#ObsidianVoices

Sherese Francis is an Alkymist of the I-Magination and expresses her(e)self through poetry, interdisciplinary arts, workshop facilitation, editing, and literary curation. Her(e) work has been published in several journals and magazines and Sherese also has published three chapbooks.

M.C. MoHagani Magnetek resides in Anchorage, AK. She is a prolific writer who is cooler than ice water and has earned degrees in Anthropology (BA), English (BA), Forensic Death Investigation (graduate certificate), and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing & Literary Arts. She is a Coast Guard veteran, Community Organizer, and Human Rights Advocate who is world-renowned, nationally recognized, and locally accepted as the undisputed people’s champ because she believes poetry is therapeutic. She has written two novels, The Mad Fantastic, 2098 (2020) and Death by a Thousand Kisses: A Ms. Mahogany Bones Murder Mystery (2021). Her list of accolades also includes jumping over five cars on her bike and chaining herself to a tree for justice, equality, and respect for all people.

Charles Rice-González is an LGBTQ activist, cofounder of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, and an Assistant Professor at Hostos Community College. His debut novel, Chulito, received recognition from the American Library Association and the National Book Critics Circle, and his writings appear in over a dozen publications. He’s a fellow of MacDowell, the Lannan Foundation, and PEN America.

Moderator

Duriel E. Harris is a writer, performer, artist, and scholar. She is author of three critically acclaimed volumes of poetry, including No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (Nightboat, 2017), Drag (2003), and Amnesiac: Poems (2010). Multi-genre works include the one-woman theatrical performance Thingification, the video collaboration Speleology (2011), and the sound+image project “Blood Labyrinth.” Cofounder of The Black Took Collective, Harris is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at Illinois State University and Editor in Chief of the award-winning publishing platform Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora.

Moderator

Ronaldo V. Wilson, PhD, poet, interdisciplinary artist, and academic, is the author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man, winner of the Cave Canem Prize; Poems of the Black Object, winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and the Asian American Literary Award in Poetry; Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other, finalist for a Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry; and Lucy 72. His latest books are Carmelina: Figures and Virgil Kills: Stories. The recipient of numerous fellowships, including Cave Canem, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Ford Foundation, Kundiman, MacDowell, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and Yaddo, Wilson is Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at U.C. Santa Cruz, serving on the core faculty of the Creative Critical PhD Program; principal faculty member of CRES (Critical Race and Ethnic Studies); and affiliate faculty member of DANM (Digital Arts and New Media).