Words and Sh*t

Tariq Luthun is a Detroit-born, Dearborn-raised community organizer, data consultant, and Emmy Award-winning poet. The son of Palestinian Muslim immigrants from Gaza, he is a Kresge Arts in Detroit fellow that earned his MFA in Poetry from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Luthun’s work has earned him such honors as being named Best of the Net, in addition to fellowships through Kundiman, The Watering Hole, and the Kresge Foundation. His work has appeared in Vinyl Poetry, Lit Hub, Mizna, and Button Poetry, among others. He also serves as a board member The Offing Literary Magazine. Luthun’s first collection of poetry, How The Water Holds Me, was awarded Editors' Selection by Bull City Press and is available now.

AYOKUNLE FALOMO is Nigerian, American, and the author of Autobiomythography of (Alice James Books, 2024), AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSong Press, 2022), two self-published col-lections and African, American (New Delta Review, 2019; selected by Selah Saterstrom as the winner of New Delta Review’s 8th annual chapbook contest). A recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, and the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where he obtained his MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry, his work has been anthologized and widely published.

A writer from Ohio, they are Social Media Manager for The Kenyon Review and Poetry Editor at Tinderbox Poetry Journal. Their work has been featured in Button Poetry, Indiana Review, The Journal, The Margins, The Recluse, and elsewhere. They’ve received numerous awards, most recently, second place winner of Frontier Poetry’s 2023 Hurt and Healing Prize, a 2022 Academy of American Poets Prize and Booth Journal’s 2022 Beyond the Margins contest prize, and their work has been supported by the Tin House Summer Workshop.

tanea lunsford lynx (pronouns flexible) is a writer, abolitionist, and fourth generation Black San Franciscan on both sides.

tanea is a proud alum of Voices of Our Nation (VONA) and the Lambda Literary Retreat. In 2023 tanea grew her showings of multidisciplinary work to include her first solo exhibition (we were here) at the San Francisco Main Library and an interactive exhibit (I Used to Live Here) as a part of MUNI RAISED ME at SOMArts. in They’ve been a featured artist in the National Queer Arts Festival twice: in 2023 they curated and hosted “Remembering Club Q” and in 2018 they co-curated 'Still Here VI: Existence as Resistance', a performance featuring queer Black San Franciscans. tanea has been awarded individual artist grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission as well as residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts, The San Francisco Public Library (in collaboration with the SF Arts Commission), Mesa Refuge, the Vermont Studio Center, and others. Her work has been published in Foglifter, the Lambda Literary Anthology, Mala Forever, and in "Nothing to Lose But Our Chains: Black Voices on Activism, Resistance, and Love". 

tanea earned a BA from Columbia University and an MA from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).

tanea served as Chair of the Spoken Arts Department at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts from 2021-2023 and currently teaches Social justice and Ethnic Studies classes at City College of San Francisco. 

 tanea is currently at work on her first novel.

Leigh Lucas is a writer in San Francisco. Her chapbook Landsickness (Tupelo Press, 2024) was selected by Chen Chen for the 2023 Sunken Garden Poetry Chapbook Award. She has been awarded residencies at Tin House, Community of Writers, and Kenyon, and has been recognized with AWP’s Kurt Brown Prize, as well as with a Best New Poet nomination, Best of Net nomination, and multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Leigh’s poems can be found in Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Alta Journal, Smartish Pace, and elsewhere. She holds a BA from Stanford and an MFA from Warren Wilson. 

Derrick C. Brown is a renowned poet, comedian and former Paratrooper. His album, 'A Close Shave with Heaven' earned him Paste Magazine's '2023 Album of the Year.' Winner of the Texas Book of The Year award for Poetry, owner and president of the esteemed Write Bloody Publishing, hailed by Forbes and Filter Magazine as one of the nation's premier independent poetry presses, he has authored ten poetry books and four children's books. Brown's impact on literature is undeniable. He's graced stages worldwide, from Glastonbury to The Tonight Show, and collaborates with comedians like Kristin Schaal, David Cross, and Eugene Mirman.

Lexi Pelle is the winner of the 2022 Jack McCarthy Book Prize, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a finalist for the Prufer Poetry Prize, Crosswinds Poetry Prize and the Marvin Bell Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Ninth Letter, SWWIM, Sucarnochee Review, and The Shore. Her debut poetry collection, Let Go With The Lights On, is out now.

Born and raised in Chicago, storyteller Steven Antoine Willis uses his poetic and theatrical background to embark on the daunting task of creatively articulating African American culture. With art heavily influenced by urban life and religion, Steven mixes elements of hip hop poetics and theatrical performance with formal teachings of anthropology, and political theory to help express his eclectic personal narrative. Willis is a contributing writer to the Breakbeat Poets Anthology, NYU's National Council for Teachers of English Journal, and is a 3-time Individual World Poetry Slam Finalist. Willis received his MFA in Acting from theUniversity of Iowa in 2021 and the Iowa Writers Workshop for Poetry in 2023. His first full poetry collection A Peculiar People was released in 2022 through Button Poetry.

Haydil Henriquez is an arts educator, cultural advocate, program manager and Bronx-bred poet. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology & Education from Swarthmore College in 2014, and has worked with communities across the Diaspora facilitating oral storytelling workshops for youth. Although Haydil does not possess a formal degree in writing, she witnessed the magic of poetry during her formative years in the spoken word community.

Published in The Best Teen Writing of 2008, and later receiving honors like the Mahasweta Devi/ Gloria Anzaldúa Creative/Visual/ Performing Arts Award in 2012 from the Intercultural Center at Swarthmore. Haydil then participated in the Poets House Emerging Poets Fellowship in 2018, Las Musas Books Hermanas Mentorship Program in 2020 and Cave Canem Intermediate Portals into Language Workshop in 2021.

Since then her work has been published in Cutbank Literary Journal (University of Montana, 2020), Rigorous Magazine (2021), Coffin Bell Journal (2022), ¡Pa'lante! (2022), TroubleMaker FireStarter (2022), Worcestor Review (2022) and many more literary publications. Haydil was honored as the inaugural Bronx Poet Laureate in 2021.

Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta (she/they) is a full professor at the City University of New York (CUNY)-BCC. Their poetry collection, Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere, was a 2020 finalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (Get Fresh Books, 2021). She is the editor of Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity (Routledge, 2019), Creative Writing Editor at Chicana/Latina Studies Journal, and a new Poetry Editor at Women’s Studies Quarterly (WSQ). Select work is in The Baffler; Best American Poetry; Split this Rock; Paterson Review; and Acentos Review. Works are forthcoming in Inkwell Journal and The Hopkins Review. They are a Geraldine Dodge Foundation Poet, a Macondo Fellow, and a VONA alum. Her oral history and memoir work, titled First Spanish, has been funded by the Mellon Foundation.