These are the authors that Tony Robles and Martha Cinader have interviewed on the Listen & Be Heard Hour for Readers & Writers, or authors that we, or our guests, have mentioned. You will find most of their books on our Affiliate Bookstore at Bookshop.org. Proceeds from purchases will go to Listen & Be Heard Radio, toward the construction of a non-commercial community broadcast radio station in Greenville, SC at 92.1FM, WLBH.
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Laura Cassidy – Writer, Publisher
Laura Cassidy is publisher and co-editor at the literary journal and small press Banshee, where along with her co-founders she was named a Bookseller Rising Star. Her novels for young adults were published by Penguin Ireland, and she is a recipient of the Cecil Day Lewis Literary Bursary Award and an Arts Council of Ireland…
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Mahreen Sohail – Writer
Mahreen Sohail was born in Pakistan. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College where she studied as a Fulbright scholar; and was a Writing Fellow at A Public Space and a Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Her work has appeared in Granta, the Kenyon Review, the Pushcart Prize Anthology (XLII), and elsewhere. She lives in…
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Laura Jean McKay – Writer
Laura Jean McKay is the author of The Animals in That Country – winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Victorian Prize for Literature, the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year and co-winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2021. Laura is also the author of Holiday in Cambodia and her latest collection…
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Mary O’Donnell – Writer
Mary O’Donnell has written award-winning poetry, novels, short fiction collections and dynamic essays. Published fiction includes the novels The Elysium Testament and Where They Lie. In 2023 she received an An Post/Irish Book Award for her political poem ‘Vectors in Kabul’. In 2026 Wake Forest University Press (USA) will publish her ninth poetry collection, Tenderness. In May this year, a…
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Patrick Cotter – Poet
Patrick Cotter is an Irish poet, born in Cork City where he still lives and works as a literary festival organiser and editor. His poems have been published in journals such as the Financial Times, The London Review of Books, Poetry and Poetry Review. He is a recipient of the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry. His…
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Nilsa Rivera – Data Analyst, Essayist
Nilsa Rivera is a data analyst and essayist exploring the intersections of housing insecurity, environment, and public policy. She’s currently working on her debut nonfiction book, Houselessness in Florida, forthcoming from the University of Florida Press.
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Brett Cook – Interdisciplinary Artist, Educator
Brett Cook is an interdisciplinary artist and educator who uses storytelling to distill complex ideas and creative practices to transform outer and inner worlds of being. His elaborate installations feature painting, drawing, and photography to tell pluralistic stories with broad representation. His public projects typically involve community workshops featuring arts-integrated pedagogy and contemplative strategies—along with…
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Mary Morrissy – Writer
I’m an award-winning Irish novelist (The Hennessy Award, Lannan Foundation Award) and short story writer, the author of four novels, Mother of Pearl, The Pretender, The Rising of Bella Casey and Penelope Unbound, as well as three collections of short stories, A Lazy Eye, Prosperity Drive and Twenty-Twenty Vision
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Vanessa Onwuemezi – Writer
Vanessa Onwuemezi is a writer living in London. She is the winner of The White Review Short Story Prize in 2019 and her work has appeared in literary and art magazines, including Granta, Frieze and Prototype. Dark Neighbourhood, her debut story collection, was named one of the Guardian’s Best Books of 2021, and was shortlisted for both the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the Edge Hill Prize…
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Gina Chung – Writer, Editor
Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in New York City. She is the author of the novel Sea Change, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and a B&N Discover Pick, and the short story collection Green Frog, which was a Good Morning America Book…
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Pyeng Threadgill – vocalist, composer, author, video artist, and voice and movement teacher
Pyeng Threadgill is an American vocalist, composer, author, video artist, and voice and movement teacher. With a deep belief in the transformative power of music and movement, she creates what she calls New Porch Music. Drawing on the musical traditions of the African Diaspora—from Black American Folk and Soul to Jazz and improvisation—Pyeng uses her…
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Bev Grant – social activist, feminist, labor singer/songwriter, photographer, filmmaker
Bev Grant is a veteran social activist, feminist, labor singer/songwriter, “cultural worker” from Park Slope Brooklyn, where she has lived for over 40 years. She is the co-creator of a women’s labor history multi-media presentation entitled “We Were There!” has recorded six albums, including a companion cd for the show, called “We Were There!”, a…
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Marque Gilmore – drummer, percussionist
Internationally acclaimed drummer/percussionist; future-music & live electronic music performance pioneer; professional international solo artist, producer, arranger and innovative cultural arts practitioner; Musical/Creative Director for the music/multi-media performance project DRUM-FM and Stockholm-based live arts-education organization and interactive concept-club KULT-U-REAL™.
