Mahogany L. Browne & Aricka Foreman

Mahogany L. Browne, a Cave Canem, Poets House, and Serenbe Focus alum, is the author of several books including Redbone (nominated for NAACP Outstanding Literary Works) and Dear Twitter: Love Letters Hashed Out On-line, recommended by Small Press Distribution & About.com Best Poetry Books of 2010. Mahogany bridges the gap between lyrical poets and literary emcee. Browne has toured Germany, Amsterdam, England, Canada and recently Australia as 1/3 of the cultural arts exchange project Global Poetics. Her journalism work has been published in magazines Uptown, KING, XXL, The Source, Canada's The Word, and UK's MOBO. Her poetry has been published in literary journals Pluck, Manhattanville Review, Muzzle, Union Station Mag, Literary Bohemian, Bestiary, Joint, and The Feminist Wire. She is the co-editor of forthcoming anthology The Break Beat Poets: Black Girl Magic and chapbook collection Kissing Caskets (Yes Yes Books). She is an Urban Word NYC Artistic Director (as seen on HBO’s Brave New Voices), founder of Women Writers of Color Reading Room, Program Director of BLM@Pratt and facilitates performance poetry and writing workshops throughout the country. Browne is also the publisher of Penmanship Books, a Nuyorican Poets Café Friday Night Slam curator, and a recent graduate from Pratt Institute MFA Writing & Activism program. Find her ​@mobrowne on Twitter & Instagram.

​Aricka Foreman is a poet, editor and educator from Detroit, MI. Her poems, essays and curation have appeared in The Offing, Buzzfeed, Vinyl, RHINO, The Blueshift Journal, Day One, shuf Poetry, James Franco Review, THRUSH, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Viking Penguin), among others. Author of the chapbook Dream with a Glass Chamber (YesYes Books), she has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She currently lives in Chicago, IL.