contributors
avery r. young is an interdisciplinary artist and an educator. He is the librettist and composer of safronia, a gospel opera. His poetry and prose were featured in The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (2015), Teaching Black (2021), The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (2017), and AIMprint, among other publications. His writing is featured alongside images in photographer Cecil McDonald Jr’s In the Company of Black (2018). The full-length recording tubman. (FPE Records) is the soundtrack to his collection of poetry, neckbone: visual verses (2019). Young’s album booker t. soltreyne: a race rekkid (FPE Records) engages matters of race, gender, and sexuality in the United States during the Obama era.
Young’s work in performance, visual text, and sound design has been featured in several exhibitions and theater festivals, including the Chicago Hip Hop Theater Fest, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the American Jazz Museum. In addition, he is one of four directors of the Floating Museum, a co-mentor for the Rebirth Youth Poetry Ensemble, and performs with his band, de deacon board.
In 2023, young was appointed the inaugural Chicago Poet Laureate. Young is a 3Arts awardee, a poetry editor for Bridge, and a former Cave Canem fellow. With more than two decades of experience in the teaching artist field, young has led programs in and out of schools, community-based organizations, and other learning environments. He has served as a teaching artist for the Arts + Public Life residencies at the University of Chicago and dedicated his work to helping youth overcome social and economic barriers to accessing Chicago’s artistic and cultural vitality.
photo credit: ajanaé dawkins
photo credit: Wulf Bradley
W.J. Lofton is a Black Queer Southern poet and multimodal artist. He is the author of boy maybe (Beacon Press, 2025) and A Garden for Black Boys Between the Stages of Soil and Stardust (published by the author, 2018). A recipient of Ava DuVernay’s LEAP Grant, Lofton is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and an Emory University Arts & Social Justice fellowship.
Lofton’s poetry, essays, and film work have appeared on the Academy of American Poets site and in the American Poets magazine, Obsidian, Scalawag, TIME, the books No Justice, No Peace and Prose to the People, and film festivals nationwide. His work is driven by a sustained concern with liberation and its lived manifestations—the personal, the political, and the collective.
Lofton lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where he co-curates Rebellion: A Writing Salon at For Keeps Books.
Brittany Rogers is a Black queer poet and multidisciplinary artist, educator, and lifelong Detroiter. Her poems and essays have been published widely, including the Academy of American Poets, Lit Hub, The Hopkins Review, The Metro Times, Lambda Literary, and Oprah Daily. Her visual art has been on display in spaces such as Urban Arts Space and WOMXNHOUSE Detroit. She is Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine, former co-host of VS Podcast, and the author of the poetry collection Good Dress (Tin House, 2024), a Michigan Notable Book for 2025, and finalist for both the NAACP Image Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry, amongst others. Brittany is a Betty Berzon Emerging Writer, Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellow, and 2026 Whiting Award Winner.
photo credit: Beowulf