Kathryn Sophia Belle is an associate professor of philosophy and is affiliated with African American studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of specialization include African American/Africana philosophy, Black feminist philosophy, continental philosophy (existentialism), and critical philosophy of race. Major figures she engages include Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Anna Julia Cooper, Frantz Fanon, Audre Lorde, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maria W. Stewart, and Richard Wright. She has published on race, feminism, intersectionality, and sex/sexuality. Under the name Kathryn T. Gines, she co-edited Convergences: Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy (2010) and wrote Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question (2014). She is founding director of the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers, founding co-editor of the journal Critical Philosophy of Race, and founder of La Belle Vie Coaching, offering initiatives for high achievers, the happily unmarried, and erotic empowerment.
Joshua Bennett is the Mellon Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth. He is the author of three books of poetry and criticism: The Sobbing School (2016)—winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award—Being Property Once Myself (2020), and Owed (2020). Bennett earned his PhD in English from Princeton University and an MA in theatre and performance studies from the University of Warwick, where he was a Marshall Scholar. Dr. Bennett’s writing has been published in Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, MIT, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. His first work of narrative nonfiction, Spoken Word: A Cultural History, is forthcoming from Knopf.
Daina Ramey Berry is the Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History and chair of the history department at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the award-winning author and editor of six books, including The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation (2017), which received three book awards. Her most recent book, A Black Women’s History of the United States (2020), co-authored by Kali N. Gross, has received starred reviews from Kirkus Review and Library Journal. In February 2020, it was listed as one of the top ten books to read by The Washington Post, and it is on the longlist for the Brooklyn Public Library’s Literary Prize.
Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., Jamelle Bouie is a columnist for The New York Times and a political analyst for CBS News. He covers campaigns, elections, national affairs, and culture. Prior to his work for the Times, Bouie was chief political correspondent for Slate magazine and a staff writer at The Daily Beast and he held fellowships at The American Prospect and The Nation. He attended the University of Virginia, where he graduated with a degree in political and social thought, and government. Bouie is also a photographer, documenting his surroundings using digital and analog tools.
Herb Boyd is an award-winning author and journalist who has published a number of books and countless articles for national magazines and newspapers, including the Amsterdam News. His most recent book is Harlem Renaissance Redux (2019). Black Detroit: A People’s History of Self-Determination (2017) received several awards and was named a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. Among his other books are The Diary of Malcolm X (2013), co-edited with Malcolm’s daughter Ilyasah Shabazz, and By Any Means Necessary—Malcolm X: Real, Not Reinvented (2012), co-edited with Haki Madhubuti, Ron Daniels, and Maulana Karenga. Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America—An Anthology (1995), co-edited with Robert Allen of the journal Black Scholar, won the American Book Award for nonfiction. He teaches African American history and culture at the City College of New York in Harlem, where he also lives.
Donna Brazile is a veteran political strategist, a Fox News contributor, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and the King Endowed Chair in Public Policy at Howard University. She previously served as interim chair of the Democratic National Committee and of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute. She managed the Al Gore presidential campaign in 2000 and has lectured at more than 225 colleges and universities on race, diversity, women, leadership, and restoring civility in politics. Brazile is the author of several books, including Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House (2017).
Jericho Brown is the author of The Tradition (2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book, Please (2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition, won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, BuzzFeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University.
Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, organizer, and educator, as well as executive director of Bowery Poetry Club, artistic director of Urban Word NYC, and poetry coordinator at St. Francis College. Browne has received fellowships from Agnes Gund, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research, and the Rauschenberg Foundation. She is the author of Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice (2020), Woke Baby (2018), Black Girl Magic (2018), Kissing Caskets (2017), and Dear Twitter (2010). She is also the founder of the Woke Baby Book Fair (a nationwide diverse literature campaign) and, as an Arts for Justice grantee, is excited to release her first YA novel, Chlorine Sky, in January 2021. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Howard Bryant is the author of nine books—Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field (2020), The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism (2018), The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron (2010), Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball (2005), Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston (2002), the three-book Legends sports series for middle-grade readers, and Sisters and Champions: The True Story of Venus and Serena Williams (2018)—and has contributed essays to fourteen others. He is a two-time Casey Award winner, in 2003 and 2011, for best baseball book of the year, and a 2003 finalist for the Society for American Baseball Research Seymour Medal. The Heritage received the 2019 Nonfiction Award from the American Library Association’s Black Caucus and the Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazard Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African American Studies. He has been senior writer for ESPN since 2007 and has served as the sports correspondent for NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday since 2006. He has won numerous awards, was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for commentary in 2016 and 2018, and earned the 2016 Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. In addition, Bryant has appeared in several documentaries, including Baseball: The Tenth Inning and Jackie Robinson, both directed by Ken Burns, and Major League Legends: Hank Aaron, produced by the Smithsonian and Major League Baseball. In 2017 he served as the guest editor for the Best American Sports Writing anthology.