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Dao Strom – poet, musician, writer, interdisciplinary artist
Dao Strom is a poet, musician, writer, and interdisciplinary artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author/composer of several hybrid-literary works, including including the poetry-art collection, INSTRUMENT, and its musical companion of song-poems, TRAVELER’S ODE, and the forthcoming TENDER REVOLUTIONS/YELLOW SONGS…
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Charlie Rosario
Charlie Rosario is a graphic designer, visual artist, drummer and poet of Puerto Rican parentage who was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1950. In the late 1960s he began his career in Latin album cover art with a psychedelic painting for Tito Puente (The King Tito Puente / El Rey Tito Puente, Tico Records, 1969),…
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Andrew Lam
Andrew Lam fled Vietnam with his family during the fall of Saigon in April 1975 when he was eleven years old. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, studying biochemistry, but abandoned plans for medical school after graduation. He entered the creative writing program at San Francisco State University instead. While still in school, he…
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Gail Ward
Interesting it has been! Gail Ward’s career has been a tapestry of diverse experiences, from dance to music production, international events, and multimedia content production. She has worked with renowned artists and managed large-scale events, always embracing change and creativity.
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Fortuna Sung
Fortuna was born in Hong Kong in an artistic family. Father John Chia Wen Sung was a film director, a producer and an educator. Mother was an actress. When Fortuna was 12 years old, she moved to Rome, Italy with her family where her father received an education in classical music and film.
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Matthew Garrison
Born 1970 in New York, Matthew Garrison, along with his mother Roberta Escamilla Garrison and sister Maia Claire Garrison, spent the first seven years of his life immersed in a community of musicians, dancers, writers, visual artists and poets. After the death of his father Jimmy Garrison (John Coltrane’s bassist), his family relocated to Rome, Italy…
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Deepika Singh – Poet
Deepika Singh is an Indian native from Margherita, Assam. By profession, a teacher. She is a budding poetess. Her writings are a reflection of the everyday experiences she has. She thinks the correct words have the power to transform our culture. Her works were featured in various national and international publications.
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Megan Marshsall – Biographer, Essayist
Megan Marshall is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Margaret Fuller: A New American Life as well as Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast and The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
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Trinh Mai – Multi-media Artist
Trinh Mai is a second-generation Vietnamese American visual artist who examines the refugee and immigrant experience, then and now. Through a vast breath of media, she helps tell the stories of we, the enduring People, while focusing on our witnessing of war, …
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Vi Khi Nao – Poet, Writer
Vi Khi Nao is a multidisciplinary writer working across poetry, fiction, theater, film, and collaborative art. She won the 2016 Nightboat Poetry Prize for The Old Philosopher and the 2017 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize for A Brief Alphabet of Torture. Her latest novel, The Italy Letters, was published by Melville House.
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Yvette Murray, Poet
Yvette R. Murray is an award-winning poet and writer. She has been published in Chestnut Review, Emrys Journal, Litmosphere, A Gathering Together, and others. She is the 2022 Susan Laughter Meyers Poetry Fellow, a 2021 Best New Poet selection, a Watering Hole Fellow, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She is a board member of the…
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Opal Palmer Adisa – Writer, Phd
Diverse and multi-genre, Opal Palmer Adisa, is an exceptional talent, nurtured on cane-sap and the oceanic breeze of Jamaica. Currently the Director of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of West Indies.
