Omaria Sanchez Pratt Omaria Pratt (they/them) is a Black trans writer from North Carolina. They hold an M.F.A. from the University of Kentucky where they were a recipient of the 2018 Nikky Finney Fellowship. They have received fellowships from Periplus Mentorship Collective, Kimbilio for Black Fiction, Lambda Literary,  Roots. Wounds. Words. and the Hurston/Wright Foundation. Their work can be found in Taint Taint Taint Magazine, StoryMagazine issue 9, and the Anthology of Appalachian Writers–VolumeXII, where they were nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

A lover of language in all forms and a word laborer who is not shy about correcting errors, politics be damned, Mary C. Lewis balances her enthusiasm for grammar with a commitment to act creatively on her knowledge. Throughout more than four decades, Mary has built a communications portfolio. She began her career as editorial assistant and then managing editor of Ebony Jr! (Johnson Publishing), entering self-employment in 1980. She has edited manuscripts for book publishers; served as “last eyes” on stewardship reports at universities; helped implement first responses to the Affordable Care Act; and composed intranet articles on cultural events for a global investment firm. Her latest day job, as a senior editor, involves her in analyses of transformative destinations. Those are day jobs. Mary also unearths characters’ footsteps and voices, to bring collective fulfillment to as many ancestors and contemporaries as her daily 4 a.m. rising allows. eMerge has published her short fiction, and her essays appeared in Under Her Skin and Sleeping with One Eye Open. Her début novel, Strangers and Pilgrims, will extend to a sequel. Mary enjoys cooking, films, books, and conversations among the sun, moon, and innocent, determined creatures.

JM Holmes is a father of two, whose family was displaced by the Eaton Canyon Fire in LA. He used to write for TV but now organizes full time with the All African People’s Revolutionary Party and Black Men Build. He has an old collection of stories with Little, Brown and a forthcoming debut novel from Common Notions Press.

Jason Harris is a Baltimore based futurist, educator and cultural activist. He is the founder and facilitator of the BlkRobot Project, a long term multi-modal educational art effort designed to place STEM educational opportunities in predominantly Black neighborhoods in the U.S. and Africa. Jason is also a writer whose work has appeared in Black Enterprise magazine, Catalyst Literary journal, Chicory, BmoreArt.com and various online publications. He self-published the speculative fiction anthology entitled, “Redlines: Baltimore 2028′′ in 2012, and is a 2015 Kimbilio Fiction Fellow. He also runs the “SoulBot Saturday Design Squad”, a S.T.E.A.M. based learning course for youth in Baltimore. He co-facilitated “Future Cities” course at Goucher College, and has previously facilitated classes/workshops at the University of Baltimore and the University of the Bahamas. He currently teaches technology classes at the Enoch Pratt Free Library System in Baltimore. You can find him on BlueSky @jharrisfuture, Instagram @jharrisfuture and via Google Sites at https://sites.google.com/site/jharrisfuturenow/home

Leesa Fenderson is an IP attorney and has recently completed her Doctoral studies in USC’s Creative Writing and Literature program. She is polishing a collection of short stories. Her work appears in Joyland Magazine, Story Magazine, CRAFT, Callaloo Journal, and elsewhere. Leesa believes deeply that art and rest are modes of resistance.

Shinelle L. Espaillat is a writer whose work has appeared in midnight & indigo, Pleiades Magazine, Torch Literary Arts, Tahoma Literary Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, Minerva Rising, Ghost Parachute, among others, as well as in the collections Ghost Parachute: 105 Flash Fiction Stories, Shale: Extreme Fiction for Extreme Conditions, and How Higher Education Feels: Commentaries on Poems That Illuminate Emotions in Learning and Teaching. Her stories have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes. She holds an M.A. in English-Creative Writing from Temple University. She teaches at Westchester Community College in NY.

Jamiyla Chisholm is an author, journalist and educator. She is the author of the book The Community: A Memoir. Jamiyla has appeared in The New York Times, and her writing has been published by BET, Colorlines, Essence, TIME’S UP and other companies and publications. As a writer and editor, Jamiyla leads creative content and storytelling for New York City’s first women’s college and has created narratives that seek to empower people of color and the silenced. As an educator, Jamiyla teaches on the importance of storytelling to create positive narrative and social change. In 2024, she joined the Kimbilio team as a Fellow.

Elizabeth Bryant is a lifelong student of the Minnesota River Valley. Her writing explores black interiorities, especially in rural and small town environments in the midwest. She has studied history and black studies, and worked as a barista, literary nonprofit manager, nanny, publicist, events programmer, butcher, and farmer-trainee. Elizabeth is a founding member of the Minneapolis-based artist collective Burn Something, and a current MFA student in fiction at the University of Maryland.

Samuel Autman For the thirteen years Samuel Autman wrote for daily newspapers in Tulsa, Salt Lake City, St. Louis, and San Diego, he felt more was calling to him.  After penning a front-page story about Cupcake Brown’s remarkable journey from crack addict and street gang member to law school graduate, he found it. Since then his nonfiction has appeared in It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror, The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction, The Kept Secret: The Half-Truth in Nonfiction, The Chalk Circle: Prizewinning Intercultural Essays, Ninth Letter, The Common Reader, Under the Gum Tree, The Little Patuxent Review, PANORAMA: The Journal of Travel, Place and Nature, Memoir Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, The St. Louis Anthology and Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology From Middle America. He’s a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee in nonfiction. When a young director named Chinonye Chukwu converted his flash nonfiction into a short film called “A Long Walk,” he began experimenting with form. His last publication, “Friends on My Screens and In My Head,” blurs the lines between personal narrative and screenwriting, television, and film history. Now a writing professor at DePauw University, he’s pursuing short fiction and screenplays.

