BIOGRAPHIES

Dee Allen is an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. Active in creative writing & Spoken Word since the early 1990s. Author of 7 books--Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater, Skeletal Black [all from POOR Press], Elohi Unitsi [Conviction 2 Change Publishing] and his 2 newest, Rusty Gallows [Vagabond Books] and Plans [Nomadic Press] and has 66 anthology appearances under his figurative belt so far. He is currently seeking a new publisher to turn his finished manuscript into an 8th book.

Hzal Anubewei (Anthony Fudge) was born in Cleveland, Ohio and currently resides in Lithonia, GA. He has performed original works at Karamu, Albany State College (writer-in-residence), Cleveland State, and Howard University. He appeared on WKYC TV, and radio stations WABQ and WRFG in the Cleveland and Atlanta areas. His works have been published in Freelance, Cleveland Area Arts Council Anthology. He recently read at African American Arts & Heritage Academy, Poetry Kitchen, Lovers of Poetry Day, Ansted W. Virginia and most recently at other venues. His writings include Seso the Prophet; Pouring Shade; A Scheme in Every Scene; Muntu Poets Anthology 47 and his most recent book AMA.

Jacquese Armstrong, author of birthing yourself naturally: motivational reflections on a mental health journey (2022) and blues legacy (Broadside Lotus Press, 2019), was the recipient of the 2019 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award and 2015 Ambassador Award from the State of New Jersey Governor’s Council on Mental Health Stigma for promoting wellness and recovery and reducing stigma through the arts. She served as a 2022 Black Fire—This Time Anthology Summer Fellow and has been a cast member of TMI Project’s storytelling performances Black Stories Matter: Every Word Spoken and Alone Together stories of COVID-19 in quarantine. Her work has been published in midnight & indigo, Ourselves Black, Stellium and others.

Georgene Bess Montgomery is a Professor and Chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages
at Clark Atlanta University. She received her B.A. and M.A. in English from Georgia Southern University and her Ph.D. in English from the University of Maryland. An initiated priest of Shango, she is the author of The Spirit and the Word: A Theory of Spirituality in Africana Literary Criticism. Bess Montgomery has published and spoken extensively on a variety of subjects but also continues to publish scholarly essays that employ the Ifa Paradigm as a lens through which she analyzes Africana literary texts.

Charlie R. Braxton is a poet, playwright, and cultural critic from Mississippi. His poems have appeared in numerous literary publications such as African American Review, Cutbanks, Drumvoices Review, Black Magnolias, The Minnesota Review, The San Fernando Poetry Journal, The Black Nation, Massiffe, Candle, Transnational Literary Magazine, Eyeball, Sepia Poetry Review, Specter Magazine, and Valley Voices.

Carlton Brown is the COO of Full Spectrum of NY, a regenerative real estate development company. He is a graduate of Princeton University School of Architecture, Adjunct Faculty Member at Pratt Institutes Graduate Planning Program, a board member of Global Green USA and frequent public speaker on regenerative development in disproportionately burdened and disinvested communities.

Minnie A. Collins is poet and author of The Purple Wash (2012), Palm Power: Hearts in Harmony (2018), Commemoration Plaques at Seattle’s Historical Liberty Bank Building apartments (2019), screenplay Troubled Waters for the Mahogany Project and We Out Here (2020), essay “Sojourner Truth Prevails”(2021) in the National African American Clergy Women’s Collection, and editor/contributor to 2022 anthology Black Writers Unmasked. Numerous anthologies have included her work as well as participating in Venues during 2021 and 2022 that included Jacob Lawrence exhibit at Seattle Art Museum, the Green Book exhibit at Tacoma WA Historical Museum, “African Proverbs” at Highline Heritage Museum, NPR, and Seattle Public Library.

