POETS AND ARTISTS

Anthony R. Keith, Jr., Ph.D. (Tony) is a Black, gay spoken word artist, poet, and Hip-Hop educator. His debut, How the Boogeyman Became a Poet, is a powerful YA memoir in verse, tracing his journey from being a closeted gay Black teen battling poverty, racism, and homophobia to becoming an openly gay first-generation college student who finds freedom in poetry.

Born in Harlem to Dominican parents, Raquel is an award-winning journalist, cultural activist, podcaster, and documentary filmmaker who travels widely to speak to diverse audiences about Latina identity, social justice, gentrification and inequality.

Joel Christian Gill is the Inaugural Chair of Boston University’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Narrative and Associate Professor in the CFA School of Visual Arts. He is also a cartoonist and historian who speaks nationally on the importance of sharing stories. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir Fights: One Boy's Triumph Over Violence, cited as one of the best graphic novels of 2020 by The New York Times and for which he was awarded the 2021 Cartoonist Studio Prize.

Gloriais a Colombian American writer, translator, and advocate for multilingual literacy. She is the author of This is the Year, Your Biome Has Found You, and Danzirly, which won the Ambroggio Prize and the Gold Medal Florida Book Award. Her other honors include an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellowship, Hedgebrook Fellowship, being a Macondista, Highlights Foundation’s Diverse Verse Fellowship, Lumina’s Multilingual Writing Award, and a part of Las Musas. She is proud to be St. Pete's first Latina poet laureate. 

John Jennings is a professor, author, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times Bestseller, 2018 Eisner Winner, and winner of the Hugo Award for his co-adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s dystopian novel The Parable of the Sower. As Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside (UCR), Jennings examines the visual culture of race in various media forms including film, illustrated fiction, and comics and graphic novels. He is also the director of Abrams ComicArts imprint Megascope, which publishes graphic novels focused on the experiences of people of color.

Bridgett M. Davis (pronounced Brih-jet) is the author of the memoir Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy, published by Harper Books in spring 2025. Davis is also the writer and director of the 1998 award-winning feature film Naked Acts, newly restored by Milestone Films and released in 2024 to critical acclaim, and screening in theaters across the US as well as international venues. Davis is Professor Emerita in the Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where she taught creative, narrative and film writing.

Priya Huq is a Bangladeshi Texan cartoonist living in New York who speaks widely on issues related to the comics industry, art, race, culture, identity and their intersections. Her appearances include the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, Emerald City Comic Con, and New York Comic Con. In her talks, Priya focuses on practical advice for marginalized artists and cartoonists. Audiences will learn how trauma affects an artist's brain and techniques for creating after trauma.

“I wrote poetry before I wrote anything else,” Susan Abulhawa. My Voice Sought the Wind is the poetry collection following her highly acclaimed novel, Mornings in Jenin, which has been translated into 30 languages since it was published in 2010. My Voice Sought the Wind represents five years of Abulhawa’s best poems on the timeless themes of love, loss, identity, and family, brought to life through her vivid observations and intimate personal reflections. She writes from her own experience, with a style that is romantic, but tinged with disillusionment, often a bit sad and always introspective.

Hafizah Augustus Geter is a Nigerian-American poet, writer, and literary agent born in Zaria, Nigeria, and raised in Akron, Ohio, and Columbia, South Carolina. Her debut memoir, The Black Period: On Personhood, Race & Origin, (Random House, 2022) won the 2023 PEN Open Book Award, the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Nonfiction in addition to being a 2023 Chautauqua Prize Finalist, a New Yorker Magazine Best Book of 2022, a Good Morning America Anticipated Book, and an Amazon's Best of the Month Editor's Pick. Kiese Laymon writes, "The Black Period: On Personhood, Race & Origin is an absolutely stunning literary experience. If our creases could croon and our aches could wail, The Black Period is what it might sound like. Hafizah Augustus Geter has written a classic." 

Called "one of 2020's buzziest poets" by Marie Claire, Hafizah is also the author of the debut poetry collection Un-American from Wesleyan University Press (September 2020), nominated for a 2021 NAACP Image Award, a finalist for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, longlisted for the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, and which received a Starred Review from Publisher's Weekly. Roxane Gay calls the poems "incisive" and "devastating." Claudia Rankine calls UN-AMERICAN a "gorgeous debut" that "troubles and reshapes notions of belonging."