D E HarrisPoet, sound artist, and scholar Duriel E. Harris is the author of three critically acclaimed volumes of poetry, including DRAG (Elixir Press, 2003) and NO DICTIONARY OF LIVING TONGUE (Nightboat Books, 2017), winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize and Pblishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award finalist. Harris is Professor of English at Illinois State University and Editor of Obsidian. Sheree Renée Thomas is an award-winning editor and the author of three collections, Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future (Third Man Books, 2020), Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Press, 2016), and Shotgun Lullabies: Stories & Poems (Aqueduct Press, 2011). She is the editor of the groundbreaking anthologies Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (2000) and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones (2004). Sheree is the editor of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Widely anthologized, her work also appears in The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (1945-2010), Marvel's Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda, and the New York Times. Nancy D. Tolson is the assistant director of the African American Studies Program at the University of South Carolina. Tolson has been a Ford Fellow, an NEH facilitator, a Fulbright scholar/lecturer at the University of Cape Coast (Ghana), and an Illinois Humanities' Road Scholar. Nancy is the author of Black Children's Literature Got de Blues: The Creativity of Black Writers and Illustrators (2008) and Tales of Africa (1998). She is a commissioner for the Columbia Museum of Art. Wesley Jacques is a writer, educator, and researcher of children's literature and culture. His scholarly focus is on power and inequity, especially as it pertains to Black children globally. He received his doctorate from Illinois State University and is currently a lecturer at Clayton State University in Georgia. Lauren K. Alleyne is the author of two collections of poetry, Difficult Fruit (Peepal Tree Press, 2014), and Honeyfish (New Issues & Peepal Tree, 2019), and co-editor of Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry (Northwestern, 2020). Her most recent honors include nominations for a 2020 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, the 2020 Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and the Library of Virginia Literary Awards. Alleyne was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. She is an associate professor of English at James Madison University, and the assistant director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center. Kei Miller is the award-winning author of several novels, poetry, and essay collections, including Fear of Stones and Other Stories. In 2014, he won the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection for The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion; in 2017, the OCM Bocas prize for Caribbean Literature for his novel Augustown; and the 2018 Anthony N Sabga Caribbean Award for Excellence. His collection of essays, Things I Have Withheld, is, according to Forbes Magazine, one of America's most anticipated titles of 2021. Read More Read Less