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Jen Soriano, Writer
Lan Duong is Associate Professor in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Treacherous Subjects: Gender, Culture, and Trans-Vietnamese Feminism and coeditor of Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora: Troubling Borders in Literature and Art. Her poetry has appeared in Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, Bold Words: Asian American Writing…
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Kim McMillon – Author, Educator
Dr. Kim McMillon, University of California, Merced, is a producer, playwright and contributor to Some Other Blues: New Perspectives on Amiri Baraka and Black Power Encyclopedia (1965-1975). She is editor of Black Fire—This Time (Willow Books).
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Lan Duong – Poet
Lan Duong is Associate Professor in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Treacherous Subjects: Gender, Culture, and Trans-Vietnamese Feminism and coeditor of Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora: Troubling Borders in Literature and Art. Her poetry has appeared in Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, Bold Words: Asian American Writing…
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Cal Hoffman – Author
CAL HOFFMAN is a writer, educator, and actor. He graduated from Catholic University and attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London, as well as the MFA Fiction Writing Program at Columbia University. He has taught English and creative writing to children of immigrants, private school students, and young people in foster care.
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Anderson Zaca, Photography
Anderson Zaca lives in NYC and holds a degree in photography and film production. He is the author of *Block Party NYC: Soul of Summer* and *Fire Island Invasion: Day of Independence*. Zaca has exhibited his work internationally and traveled extensively for various photo documentaries, assignments, and commercial projects. His commercial clients include Nike, Budweiser,…
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Russell Frederick, Photography
After the first day of class Russell knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life and he never looked back. At this time he was working in healthcare and in nursing school. A career as a nurse would be steady work but a career as a photographer had much more longterm…
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Mark Talbert – Landscaper, Author
Mark graduated from the University of Kentucky with a Master’s Degree in Agriculture. He served twenty-nine years as a county agent for Clemson University Extension Service in three counties with responsibilities in horticulture, agriculture and 4-H. He taught Master Gardeners and Pesticide Management. He wrote weekly/monthly articles for local and State Newspapers,
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Preston Lauterbach – Author
Preston Lauterbach is author of the American music classic The Chitlin’ Circuit (2011) and the history of the main street of Black America, Beale Street Dynasty (2015). His latest, Before Elvis: The African American Musicians Who Made the King published in January of 2025.
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Arnoldo García – poet, musician, visual artist, human rights organizer, restorative justice practitioner/trainer
Arnoldo García is a community-based poet, musician, visual artist, human rights organizer and a dedicated restorative justice practitioner/trainer. He has migrant roots that stretch from south Texas to the Pacific Northwest and is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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James Baldwin – Author
When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Baldwin was living in California in a rented house in Los Angeles, where he was writing a screenplay based on Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He received the tragic news while visiting London with his sister Gloria. Many of Baldwin’s extended visits to the United…
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Monica Macansantos – Author
Monica Macansantos is a 2024-2025 Shearing Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, and was recently named a 2025 Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellow at the Carson McCullers Center in Columbus, Georgia. She is the author of the essay collection, Returning to My Father’s Kitchen (Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books, May 2025) and the story collection, Love and Other Rituals (Grattan Street Press,…
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Wendy Loomis – Pianist, Composer
WENDY LOOMIS is an award-winning San Francisco-based composer, pianist, producer, and educator. She has released 20 CDs to date and performs nationally and internationally with various ensembles in the genres of poetic jazz, new age, and world music.
