Photo by Paul Coates

Ethelbert Miller is a literary activist and author of two memoirs and several poetry collections. Miller’s latest book If God Invented Baseball(City Point Press) was awarded the 2019 Literary Award for poetry by the American Library Association’s Black Caucus. He is a member of Voice Male’s national advisory board. Kirsten Porter is a freelance editor, poet, professor, and guest lecturer. Porter is the assistant to poet and literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller and the editor of The Collected Poems of E. Ethelbert Miller (Willow Books).

Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, editor, and community activist. She volunteers for organizations that promote Palestinian rights and culture and the civil rights of vulnerable communities in Alexandria, Virginia, where she lives. Azzam currently works as publications editor for the DC think tank, Arab Center Washington. Her poems have appeared in several publications. She holds an M.A. in Arabic literature from Georgetown University.

John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is the author of the Splinterlands trilogy and Aftershock: A Journey into Eastern Europe’s Broken Dreams, among other books.

Aaron Jenkins is an ordained minister at New Solid Rock Church Ministries.  He is the former executive director of Operation Understanding DC, former White House appointee under President Barack Obama, and a former US Senate staff member.

Robert Jensen, an emeritus professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of several books, including The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men and The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege. His 2007 book, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, is available as a free PDF online. He can be reached at rjensen@austin.utexas.edu or http://robertwjensen.org/.

Holly Karapetkova is the author of two books of poetry, Words We Might One Day Say and Towline. Her poetry, prose, and translations have appeared widely. She teaches at Marymount University and is currently serving as Poet Laureate of Arlington County.

Sean Murphy has appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered and been quoted in USA Today, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and AdAge. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Founding director of 1455 (www.1455litarts.org), he has served as writer-in-residence of the Noepe Center on Martha’s Vineyard. Please contact seanmurphy.net/; @bullmurph.

Dr. SooJin Pate is a professor, writer, and a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant dedicated to centering the lives and experiences of historically marginalized communities. She teaches courses on U.S. history and culture through the lens of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Pate is the author of From Orphan to Adoptee: U.S. Empire and Genealogies of Korean Adoption (University of Minnesota Press).

Rachel B. Reinhard was born and raised in Washington, DC. She currently lives in Oakland, California, where she works with history teachers.

Emily Ruth Rutter is an associate professor of English at Ball State University. She is the author of Invisible Ball of Dreams: Literary Representations of Baseball Behind the Color Line (University Press of Mississippi, 2018) and The Blues Muse: Race, Gender, and Musical Celebrity in American Poetry (University of Alabama Press, 2018). Rutter co-edited Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era (Routledge, 2020).

Clifford Thompson’s most recent book is What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues (2019). He teaches nonfiction writing at the Bennington Writing Seminars, Sarah Lawrence College, and NYU. A painter, he is a member of the Blue Mountain Gallery in New York City.

Lynda Tredway is an educator and fabric artist. She is currently senior associate for equity and leadership at the Institute for Educational Leadership and program coordinator in Educational Leadership at the East Carolina University. Coauthor of two books on equity in education, her quilt project, The Lynching Trees: Leaves of Redemption for America, exemplifies her commitment to facing our collective history.

Sarah J. Trembath is a poet, academic researcher, creative nonfiction writer, and lecturer in the writing studies program at American University. She has written two books: This Past Was Waiting for Me (2018) and It Was the Scarlet That Did It (2019). She is a former empowerment self-defense instructor and is instructor emeritus at Defend Yourself in Washington, DC.

Julie Walls is a poet and essayist who lives in southeastern Virginia. She has spent more than four decades working with foster children.