Duriel E. Harris is a poet, performer, and sound artist. She is author of three print volumes of poetry, including her most recent, No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (Nightboat, 2017), Drag (2003) and Amnesiac: Poems (2010). Multi-genre works include her one-woman theatrical performance Thingification, as well as Speleology (2011), a video collaboration with artist Scott Rankin. Cofounder of the avant garde poetry/performance trio The Black Took Collective, Harris has been a MacDowell and Millay Colony fellow. Her work has appeared in numerous venues, including BAX, Mandorla, The &Now Awards, Of Poetry & Protest, Ploughshares, Troubling the Line, and The Best of Fence; and her compositions have been translated into Polish, German, and Spanish. Awarded the George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature in 2023, Harris is Professor of English at Illinois State University and Editor of the award-winning publishing platform Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora.

Tracie Morris is an interdisciplinary poet and sound artist. In her poetry, Morris transforms and complicates her subjects of abuse, power, and the body through repetition and accretive adjustments or substitutions, creating an intimate, dynamic space for readers and listeners. In an interview for Creative Capital, Morris states, “For me, sound poetry teases apart the meaning that is embedded with sound and separates that from literal meaning. So what I try to do is pull those things apart and then create a narrative arc from it.” Morris’s poetry collections include Hard Kore: Poemes/Per-Form: Poems of Mythos and Place (in English and French—joca seria, 2017 France/2018 US), handholding: 5 kinds (2016), Rhyme Scheme (2012), and Intermission (1998). Her work is featured in numerous anthologies, including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind (2015), The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (2015), and An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art (2002). Her sound installations have been presented at the Whitney Biennial, MoMA, the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, and other sites. She leads the Tracie Morris Band and is also a lead singer for the group Terraplane. In 2018 Morris was designated a Master Artist by the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Visiting Writer at the Vermont Studio Center, and WPR Fellow at Harvard University (2018-2019). After three years as the first Distinguished Visiting Professor of Poetry at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Morris joined the permanent poetry faculty in Fall, 2020.

Sylvia Ewing‘s work has appeared in Newcity Magazine, the Chicago Reader, and live events. Her poems reflect her passion for place, people, nature, and Black life. Sylvia studied with Emily Hooper Lansana and Jon Sands’ Emotional Historians. She is also a PBS Pledge Host, teacher, and HistoryMaker for media.

Me’Chelle (She/Her) is a mother, poet, musician and teaching artist. Her work is interdisciplinary, often blending music, poetry & digital visual art together. Her poem “Dark Haunts” was featured in Bone Bouquet magazine (Winter 2020) & her poem “Lumiere” was recently featured at the Lumiere Gala for MSV Chicago (Spring 2023).

Sterling D. Plumpp is a blues poet, essayist, and author of fifteen books including Home/Bass, Velvet Bebop Kente Cloth, Ornate with Smoke, Blues Narratives, and his most recently released collection, Exile. Plumpp is Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has a daughter and two grandchildren.

avery r. young [him, him, his] is Chicago’s first Poet Laureate, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. He is a Leader for a New Chicago 2022 awardee, a Cave Canem fellow and a co-director of The Floating Museum. His poetry and prose have been featured in BreakBeat Poets, Teaching Black, Poetry Magazine, and alongside images in photographer Cecil McDonald Jr’s In The Company of Black.  He is the composer and librettist for a newly-commissioned work from The Lyric Opera of Chicago titled safronia.  His full-length recording, tubman., is the soundtrack to his collection of poetry, neckbone: visual verses.