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Ozier Muhammad, Photojournalist
Ozier Muhammad graduated with a B.A., in photography from Columbia College in Chicago. He has been a photojournalist for more than 3 decades. His first job was as a staff photographer at Ebony Magazine. Ozier joined The Charlotte Observer in 1978, went to Newsday in 1980 and has been at the New York Times since…
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Dorsía Smith Silva, Author
Dorsía Smith Silva is the author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry, 2024), which was a finalist for the Whirling Prize and reviewed by Publishers Weekly. She is a multi-nominated Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net finalist, Best New Poets nominee, Cave Canem Poetry Prize Semifinalist, Poetry Editor at The Hopper, and Professor of…
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Matthew Shipp – Pianist, Author
With a unique, instantly recognizable style, pianist Matthew Shipp has been active on the international jazz scene since late 1980s. His boundary-less musical approach crisscrosses free jazz, elliptical post-bop, and modern classical music. He served as pianist in the David S. Ware Quartet during the early ’90s before leading his own dates and recording duos with a…
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Freda Epum- The Gloomy Girl Variety Show
Freda Ndidi Epum (Free-duh Nn-dee-dee Ay-poom) is a Nigerian-American writer, artist, and consultant from Tucson, AZ. Her work has been published in The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Vol 1. Brooklyn, Entropy, Bending Genres, Cosmonauts Avenue, Heavy Feather Review, Nat.Brut, Third Coast, Atticus Review, Rogue Agent, and the 2020 Bending Genres Anthology. She received her MFA from Miami University…
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Richard Clements – Pianist, V.P. & Founder, Barry Harris Institute of Jazz
Richard Clements is a pianist. In the 1970’s Richard played in various R & B bands in the northern California area. In the early 1980’s, he moved to New York City to pursue his Jazz studies with Jazz master pianist Barry Harris. Richard has worked with Clifford Jordan, Abby Lincoln, Leon Thomas, Charlie Persip and His…
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Vida Cruz-Borja – Fantasy and Science Fiction Author
Vida Cruz-Borja is a Filipina fantasy and science fiction writer, editor, artist, tarot reader, and conrunner. Her short fiction and essays have been published in F&SF, Fantasy, Strange Horizons, PodCastle, Expanded Horizons, and various anthologies. She won the 2022 IGNYTE Award for Best Creative Nonfiction for “We are the Mountain: A Look at the Inactive…
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C. L. Willis- Author
C. L. (Cecil) Willis, a native of Canton, North Carolina, is professor emeritus of sociology and criminology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. After retiring, he moved back to his beloved Southern Appalachian mountains. He lives with his daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren in Alexander outside Asheville, NC. Hillbilly Odyssey is his first book.
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Suzette Clark Bradshaw – Poet, Sculptor
Suzette Clark Bradshaw from western North Carolina, is a self-taught poet and sculptress. Her poems have appeared in Dead Mule, Branches, Women Speak, and more.
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Donna Janell Bowman – Author
Donna Janell Bowman is an award-winning author of books for young readers, including Wings of an Eagle: The Gold Medal Dreams of Billy Mills, co-authored with Olympian Billy Mills and illustrated by S.D. Nelson; Step Right Up: How Doc and Jim Key Taught the World About Kindness, illustrated by Daniel Minter; Abraham Lincoln’s Dueling Words,…
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Elizabeth Perlman – Writing Teacher
Elizabeth has a BA in Media Arts and a Masters in Transformative Arts, the study of creative expression for healing, connection, and growth. She is also a certified Group Leader in The Amherst Writing Method. Before launching TIWP in 2013, Elizabeth worked for over a decade as a graphic designer and art director in the advertising…
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Julie Patton – Poet
Julie Ezelle Patton is the author of The Flower Poem (Tender Buttons, 2024), Notes for Some (Nominally) Awake (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2007), and “Car Tune” & Not So Bella Donna (Belladonna*, 2003). A 2024 special issue of Chicago Review is devoted to their poetic, performative, and visual work and building maintenance project.
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Judy Talaugon -Land Protector, Storyteller
Judy Talaugon is a Chumash and Filipina Land Protector from the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. She is the daughter of farmworkers and immigrant leaders. Growing up among Mexican and Filipina communities in California, she has been a long-time activist in numerous struggles, ranging from human rights to housing, land rights, and the fight…
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Jonathan Thirkield – Poet
Jonathan Thirkield is a poet and digital artist. He is the author of two collections—Infinity Pool (University of Chicago Press Phoenix Poets 2024) and The Waker’s Corridor, winner of the 2008 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets.
