Arkansas born and raised; resident of New York City for more than four decades, Patricia Spears Jones is the recipient of The Jackson Poetry Prize. She has been a culture maven for four decades. She was the first African American Program Coordinator at The Poetry Project where she later served as Mentor for Emerge, Surface, Be, a fellowship program. She ran the New Works Program for the Massachusetts Council of Arts & Humanities and was Director of Planning & Development at The New Museum of Contemporary Art. She is active in organizations involved with progressive politics, social justice, feminism, the environment, and multi-culturalism. She curates WORDS SUNDAY, a series focused on Brooklyn-based writers and artists. She has taught at CUNY and Adelphi University.

Ali Black is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize for her poem “Kinsman.” Her work has appeared in December, jubilat, LitHub, The Offing and elsewhere. Her first book of poetry, If It Heals At All was selected by Jaki Shelton Green for the New Voices series at Jacar Press.

Michael Broder is the author of Drug and Disease Free (Indolent Books, 2016) and This Life Now (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014), a finalist for the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His poems have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. He holds a BA from Columbia University, an MFA from New York University, and a PhD in Classics from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the founding publisher of Indolent Books and the creator of the HIV Here & Now Project. Broder lives in Brooklyn with his husband, the poet Jason Schneiderman, and a backyard colony of stray and feral cats.

After a fourteen-year career as a professional social worker in the fields of foster care and AIDS services in NYC, poet-translator-editor Peter Covino is an associate professor in the English and Creative Writing PhD Program at the University of Rhode Island. He is a well-published scholar and author of The Right Place to Jump and Cut Off the Ears of Winter both from W. Michigan UP, New Issues; and Essays on Italian American Literature CUNY/Bordighera. His prizes include a 2019 NEA Translation Fellowship, a Fellowship from the Richmond American International University of London, the PEN American/Osterweil Award, and the Frank O’Hara Prize for his chapbook Straight Boyfriend. He is a founding editor/trustee of Barrow Street Press.

A. Van Jordan is the author of four collections: Rise, which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award (Tia Chucha Press, 2001); M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, (2005), which was listed as one the Best Books of 2005 by the London Times; Quantum Lyrics, (W.W. Norton, 2007); and The Cineaste (W.W. Norton,, 2013). Jordan has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. He is also the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and a United States Artists Fellowship. He is the Henry Rutgers Presidential Professor at Rutgers University-Newark.

Composer-pianist-poet and the author of LEAVING CLE and SWAM. Her musical theater compositions include "SOmewhere i Texas," and "Sit-In at the Five & Dime." She has composed music for plays including "Door of No Return" by Nehassaiu deGannes and arranged the music of Montague Ring for Tracie Morris’ play "Impossible Man." She is the author of Leaving CLE poems of nomadic dispersal. A recent Creative Capital awardee, Lowe was commissioned to compose Millie and Christine McKoy Sisters’ Syncopated Sonnets in Song, from Tyehimba Jess’s Olio. She has performed in Nona Hendryx’s Rock Solid Women Festival and with Anne Waldman and Fastspeaking Music. Leaving CLE Songs, the debut album of Janice Lowe & NAMAROON is available on Bandcamp. She is a co-founder of the Dark Room Collective.

Jade Yeung was raised in Brooklyn, the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She has received support from Community of Writers and Fine Arts Work Center, and attended workshops at Tin House and VONA. Currently Jade is pursuing an MFA at Rutgers-Newark and is a proud alum of CUNY Hunter.