Literary Conference 2024
Meet the 2024 Presenters
R.O. Kwon
R. O. Kwon, also known as Reese Okyong Kwon, is a South Korean–born American author. In 2018, she published her nationally bestselling debut novel The Incendiaries with Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Her second novel, Exhibit, published in May 2024 with Riverhead Books (US) and in July 2024 with Virago/Little Brown (UK).
Kwon’s nationally bestselling first novel, The Incendiaries, has been translated into seven languages and was named a best book of the year by over forty publications. The Incendiaries was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award. Kwon and Garth Greenwell co-edited the bestselling Kink, a New York Times Notable Book and recipient of the inaugural Joy Award.
Kwon’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Guardian, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from MacDowell, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Yaddo. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.
Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, was a National Book Award finalist and named a “Best Book of the Year” by TIME. Her first novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree was the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and a New York Times editor’s choice. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Cut, and Zyzzyva, among others. She lives in California.
Danny Caine
Danny Caine is the author of the poetry collections Continental Breakfast, El Dorado Freddy's, Flavortown, and Picture Window, as well as the books How to Protect Bookstores and How to Resist Amazon and Why. His poetry has appeared in The Slowdown, LitHub, DIAGRAM, HAD, and Barrelhouse. He's a co-owner of the Raven Book Store, Publishers Weekly's 2022 bookstore of the year.
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KB Brookins
KB Brookins is a Black queer and trans writer, cultural worker, and visual artist from Texas. KB’s chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize, a Writer’s League of Texas Discovery Prize, and a Stonewall Honor Book Award. Their debut poetry collection Freedom House won the American Library Association Barbara Gittings Literature Award and the Texas Institute of Letters Award for the Best First Book of Poetry. KB’s debut memoir Pretty released in May 2024 with Alfred A. Knopf. Follow them online at @earthtokb.
Franklin Leonard
Franklin Leonard is a film and television producer, cultural commentator, and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of the Black List, the company that celebrates and supports great writing and the writers who do it via film production, its annual survey of best unproduced screenplays, and online marketplace for novels, screenplays, and television pilots. More than 400 scripts from the annual Black List survey have been produced as feature films earning 300 Academy Award nominations and 50 wins including four Best Picture and nearly half of the screenwriting Oscars awarded since 2007. Franklin has worked in feature film development at Universal Pictures and the production companies of Will Smith, Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella, and Leonardo DiCaprio. He has been one of Hollywood Reporter’s 35 Under 35, Black Enterprise magazine’s “40 Emerging Leaders for Our Future,” and Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business,” and was the recipient of the 2019 Writers Guild of America, East (WGAe) Evelyn Burkey award for elevating the honor and dignity of screenwriters. He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a member of both BAFTA and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). His TED talk - How I Accidentally Changed the Way Movies Get Made - has been viewed more than 1.75 million times.
Cynthia Harmony
Cynthia Harmony is a bilingual author and educational psychologist, originally from Mexico City. She is a 2023 recipient for the Sustainable Arts Foundation Illustrated Children's Books Award and author of OUR WORLD: MEXICO (Barefoot Books, 2023) and JLG Gold Standard Selections MI CIUDAD SINGS, MI CIUDAD CANTA (Penguin Workshop, 2022) and the multi-starred reviewed A FLICKER OF HOPE, UN ALETEO DE ESPERANZA (Viking, 2024).
When not writing, Cynthia can be found in a museum with her kids, dancing to a Latin beat, daydreaming of tacos, or planning her next family trip.
Acamea Deadwiler
Acamea is the author of the 2024 memoir, Daddy’s Little Stranger. Her writing has been published in Bellevue Literary Review, North American Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Acamea’s 2020 book, Single That, was featured by Publishers Weekly, Cosmopolitan, and Bustle, among other media outlets. She has appeared on the FOX television network and is a TEDx speaker. Acamea is also a Blackburn Fellow in the MFA program at Randolph College.
Neesha Powell-Ingabire
Neesha Powell-Ingabire is a coastal Georgia-born-and-raised movement journalist, essayist, and community & cultural organizer living in Atlanta/traditional Muscogee territory. Her writings have been published in various online and print publications, including Harper’s Bazaar, Oxford American, Scalawag, and VICE.
Neesha reports on the justice movements of the Black, trans, queer, and Southern communities to which she belongs and writes essays to recover her own history and the histories of her ancestors and their ancestral homes. Her forthcoming debut book, Come By Here: A Memoir in Essays from Georgia’s Geechee Coast (out on September 24 from Hub City Press), chips away at coastal Georgia’s facade of beaches and golden marshes to recover undertold Black history alongside personal and family stories.