Felton Eaddy, poet, singer, arts educator and professor, lives in Dillon, South Carolina. He Studied English at Claflin University, and creative writing at Johns Hopkins University. His poems have appeared in African American Review, Catalyst Magazine, Out of the Rough and Crux. Author of Bending Over to Pick up a Snake and Living by the Sword, Eaddy is a poet and teaching artist who contracts with Georgia, South Carolina, Atlanta, Fulton County, GA and Young Audiences of Atlanta as a literary artist. Professor emeritus at Clark Atlanta University, the poet founded and hosts Felton Eaddy’s Poetry Kitchen, a long-term project which features poets in performance.

Robert Anthony Gibbons has been published in hundreds of literary magazines and in several notable anthologies. Recent publication credits include; Killens Review, Tribes, Involuntary Magazine, Peregrine, Expound, Promethean, Turtle Island Quarterly, Killer Whale, and Suisun Valley Review, Voices of Lefferts and the Bronx Memoir Project: Vol. 2 published by the Bronx Council of the Arts. Inner Child Press, Robert’s first collection, Close to the Tree published by Three Rooms Press, 2012, and his chapbook, Flight, published by Poets Wear Prada in 2019.

Jacqueline Gordon retired as a high school counselor. She served as a literary consultant for the National Black Arts Festival and writer-in residence for Focus on Black Women. She was named poet laureate for the Spiritual Living Center in Atlanta and her work appears in several journals and anthologies including the First World Writers Collective anthology.

Rashidah Ismaili, originally from Dahomey (Benin) now a four-decade long resident of Harlem where she hosts Salon d'Afrique; a creative intergenerational and interfaith meeting place. Was active in the Black Arts Movement, Umbra, and in the John Oliver Killens Writers Workshop. Has taught at several colleges and universities. Currently teaches in the Creative Writing MA/MFA Poetry and Memoir department at Wilkes University. Is a founding member of (OWWA) Organisation of Women Writers of Africa and PEN, and Pen and Brush. Featured in The New Daughters of Africa, ed. Margaret Busby. Has participated in international arts festival in Africa, and South America.

Gary Johnston has taught creative writing and read and performed at such places as Columbia University and numerous other locations both nationally and in the tri-state area. He has been published in “New Rain", “Bum Rush The Page” “Let Loose on the World, Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75” and other small press publications. He is a New York State Foundation on the Arts Fellow, 1993 and winner of the William C. Wolfson Award for Poetry, BRIO Award, 1989, Published: “Making Eyes Thru Morning", 1979 “Blue Suite, Voices & Memory, CD music & poetry 2005, and two chapbooks of poetry,”Tears of Answered Prayer”2012 and “Good Work for a Season 2013”. He is co-founder, editor, and publisher of Blind Beggar Press Inc.

Janice Liddell is Professor Emerita, Clark Atlanta University where she worked for nearly 35 years. She is the author of a children’s book and co-editor of a literary criticism collection; she is also the author of several published articles, poems, and plays produced nationally and internationally.

Alice Lovelace is a cultural worker, poet, arts educator and arts administrator who arrived in Atlanta in April 1976. In 1978 she, Ebon Dooley and Toni Cade Bambara founded The Southern Collective of African American Writers. In 1979 she was a writer-in-residence of the Neighborhood Arts Center. In 1983, with Ebon Dooley, Alice founded the Southeast Community Cultural Center aka The Arts Exchange. Under her leadership, in 2006 as the President of the Board the organization sold the Kalb Street property in 2016 and purchased its current facility, renamed ArtsXchange, in East Point in 2017. In 2021, she returned to the position of Executive Director. Alice is also an accomplished author with several books to her name, and her poems have been widely published in anthologies, as well as in Spanish and Swedish.

Charlois Lumpkin, aka Mali Newman, is a native of St. Louis, Missouri and a member of the Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club and its performance troupe, the Soular Systems Ensemble. Her work currently appears in the anthology Black Fire this Time Volume I (2022) and has previously appeared in Drumvoices Revue, Valley Voices – A literary Review, Crossing the Divide from the Poets of St. Louis, The Hoot and Holler of the Owls an anthology published by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. Most recently, she appeared in the documentary POETRY IN MOTION: ST. LOUIS POETS TAKE THE MIC directed by Dana Christian and produced and narrated by Lyah LeFlore-Ituen; filmed in 2020 and 2021, featuring 36 of the most dynamic poets of the St. Louis region.

