Sophia Hussain organizes readings at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and is a proud member of the AAWW Union with UAW Local 2110. She is a livestream phantom, a lapsed content creator and a writer.

Joseph O. Legaspi is the author of the poetry collections Threshold and Imago, both from CavanKerry Press; and three chapbooks: Postcards (Ghost Bird Press), Aviary, Bestiary (Organic Weapon Arts), and Subways (Thrush Press). Recent works have appeared in POETRY, New England Review, World Literature Today, Best of the Net, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. He cofounded Kundiman (www.kundiman.org), a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature.

Timothy DuWhite is a writer, poet, playwright, performance artist, and activist. His work is both brave and exhilarating, and directly addresses difficult and controversial issues such as HIV, state sanctioned violence, racism, and queerness.

He has performed at the United Nations/UNICEF, Apollo Theater, Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, Bowery Poetry Club, Dixon Place, La Mama Theater, Issue Project Room, on the behalf of Adidas and many more. He has delivered keynote speeches and appeared at institutions such as San Diego State University, Indiana University, Columbia University, Oregon State University, John Hopkins University and many more.

His writing and poetry can be found in The Rumpus, The Root, Afropunk, Black Youth Project, The Grio, and elsewhere. He has work in the forthcoming anthology The Future is Black: Afropessimism, Fugitivity and Radical Hope in Education co-edited by Michael Dumas, Ashley Woodson and Carl Grant.

A committed educator, he has facilitated workshops at New York City’s legendary Urban Word, the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project, Housing Works, and Rikers Island. A finalist for Poet’s House Emerging Poets Fellowship, he is currently at work on a one man play at Dixon Place, where he is artist-in residence.

A great deal of Timothy’s work and activism is around HIV/AIDS and related issues. In 2015, he developed a writing workshop entitled “HIV & the State: Coalition Building beyond the Condom,” in which he debunks popular narratives surrounding HIV as it relates to black people. Timothy has taught this workshop at major institutions across the country.

Currently the Program Director at New York Writers Coalition, Timothy lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Dave Morse is a poet, musician, and bookseller living in Brooklyn, NY. He has published one full-length collection and a handful of chapbooks. In the near future, he has poems forthcoming in the Brooklyn Rail, and is currently at work on a second book considering masculinity, illness, and ability. His other projects include being half of the Bushwick used bookstore Book Row, half of the poetry imprint IMP, and playing guitar in punk bands Nandas and Terrorist.

Andriniki Mattis is a non-binary poet, who has received fellowships from Cave Canem & Poets House. They earned an M.A in Creative Writing and Education, from Goldsmiths University of London, and a B.A in Political and Poetic Resistance, from Brooklyn College. Their work has appeared in Nepantla, Cortland Review, Paperbag Journal, Pariah’s Anthology, Typo Mag, THEM journal, and elsewhere. Andriniki is from and currently living in Brooklyn, their updates can be found at andriniki.com.

Francisco Márquez is originally from Venezuela. He received his MFA in poetry from New York University, where he was a Goldwater Fellow. The recipient of grants from the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and Letras Latinas, his poems have been published in Bennington Review, Narrative, and The Offing, among other publications. He works at the Academy of American Poets and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Edgar Oliver is a writer and performer who has lived and worked in New York for many years.  He started out reading his poems and performing monologues at the Pyramid night club in the early 1980’s.  From 1988 to 2001 he wrote and staged a series of autobiographical plays – premiering a new play almost every year in the Club at LaMama on east 4th Street.  Titles include The Seven Year Vacation, The Ghost of Brooklyn, Mosquito Succulence, Motel Blue 19, and The Drowning Pages.  In recent years he has written and performed a series of one man shows that have won much critical acclaim.  These shows include Helen and Edgar – directed by Catharine Burns of The Moth – and East 10th Street: self-portrait with empty house, In the Park, and Attorney Street – all three directed by Randy Sharp of the Axis Theatre Company.