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Aslı Erdoğan
Aslı Erdoğan is a writer of literature and columnist, human rights defender, ex political prisoner as well as a particle physicist. She is the author of eight books, novels, novellas, collections of poetic prose and essays, translated into more than twenty languages .She was arrested in 2016 for her collaboration with the pro-Kurdish newspaper Özgür Gündem. Aslı Erdoğan has received several prizes in literature and human rights such as SAIT FAIK Award, Simone de Beauvoir Award, Kurt Tucholsky Award, Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize, Vaclav Havel Library Foundation Award, Chevalier des arts et Lettres among others. Her work has been adapted into theater and acted in Milan, Graz and Avignon, into classical ballet, radio, a short film and finally opera.
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Angie Zhao
Events & Marketing Manager
Lupita Aquino
Lupita Aquino—better known as @Lupita.Reads on Instagram and TikTok—passionately spreads her love for books online. She has moderated numerous book events and founded La Comunidad Reads, an author-inclusive book club in partnership with the DC Public Library that amplifies Latine Literature. Alongside her vibrant online presence, she has contributed insightful book coverage to outlets such as TODAY.com, Aster(ix) Literary Journal, She Reads, The Washington Independent Review of Books, and many more. Notably, Lupita has served as a judge for the 2024 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the 2023 Louise Meriwether First Prize for the Feminist Press, and was on the Selection Committee for the Aspen Words Literary Prize in 2021. She enjoys exploring local bookstores and libraries with her wife and son when not immersed in books.
Randy Winston
Randy Winston, a 2016 graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at The New School, is the Creative Director at The Black List, founded by Hollywood executive Franklin Leonard. The Black List is a renowned platform dedicated to nurturing written storytelling and empowering writers to maximize their professional talent. Winston is the former Director of Writing Programs at The Center for Fiction and Fiction Editor at Slice Literary Magazine. Prior to his MFA, Randy served as editor-in-chief of a university online and print publication of Southern Polytechnic State University and was the first student ever to deliver a commencement address. He sits on the board for Orion Magazine and WriteOn NYC. He has appeared in Medium, Brooklyn Magazine, the NY Times, and has moderated talks with and interviewed Kaitlyn Greenidge, Nicole Dennis-Benn, Lauren Wilkerson, Benjamin Lazar Davis, Hugo McCloud, Zakiya Dalila Harris, Tomi Adeyemi, Morgan Jerkins, and Mohsin Hamid.
Zephyr James
Zephyr James (they/them) is a fierce advocate with a mushy heart. Their work often revolves around themes of grief, hope, identity, and belonging. This has taken form in their writing and in their various roles in the community: grief & death doula, organizational consultant, and educator & coach for families of youth who are neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+, and/or experiencing suicidality. Their academic writing has been featured by Harvard Business Publishing and various peer reviewed journals, and their personal writing has been published by Beyond the Veil Press and Querencia Press.
D.L. Cordero
D.L. Cordero is a fantasy author, occasional poet, and horror dabbler working out of Denver, CO. Their work can be found in several literary magazines and anthologies, such as Listen To Your Skin: An Anthology of Queer and Self-Love, and Denver Noir from Akashic Books, which won the Colorado Book Award in 2023. They are also the voice of Cracogus in the audiodrama Harbor. In their advocacy work, Cordero has performed for institutions such as Denver Health Medical Center, Yale University, and The Transgender Center of the Rockies. When not storytelling, Cordero can be found wrangling their blind pitbull and anxious yellow lab, thrifting for witchy oddities, and binging old-school anime. Follow them @dlcorderowrites and on dlcordero.com.
Çağla Arıbal
Çağla Arıbal is a Berlin-based Turkish writer, poet, and editor, educated in literature at Potsdam University. Her writing has been featured in publications such as First Page, Stadtsprachen, Orlando, and Textur Mag. Some of her works have been anthologized and have won the Best Short Fiction Prize, including at the Oxford Review of Books in 2023. Arıbal teaches literature courses at art and educational institutions across Europe and edits fiction works. She has been invited as a resident by the Arteles Creative Center and Villa Sarkia in Finland. Currently, she is working on a novel set in Berlin, Istanbul, and Antakya, as well as a poetry collection.
Britt J. Camacho
Britt J. Camacho (she/her) is ABA’s DEIA and Communications Senior Copy Editor, where she reviews content and language standards across the organization for diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. As an editor and cultural worker, she specializes in centering the stories and people that institutions might otherwise leave in the margins. Her work has supported libraries, museums, and nonprofits like the Juilliard School, the New York Public Library for Performing Arts, and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. She believes that language is a means of freedom, and that stories help us build the future.
Ana Siqueira
Ana Siqueira is a Spanish-language elementary teacher and an award-winning children's book author based in Tampa, Florida. Her books include Bella's Recipe for Success (Beaming Books 2021), If Your Babysitter is a Bruja (S&S 2022), Abuela’s Super Capa/ La Supercapa de Abuela (HarperCollins 2023), Our World Brazil (Barefoot Books 2023), Boitata: the Fire Snake (Capstone 2023), La Mala Suerte is Following Me (Charlesbridge 2024), Mami’s Heart (HarperCollins 2026) among others. Ana is the co-founder of Latinxpitch, a pitch event to promote Latin authors and illustrators.
