Hanif Abdurraqib

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, and PEN America, among other journals, and his essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and the New York Times. His first full-length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much (2016), was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize and nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. He released a limited edition chapbook, Vintage Sadness, in 2017, the same year his first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named a book of the year by media outlets such as Buzzfeed, NPR, and The Los Angeles Review, among others. His book Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest (2019), which chronicled the band, was a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune For Your Disaster, won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. In 2021, he will release the book A Little Devil in America with Random House.   

Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta

Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta is an associate professor at the City University of New York-BCC. Her first book of poetry, Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere, is an Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize finalist, and it is forthcoming from Get Fresh Books in 2021. Recent work can be found in Best American Poetry, The Baffler, Acentos Journal, Kweli Journal, Red Fez, Gathering of the Tribes Magazine, In Full Color, Paterson Literary Review, MiPoesias, Short Plays on Reproductive Freedom, and Celebrating Twenty Years of Black Girlhood: The Lauryn Hill Reader. She is a Geraldine Dodge Foundation Poet, a Macondo Fellow, and the editor of Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity, an anthology that features over Latinx 30 contributors and subjects. Her work focuses on her Afro-Latinx and indigenous ancestry, queer identity, the punk and house music subcultures, her birthplace of Chicago, and the destruction of post-colonial neoliberalism in educational environments.  

Tara Betts

Tara Betts is the author of Arc & Hue and the chapbooks 7 x 7: kwansabas and THE GREATEST!: An Homage to Muhammad Ali. A Cave Canem alum, she received her Ph.D. at Binghamton University and her MFA from New England College. Betts has performed her poems across the country and internationally, and her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She has taught writing at Rutgers University, Binghamton University, and the University of Illinois-Chicago.

 

Ochy Curiel

Ochy Curiel is a gender studies professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She is an Afro-Dominican feminist, lesbian, anti-racist, and decolonial singer/scholar/activist who has been at the forefront of contemporary Afro-feminist movements throughout Latin America.

 

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs

A writer, vocalist, and performance/sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of TwERK (2013). Diggs has presented and performed at California Institute of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, the Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center and at festivals including Explore the North Festival in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands; Hekayeh Festival in Abu Dhabi; the International Poetry Festival of Copenhagen; and the 2015 Venice Biennale. As an independent curator, artistic director, and producer, Diggs has presented events for BAMcafé, Black Rock Coalition, El Museo del Barrio, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. She received a 2020 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, a Whiting Award (2016), and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (2015), as well as grants and fellowships from Cave Canem, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, among others. Diggs lives in Harlem. 

Lise Esdaile

Lise Esdaile teaches writing-intensive courses at Lehman College. She has taught at the Eugene Lang School and the Bayview Correctional Facility for Women, which was part of Bard College's Prison Initiative Program. Her areas of interest include feminist/womanist literature and theory; African-American literature and theory; the African-American detective in film and fiction; and cinema studies, with a focus on horror and the intersection of literature and film.

 

Mariposa María Teresa Fernández

Mariposa María Teresa Fernández is an award-winning Afro-Puerto Rican poet, spoken word performance artist, visual artist, educator, activist, scholar, and Bronx native. Her poetry has been published in African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song; The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature; The Afro Latin@ Reader: History & Culture in the United States; Manteca: Anthology of AfroLatin@ Poets; Bumrush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam; and Latinas: An Anthology of Struggles and Protests in 21st Century USA. She has been featured on HBO Latino in the critically acclaimed series Habla Ya! and Americanos: Latino Life in the U.S. Fernández has performed throughout the United States and abroad, including Cuba, Germany, and South Africa. She has served New York City as a teaching artist and has taught creative writing for numerous public schools and nonprofit organizations. A member of the NYC Latina Writers Group, Fernández has also led poetry workshops at the Sankofa Sisterhood Writers Retreat for BIPOC women. Fernández is a CUNY faculty member and teaches at Lehman College in the Women and Gender Studies Program and the Africana Studies Department, and the Black Studies Program at The City College of New York. She is a proud recipient of the 2020 CUNY Adjunct Incubator grant and is working on a project documenting stories of neighborhood and community resilience in the South Bronx. 

Harmony Holiday

Harmony Holiday is a writer, dancer, archivist, director, and the author of four collections of poetry, A Jazz Funeral for Uncle Tom (2019), Hollywood Forever (2017), Go Find Your Father/A Famous Blues (2014), and Negro League Baseball (2011). She founded and runs Afrosonics, an online archive of jazz and diaspora poetics, and Mythscience, a publishing imprint that reissues and reprints work from the archive. Holiday studied rhetoric at UC Berkeley and received her MFA from Columbia University. She has received the Motherwell Prize from Fence Books, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and an NYFA fellowship. She is currently completing a book of poems called M a à f a, an accompanying collection of essays and memoir titled Love is War for Miles, and a biography of the jazz singer Abbey Lincoln. Her work is deeply rooted in Black music and collective improvisation with Black people in the tradition of her father, a northern soul singer-songwriter who introduced her to artists such as Ray Charles, The Staple Singers, and Bobby Womack.  

