Roxane Gay is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women, and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is at work on television and film projects. Gay also has a newsletter, The Audacity, and her most recent work, Opinions, was published in October 2023. Her latest work, How to Be Heard, will be published in December.

Montego Glover is a Tony Award nominee, two-time Drama Desk Award winner, Outer Critics’ Circle Award winner and honoree, and Drama League Award nominee. She starred on Broadway in Into The Woods, Memphis, Hamilton, Les Miserables, It Shoulda Been You, and The Color Purple. Glover's television and film credits include Inventing Anna, The Blacklist, Evil, BULL, The Following, Black Box, Hostages, Smash, Golden Boy, The Good Wife, White Collar, Law & Order, Made in Jersey, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Entergalactic, and Every Little Secret. She has appeared in numerous commercials, and does voice-overs, narration, and animated characters for television, gaming, film, and new media; most notably, her narration for Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Real Life Tales of Black Girl Magic. Glover works extensively as a Concert Guest Artist, most recently for a sold-out evening of Gershwin with The New York Pops at Carnegie Hall. Ms. Glover has served as a member of the Artists’ Committee for the Kennedy Center Honors and Lincoln Center Theater. She is a New York PopsEd Ambassador and a member of the Broadway Green Alliance.

Brandon Kazen-Maddox (they/them) is a Grandchild of Deaf Adults (GODA) and third-generation native signer of American Sign Language (ASL) who identifies as a Nonbinary, Black Indigenous Person of Color and a member of the LGBTQAI+ community. Brandon is a choreographer, dancer, director, actor, acrobat, activist, voice-over, and ASL artist. They have also spent the last 10 years as a professional ASL interpreter. Brandon creates work with and for the Deaf and Disability communities, and highlights and empowers BIPOC and LGBTQAI+ artists, building bridges of collaboration and community among people of all backgrounds and abilities. In May 2019, Brandon graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with an MFA in Dance and New Technology. Brandon is currently touring their multimedia one-person ASL Dance Theatre show, Freedom, which celebrates the themes of community, intersectionality, self-expression, and the empowerment of finding one's own voice.

Nicole Ari Parker is a seven-time NAACP Image Award nominee and a graduate of NYU’s famed Tisch School of the Arts, Circle in the Square Studio. The actress and entrepreneur rose to fame with her outstanding performance as Teri Joseph on Showtime’s award-winning original series Soul Food. Parker can currently be seen starring in the Max reboot of the iconic comedy Sex and The City, And Just Like That…. The show is currently in production on its third season. Additional film and television credits include Soul Food, Chicago P.D., The Romanoffs, Almost Christmas, Time After Time, How It Ends, The Best Man: The Final Chapters, and more. On stage, Parker made her Broadway debut in 2012 as Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire for director Emily Mann. Her powerful performance as Blanche earned her an Outer Critics Award nomination. In 2014, she reunited with director Emily Mann as Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra at the McCarter Theatre Center. Her most recent stage appearance was in 2023 as Early in the Off-Broadway World Premiere of Nathan Alan Davis' The Refuge Plays. She was nominated for a 2024 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Performer in a Play and a 2024 Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance. In addition to her acting career, Parker created The GymWrap and her charitable organization the Kodjoe Family Foundation, which she runs with her husband.

Toshi Reagon is a multi-talented and versatile singer, composer, musician, curator, and producer with a profound ear for sonic Americana. Her expansive career includes residences at Carnegie Hall, the Paris Opera House, and multiple festivals and venues nationally and internationally. A highly collaborative artist, she has worked with many musicians, choreographers, film and theater makers, including Meshell Ndegeocello, Urban Bush Women, Dorrance Dance, Nona Hendryx, Carl Hancock Rux, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Robert Wilson, and her band BIGLovely. Toshi co-composed music for two Peabody Award–winning films. She is a 2015 Art of Change Fellow by the Ford Foundation. A 2018 United States Artist Fellow, and an Andrew W. Mellon Creative Futures Fellow Carolina Performing Arts. In 2021, Toshi received the APAP Award for Merit in the Performing Arts and was a 2021 recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in Music. Toshi received an honorary doctorate from Emerson College in 2022. In 2011 she founded the Community festival Word*Rock*& Sword. Toshi and Bernice Johnson Reagon co-created the opera Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which premiered in 2017 at NYUAD Arts Center. Ongoing projects include Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely on tour; LongWaterSong Marine Mammal Meditations with Alexis Pauline Gumbs; Octavia’s Parables podcast, Songs of the Living; and multiple collaborations and curated events. Toshi created the production company Wise Reagon Arts in 2018 to produce the opera Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. New works include the musical You’re Having Too Much Fun So We’re Gonna Have to Kill You and EcoTones.

Lena Waithe is an Emmy-winning writer, producer, actor, and founder of Hillman Grad, a media company providing opportunities for marginalized storytellers to access the industry. Known for Master of None, The Chi, and Queen & Slim, Lena’s latest credits include the Emmy-nominated Being Mary Tyler Moore, A Thousand and One, Kokomo City, and the Tony-nominated Ain’t No Mo’.

Jacqueline Woodson received a 2023 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award, and she was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Her New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, won the National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, and the NAACP Image Award. Her dozens of books for young readers include Coretta Scott King Award and NAACP Image Award winner Before the Ever After, New York Times bestsellers The Day You Begin and Harbor Me, Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster, and Each Kindness, which won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award.