She lives in Palm Harbor with her husband and loves to play with her Cuban-Brazilian-American grandkids.
paparouna
paparouna writes queer speculative prose, translates queer Greek literature into English, and daydreams about life as a marine mammal. An MFA Candidate in Fiction and Translation at Antioch University Los Angeles, paparouna is also a graduate of the 2018 Princeton Hellenic Translation Workshop and the 2018-2020 Lighthouse Book Project. They currently serve as the Lead Translation Editor at _Lunch Ticket_. Their work has been published in _Progenitor_, _Asymptote_, _Exchanges_, _New Poetry in Translation_, _Denver Quarterly_, _Timber_, _The Thought Erotic_, and _Lunch Ticket_.
Amanda Orozco
Amanda Orozco is a literary agent at Transatlantic. She graduated from NYU with her Masters of Science in Publishing: Digital and Print Media. Before joining Transatlantic, she worked in Subsidiary Rights at Little, Brown and at Park & Fine Literary and Media. While at NYU, she interned at the National Book Foundation, Shreve Williams Public Relations, and The Gernert Company. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
Roma Panganiban
Roma Panganiban began her publishing career at The Gernert Company and joined Janklow & Nesbit in 2019. Her taste leans literary, but she is open to a broad range of adult fiction, including novels and collections that embrace genre elements—speculative, historical, mystery, sci-fi, fantasy—as well as those that defy categorization altogether. She is also looking for narrative nonfiction that reorients our understanding of history, culture, science, society, education, and/or ourselves, as well as creative nonfiction that appeals equally to the heart, mind, and sense of humor. Roma is a member of the American Association of Literary Agents (AALA) and an ambivalent Twitter user (@romapancake). She lives in Brooklyn and on the internet.
Ellen Chang-Richardson
Ellen Chang-Richardson is an award-winning poet of Taiwanese and Chinese Cambodian descent, currently living on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg (colonially known as Ottawa, Canada). The author/co-author of six poetry chapbooks, their writing has appeared in journals and anthologies across Turtle Island including Augur, The Ex-Puritan, The Fiddlehead, Grain, third coast magazine and Watch Your Head. They are an editorial member of Room magazine, a poetry editor for long con magazine, the co-founder of Riverbed Reading Series, and a member of the poetry collective VII. Blood Belies (Wolsak & Wynn) is their debut collection.
May Zhee Lim
Born and raised in Malaysia, Lim May Zhee is a writer living in New York. Her writing has appeared in Electric Literature and AirMail. She is formerly a publicist for Riverhead Books, an executive assistant for PEN America, and is currently at work on her first novel.
Joe Ponce
Joe Ponce is from Joliet, Illinois. He received his MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia, and has been published in Blunderbuss Magazine, Anathema Magazine, and Action: Spectacle. He is currently pursuing an MBA at the University of Denver.
Lydia Gil
Lydia is the author of the bilingual children’s picture book Mimí’s Parranda / La parranda de Mimí and the middle-grade novel Letters from Heaven / Cartas del Cielo, both published by Arte Público Press. Both books celebrate her Cuban/Puerto Rican heritage. Her middle-grade novel was awarded an International Latino Book Award and a Colorado Authors’ League Award, among others, and is widely taught in Texas public school districts. Lydia facilitates workshops on writing and self-awareness in both English and Spanish. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and teaches Spanish and Latin American literature at the University of Denver.
Kanika Agrawal
Kanika Agrawal is a mad queer Indian writer of multilingual texts and (mis)translations. As an (im)migrant and former scientist-in-training, she works between and across geographies and disciplines. She holds a BS in Biology and a BS in Writing from MIT, an MFA in Writing from Columbia University, and a PhD in English and Literary Arts from the University of Denver. Kanika is Managing Hybrid/Nonfiction Editor at _Foglifter_, a journal for LGBTQIA2S+ writing; Fiction Editor at _khōréō_, a magazine of immigrant and diasporic speculative writing; and Assistant Editor at _Conjunctions_. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in _Best American Experimental Writing 2020_, _Black Warrior Review_, _FOLDER_, _Notre Dame Review_, _SAND_, _Texas Review_, and various SFF publications. She has been awarded residencies by the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Denver with her senior toy fox terrier.