Tyehimba Jess

Tyehimba Jess is a Cave Canem and NYU alumnus. The winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, Jess is described by the Poetry Foundation as “the rare poet who bridges slam and academic poetry.” He earned his MFA from New York University and his BA from the University of Chicago. In addition to Olio, he is the author of the 2005 volume of poetry leadbelly, which chronicles the life of blues musician Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter and won the 2004 National Poetry Series, and African American Pride: Celebrating Our Achievements, Contributions, and Enduring Legacy. Jess is currently an English professor at the College of Staten Island. He has received fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.

 

Patricia Spears Jones

Patricia Spears Jones is a poet, educator, cultural activist, and anthologist and the recipient of the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize. She is the author of A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems, three full-length poetry collections, and five chapbooks. Jones co-edited the groundbreaking anthology Ordinary Women: An Anthology of New York City Women (1978) and THINK: Poems for Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Day Hat (2009). Her poems are widely anthologized, most notably in Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin; BAX 2016: Best American Experimental Writing; WORD: An Anthology by A Gathering of Tribes, and Lift Every Voice: Why African American Poetry Matters Today, among other publications. Her essays, colloquies, and interviews are published in Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry; The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience and Change Agent, and print and online journals including The Black Scholar, Bomb, Rumpus, and The Writers Chronicle. The Museum of Modern Art commissioned the poem “Lave” for the exhibition Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series. She has taught creative writing at Hunter College, Barnard College, Adelphi University, and Hollins University as the 2020 Louis D. Rubin Writer in Residence. Jones is an emeritus fellow for Black Earth Institute and organizer of the American Poets Congress.   

The Last Poets

The Last Poets is a collective of poets and musicians that arose from the Black nationalism of the late 1960s African-American civil rights movement. The name is taken from a poem by the South African revolutionary poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, who believed he was in the last era of poetry before guns would take over. The original users of that name were the trio of Felipe Luciano, Gylan Kain, and David Nelson.

 

Rodney Terich Leonard

Rodney Terich Leonard is the author of Sweetgum & Lightning. His poems have appeared in BOMB, Four Way Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Cortland Review, HIV Here & Now, and other journals. A Callaloo poetry fellow, he holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University and lives in Manhattan.

 

Trapeta B. Mayson

Trapeta B. Mayson is the city of Philadelphia’s 2020-2021 Poet Laureate and the author of She Was Once Herself and Mocha Melodies. Mayson is a recipient of a Pew Fellowship in Literature, a Leeway Transformation Award, a Leeway Art and Change Grant, and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Grants. She is a Cave Canem and Callaloo Fellow and a 2019 Aspen Words Emerging Writer’s Fellow with the Aspen Institute. Mayson also released two music and poetry projects, SCAT and This Is How We Get Through, in collaboration with internationally acclaimed jazz guitarist Monnette Sudler. Her other publications include submissions in The American Poetry Review, Epiphany Literary Journal, Aesthetica magazine, and Margie: The American Journal of Poetry among others.

 

Dr. Tanya L. Saunders

Dr. Tanya L. Saunders is a sociologist interested in the ways in which the African Diaspora throughout the Americas uses the arts as a tool for social change. They hold a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Master of International Development Policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Dr. Saunders’ books include Cuban Underground Hip Hop, as well as a recently published chapter in No Tea, “No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies.” For those of you who read/speak Portuguese, check out their essay “Epistemologia negra sapatão como vetor de uma práxis humana libertária.” Dr. Saunders is currently working on a forthcoming documentary short about Black Feminist Activism in Cuba.

 

Monnette Sudler

Monnette Sudler is a poet and performer who loves music by classic jazz guitarists like Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, and Bolo Sete. She continues to be inspired by her family, colleagues, and the communities where she has either lived or been of some service. Monnette grew up listening to Nat King Cole and the Motown sounds. Her first teacher was a positive influence that taught folk music of different eras, Paul Simon, Richie Havens, Joni Mitchell, and Mississippi Reds. Later Monnette was influenced by the music of John Coltrane, Yusef Lateef, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Wayne Shorter, and Miles Davis.

 

Hank Williams

Hank Williams currently teaches in the Departments of English and Africana Studies at Lehman College. His regular courses are Contemporary Urban Writers, Intro to Africana Studies, Fieldwork in the African American Community, and African American History. His research focuses on the Black Arts and Black Power Movements of the 1960s-70s and the intersection of art, politics, and sound.

 

Lift Every Voice is made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Emerson Collective and is presented in partnership with The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Lift Every Voice coincides with the publication in September of African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song, a major new Library of America anthology edited by Kevin Young, who also serves as principal humanities advisor on the project. Additional funding has been provided by the Department of Cultural Affairs.