U.S., Midwestern

Jada Renée Allen (she/her) is a writer, educator, and culture worker from South Side Chicago, Illinois. She is the recipient of fellowships, scholarships, and support from Tin House, Kenyon Review Writers ...

June Camille Carpenter (she/her) is an Osage Nation tribal member and a self-taught, multidisciplinary artist from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her artwork addresses systemic injustices against Native people and explores...

Matt Bodett (he/him) is a visual artist, poet, and activist. His work has been exhibited at venues including the Poetry Foundation, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the Freud Museum in London, and the NO LIMITS...

Crystal Carrazco (she/her) earned a Master of Arts in the humanities, with a cinema and media studies focus, from the University of Chicago. Her thesis, “Embracing the Rogue Agent in the Mission: Impossible...

Joy Young (she/her) is a Chicago-born storyteller and teaching artist. Her prose and poetry have been published in Poetry East, Lunch Ticket, Black Warrior Review, Portable Gray, and the LOCUS: VIII Gallery...

Chris Watkins (they/them) is a genderqueer poet, environmental activist, and PhD candidate in English studying at Florida State University. Their recent work has appeared in Harvard Review, Redivider, Frontier...

Theaster Gates (he/him) is an artist whose practice finds roots in conceptual formalism, sculpture, space theory, land art, and performance. Trained in urban planning and within the tradition of Japanese ceramics...

Kathryn Irene Glascock (she/her) was an American poet from Indiana and the author of Poems (Country Life Press, 1923). Glascock graduated Mount Holyoke College in 1922, where she was editor-in-chief of the...

Vivek Sharma’s (he/him) first book of verse, The Saga of a Crumpled Piece of Paper (Writers Workshop, 2009), was shortlisted for the Muse India Young Writer Award for 2011. His work in English is published...

Timothy David Rey (he/him) is a poet, playwright, and performer. His original solo performances, monologues, poems, and plays have been produced in Chicago, Texas, and Panama (translated into Spanish). He ...

Rubén Medina (he/him) is a poet, translator, and scholar, as well as one of the founders of Infrarealism. His research and teaching center on Mexican and United States Latinx literature and culture, continental...

Grisel Y. Acosta (she/they) is a professor at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York. Their poetry collection, Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere (Get Fresh Books, 2021), was a 2020...

Luis Tubens (he/him), also known as “Logan Lu,” is a Chicago-born, Puerto Rican spoken-word artist and educator. He is the author of Stone Eagle (Bobbin Lace Press, 2017). In 2014 and 2018, he represented ...

Yolanda Nieves, born and raised in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, identifies as a second-generation Puerto Rican and is an activist scholar, poet, playwright, director, and educator. She is the author...

Marta Collazo (she/her) is a Queer, Afro-Latina poet who has explored and deconstructed how heteronormative constructs, culture, gender, spirituality, monogamy, body agency, guilt, and shame play a role in...

Dawn M Joseph (she/her) is an artist and educator whose creative work spans photography and design. Her photography emphasizes the interplay of textures, light, shadows, and alternative perspectives. Central...

Keli Stewart (she/her) is an author, educator, and arts activist whose writing has been published in Rhino, Meridians, and WarpLand: A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas, among others. Her published works...

Crystal Vance Guerra (she/her) is a Chicana poet, historian, and educator based in Chicago and Mexico City. Her art is Latin Americanist at root, often Spanglish in expression, and written to be read out loud...

John B. Burroughs served as the National Beat Poetry Foundation’s 2022–2023 U.S. Beat Poet Laureate. Burroughs previously served for two years as Ohio’s Beat Poet Laureate. His poetry collections include The...

Scheherazade Tillet (she/her) is a photo-based artist, curator, and feminist activist. Tillet’s work focuses on themes like Blackness, play, freedom, trauma, and healing. Tillet’s work has been showcased at...