#ObsidianVoices

Ashley J. Hobbs is a writer, voiceover artist, and two-time NAACP Image Award–winning podcast producer. She is the founder and executive producer of Temple & Riot Productions, through which she develops and produces culturally celebratory audio experiences like Holding Court with Eboni K. Williams and The Unbothered Network. Her writing explores the interior and spiritual lives of women and girls, examining how we (re)claim and celebrate our selves and our agency.

Leodis Smith is an actor/playwright currently residing in Queens with his girlfriend and cat. He is working on rewriting and producing a full-length play titled V from Vitality. When he’s not writing or acting, he likes wandering his neighborhood, watching wrestling, making songs for himself, or reading.

Poet and visual artist Mitchell L. H. Douglas is the author of dying in the scarecrow’s arms, \blak\ \al-fə bet\, and Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem. A 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, he is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University Indianapolis, a Cave Canem alum, and cofounder of the Affrilachian Poets.

Sara E. Hughes is a Massachusetts-based poet. She received honorable mention for the American Poets College & University Prize in 2022. She is a Wild Seeds Writer’s Retreat Fellow and an Aspen Words participant. Sara served as Colorado State University’s 2022 Morgan Library Writer-in-Residence. Sara received a BA in English from Framingham State University and earned two years of study in Colorado State University’s MFA poetry program.

Moderator

A proud New Orleanian, Bernardo Wade tries at poems, catches elbows on the court, & rides his bike around Bloomington, IN, because IU funds his present period of studying with others. Previously the Editor of Indiana Review, he now serves as Assistant Editor and Poetry Editor for Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. Though he’s published in a bunch of literary journals no one in his family has ever heard of, they remain proud of him, especially when they are featured in the poems. His first full-length poetry collection is forthcoming from Lookout Books. He’s infatuated with Ed Roberson’s question, “Can you O.D. on life?”