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Mosab Abu Toha – Poet
MOSAB ABU TOHA is a Palestinian poet, short-story writer, and essayist from Gaza. His first collection of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and won the Palestine Book Award, the American Book Award, and the Walcott Poetry Prize. Abu Toha…
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Victoria Santa Cruz – Poet, Choreographer, Costume Designer
In 1958, together with her younger brother Nicomedes, she cofounded the first black theater company in Peru, Cumanana, which she codirected until 1961. The three-act musical play Malató (1961)—which she wrote, choreographed, and staged—revealed “the historically prevalent intimate relations between slave and master that were omitted from the official history of Peruvian haciendas and biological mestizaje.”
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Genny Lim – SF Poet Laureate
Genny Lim is an American poet, playwright, and performer. She is the ninth poet laureate of San Francisco, California, and the first Chinese American in the role.She was the Chair of Community Arts and Education Committee, and Chair of the Advisory Board for the San Francisco Writers Corps.
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Roy Ayers – Vibraphonist, Vocalist
Now in his fourth decade in the music business, Ayers, known as the Godfather of Neo-soul, continues to bridge the gap between generations of music lovers. In the 60’s he was an award-winning jazz vibraphonist, and transformed into a popular R&B band leader in the 70’s/80’s.
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Craig Harris – Trombonist, Composer
Craig Harris, trombonist, composer, bandleader, and sonic shaman. … his musical journey began with the Sun Ra, … place among creative music’s … leaders.
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Nikki Giovanni – Poet
… I have been awarded … 7 NAACP Image Awards which makes me very very proud. I have been nominated for a Grammy; been a finalist for the National Book Award… authored 3 New York Times and Los Angeles Times Best Sellers, highly unusual for a poet.
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Wordslanger, A poet for the people.
Producing Director of The Lower Bottom Playaz, the Founding Artistic Director of The Sister Thea Bowman Memorial Theater, Associate Director of Recovery Theatre Inc, and Recovery Theater: San Francisco., Founder of the Sister Thea Bowman Memorial Theater Day Camp free for kids, Artist Educator, independent Arts Programming Consultant.
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Peter Jamero – Author, Human Services, Human Rights
Peter was born on August 27, 1930, in Oakdale, California to parents Ceferino Jamero Sr. and Apolonia Madelo Jamero. He graduated from University of California Los Angeles with a Master’s degree in Social Work. Peter’s professional achievements were often Filipino firsts as a human services leader and top-level government executive. He served as a King…
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Alice Walker – Writer, Poet, Activist
Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer, poet and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, four children’s books, and volumes of essays and poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1983 and the National Book Award.
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Zora Neale Hurston – Author, Anthropologist
I remember the very day that I became colored. Up to my thirteenth year I lived in the little Negro town of Eatonville, Florida. It is exclusively a colored town. The only white people I knew passed through the town going to or coming from Orlando.
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Brian Kimmel – Author
Brian Kimmel is a multiheritage Indonesian American, and grandchild to Pacific Northwest author, Martha Walandouw Lohn. He co-authored Lohn’s memoir, Blue Skies, Troubled Waters, and edited the first Indonesian language version. A poet, memoirist, lyricist, composer, musician, and scholar-practitioner, Kimmel guest lectures and recitals internationally on narrative technologies and the expressive arts.
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Caitlin Jans – Publisher, Teacher, Writer
Caitlin Jans is the co-founder of Authors Publish Magazine and the Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish, as well as The Poetry Marathon. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and has taught at Seattle Pacific University, and Berkeley College, Her work has been published widely including: The Rumpus, Poets & Writers, The Adroit Journal,…
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Blagovesta Momchedjikova – Poet, Author, Professor
Blagovesta Momchedjikova, PhD, is a lover and writer of cities, who has been teaching at the Expository Writing Program at New York University since 1998. She is the editor of Captured By The City: Perspectives in Urban Culture Studies (2013) and Streetnotes: Urban Feel (2010); co-editor of Urban Habits (2025),
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Alejandro Murguía – Author, Poet Laureate
Alejandro Murguía is the author of Southern Front and This War Called Love (both winners of the American Book Award). His non-fiction book The Medicine of Memory highlights the Mission District in the 1970s during the Nicaraguan Solidarity movement. He is a founding member and the first director of The Mission Cultural Center.
