John Sims, a Detroit native, is a multi-media conceptual artist, writer and activist creating projects spanning the areas of installation, text, music, film, performance and large scale activism. His main projects are informed by mathematics, the politics of sacred symbols/anniversaries and the agency of poetry. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, NBC News, USA Today, NPR, The Guardian, ThinkProgress, Al Jazeera, Art in America, Sculpture, BOMB, Science News, Nature, and Scientific American. He has written for CNN, Al Jazeera, The Huffington Post, Guernica Magazine, and The Rumpus.
Terry Blackhawk is the founding Director Emerita (1995-2015) of Detroit's acclaimed InsideOut Literary Arts Project, Dr. Terry Blackhawk is a Kresge Arts in Detroit Literary Fellow. She won the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize and is the author of seven poetry collections, including Escape Artist, which received the John Ciardi Poetry Prize from BkMk Press. www.terrymblackhawk.com.
Sylvia L. Blalock is a San Francisco native, a singer, writer, spoken word artist. She is the author of Uprising: a book of poetry and the host of Poetry In the Raw on blogtalkradio.com.
Drew Dellinger is a writer, teacher, and speaker living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is author of Love Letter to the Milky Way and his work has recently appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Kosmos Quarterly. www.drewdellinger.org, @drewdellinger.
Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker and educator. His book titled, Someone's Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book Heaven Is All Goodbyes was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award.
Prentice Powell is an Oakland native spoken word artist and actor. He has appeared multiple times on the Arsenio Hall Show, five seasons of TV One’s Verses and Flow and most recently in the film Kings: The Short Film.