.CHISARAOKWU. (she/her) is an Igbo American transdisciplinary poet artist weaving archives, collage, and film to explore memory in the African diaspora. Her poetry is featured in Michigan Quarterly Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, ROOM, Obsidian, and others, and was nominated for Best New American Poets and Best of Net (Poetry). Her chapbook “This Wake Holding, Mmiri” received the 2023 Evaristo Poetry Prize’s Honorable Mention from the Africa Poetry Book Fund. In 2025, she was named a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow. Learn more about her practice at www.chisaraokwu.com.

T. De Los Reyes is a Filipino poet and author of And Yet Held (Bull City Press, 2024). Her poems have previously appeared or are forthcoming in Pleaides, Epiphany, Waxwing, The Los Angeles Review, among others. She is the founder of Read A Little Poetry. She lives and writes in Manila, Philippines.

@kjaime.bsky.social

linktr.ee/KarenJaime

As a poet, lesbian, and admirer of all things to do with the black body. Symphoné’s practice yearns to bridge the gap between the unseen and the felt. How do you make the itchy scalp readable? How do you turn a passive moment into a sequence of action? These are the questions she begins to integrate within her work. Not every poetic investigation leads to a conclusion, but that's the joy of her practice. How do we better understand the tender, the invisible and visceral moments

Victoria Reyes (she/her) is Associate Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies at University of California, Riverside. She is author of Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines (Stanford University Press, 2019) and Academic Outsider: Stories of Exclusion and Hope (Stanford Briefs, 2022). In addition to academic publications, she’s written for the Washington Post, LA Times, The Conversation, and Inside Higher Ed, among others. She also has two poems that are forthcoming in Feminist Formations and Departures in Critical Qualitative Research. Currently, she’s working on her poetry book manuscript tentatively titled “Monster.” She lives in Riverside, CA with her two children and her grandmother. She follows Palestinian artists in calling for solidary and action for a Free Palestine and to fight against and resist all systems of oppression and domination in pursuit of liberation for all. You may find her work at: https://profiles.ucr.edu/app/home/profile/vreyes

Julliette Holliday (she/her) is a Brooklyn based, Black, multi-hyphenate writer, artist, director, and educator. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, her concentrations included theater, dance, and Black studies, as well as African history and politics during a semester abroad at universities in Tanzania, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Her theater credits include composing, dramaturgy, directing, and producing for many organizations, including La Mama Experimental Theatre Club and The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Today, she teaches drama and devising with Brooklyn Arts Exchange and Opening Act. Her poetry and creative writing has received support from VONA, Kenyon Review’s Adult Writers Workshop, and the Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (recipient of the 2025 Katharine Bakeless Nason Scholarship for Non-Fiction). Julliette loves long walks in the park, reading a good book in one sitting, baking gluten free chocolate chip cookies for friends, and appreciating the childlike magic of Winnie the Pooh.