José Olivarez
José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants, and the author of two collections of poems, including, most recently, Promises of Gold—which was long listed for the 2023 National Book Awards. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. Along with Felicia Rose Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he co-edited the poetry anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. Alongside Antonio Salazar, he published the hybrid book, Por Siempre in 2023.
poupeh missaghi
poupeh missaghi is a writer, editor, translator (between English and Persian) and educator. Her second book Sound Museum is forthcoming in October 2024 and her debut novel trans(re)lating house one was published in 2020 (both with Coffee House Press). Her translations include Boys of Love by Ghazi Rabihavi (University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming 2024), In the Streets of Tehran by Nila (Bonnier Books, 2023), and I’ll be Strong for You by Nasim Marashi (Astra House, 2021).
She is currently an assistant professor of English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver, and a faculty mentor at the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR.
Sasha Geffen
Sasha Geffen is the author of Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary (University of Texas Press), named a best book of 2020 by NPR, Rolling Stone, and Kirkus Reviews. The accompanying podcast Shattering Gleam won medals at the 2022 Signal and Anthem awards. Geffen's writing on music, gender, technology, and embodiment appears in Pitchfork, Vulture, The Nation, and many other publications. They teach at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop and spin vinyl as a third of the Denver-based DJ group Sunhigh. Originally from Boston, they spent a decade in Chicago before moving to Colorado in 2017.
Monica Rodriquez
Monica Rodriguez is a literary agent and the Director of Brand Management at Context Literary Agency. Her mission as an agent is to help uplift underrepresented voices in publishing, specifically within the Latinx community. She’s mentored authors at The Writing Barn and is a faculty member at The Manuscript Academy. In children’s literature, she is actively looking for MG, YA & Graphic Novels. She also represents illustrators and comic artists. In adult fiction, she’s looking for contemporary romance, speculative, sci-fi, and book club fiction.
Monica is also a first-gen, Mexican-American author. Her love for books can be traced back to elementary school, where the best days were spent attending book fairs and author readings. She enjoys writing about self-love and identity, family dynamics, and red flags in attempted relationships. Her published articles cover similar themes in movies & tv shows. She runs a self-love journey podcast called Find A Lovely Life.
Noelle Falcis Math
Noelle Falcis Math has garnered a breadth of experience as a writer and editor before transitioning into agenting. She holds a BA and MFA in English and Creative Writing, and has received fellowships or residencies from VONA (Voices of Our Nations), Tinhouse, The Seventh Wave, and Lemontree House. At VONA, she realized the lack of knowledge accessible to marginalized writers, which fueled her interest in publishing. In 2021, she completed the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Publishing Workshop and Transatlantic Agency’s BIPOC mentorship program. Noelle has since transitioned into an Associate Literary Agent where she is now building her list, focusing on literary, speculative, and upmarket fiction, and narrative nonfiction intersecting the personal, political, and cultural.
Adriana Dominguez
Adriana Dominguez is a literary agent with over 25 years of experience and Partner at Aevitas Literary Management. Adriana has wide-ranging experience in publishing; she began her editorial career at Scholastic in the 1990s, served as Children’s Reviews Editor at Críticas Magazine (Library Journal), and as Executive Editor at HarperCollins, where she led the children’s division of the Latinx-focused Rayo imprint. She is a member of Women’s Media Group (WMG) and the Association of American of Literary Agents (AALA),and a Board member of the Latinx Kidlit Book Festival, where she sits on the Organizing Committee for the LKBF Latinx Storyteller Conference. She is also an award winning translator. Adriana has a long trajectory of supporting authors and illustrators from underrepresented backgrounds and always welcomes submissions that offer a diverse point of view.
Mariana Llanos
Mariana Llanos is a Peruvian born writer, poet, and translator. She’s the author the Pura Belpré Honor Benita y las criaturas nocturnas/Benita and the Night Creatures and the award-winning ¡Corre Pequeño Chaski/Run Little Chaski among several other titles. Her new chapter book series Vampirita, released in July 2024 from Reycraft Books in both English and Spanish. She’s passionate about visiting schools to spread the joy of reading. She lives in Oklahoma with her children.
Maya Prasad
Maya Prasad is a South Asian American author, a Caltech graduate, and a former software engineer. She currently resides in the Pacific Northwest, where she enjoys hiking, kayaking, and raising her budding bookworm kiddo.
Her YA novels include DRIZZLE, DREAMS, AND LOVESTRUCK THINGS, a Children’s Book Council Young Adult and Librarian Favorite, and WILD WISHES AND WINDSWEPT KISSES. She's also the author of the SEJAL SINHA chapter book series, which have been selected for honors such as the OWL Awards shortlist, the Bank Street Best Books of 2024, and the NECBA Windows & Mirrors list. She’s passionate about creating brown kid leads in books across genres.
Zoe Brook
Zoe Brook is a queer writer, stagehand, and pole dancer in the Seattle area. They write themselves into the queer historical record with fantasy and nonfiction essays frequently dealing with themes of queer joy, mundane magic, pleasure, and sexuality. They love all things art, storytelling, and dance.
