Amanda Johnston is a writer, artist, and the 2024 Texas Poet Laureate. Born in East St. Louis, IL, and raised in Austin, TX, she began writing poetry while living in Kentucky. Her writing is published widely, and she has presented at numerous literary conferences and events.

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She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter. Her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them, Callaloo, Poetry Magazine, Puerto del Sol, Muzzle, and the anthologies, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Tasajillo, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Watermill Center, and the Austin International Poetry Festival. She is a former Board President of Cave Canem Foundation, a member of the Affrilachian Poets, cofounder of Black Poets Speak Out, and founder of Torch Literary Arts.

Named one of Blavity’s "13 Black Poets You Should Know," Amanda’s work has been featured on Bill Moyers, the Poetry Society of America’s series In Their Own Words, The Moth Radio Hour, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series. She was commissioned to curate a collection of poems for the Poetry Coalition on the theme Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body.

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She has facilitated creative writing workshops and presented at the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, Hugo House, Langston Hughes House, Frye Museum, Carver Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Prizer Arts and Letters, NeoSoul Poetry Lounge, Nuyorican Poet’s Café, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Pillsbury House Theater, Rude Mechanical Theater, and at numerous universities and literary venues across the country.

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Amanda Johnston is the creator of the genesis - a poetic form comprised of seven poems. Five individual poems in columns create a sixth prose poem when read left to right, and italicized words that create the final seventh poem when read independently as a visible erasure.

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Matthew D. Morrison, a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, is an Associate Professor in the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Dr. Morrison holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from Columbia University, an. M.A. in Musicology from The Catholic University of America, and was a Presidential music scholar at Morehouse College where he studied violin and conducting.

Jenn M. Jackson (they/them) is a genderflux androgynous Black woman, a lesbian, an abolitionist, a lover of all Black people, and an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University in the Department of Political Science.

Crystal Wilkinson, a recent fellowship recipient of the Academy of American Poets, is the award-winning author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a culinary memoir, Perfect Black, a collection of poems, and three works of fiction—The Birds of Opulence , Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries.

She is the recipient of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, an O. Henry Prize, a USA Artists Fellowship, and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. Her second book, Water Streetwas a finalist for the Orange Prize and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award. She was Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2021 to 2023 . She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Kentucky where she is a Bush-Holbrook Endowed Professor.

Troy D. Johnson is a prominent figure known for his remarkable contributions to Black literature and culture. As the founder of the African American Literature Book Club (AALBC) and President of AALBC.com, LLC, he has left an indelible mark in several crucial domains.

Carol Anderson, the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University, is a distinguished scholar whose impactful work has garnered recognition and accolades. With a Ph.D. in history from The Ohio State University, she has made significant contributions to the field.

Soyica Diggs Colbert is the Vice President for Interdisciplinary Initiatives and Idol Family Professor of African American Studies and Performing Arts at Georgetown University.

Taylor Johnson is from Washington, D.C. and was a former participant in the Hurston/Wright Foundation's teen writing program in the early 2000's. Now, an award-winning poet, Taylor spoke with Dr. Ali-Coleman in November 2022 about his residency at the Guggenheim museum, his new appointment as the Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, MD and his poetry journey for this episode of the Black Writer's Studio.