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Martha Cinader, Author, Performance Artist
Martha Cinader is an author and performance artist. She hosts and produces The Listen & Be Heard Hour for Reader & Writers, a non-commercial podcast, and a syndicated radio show on the Pacifica Affiliate Network. Originally from New York, she lives in Greenville, SC where she is the Director of Listen & Be Heard Radio.
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Billy Mills – Athlete and Author
At the 1964 Olympics, Billy Mills shocked the world and came from behind to win the gold medal in the 10,000 meters race. At the time, he set a world record of 28 minutes, 24.4 seconds and is still the only American to ever win a gold medal in the 10K event.
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Barbara Tran – Author, Editor
Barbara Tran is an immigrant. And a settler. She writes in multiple genres. Her debut poetry book, Precedented Parroting, is a Finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award. She is currently at work in collaboration with Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn on the screenplay for Nguyễn’s debut feature film.
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Monique Truong – Writer, Editor
Monique Truong is the Vietnamese American author of the bestselling, award-winning novels The Book of Salt, Bitter in the Mouth, and The Sweetest Fruits and the co-author of the children’s picture book Mai’s Áo Dài. She’s also a former refugee, essayist, avid eater, lyricist/librettist, and intellectual property attorney (more or less in this order).
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Tony Robles – Poet, Author
Tony Robles, “The People’s Poet” was born in San Francisco and is the nephew of Filipino-American poet, historian and social justice activist Al Robles. He was a shortlist nominee for poet laureate of San Francisco in 2017 and the recipient of the San Francisco Art Commission individual literary artist grant in 2018. His two books…
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Marissa Eller – Author
Marissa Eller is a novelist with chronic pain and an abundance of emotions. She holds a BA in English from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University, which she uses in her work as an academic consultant. She resides in Hickory, North Carolina with her family and…
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Marivi Soliven – Author
Marivi Soliven is a Filipina author based in America where she works as an interpreter. Her background as a writer includes having taught creative writing at the University of the Philippines, the Ayala Museum, and the University of California in San Diego. The Mango Bride has earned her a Hedgebrook writing residency last August 2012,…
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Crystal Simone Smith – Author, Poet, Editor
Crystal Simone Smith is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Routes Home (Finishing Line Press, 2013) Running Music (Longleaf Press, 2014), and Down To Earth (Longleaf Press, 2020). She co-authored, One Window’s Light, A Collection of Haiku, edited by Lenard D. Moore (2017), which won the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award for Best…
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Meg Reid – Publisher
Meg Reid is the Executive Director of the Hub City Writers Project in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and the Publisher of Hub City Press, where she finds and champions new and overlooked voices from the American South, including Carter Sickels, Drew Lanham, Ashley M. Jones, and Anjali Enjeti. She is outspoken about the need for transparency…
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Ernest Brawley – Author
Ernest Brawley has spent his life writing novels and film scripts, teaching, and traveling the world. Ernest has attended the University of California at Santa Barbara and San Francisco State University, where he was granted several writing scholarships and a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing and went on to writing five novels.