Tamara J. Madison “I am an MFA graduate of New England College and an Anaphora Arts (an organization that promotes writers of color) fellow. My creative and critical work have been published in various anthologies, journals, and magazines including Poetry International, MER (Mom Egg Review), Tidal Basin Review, Web Del Sol Review of Books, and Tea Party Magazine. I am a contributing editor to aaduna, an online journal of words and images, and an English and Creative Writing instructor at Valencia College. My most recent poetry collection is Threed, This Road Not Damascus (Trio House Press). I am also the creator and host of BREAKDOWN: The Poet & The Poems, a poetry conversation series on YouTube.”

Bill Marable is the co-founder of the Griot Writer's Group of Jackson, TN (now The Griot Collective of West TN) which is a Jackson, TN based poetry workshop under the leadership of James. E. Cherry. Marable has been writing poetry for many of his 59 years on earth. His work has appeared on NubianPoets.com, The Detroit Writer's Guild, and most recently in the Pierian Literary Journal published by Albany State University.

Eric F. Maxie was born in Chicago, Illinois. He is currently living, working and writing in Atlanta, Georgia. A graduate of Morehouse College, he has published two volumes of poetry, Whispers Through Stone Windows and Return to Forever, Lost Boys, and Other Poems. His works explore themes such as grief, mental health, poverty, and spirituality in the context of the historical impact of racism and inequality on the black community.

C. Liegh McInnis is a poet, short story writer, Prince scholar, 2025 Finalist for the Mississippi Poet Laureate, co-founder of the JSU Creative Writing Program, the former publisher and editor of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, retired instructor of English at Jackson State University, and the author of eight books, including four collections of poetry, one collection of short fiction (Scripts: Sketches and Tales of Urban Mississippi), one work of literary criticism (The Lyrics of Prince: A Literary Look at a Creative, Musical Poet, Philosopher, and Storyteller).

Tony Medina is a poet, editor, writer, and author. Born in the South Bronx, he earned a BA in English at Baruch College, CUNY, on the GI Bill, and an MA and PhD at Binghamton University, SUNY, where he received the Distinguished Dissertation Award. Medina has published 23 books for adults and young readers. He has received many awards and has read/performed his work all over the US and abroad. The first Professor of Creative Writing at Howard University, Medina’s poetry, fiction and essays appear in over 100 journals and anthologies.

Tony Mitchelson is a poet/writer who was born in New York City. Raised in Harlem, he presently resides in Newark, New Jersey. He is the author of a book of poems: Linyak Love. His writings have appeared in various publications over the past 40 years. Tony is co-founder of The Linyak Project - an Arts, Culture and Education organization aimed at highlighting, motivating, and encouraging people.

Opal Moore is the author of the poetry collection, Lot’s Daughters, a meditation on Black women and migration. Moore’s poems and short fiction appear in journals and anthologies including Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic, The Boston Review, Callaloo, Obsidian II, African American Review, Honey, Hush! An Anthology of African American Women’s Humor, Homeplaces: Stories of the South by Women Writers, and the Killens Review of Arts & Letters. Opal Moore is a Cave Canem and Bellagio fellow. Opal lives and creates in Atlanta, Georgia.

David Mills has published three collections: The Dream Detective, The Sudden Country and Boneyarn (New York Slavery poems). His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Brooklyn Rail, Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, Jubilat, Callaloo, Obsidian, The Common and Fence. He has received fellowships from the New York Arts Foundation, Breadloaf and The American Antiquarian Society. He lived in Langston Hughes’ landmark home and wrote the script for Deborah Willis’ exhibition: Reflections in Black:100 Years of Black Photography. Juilliard School produced a play by Mills. He has recorded his poetry on ESPN and RCA Record

Bonface Isaboke Nyamweya is a Kenyan poet, novelist and young Pan Africanist. His short story, ‘Whose Title Died’ was published by the Pan African Writers Association in their anthology, Voices that Sing Behind the Veil (2021). Peeling the Cobwebs (2020) is his first novel and it treats the theme of tribalism in an imaginary African country called Ricafa. Her Question Pills (2020) treats feminism and African womanism. He is currently winding up his Masters in Philosophy at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa. He is also a law student (LLB) at the University of Nairobi, Parklands.

