s work has appeared at Poets.org (where she won the Harold Taylor Prize in 2019), Nighthawk Literature, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Of Rootwork, was a finalist in the 2025 Alta California Chapbook Contest, sponsored by Gunpowder Press and judged by Raina J. León. She has received support from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, earned her MFA from Emerson College, and is curren

Amanda Borquaye is a Ghanaian-American creative nonfiction writer from the American South. She writes from the interior of a youngest daughter in an immigrant family, using the lyrical essay as a way to wade through the fragility of belonging in a decaying empire. Her work embodies the necropolitical, exploring who is allowed to live and who must die in the context of immigrant identity. By day, she works in humanitarian response and international development. She is an alum

February Spikener (they/she) is a Black femme poet from Detroit. She holds a BA from Wellesley College and an MFA from Randolph College. Spikener self- describes her work as “feral”: meaning, her work embraces the carnal and violent qualities of feral animals while reimagining beasthood as well as daughterhood. Ever inspired by their loved ones, their poems reflect how they navigate through the world and what it means to love and be loved. Her work has been supported by the M

Joely Williams is an Afro-Boricua poet, letter-maker, and community educator raised in the Bronx and currently living in South Carolina, where she is still adjusting to the concept of sky. Much of her work is rooted in the emotional and physical geography of migration: what it means to leave one place while still carrying its sounds, smells, language, and architecture in the body years later. She writes often about memory, grocery stores, kitchens, mothers, public transportat

Alisha S. Lockley is a poet, multimedia artist, stage director, and short film producer. Her work closely examines the subtle sensualities of the surreal and the spiritual. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Randolph College, and she was a finalist for the 2025 Furious Flower Prize judged by aracelis girmay. Unremarkable View of January from one window up above the maternity ward. Below, browning palms, a sherbet sunset; wind chopped Florida water froths filth. I’ve

Audrey Patricia Williams (she/her) is a queer Caribbean writer and journalist whose work lives at the intersections of culture, identity, and womanhood. Moving between features, interviews, and cultural commentary, her storytelling holds a magnifying glass to the Black experience, exploring its tensions as much as its beauty. As a Brooklyn native raised by Guyanese immigrants in the American South, Audrey’s perspective is rooted in both curiosity and connection. Her work has

Jae Broderick is an award-winning lyricist, librettist, composer, and the author of DeConstructing Criticism and Or You Could Just Not. When she isn’t working, Jae can be found practicing her backhand or on a plane to somewhere amazing because, um, “writers need to experience things.” Documenti is excerpted from her forthcoming novel, A Few Good Years. Documenti Puglia. 2025. Zia said it was because of the grapes. That the flies infecting every corner of the città were drawn

Ryane Nicole Granados has always called Los Angeles her home, and her writing finds its roots in her love of her community. She is inspired to write stories of survival that magnify the marginalized while also unearthing the splendor of second chances. Named the 2021 California Arts Council Established Writer and Individual Arts Fellow, Ryane currently teaches at Loyola Marymount University, where she also serves as the Associate Director of the Academic Resource Center. Her

Joy tabernacle KMT-Battle iz a Two-head Blackwoman, Opulence, mother, lover & crowned Hoodoo Queen. As a writer, she has received residencies and fellowships from Heinz, MacDowell, Callaloo, Vona & Periplus. They are published in many places, including Callalloo and Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color , Pluck! The journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture , Jazz and Culture , Hayden’s Ferry Review , Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and more. She is the winner of th

Born in Jackson, Tennessee, JUSTICE is a rising film director, screenwriter, and producer. After attending film school at Belmont University, JUSTICE began her career in film and television by crewing on various local productions. While gaining insight into the inner workings of the industry, she simultaneously tends to the hunger of telling her own stories. JUSTICE believes the world lacks perspectives in Black stories rooted in societal abnormality, social commentary, and

Temidayo Testimony Omali Odey , also known as Testimony Odey, is a graduate of English and Literature from the University of Benin. Her writing has been published in magazines and journals, including The Deadlands , Poetry Pause , The FEMINIST Magazine , Brittle Paper , Kalahari Review , Eco-Instigator , Akéwì Magazine , Rising Phoenix Review , and PoeticAfrica . Her work maps the complexities of the human experience, exploring identity, culture, and emotion through lenses o

Chiagoziem Jideofor is Queer and Igbo. Her work has appeared in Poetry , Michigan Quarterly Review , South Carolina Review , berlin lit , The Lincoln Review , Passages North , Commonwealth’s ADDA , the minnesota review , Sho Poetry Journal , MAYDAY , and elsewhere. She currently lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. when you claim to be from nowhere in particular a seed doesn’t just fall off is what my grandmother would say her ideation as crow, as sudden interest in such con

Jasmine Harris is a multi-genre writer and educational specialist featured in the Hidden Sussex Anthology , Prometheus Dreaming , Syndrome Magazine , and several others. She most recently was the recipient of the Mid-America Arts Alliance Catalyze Grant 2024 and served as the 2023 Arts and Science Center of Southeast Arkansas Arts in Education Artist in Residence. Harris focuses her writing on celebrating Black culture and community, intersectional identities, speculative an

Cynthia Manick is the author of No Sweet Without Brine (Amistad-HarperCollins, 2023), which received 5 stars from Roxane Gay, was named among the “Best Poetry of the Last Year (2023)” by Ms. Magazine, and was selected as a New York Public Library Best Book of 2023. She is the author of Brown Girl Polaris (a Belladonna chaplet), editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry; and winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry for her first

Rakaya Fetuga tells stories through prose, poetry, and performance. From the age of 17, Rakaya landed upon London’s poetry scene, and since then, her words have taken her across the country and the world, performing on stages from Qatar to Cuba. Rakaya’s writing has spearheaded an array of campaigns for the UN, L’Occitane and Cartier amongst others. Receiving writing awards from the New York TV & Film Festival (2024) and Royal Holloway University of London (2015 & 2016), as

Samantha Lamont Adams is a Black Milwaukeean, freshwater enthusiast, and Doctoral Candidate in English and Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, currently completing a dissertation about literary and historical relationships between Black Americans and bodies of water beyond the Atlantic Ocean in the early 20th century. She previously studied Creative Writing and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is ever interested in the

Allie Morgan (she/her) is a writer, director, and producer in Chicago, IL. She studied entertainment business at Los Angeles Film School and screenwriting at New York Film Academy.  She has written and directed numerous award-winning short films and a proof of concept, and recently started her own production, Muffy Film Productions, which focuses on platforming marginalized filmmakers. When she is not writing and directing her own projects, she also loves assistant directing

Chennelle Channer is a Jamaican-born poet and writer. She immigrated to America in her early childhood and was raised between the restless hum of Brooklyn and the measured cadence of South Carolina. Her Caribbean roots shape the rhythm and voice of her storytelling and Jamaica remains the place where she feels most at home. She earned her B.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing from SUNY Binghamton and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Liberal Studi

Idza Luhumyo was born in Mombasa, Kenya. She studied law at the University of Nairobi, earned an MA in Comparative Literature at SOAS--University of London, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University. Her writing has appeared in various publications, including Transition Magazine , African Arguments , the Masters Review , and the Porter House Review . Her short story, "Five Years Next Sunday," was awarded the 2021 Short Story Day Africa Prize and the 2022