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Ernie Brill – Poet, Author
Ernie Brill grew up in a lively Brooklyn housing project in a family of hyperbolic storytellers and a neighborhood featuring boisterous luncheonettes and sumptuous ice cream. At 13, a vision on the BMT subway inspired him to start writing. Brill’s I Looked Over Jordan And Other Stories (Boston South End Press 1980) was optioned by…
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Jan Smith – SOMOS Bookstore
Jan Smith has an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, was the curator of the SOMOS Summer/Winter Writers Series from 2009-2015, and is currently the Executive Director of SOMOS(since 2014). She is a 2012 recipient of an award from Southwest Writers for her short story, “Breasts,” …
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Nick Courtright – Publisher
Dr. Nick Courtright is Founder and CEO of Atmosphere Press, a literary hybrid publisher that provides meaningful and rewarding experiences to writers. He is the author of the poetry collections The Forgotten World, Let There Be Light, and Punchline. His latest book, on literary interpretation, is In Perfect Silence at the Stars: Walt Whitman and…
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Kellie Richardson – Author
Kellie Richardson is a writer, artist, and educator born and raised in Tacoma, Washington. Kellie’s work primarily explores themes of love, loss and longing, with particular attention to how those themes intersect with Black American humanity. Kellie’s relationship with art is defined by the metamorphosis that happens when art is a liberatory practice.
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Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés – Poet / Author
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés is Mestiza Latina [Native American/ Mexica Spanish], presently in her seventies. She grew up in the now vanished oral tradition of her immigrant, refugee families who could not read nor write, or did so haltingly, and for whom English was their third language overlying their ancient natal languages.
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Vanessa Miller – Author, Playwright, Motivational Speaker
Vanessa Miller is a best-selling author, playwright, and motivational speaker. She started writing as a child, spending countless hours either reading or writing poetry, short stories, stage plays and novels. Vanessa’s creative endeavors took on new meaning in1994 when she became a Christian. Since then, her writing has been centered on themes of redemption, often…
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Shizue Seigel – Founder and Director of Write Now! SF Bay
Shizue Seigel is a third-generation Japanese American writer, visual artist and community activist who explores complex intersections of history, culture and spirituality through prose, poetry and visual art.
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William Giraldi – Author
William Giraldi is author of the novels Busy Monsters, Hold the Dark (a Netflix feature film), and About Face, the memoir The Hero’s Body, and a collection of literary criticism, American Audacity (all published by W.W. Norton). He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and is Master…
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David Jauss – Author, Poet
David Jauss is the author of four collections of short stories, Black Maps, Crimes of Passion, Glossolalia: New & Selected Stories, and Nice People: New & Selected Stories II; two books of poems, You Are Not Here and Improvising Rivers; a collection of craft essays, Alone With All That Could Happen: On Writing Fiction (Revised & Expanded Edition); and an essay on the…
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Beth Revis – Author/Co-owner of Wordsmith Workshops
Beth Revis is an internationally acclaimed bestselling author with books available in more than 20 languages and has toured internationally to meet her fans. Five of her novels have listed in the NY Times, including her most recent title, the co-authored romantasy Night of the Witch. Beth primarily writes science fiction and fantasy for both…
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Dan Sinykin – Author, Professor of English
Dan Sinykin is an assistant professor of English at Emory University with a courtesy appointment in quantitative theory and methods. He is the author of American Literature and the Long Downturn: Neoliberal Apocalypse (2020). His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, Dissent, and other…
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Crystal Cauley – Poet, Activist
Crystal Cauley (1980-2024) was the founder of the Black History Collective of Henderson County, and Black Business Network of WNC. She was a host of The Versers of Color open mic. She served on Hendersonville’s Historic Preservation Commission and on many other community boards and was a tireless advocate for her community.
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Lesley-Ann Brown – Author, Publisher
Lesley-Ann Brown is a Caribbean American writer who is originally from Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black Woman to her European Son and Blackgirl on Mars. She currently resides in her own body.