Michael Simanga is a poet, novelist, producer and Africana Studies Scholar and educator. As an artist and cultural worker, he has produced more than 200 artistic projects; including editor with Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez and Woodie King Jr. of the anthology BRILLIANT FLAME! AMIRI BARAKA: Poetry, Plays and Politics for The People.

Ayana Sloan “I am a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. I have been practicing law and fighting for those who are marginalized for over thirty years. After years of working as a champion for those who cannot speak for themselves, I felt compelled to use my voice to heal, to inspire and to capture the experiences of those whose aspirations have not always been included under the umbrella of the American dream. Although I have just started exploring my poetic voice, one of my first poems was published by Oprelle Publications in 2021 in its Rise Up Anthology. I also was a finalist in Oprelle’s “Coming Home” Poetry Contest. In addition, two of my poems were published in For A Better World 2022, which was published by Ghosn Publications.”

RaShell Smith Spears “I am currently a professor of English at Jackson State University in Jackson, MS, where I teach creative writing and literature. After earning an MFA from the University of Memphis in Creative Writing, I went on to publish poetry and short fiction in several journals and anthologies including Obsidian, Jelly Bucket, Sycorax's Daughters, Mississippi Noir, and Black Magnolias: A Literary Journal.”

fabian m. thomas is a Calabash Writers Workshop Fellow and has had his work published in more than a dozen collections and anthologies. In 2018, fabian launched his first self-published book entitled New Thought, New Words, a collection of gratitude verses, affirmations and spoken word. His first children’s book (illustrated) Djembe was released in February 2022 and Tribal Elements (A Tribe Ting, Volume 1), a chapbook of original writings by members of his performing arts collective Tribe Sankofa was launched on April 23, 2022 as part of the collective’s 10th Anniversary celebrations. His debut collection of poetry and spoken word, the solace of sound was published March 2025. In addition to writing, fabian is a Trainer/Facilitator, Adjunct Lecturer, performing arts specialist and a life, corporate and creative coach.

Atiba Kwabena Wilson is a musician, published poet, storyteller, and the founder/artistic director of both the Songhai Djeli Folkloric Ensemble and the Befo' Quotet Rhythm 'n' Dues Band. He has been a featured artist for several National Association of Black Storytellers festivals, the International African Arts Festival and at FESTAM International Music Festival, Inc. in Dakar, Senegal. Atiba also served as the artistic director of the Music Meets Poetry series at Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Plaza from 1999 to 2009, and wrote a poetic narrative for, and performed in, Harlem School of the Arts' presentation of the Kwanzaa Nutcracker from 1996 to 2002. He has also recorded with Arrested Development, Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber and Kevin Nathaniel of the renowned Spirit Ensemble.

Olumide Ted Wilson born and raised in Harlem is a writer, producer, promoter, and publisher of two books of poetry, Slo Dance and Senses and Shadows and a memoir, Kinda Blue, Memories of a Harlem Ivy League Teenager. He published Let Loose on the World, Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75 with associate publisher, SE Anderson. He has been a cultural worker since the 1960s in the Black Liberation/human rights movement His writings have appeared in many journals including The Black Nation and several anthologies including Black Fire, Anthology of Afro American Writing ed Leroi Jones and Larry Neal.

Kenneth Zakee was born in Cleveland, Ohio and resides in Atlanta, Georgia. He is an artist of many disciplines. As a spoken word artist, he has shared his work extensively. He paints and adorns gourds from West Africa and makes collages, wearable art, and handcrafted greeting cards. One of his collage/quilts was on display at the Southwest Art Center in the Good Trouble Quilt Exhibit Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Congressman John Lewis as part of the Atlanta Quilt Festival. Zakee can be reached at his studio at the
ArtsXchange or on Facebook.