Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movi…
Sarah Kay is an American poet. Known for her spoken word poetry, Kay is the founder and co-director of Project V.O.I.C.E., a group dedicated to using spoken word as an inspirational tool.
Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics. Carson lived in Montreal for several years and taught at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and at Princeton…
Lucille Clifton was an American poet, writer, and educator from New York. Common topics in her poetry include the celebration of her African American heritage, and feminist themes, with particular emp…
Joudah was born in Austin, Texas in 1971 to Palestinian refugee parents, and grew up in Libya and Saudi Arabia. He returned to the United States to study to become a doctor, first attending the Univer…
Nam Le came to Australia from Vietnam with his parents, when he was less than a year old, as a boat refugee. He went to Melbourne Grammar School and the University of Melbourne, from where he graduate…
Jericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA from the Universi…
Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Intimacies. One of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021, it was longlisted for the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the Joy…
Melissa Febos is the national bestselling author of five books, including Whip Smart, Abandon Me, Girlhood—which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Body Work: The Radical Pow…
Kelly Lytle Hernández holds the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History and directs the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. A 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient, she is …
Jenny Sarah Slate is an American actress, stand-up comedian, and author best known as the creator of the Marcel the Shell With Shoes On short films, which was also spun off into a children's book. She…
Seán Hewitt's debut collection of poetry, Tongues of Fire (2020), won the Laurel Prize in 2021. His memoir, All Down Darkness Wide (2022), won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2022. He lives i…
Oliver Baez Bendorf is the author of Consider the Rooster (Nightboat, 2024), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and two previous collections of poems: Advantages of Being Evergreen…
Danez Smith is the author of [insert] boy (2014, YesYes Books), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Their 2nd collection …
Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collection, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Equilibriu…
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist, and translator. She is author of three books of poetry: Something About Living (UAkron, 2024), winner of the 2024 National Book Award and winner of the 2022 Ak…
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…
Andrea Long Chu is a writer, critic, academic living in Brooklyn. Her first book, published by Verso, is Females. As an essayist, her work has appeared in n+1, Boston Review, The New York Times, New Y…
Mosab Abu Toha is the winner of a Palestine Book Award, an American Book Award, Walcott Poetry Prize, and also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
Sarah Ghazal Ali is a Pakistani American writer. She is the author of the poetry collection Theophanies (Alice James Books, 2024), winner of the GLCA New Writers Award and a California Book Award, and…