Robert Wood Lynn is the author of How to Maintain Eye Contact (Button Poetry 2023), runner-up in the 2020 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest, and Mothman Apologia (Yale University Press 2022), selected by Rae Armantrout as the winner of the 2021 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize. His poems have recently appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Narrative Magazine, Shenandoah, The Southern Review and other journals. He splits his time between Brooklyn, New York and Rockbridge County, Virginia.

Accolades:
2023 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow

Siaara Freeman is from Cleveland Ohio, where she is the current Lake Erie Siren & a teaching artist for Center For Arts Inspired Learning and The Sisterhood Project in conjunction with the Anisfieldwolf Foundation. She is a 2021 Premier Playwright fellow recipient with Cleveland Public Theater. She is a 2020 WateringHole Manuscript fellow, a 2018 winter tangerine chapbook fellow and a 2018 Poetry Foundation incubator fellow. Her work appears in, The Offing, BOAAT, Tinderbox, Josephine Quarterly and elsewhere. She has toured both nationally and internationally. She is the co-founder of Outsiders Queer Midwest Writers Retreat. Chances are she’s by a lake, thinking about Toni Morrison and talking to ghosts. In her spare time she is growing her afro so tall God can use it for a microphone and speak through her.

At only 25 years old, Blythe Baird is already one of the most recognizable and acclaimed names in spoken word poetry.

Originally from the northwest suburbs of Chicago, the viral writer has garnered international recognition for her stunning performance pieces that speak urgently and honestly about sexual assault, mental illness, eating disorder recovery, sexuality, and healing from trauma.

Her work has been featured by Glamour, ELLE, TEDxMinneapolis, The National Eating Disorder Association, Mic, The Huffington Post, Everyday Feminism, Medium, The Mighty, The Body Is Not an Apology, Write Bloody, Button Poetry, A-Plus, and many more.

Baird graduated from Hamline University in 2018 with a dual degree in creative writing and women’s studies. In 2020, she became the recipient of the prestigious McKnight Artist Fellowship for Spoken Word administered by The Loft Literary Center in Minnesota.

Darius Simpson is a writer, educator, performer, and skilled living room dancer from Akron, Ohio. Much like the means of production, he believes poetry belongs to and with the masses. He aims to inspire those chills that make you frown and slightly twist up ya face in approval. Darius believes in the dissolution of the empire and the total liberation of Afrikans and all oppressed people by any means available. Free The People. Free The Land. Free All Political Prisoners. His poetry book, Never Catch Me is now available.

Accolades:
2023 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow