Morgan Christie's work has appeared in Room, Aethlon, Hawai'i Review, the Coil, and others, and has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. Her poetry chapbook 'Variations on a Lobster's Tale' was the winner of the 2017 Alexander Posey Chapbook Prize (University of Central Oklahoma Press) and her second poetry chapbook 'Sterling' was released by CW Books (2019). Her first full-length short story manuscript 'These Bodies' was published by Tolsun Books (2020) and was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in fiction. Her most recent poetry chapbook ‘when they come’ was released by Black Sunflowers Press (2021) and is featured in the Forward Arts Foundation’s National Poetry Day exhibit.
Khalisa Rae is a poet, activist, and journalist in Durham, NC that speaks with furious rebellion. She is the Gen Z Culture Editor at Blavity News and Blavity U. Her debut collection Girl's Throat released from Red Hen Press April 2021. Her essays are featured in Autostraddle, Catapult, LitHub, as well as articles in B*tch Media, NBC-BLK, and others. Her poetry appears in Electric Lit, Pinch, Art Lib Lab, Frontier Poetry, Florida Review, Rust & Moth, PANK, Hellebore, Sundog Lit, HOBART, among countless others. She is the winner of the Bright Wings Poetry contest, the Furious Flower Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, and the White Stag Publishing Contest, among other prizes. Currently, she serves as Assistant Editor for Glass Poetry and co-founder of Think in Ink and the Women of Color Speak reading series. Her second collection Unlearning Eden is forthcoming from White Stag Publishing in 2022. Follow here at @k_lisarae on Twitter. Find more information here: khalisarae.com.
Danielle Buckingham, affectionately known as Dani Bee, is a Chicago-born, Mississippi-raised writer and creative based in Oxford, Mississippi. A 2021 Lambda Literary fellow, Dani’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Midnight & Indigo literary magazine, New Orleans Review, Raising Mothers, and elsewhere. When Dani isn’t writing or tending to her plants, you can find her talking Black spirituality, growing up in Mississippi, and pop culture on the Hoodoo Plant Mamas podcast. She is currently a Southern Studies graduate student at the University of Mississippi where she working on a memoir-documentary project centering Black & Queer Southerners.
Asia Calcagno is a writer and educator from Chicago. She has utilized writing as a tool for liberation and dialogue for the past 10 years. Her work has been featured and is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, The Golden Shovel Anthology, Smartish Pace, Hartskill Review, Learn Then Burn 2, and Respect the Mic Anthology. She has taught, coached, and performed locally and abroad. She was featured in The Limited’s national New Look of Leadership campaign which features women-identified leaders in the Chicago area. Asia holds an MFA from Bennington College and spends her time educating, consulting, and centering storytelling to create more effective educational spaces.
Named one of Ebony.com’s “8 Dynamic Black Women Editors in New Media” in 2013, Andrea Plaid’s work on race, gender, sex, and sexuality has appeared at Newsweek.com, Vogue.com, In These Times, On The Issues, Bitch.com, and Rewire. Her commentary has appeared on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Post. She is writing the forthcoming stylebook, Penning with the People, for the TFW/University of Arizona Press’ book series. She lives in Philadelphia, PA, where she is training as a sex educator, riding hard for the Oxford comma and em dashes, and eating fried okra...a lot of fried okra.
Sabrina Sarro (they/them/theirs) is a silly, colorful, human who loves to write about their Trans*ness, Queerness, and Blackness. They hold an LMSW from Columbia University and work as a healing worker in private practice. They are currently pursuing their MFA at CCNY, and are a Lighthouse Book Project fellow. They are an alumni of the following writing experiences: Bread Loaf, LAMDA, Martha’s Vineyard, Slice, Squaw Valley, and Yale. They can often be found wearing their polychromatic clogs while carrying a backpack full of too many books. Sabrina is working on their forthcoming memoir: If you steam one single organ, you can make the entire body a stew---which chronicles their experience as a food-rape survivor.
Jessica Vance is a new adult and longtime writer. She was raised in south Texas by the gulf, but moved to the piney east for school where she furthered her active participation in the arts. She's writing essays, screenplays, and poetry some of which you can read in Ashamed Magazine, Antifragile zine, and FilmDaze. Jessica utilizes writing as a method of building community and has enjoyed the opportunity to meet, work with, and interview many other writers and creatives who she believes are the futures of their respective industries. Her passion for community is one of the many things that inspires her work as well as her terminal internet addiction. Connect with her on Twitter @jessica_eva.
Casira is a Black feminist writer and traveler who tries to spend most of her free time in other countries. She writes primarily cultural essays and media reviews about a range of issues pertaining to race, feminism, LGBTQ+ experiences, and other relevant topics for outlets like ZORA, Sorella, and Black Girl Nerds. Her goal is to explore unique perspectives on relevant issues in an accessible way. In addition to writing, she became a trained facilitator in 2019 through the YWCA's Racial & Social Justice program and has led discussion series on issues of racial justice and equity. She’s currently obtaining a Master's degree in Social Justice and Community Action from the University of Edinburgh.
Sonja Killebrew (she/her) is a queer Black writer with an MFA in creative writing from City College of New York where she teaches writing as an adjunct assistant professor. She is also a teaching artist with Culture for One where she teaches creative writing to public school students and young people in foster care. Sonja’s play, The Brunch Club – A Dark Comedy, was produced online by Naked Angels Theater Company in 2021. Her creative nonfiction can be found in 433 Magazine, Pussy Magic Heals, and Medium. When not walking about New York City or dreaming about the return of hot yoga, Sonja can be found dancing to Beyonce videos in her Queens apartment.