A leading poet and one of the architects of the Black Arts Movement, Haki R. Madhubuti—publisher, editor and educator—has been a pivotal figure in the development of a strong Black literary tradition. He has published more than 31 books (some under his former name, Don L. Lee) and is one of the world’s best-selling authors of poetry and non-fiction. He founded Third World Press Foundation in 1967.

Madhubuti is an award-winning poet and recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, the American Book Award, an Illinois Arts Council Award, the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award and others.

Professor Madhubuti earned his MFA from the University of Iowa. His distinguished teaching career includes faculty positions at Columbia College of Chicago, Cornell University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Howard University, Morgan State University, and the University of Iowa. He is the former University Distinguished Professor and a professor of English at Chicago State University where he founded and was director-emeritus of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center and director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program. Professor Madhubuti served as the Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor at DePaul University for 2010-11.

Most recently, Madhubuti co-edited the collection, Not Our President: New directions from the Pushed Out, The Others and the Clear Majority in Trump's Stolen America.

An interdisciplinary scholar, Noliwe Rooks is the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor of Africana Studies, and the chair of Africana Studies at Brown University. Her work explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, social history and political life in the United States. She works on the cultural and racial implications of beauty, fashion and adornment; race, capitalism and education, and the urban politics of food and cannabis production.

Rooks is the author of Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education which won an award for non-fiction from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. Her current book project explores how the implementation of integration/desegregation strategies impacted Black children and communities. It is tentatively titled, Integration, An American Dream, and explores four generations of her family history with integration and educational experimentation. Her most recent book is a biography of Mary Mcleod Bethune.

Dr. Michael Simanga is an activist cultural worker, artist, and scholar in African American art and culture as expression of identity, forms of resistance and transformation. He has written, edited, and published fiction, poetry, drama, essays, and memoir about the African American experience. Dr. Simanga has also produced, presented, and directed more than 200 artistic projects including plays, exhibitions, concerts, readings, and festivals. He has also produced music with Cassandra Wilson, Sonia Sanchez, and others.