Ayanna Florence is a spoken word poet, author, and creative from Chesapeake, VA. A born writer and performer, she prides herself in creating work that is thought-provoking, emotion-evoking, and fearless. Since her introduction to slam poetry at 16 years old, she has become one of the most decorated and prominent voices in the space, touring the nation as a self-made artist while continuing to share her love and respect for the craft. Ayanna is the 2023 Womxn of the World Poetry Slam champion, the 2023 and 2024 Slam Charlotte Grand Slam champion, the 2023 and 2024 Queen of the South, a 2x Southern Fried Poetry Slam Finalist, and much more.

As a queer black womxn, Ayanna exists on the fringes and outside the box, and her artistry reflects this reality. She believes that living outside of the margins is an inherently revolutionary act that gives her a singular perspective on life and humanity. In both performance and prose, her artistry is raw, powerful, and poignant, magnifying issues that often go unheard such as the mental health crisis and the queer black femme experience.

Ayanna has been an avid participant in the theatre since the age of 3, majoring in Acting at Howard University, and actively incorporates her extensive theatrical experience into her poetic work. She debuted her one-woman show Moonchild in collaboration with BOOM Charlotte in 2023, and Identity Crisis at the Richmond Poetry Festival in 2024.

As dedicated to teaching as she is to learning, Ayanna has facilitated workshops at the likes of Harvard University, and has created programming and poetry curriculum for middle and high school students across the country. She believes in the necessity of art in all spaces, and the importance of accessibility to knowledge.

Ayanna is a Write Bloody book prize finalist, and her work has been published alongside legends such as Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez in literary magazine, African Voices. In 2024, she self published her debut chapbook, Oceans. Her forthcoming debut full length poetry collection, unreliable narrator (Button Poetry, 2026), seeks to relinquish the shame surrounding victimhood and to empower the sensitive black girl within.

Embraced as one of the most unique voices in spoken word and a standout in any room, Ayanna is proof that your greatest superpower is yourself. She believes in the power of walking in your purpose and loving yourself first, and is filled with eternal gratitude at the opportunity to instill that same belief in others through her work. Her confidence and conviction serve as both inspiration and reminder of what is possible when you dare to dream. Above all, Ayanna is passionate about using her poetry as a method of healing for herself and others.

Matt Mason served as the Nebraska State Poet from 2019-2024 and has run poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus for the U.S. State Department. His poetry has appeared in The New York Times and Matt has received a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found in Rattle, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, and in hundreds of other publications. Button published Mason’s 5th book, Rock Stars, in 2023.

Tim Raymond is an autistic and nonbinary writer based in South Korea. Their fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Chicago Quarterly Review, Joyland, and Witness, among other publications. They contribute comics to ONLY POEMS regularly and post stories and dialogues on Instagram.

PAGES Matam (They/He), is a genderqueer med school drop-out turned award-winning multi-hyphenate, pleasure advocate and agent of imagination. Their work as a film-poet is fueled by Toni Morrison’s words: “the function of freedom is to free someone else,” challenging systems of power to move towards inclusive and ethical liberation. PAGES is a National Poetry Slam Champion and touring Burlesque performer as seen on BET, TV One, and more. Additionally, they were named a Cultural Ambassador to the National Fair Housing Alliance and an inaugural creative with Keke Palmer’s KeyTV.

Francis Dylan Waguespack (he/they) is a painter and Pushcart-nominated poet from New Orleans who writes about the politics of disasters and being from a place and in a body that both live under threat. He is 34, and therefore recently found out about birds. His work appears in many publications including ONLY POEMS DAILY, wildness journal, The Penn Review, and Foglifter. He was a finalist for the 2025 St. Lawrence Poetry Award and won the 2025 Button Poetry First Book Award for his debut collection, Tooth Gaps in the Archives, forthcoming from Button Poetry in the fall of 2026.

Buddy Wakefield is an actor, writer, producer, and three-time world champion spoken word artist featured on the BBC, HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, ABC Radio National and has been signed to both Sage Francis’ Strange Famous Records as well as Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records. In 2004, he won the first Individual World Poetry Slam Finals thanks to the support of anthropologist and producer Norman Lear, then went on to share the stage with nearly every notable performance poet in the world in over 2000 venues internationally from The Great Lawn of Central Park, Zimbabwe’s Shoko Festival and Scotland’s Oran Mor to San Quentin State Penitentiary, House of Blues New Orleans and The Basement in Sydney, Australia.

Buddy has been a busker in Amsterdam, a street vendor in Spain, a team leader in Singapore, a re-delivery boy, a candy maker, a street sweeper, a bartender, a maid, a construction worker, a bull rider, a notably slow triathlete, a facilitator at Quantum Learning Network, and is the most toured performance poet in history. He is the founder of Awful Good Writers, and the producer and host of Heavy Hitters Festival 2020, a summer-long series of online shows and workshops featuring thirty of the most beloved performance poets alive.

The inaugural author released on Write Bloody Publishing, and having served on the original Board of Directors for Youth Speaks Seattle, Buddy is published in dozens of books internationally with work used to win multiple national collegiate debate and forensics competitions. His first short film, Farmly, directed by Jamie DeWolf, won Best of Texas at the Literally Short Film Fest, and the USA Film Festival.

In the spring of 2001 Buddy left his position as the executive assistant at a biomedical firm in Gig Harbor, WA, sold or gave away everything he owned, moved to the small town of Honda Civic, then set out to live for a living. His aim was to tour North American poetry venues for two years. He did not stop. Wakefield, who isn’t concerned with what poetry is or is not, delivers raw, rounded, disarming performances of humor and heart.

Ollie Schminkey (they/them) has spent the past decade coaching, mentoring, teaching classes, and running workshops for poets. They were the winner of the 2024-25 Palette Previously Published Poem Prize, and their work has been featured everywhere from Poets.org to Frontier Poetry to Upworthy. They’ve performed poems in 21 states, with their work garnering over 3 million views on YouTube. They are the author of four chapbooks and two full-length collections: Where I Dry the Flowers (Button Poetry, 2024) and Dead Dad Jokes (Button Poetry, 2021), which was shortlisted for both the Midwest Independent Publishers Association and the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize. They are the founder and director of the slam poetry tournament Midwest Poetry Mash-Up, and their work has been supported by the Arts Impact for Individuals grant through the Minnesota Regional Arts Council, as well as the Minnesota State Arts Board. You can also find them making pottery, dancing in their kitchen, or playing with their cat Pete, who is always trying to eat things he shouldn’t.

To take a class or to see more of their work, check out ollieschminkey.com.