April Freely (1982 - 2021) was a poet and essayist from Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. Her honors include a Tulsa Art Fellowship, winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, a Cave Canem Poetry Fellowship, and an Ohio Arts Council grant. She has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Her art writing was awarded a CUE Art Foundation Mentorship. She holds a BA from Brown University, and MFAs from the University of Iowa and New York University.

Brian Alarcon is a multimedia writer, working with poetry across a variety of art forms. His experimental work deals with language as object and sound, while his prose explores the American identity through topics like immigration, sexuality, biraciality and fine art. A native New Yorker, he received his BFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College, with a concentration in Poetry under the close mentorship of Julie Agoos. Since, he has been active in the fine art world of Chelsea, where he has organized Salon-like gatherings with artists, salespeople and others from the community to encourage experimentation, collaboration, and transparency among them.

Erica N. Cardwell is a Black queer writer, critic, and educator. Born on a full moon in Dayton, Ohio, Erica has been based in New York for nearly 20 years. Erica uses a Black feminist lens as her primary critical approach. She often writes about print, archival media, visual culture, and interdisciplinary performance. She is deeply fascinated with the imaginations of people of color, as a tool for social, spiritual, and collective movement. Erica has written for BOMB, The Believer, Brooklyn Rail, frieze, Hyperallergic, Passages North and other publications. Erica has been awarded residencies and fellowships from the Lambda Literary Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She teaches writing and social justice at The New School, and received her MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.

Eva Reign is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and actress originally from St. Louis, Missouri. She writes on topics pertaining to trans identity and culture with an emphasis on Black trans women and transfeminine people. Her performance work is a part of the permanent collections of both the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum. Her writing has been featured on platforms such as Teen Vogue and them. She currently works as Digital Media Manager of the Marsha P. Johnson Institute and as a columnist with them.

Jeffrey Meris is an artist born in Haiti in 1991 and raised in the Bahamas. Meris earned an A.A in Arts and Crafts from the College of The Bahamas, a B.F.A in Sculpture from Temple University, and an M.F.A in Visual Arts from Columbia University in 2019. Meris is a two-time Harry C. Moore Lyford Cay Foundation Scholar 2012 & 2017, Guttenberg Arts A.I.R 2016, a Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture 2019 alumnus, among other achievements. Meris has exhibited and spoken in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vienna, Leipzig, Port au Prince and Nassau. Meris is currently a 2020 NXTHVN Studio Fellow.

jess pretty is on a quest for pleasure that transcends time and the spaces she claims to reside in. Within her research she choreographs, performs, collaborates with other artists (Okwui Okpokwasili, Kat Galasso, Will Rawls, Katie Workum, Cynthia Oliver, Leslie Cuyjet, Dianne McIntyre, Jennifer Monson and Niall jones) and has a teaching practice at universities around the country (The New School, Kent State University, Whitman College, Beloit College, and others) as well as NYC, where she moved after receiving an MFA in dance and queer studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Her free time is filled curating methodologies for living past survival through being as unapologetically Black as possible.

Mev Luna is an interdisciplinary artist with a research-based practice that spans performance, video installation, new media, and text. Through a self-reflexive methodology, their work considers issues of institutional access, incarceration, and how images of marginalized bodies are circulated and controlled. Luna has exhibited at EXPO Chicago, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, and PRIZM Art Fair in Miami. Their time-based works have premiered at SFMOMA, Artists' Television Access, and MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival. Luna was a 2018 Art Matters Foundation Fellowship recipient; 2018-2019 BOLT resident at the Chicago Artist Coalition and a 2017 SOMA Summer participant in Mexico City. They are currently a 2019-2021 AICAD Post-Graduate Teaching Fellow and Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art Practice at Parsons School of Design.

Nandita Raman is from Benaras, India and works with a range of mediums including photography, video, drawing and language. Her work has been exhibited at George Eastman Museum, Museum of Moving Images, Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, and Columbia University. She has curated group exhibitions in New York and Varanasi. Her work has been written about in the New York Times, British Journal of Photography, the Hindu, and published in MIT Press’s Performance Art Journal and Documenta 14 volume titled South As A State Of Mind. She was 2017 Workspace Resident at Baxter St Camera Club of New York and is a recipient of Alkazi Foundation’s Documentary Photography Grant. Nandita is a graduate of the Bard College-International Center of Photography's MFA program and teaches photography at SUNY Purchase College.

Nyala Moon is an actor, writer, and filmmaker of trans experience. She is a graduate of Baruch College. Nyala is a New York native with southern roots. After working in the nonprofit community helping other transgender and queer people of color access affirming health care, Nyala took a leap of faith and pursued her passions for filmmaking. Nyala was also a contributor for the anthology, Written on the Body: Letters from Trans and Non-Binary Survivors of Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence by Lexi Bean. Nyala Moon has been touring college with her other anthology contributors speaking to college students about sexuality, gender identity, and sexual assault. In May 2020, Nyala graduated from City College with her MFA in film production.

A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, Surya Swilley is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Johnson C. Smith University where she received a BA in Dance and a BA in Communication Arts. Through a multilingual approach to movement, Swilley interrogates "choreographic protest" (via Susan Foster), and attempts to bring liberation and empowerment to her audiences. She has been honored to work and study under great artists including Candace Jennings, PJ Pennewell, Shani Collins, and LaTanya Johnson. She has performed with Lela Aisha Jones|FlyGround, Martha Connerton/Kinetic Works and Kariamu and Company. In addition to being a videographer, Swilley holds an MFA in dance from Temple University. She is the founder of The Swilley Brand, @swilley_ on Instagram, and is deeply invested in asking the questions that bring all Black lives liberation.