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Suzy Sureck – Multi-Media Artist
Suzy Sureck is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist whose sculptural installations, videos and drawings involve physical and metaphoric qualities of wind, water, light, shadow, and the poetics of luminosity. Suzy draws with light to create experiential ecologically considered immersive root projections, underwater installations, or aquatic interactive dance performances. Cross-pollinating disciplines, she merges technology and traditional…
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Glenis Redmond – The First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina
Glenis Redmond is the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. She is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumni. She has authored six books of poetry: Backbone (Underground Epics, 2000), Under the Sun (Main Street Rag, 2002), and What My Hand Say (Press 53, 2016), Listening Skin (Four Way Books), Three…
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Ernie Brill – Poet/Author
Ernie Brill grew up in a lively Brooklyn housing project in a family of hyperbolic storytellers and a neighborhood featuring boisterous luncheonettes and sumptuous ice cream. At 13, a vision on the BMT subway inspired him to start writing. Brill’s I Looked Over Jordan And Other Stories (Boston South End Press 1980) was optioned by…
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Joan Gelfand – Writer, Speaker, Activist
Author of three well-reviewed volumes of poetry and an award-winning chapbook of short fiction, Joan Gelfand’s debut novel “Extreme,” set in a Silicon Valley startup, is published by Blue Light Press. Additionally, “You Can Be a Winning Writer: The 4 C’s of Successful Authors” Joan’s book for writers is an Amazon best seller. Joan’s memoir…
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Mary Oishi – Poet / Author
Mary Oishi was the child of an American soldier and a Japanese bride from World War II. She grew up with her father’s relatives in a white supremacist enclave in rural Pennsylvania until finally reuniting with her mother in 1987. Since arriving in Albuquerque in 1999, she has performed and published poetry “in the spirit…
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Ruth Ozeki – Author and Filmmaker
Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest, whose books have garnered international acclaim for their ability to integrate issues of science, technology, religion, environmental politics, and global pop culture into unique, hybrid, narrative forms. Her new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, published by Viking in September 2021, tells the story…
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Caroline Cabading – Vocalist, Percussionist, Composer, Educator
Caroline Cabading, a 4th-generation San Franciscan, is an actively performing jazz and R&B vocalist, indigenous Philippine percussionist, composer and traditional arts educator with over 20 years experience performing, touring and teaching. She has been commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission (2016, 2018, 2020, 2022) the California Arts Council (2018, 2020, 2022), Zoo Labs (2021)…
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T. R. Johnson – Professor of English, Author
T. R. Johnson is a Professor of English and Weiss Presidential Fellow at Tulane University. He is the author of New Orleans: A Writer’s City (2023) and the editor of New Orleans: A Literary History (2019). He has also written books about psychoanalysis, teaching, and prose-style. For over twenty years, he has lived in the…
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Randy Gonzales – Poet, Community Historian
Randy Gonzales is a native New Orleanian of Filipino descent; a poet, writer, and community historian who researches and shares the stories of Filipino Louisiana; a scholar and educator, an associate professor of English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who holds the Dr. James Wilson/BORSF Eminent Scholar Endowed Professorship in Southern Studies; a…
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Sherrie Flick – Author, Professor in Creative Writing at Davidson College
Sherrie Flick is the 2025 McGee Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing at Davidson College. She received a 2023 Creative Development Grant from the Heinz Endowments and a Writing Pittsburgh fellowship from the Creative Nonfiction Foundation. She served as co-editor for the Norton anthology Flash Fiction America and series editor for The Best Small Fictions 2018.…
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Josiah Luis Alderete – Poet, Co-owner, Medicine For Nightmares Bookstore and Gallery
Josiah Luis Alderete is a full blooded Pocho, Spanglish speaking poeta who has been an active part of la Area Bahia’s spoken word scene for over twenty years. He was a founding member of outspoken word group “The Molotov Mouths” and is the curator and host of the long running monthly Chicano/Latinx reading series Speaking Axolotl which happens…
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Doug Tallamy – Author, Professor of Agriculture
Doug Tallamy is the T. A. Baker Professor of Agriculture in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where he has authored 112 research publications and has taught insect related courses for 44 years. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how…
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Ninotchka Rosca – Author and Journalist
Ninotchka Rosca is a Filipina feminist, author, journalist, owl expert, and human rights activist best known for her 1988 novel State of War and for her activism, especially during the Martial Law dictatorship of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Rosca has been described as “one of the major players in the saga of Filipina American…