Their work has been published in Queers Who Don’t Quit edited by G Benson, Gay Apparel edited by Rachel Sharp, and volumes 2018-2022 of the Seattle Erotic Art Festival’s Literary Anthology. They have presented their work at Seattle Erotic Art Festival, professional conferences, and community readings.
Find more about their work at zoebrook.com
Sydney Fowler
Sydney Fowler is multiple fairies in a human suit. They are a white, queer, nonbinary Fiction writer living in Denver, CO. They founded their sensitivity and developmental editing company, Inqueery, LLC., in 2015 to help create more authentic and respectful portrayals of marginalized identities, communities, and experiences in literature and other media. They are published in The Snarktastic Guide to College Success (Pearson), New Directions in Folklore, and Handbook of Sexuality Leadership (Routledge). They facilitate writing and publishing workshops for youth and adults at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver where they graduated from the Book Project. They are a 2024 Tin House Summer Workshop Scholar
Monica Prince
Monica Prince teaches activist and performance writing and serves as Director of Africana Studies at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. She is the author of four collections, most recently Roadmap: A Choreopoem and How to Exterminate the Black Woman: A Choreopoem. Her poems and essays appear in national and international literary journals. As one of the foremost choreopoem scholars, Prince writes, teaches, and performs choreopoems across the nation.
Henry Lien & Jerry Lee Davis
Henry Lien is an author from Taiwan, now living in Hollywood, CA. He is the author of the award-winning and critically-acclaimed PEASPROUT CHEN fantasy series. Henry also teaches writing for institutions including UCLA, the University of Iowa, and Clarion West. He is a four-time Nebula Award finalist and won the UCLA Extension Department of the Arts Instructor of the Year award. Hobbies include writing theme songs for his novels and losing Nebula Awards. www.henrylien.com
Jerry Lee Davis is a meditation instructor and writer from Appalachia, now living in Los Angeles. He is the founder of Meditative Intuitive Sessions in Los Angeles. His first novel TWIN CITY was nominated for the Townsend Prize for Fiction and the Georgia Author of the Year award. He has written several plays that have received successful stage productions, and has had several of his screenplays produced or optioned. www.meditativeintuitivesessions.com
Mayra Cuevas
MAYRA CUEVAS is the award-winning author of multiple books and stories for children and adults. Her young adult novel Does My Body Offend You? (co-written with Marie Marquardt) was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award, named a 2023 Book All Young Georgians Should Read, a New York Public Library Best Books for Teens 2022 and a Target YA Book Club selection. In 2023, she was named Georgia Author of the Year in the Young Adult category. Mayra is also the author or the teen foodie romcom Salty, Bitter, Sweet, and the short story Resilient, published as part of the anthology Foreshadow: The Magic of Reading and Writing YA. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Mayra is a former award-winning producer for CNN, where she worked for almost 20 years. She is now a creative writing visiting professor for City University of New York’s MFA program. Mayra is also the co-founder of the Latinx Kidlit Book Festival and its Latinx Storytellers Conference. In 2022, the book festival received the National Council of Teachers of English Latinx and Black Caucus's Advocacy Award. Mayra believes in the power of stories to change lives and the right of all students to have access to diverse books in the classroom. She is also passionate about teaching writers of all ages how to craft and publish their own stories. Mayra keeps her sanity by practicing Buddhism and meditation. She lives in Atlanta with her husband, her two stepsons, their fluffy cat, and a very loud chihuahua. You can find Mayra on Instagram @Mayra.Cuevas and her website MayraCuevas.com.
Shymala Dason
Shymala Dason is a writer, poet, editor, and writing coach. She is a first-generation immigrant from Malaysia, a cancer survivor, and a former NASA tech. Her writing centers on belonging and unbelonging in immigrant and family life, her editing and coaching on helping other writers hone their craft and find their best stories. She has been published in The Massachusetts Review, The Margins, Hyphen, the Asian American Writers Workshop anthology Topography of War, Duende, The Literary Review, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, The Gateway Review, et al. She has been shortlisted for the Flannery O’Connor short-fiction collection award, and the Hyphen/AAWW short fiction award. Her poetry chapbook, Carrying the Ocean, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
Alexei Perry Cox
Alexei Perry Cox is a writer and artist and teacher. She is the author of the recent debut novella To Garden: To Grave and her poetry has been published in two full length collections, PLACE (Noemi Press 2022) and Under Her (Insomniac Press 2015). She has also published three chapbooks, Finding Places to Make Places (Vallum 2019), Re:Evolution (Gap Riot Press 2020), and Night 3 | اليوم الرابع (Centre for Expanded Poetics 2021) from her research into how the specificity of poetry’s discursiveness makes possible interventions into occupying legal systems and ongoing examinations of sociolinguistic changes at times of cultural revolutions and uprisings. She is currently at work on a collaborative book, SPACE, about [SPACE] making in Turtle Island and Palestine. This work is about energetically filling in the blanks, making radical maternities, transcreational alliances, forging unexpected uprisings and generative conversations about lessons in spatial interventions and the cosmos.