Jessica (Jess) Sullivan is a writer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She received her MFA from American University. Her work has appeared in decomp journal, Fiction Writers Review, and elsewhere. When not writing, she is often found reading, going on long walks, baking, or looking at the sky.

Melissa A. Watkins has been a teacher, a singer, a (bad) actress, and an (even worse) translator. She’s lived in 4 different countries, 10 different cities, and countless houses. Now she’s a writer of speculative fiction, essays, and book reviews based in Massachusetts. Since being a Black writer in America still means you usually have to have a day job(or two), she works as a program coordinator in higher education and performs audio description for blind and low-sighted patrons at live theatre and concert productions. Instagram, Threads, Tiktok: @EqualOpportunityReader, BlueSky: @EQReader

Angela Watkins is a Chicago native and serious bookworm who makes it a point to visit libraries or bookstores almost every place she visits. In 2014, she earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa and her research background is in African diasporan literature. Her dissertation, titled Mambos, Priestesses, and Goddesses: Spiritual Healing Through Vodou in Black Women’s Narratives of Haiti and New Orleans, put Zora Neale Hurston’s work in conversation with contemporary novels to explore how fiction by black women writers serve as counternarratives to colonialist, racist, stereotypical, misinformed portrayals of African spirituality. She is also an English teacher and began her teaching career as an assistant professor of English at an HBCU. Currently, she teaches Integrated Humanities at an arts high school in New Orleans. To better understand who she is, Angela has been researching her family history, uncovering surprising information about her ancestors and their difficult journeys. The biggest surprise was learning that her ancestry can be traced largely to Nigeria. She grew up sewing by hand but soon, she will be learning how to sew using a sewing machine in hopes of telling some of the stories she’s learned about her family through quilting.

Alonzo Vereen is a graduate of Morehouse College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A recovering editorial assistant, he’s served on editorial teams for Barack Obama, Bruce Springsteen, and Matthew McConaughey. Currently, he teaches high school English in Washington DC.

Porsha Stennis is a fiction writer born and raised in Chicago. She received her MFA from Columbia College Chicago and has a B.S. in Psychology from Northern Illinois University. Her short stories and essays have been published in Rize Short Story Anthology, Mamas, Martyrs and Jezebels, midnight & indigo, and online at The Syndrome Magazine. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, taking yoga classes, and is completing her birth and postpartum doula certification.

Charles Stephens is an Atlanta-based writer, and an MFA candidate in fiction at Randolph College. His work has been supported by Tin House, VONA,  Periplus, The Hambidge Center, and Roots.Wounds.Words.  Instagram: @charlsdotsteph , BlueSky: @charlesdotsteph

Sharda Sekaran is an emerging writer, longtime human rights advocate, and music obsessive native New Yorker currently based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Sharda has spent over two decades leading national and international initiatives to shift narratives around human rights, drug policy, and economic inequality. She co-founded a non-profit organization, Partners for Dignity and Rights, which just celebrated its 20th anniversary. Sharda’s writing has been published in Ebony, Colorlines, HuffPost, Filter, Mass Appeal, ATTN:, Al Jazeera, Nonprofit Quarterly, CNN.com, and Brown Girl Magazine’s anthology UNTOLD. She developed her craft through workshops with VONA, Tin House, Community of Writers, and Black Women Writers in Europe. Her fiction explores rebellion, belonging, grief, and transformation—often through the lens of music, mythology, and characters who don’t fit in. Sharda is drawn to weirdos, dreamers, and those navigating trauma in search of beauty and truth. Her debut novel, Bank of the Underworld, follows a young Black man excavating the legacy of his late father, a heavy metal-obsessed graphic artist. She is currently seeking representation and working on a second novel involving memory, belonging, family legacy, and possibly werewolves. Instagram: @shardaglass

Victoria Palmer lives in Washington, DC.  Her writing centers on the power and influence physical landscapes and geographies have on the sense of self and the meaning of home. Her play Tea Spilling appeared in the Best 10-Minute Plays Anthology from Smith and Kraus, and was produced in the DC/Baltimore area for the Two Strikes Theatre Collective. She is an alumna of the 2021 Kennedy Center Playwright Intensive. Her fiction work has earned support from Tin House Winter Workshop, The Yale Writer’s Workshop, and Kweli’s Art of the Short Story. She is working on a linked short fiction collection and a novel.

Ife O. Olatona is a Johns Hopkins alum and multidisciplinary writer. In 2021, he was spotlighted by The Times in an article titled “Young Hearts: 5 Poets Under 25.” He has performed poems on various stages, and his writing has been published by The New York Times, The Poetry Society, The Massachusetts Review, The Chicago Review of Books, Michigan Quarterly Review, Transition Magazine, and elsewhere. An alum of the Black Playwrights’ Gathering at the Kennedy Center—America’s national cultural center—he previously curated a contemporary African poetry exhibit at the National Museum of Language in the U.S. Born in Lagos, he has lived in multiple cities across Nigeria and the United States. He is working on a novel. Instagram: @ife.olatona