Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) bro…
Ralph Ellison was a scholar and writer. He was born Ralph Waldo Ellison in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, named by his father after Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison was best known for his novel Invisible Man, w…
Anne Fadiman is the author, most recently, of the essay collection Frog (2026). Her first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (1997), won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Ang…
bell hooks (deliberately in lower-case; born Gloria Jean Watkins) was an African-American author, feminist, and social activist. Her writing focused on the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender…
Frederick Douglass (né Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey) was born a slave in the state of Maryland in 1818. After his escape from slavery, Douglass became a renowned abolitionist, editor and femin…
Dorothy Roberts is a scholar, professor, author and social justice advocate, and currently the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She has published …
Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature, rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solita…
Laura Hillenbrand (born 1967) is the author of the acclaimed Seabiscuit: An American Legend, a non-fiction account of the career of the great racehorse Seabiscuit, for which she won the William Hill S…
GREG MELVILLE is an author, adventure journalist, and tombstone tourist whose writing has appeared in many of the country's top print publications including Outside, Men's Health, National Geographic …
adrienne maree brown is the author of Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Soc…
Shirlene Obuobi is a Ghanaian-American physician, cartoonist, and author who grew up in Chicago, Illinois, Hot Springs, Arkansas and The Woodlands, Texas. When she’s not in the hospital (and let’s be …
Christina Sharpe is Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University in Toronto. She is the author of Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects…
Caitlin Doughty is a mortician and the author of Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? as well as the New York Times best-selling books Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity. She is the creator of …
Kaveh Akbar's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Tin House, PBS NewsHour, A Public Space, Guernica, Boston Review, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent…
Patrisse Cullors is a artist, organizer, and freedom fighter from Los Angeles, CA. Cofounder of Black Lives Matter, she is also a performance artist, Fulbright scholar, popular public speaker, and an …
Tommy Orange is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Ch…
Stephanie Land is the instant bestselling author of "MAID: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive." Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The…
CEBO CAMPBELL is an award-winning, multi-hyphenate creative based in New York and London. He is a winner of the Stories Award for Poetry, and his writings are featured in numerous publications. As co-…
Gretchen Sisson, PhD, is a sociologist who studies abortion and adoption in the United States. She is a researcher at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, part of the Department of Obstetri…