Alvina Ling
Alvina Ling is VP and Editor-in-Chief at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers where she has worked since 1999. She edits children's books for all ages, including A Big Mooncake for Little Star and Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin, Dave the Potter by Laban Carrick Hill and illustrated by Bryan Collier, The Land of Stories series by Chris Colfer, The Wild Robot by Peter Brown, Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes, Troublemaker by John Cho, The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan, and The Cruel Prince by Holly Black. She co-hosts the podcast Book Friends Forever with author Grace Lin and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two cats.
Anthony Grimes
Anthony Grimes is the owner and president of 99THSTATE, a multidisciplinary firm specializing in social engineering through filmmaking, storytelling, and placemaking. He serves as the Director of Communications and Policy at Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, Denver’s largest private funder of art and culture.
Anthony is responsible for crafting and leading transformative movements, including one of the largest freedom movements in Colorado’s history with the Movement for Black Lives. Through his work, and in a variety of positions, he has organized and led campaigns across the nation and globally.
His current projects reside at the intersection of storytelling, urban planning and sustainability. Through 99THSTATE, he is currently focused on bridging the gap in public understanding of water reuse technologies, using a blend of art and science to inspire widespread adoption and awareness of sustainable water practices.
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Asmaa Alatawna
Palestinian writer and cinema documentalist
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Dino Enrique Piacentini
Dino Enrique Piacentini grew up in Los Angeles, lived in San Francisco for twenty-three years, and has also, at various times, set down stakes in Houston, Oaxaca, Champaign, and Prague. His debut novel, Invasion of the Daffodils, about a Mexican-American family living on an island off the coast of California during the Korean War, will be published by Astrophil Press on September 25, and his stories and essays have been published in Gulf Coast, Pembroke, Confrontation, The Masters’ Review, The Atticus Review, and The Massachusetts Review, among other places. Before becoming a writer, he worked as an arts administrator at The Mexican Museum, Yerba Buena Center, Asian Art Museum, and Galería de la Raza. Currently, he lives in Denver with a mini-Bernedoodle and a full-sized husband and teaches creative writing at Lighthouse Writers Workshop and the University of Denver's University College.
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DJ Bond
DJ Bond (he/him) is a writer, marketing specialist, and library professional in the Metro Detroit area. His works include his comic, The Shadow Agency, a part of his company Endurance Comics which was successfully funded on Kickstarter, and his publication in the most recent Handbook of Black Librarianship. He identifies as a biracial Black cis omnisexual man with a lived experience of anxiety and depression. When not working or writing, DJ enjoys reading, cooking, caring for his plants, hanging with his family, and being a supportive friend.
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Erika T. Wurth
Erika T. Wurth’s novel WHITE HORSE is a New York Times editors pick, a Good Morning America buzz pick, and an Indie Next, Target book of the Month, and Book of the Month Pick. She is both a Kenyon and Sewanee fellow, and Kenyon faculty. She’s published in Buzzfeed, McSweeney’s, The Writer’s Chronicle, and is a narrative artist for the Meow Wolf Denver installation. She’s an urban Native of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent and lives in Denver with her partner, niece, step-kids, and two incredibly fluffy dogs. Her novel THE HAUNTING OF ROOM 904 will be out with Flatiron books March 2025.
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Erica Ridley
Erica Ridley is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of witty, feel-good historical romance novels, including the critically acclaimed Wild Wynchesters series. Her debut young adult horror novel, The Protégée, releases next summer. When not reading or writing, Erica can be found eating couscous in Morocco, zip-lining through rainforests in Costa Rica, or getting hopelessly lost in the middle of Budapest.
Gionni Ponce
Gionni Ponce is a prose writer living in Tempe, Arizona. She is a proud alumna of Macondo, Tin House, and VONA. She has been awarded fellowships to the Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers’ Conference, the Community of Writers Workshop, and the Fine Arts Work Center. In 2024, she was selected as a Poesiæuropa Fellow to travel to Italy to present on Octavia Butler’s work, and she’s also creating a film-poem with two other artists as a Patchwork Fellow.
She’s organized workshops for young writers, assistant directed national writing workshops, and continues to host readings, workshops, and collaborative projects as an arts administrator. Wherever she goes, she aims to create storytelling space for traditionally marginalized stories.
Her work is published in Iron Horse Literary Review, Kenyon Review Online, South Carolina Review, and forthcoming from The Seventh Wave. She is currently working on a short story collection centered on bilingualism and multi-generational conflict in Mexican-American families.
