Donika Kelly

Donika Kelly is the author of The Renunciations, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf book award in poetry, and Bestiary, the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and a founding member of the collective Poets at the End of the World. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Paris Review, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor in the English department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.

Photo Credit: Ladan Osman

Danez Smith

Danez Smith is the author of three collections including Homie and Don’t Call Us Dead. They have won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and have been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Danez's poetry and prose have been featured in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, Best American Poetry, and on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective. The former cohost of the Webby-nominated podcast VS, they live in Minneapolis near their people.

Photo Credit: David Hong

Ruth Dickey

Ruth Dickey has spent over twenty-five years working at the intersection of community building, writing, and art, now as executive director of the National Book Foundation. Ruth previously had the pleasure of leading organizations in Washington, D.C.; New Orleans, Los Angeles; Cincinnati, Ohio; and, most recently, in Seattle, Washington as executive director of Seattle Arts & Lectures. An ardent fan of dogs and coffee, she served as a fiction judge for the 2019 National Book Awards and holds an MFA in poetry from UNC-Greensboro, and a BS in Foreign Service, and an MA in Latin American Studies from Georgetown University.

Photo Credit: Libby Lewis