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Katerina Jeng
Katerina Jeng (they/she) is an author, speaker, and creative coach. They are here to help guide humanity into a new paradigm world through humble service that is abundantly joyful, pleasurable, and free. Katerina’s writing explores love and power, and is inspired by their identity as a queer, neurodivergent, Filipina-Taiwanese-American femme. Their debut poetry collection, Gospel of a Whole Sun (Andrews McMeel, 2024), chronicles their journey of self-discovery over the course of three pivotal years, and is a poignant look at the relationship of art-making to personal & collective liberation.
Katerina’s work has been celebrated in People, PBS, CBS News, HuffPost, and Talks at Google. They were the 2023 Writing in Color Fellow at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. Born and raised in New York, Katerina holds degrees in English and music from Cornell University. You can follow their creative pursuits on Instagram (@katerinajeng) and Substack (katerinajeng.substack.com).
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Kristina Maldonado Bad Hand
Kristina Maldonado Bad Hand is a Sicangu Lakota and Cherokee artist that hails from Taos, New Mexico. Her passion for community and social justice has led her to speak on matters of equality and cultural representation in pop culture. She is a graphic designer, illustrator, comic creator, and community organizer. She has over 10 years of experience in after-school and summer programs She is the co-founder and director of áyA Con, Denver’s Indigenous Comic and Art Festival.
Leland Schmidt
Creative outlets have been a focus in my life since I was a kid. Growing up I always pursued creativity and getting what's in my head out into the world. What started as drawing and comics has turned into a career of film making and creation. From music videos to commercials making a pretty image is just the beginning. Capturing humans, places, and moments in time allows me to share experiences and perspectives a lot of us miss out on. Watching a beautiful painting get made in a studio to seeing home teams parading trophies down Broadway, these specials moments allow me to create images and stories so that others can learn about them. Show and tell was one of my favorite school activities that now translates into my work.
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Lisa Moser
Lisa Moser is a queer Philadelphia native and manager of Julia de Burgos Bookstore at Taller Puertorriqueño, the tri-state area’s only bilingual and Latine-focused bookstore. In four years, she has quadrupled the store’s growth with a thoughtfully curated and ever-expanding selection of books, engaging author events, and strong community partnerships. She earned a BA in Spanish and Theology from Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN, where she also discovered her passion for salsa dancing. Lisa holds certificates in TEFL and Medical Interpretation and served as a member of the Latin American Book Fair Committee. Helping customers find books that reflect and affirm their intersecting identities is one of her greatest joys.
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Rowena Alegría
Rowena Alegría is Chief Storyteller for the City & County of Denver, founder and director of the Denver Office of Storytelling, a citywide storytelling, cultural preservation and narrative change project. Naropa University’s 2024 Cobb Peace Lecturer, the 2021 Ricardo Salinas Scholar in Fiction at Aspen Words, a 2019 Jack Jones Literary Arts and Vermont Studio Center Fellow, and a 2018 Writing by Writers Fellow, Alegría earned an MFA in Fiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is a member of Sandra Cisneros' Macondo Writers. A filmmaker, career journalist, communications executive and speech writer, she is writing a novel that plays with form and the history of the Southwest. Learn more at www.RowenaAlegria.com or follow her on Instagram @RoAlegria.
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Saritza Hernández
Saritza is a self-proclaimed geek who loves escaping into worlds and stories from all walks of life. Her love of great storytelling is what has driven her work in the publishing industry for the past 18 years, and her passion for amplifying queer and BIPOC voices is what continues to drive her today. An avid romance and science-fiction reader and strong advocate of the LGBTQ+ community, she enjoys fresh voices in genre fiction.
She specializes in romance and young adult fiction by and for diverse audiences but also represents writers and illustrators for picture books, middle grade, young adult, and adult fiction and nonfiction.
Melissa Yoon
Melissa Yoon is a production editor at Penguin Random House and oversees the authenticity reads program at the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. She is a core member of PRH’s cross-divisional authenticity reads team, which developed a company-wide workflow and reader database to integrate authenticity reads and cookbook reads into the publishing process. Melissa also champions diverse books as a freelance authenticity/cookbook reader. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking, listening to podcasts, going to museums, and collecting books to add to her ever-growing TBR pile.
Jessica Hoppe
Jessica Hoppe is a Honduran Ecuadorian writer based in New York City. She has been featured on ABC News and HBOMax Pa'lante! and her work has appeared in the Latino Book Review, The New York Times, Vogue, Paper Magazine, and elsewhere. Jessica is a board member of Time of Butterflies, a non-profit supporting families through domestic abuse recovery, and an organizer with the Central American Writer's group. Her debut memoir, First in the Family, is available now from Flatiron.
Diana Dominguez
Diana Dominguez is the owner and founder of Más Libritos Bookstore, a Latina-owned, intersectional feminist independent bookstore in Springdale, Arkansas centering the stories of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities.
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Stephanie Seales
Stephanie Seales is the California-born daughter of Panamanian immigrants. She's also a storyteller, dreamer, doer, and children’s book expert who’s worked in nearly every aspect of the industry. She understands the power of story and follows Toni Morrison’s advice, writing the books she wants to read. She dreams and creates with her magical canine companion, Pan, near the water in the Hudson Valley, NY.
Assétou Xango
Artist and facilitator Assétou Xango is known as the Dark Goddess Poet. Xango’s work dismantles the dangerous, colonial binaries that restrict our full existence. As a black, pansexual, polyamorous, genderqueer womxn, Xango exists as the in-between, the darkness that serves as the entry to our deeper.
Xango was featured on HBO's Brave New Voices in 2010 and is a two-time TEDxMileHigh Speaker. Xango was a Fellow of the Academy of American Poet Laureates in 2021 and has been published by many prestigious organizations such as Westword and Poets.org. Xango is the Emeritus Poet Laureate of Aurora, Colorado (2017-2021) and founder of Dark
Goddess Collective, currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Wilkes
University. In all xyr work, Xango is dedicated to the visibility and rights of womxn and gender
non-conforming people of color through storytelling to dismantle binaries and divisions.
Shananda
Shananda is an Initiated Priestess and healer, ordained minister, and initiated in spiritual/
indigenous traditions Including Wicca, and was a student of Lucumí before their Iyanifa
transitioned to the realm of the Ancestors.
Shananda, who earned her Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling honed her skills
through utilizing their intuition to assist in uncovering the root of situations, and through being an
empathetic observer of the human spirit.
She is the Creatrix of Sacred Sister’s Connection Circle (SSCC) a space for the Sacred
Feminine to gather, and be witnessed, Release The Rage| A Sacred Body Flow Ceremony, and
Temple Crimson Lotus to where she will be focusing the majority of her attention moving
forward.
Niyankor
Niyankor is a Black, queer, Sudanese-American communications professional and multimedia
artist. She has 5+ years of experience in nonprofit communications, content creation, and
marketing. She is a student of life with a deep passion for storytelling, community, and Black
liberation. She is currently based in Denver, CO, and is the Communications, Storytelling &
Narrative Manager at Soul 2 Soul Sisters - a Black-led, love-based organization working to
actualize liberation for all through Black healing and joy.
She is also an Earthy Black Femme who loves sunsets, the moon in all her phases and puns.
Her work manifests through writing, facilitating, and muse(ing). She is a student of life who is
passionate about storytelling, love, community, connecting, Black healing, joy and liberation.
Otisa Eads
With a wealth of experience, Otisa thrives on helping established business owners create
efficient systems that drive success. She also finds immense joy in collaborating with start-ups,
nonprofits, and business owners seeking innovative solutions to their challenges. Through her
expertise, Otisa specializes in crafting impactful strategies, implementing onboarding systems,
and facilitating transformative experiences such as team mediation, retreats, and workshops.
Driven by a commitment to justice, Otisa utilizes her business as a platform to shed light on
injustices. She accomplishes this through impactful training sessions and engaging speaking
engagements, encouraging dialogue and positive change.
Otisa holds dual Bachelor's degrees, a Bachelor of Science in Business, and a Bachelor of Arts
from Murray State University. Originally from Westport, KY, she now calls Colorado her home,
where she has resided for the past eight years.
Ahja Fox
Ahja Fox is the Poet Laureate of Aurora. She has editorial, hosting, and teaching experience
and has published in various online and print journals. One of her two draft manuscripts was a
CAAPP Book Prize Finalist in 2021 and a GASHER Press First Book Scholarship Finalist in
2022. She is currently working on a third manuscript. Discover more at
dangerspoetics.wordpress.com/ and follow her on any social media platform @aefoxx.
Ahja Fox can be found around Colorado (mainly Aurora/Denver) reading at various events and
open mics or co-hosting Art of Storytelling, a reading series which you can find information
about here or here. She graduated from University of Colorado Denver with a B.A in English/
Creative Writing with a minor in Psychology and is now a stay at home mom and writer.
Amanda Roy
Amanda has been facilitating groups for over 10 years in subjects of DEI, JEDI, and IDEA as
well as youth and adult leadership, nutrition and has adopted agile methodologies through a
creative lens to facilitate groups.
While guiding complex projects and plans using empiricism and lean thinking strategy Amanda
encourages the individuals a part of projects/organizations to enter as authentic whole humans
with unbelievable potential to be successful. She facilitates self managing teams and individuals
towards productivity while building rapport through transformational communication, and
optimizing time and resources.
Amanda prides herself in being a master of the medium of clay and with it guides trainings and
retreats. Most importantly, Amanda is a mom to a 7 year old named Rae, and an ever growing
and learning entrepreneur.