Nicole Goodwin aka GOODW.Y.N. They are long-listed for The Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for 2023, the 2023 RWW Creative Nonfiction Fellow, as well as the 2018 Ragdale Alice Judson Hayes Fellowship Recipient, while advancing to the 2nd Round of the 2018 Creative Capital Awards. They published the articles “Talking with My Daughter…” and “Why is this Happening in Your Life…” in the New York Times’ parentblog Motherlode. Additionally, their work “Ain’t I a Woman (?/!): Poems,” was longlisted for The Black Spring Press Group’s The Christopher Smart-Joan Alice Prize for 2020.

Manatsu Tanaka (They/them) is a trans, bicultural, multi-disciplinary artist who grew up in Japan and in the US. They believe that it is our bodies that humanity should be able to seek shelter in. As an artist and a contemporary of this ongoing multiple genocides, they believe and spends their creative practices, platforms and their trans-taped chest physical canvas for illustrating humanness, to co-create the tools to dismantle the toxic isms, to reveal our hidden alliances to the colonial systems, to question the “that’s the world we live in today”to be the resistance against any colonial capitalist attempts to demonstrate that dismantling is possible, that a better world is imaginable, and remind each other that we are the heartbeats of our liberation.  As an artist on a visa in the US, Manatsu is committed in using their creativity in co-creating our liberated world, together.  Free Palestine, Free Sudan, Congo, the Uyghurs, Free all occupied people and lands. Decolonize. Stop the genocide. Liberation before Peace. 

Steven Muleme is a professional visual artist with a Bachelor's Degree in Commercial Industrial Art and Design from Nkumba university in Uganda. He is an inspiring activist and community organizer who is a very committed, disciplined and well organized LGBTIQ frontline activist, connected both at national and the internal level working to advance progress on LGBTIQ rights. Over the years, he has worked to combat social stigma and shame through celebration, hope, and joy. He is the Global Advisory Council Representative of InterPride for the African Region. His unique skills set and experience as the founder and Executive Director of Visual Echoes for Human Rights Advocacy (VEHRA) is unequaled. He is a passionate, selfless, committed, teachable, flexible, proactive gay man of character experienced in LGBTIQ advocacy and active with a high sense of vision, purpose and team spirit. He is so passionate about healing the world and making it a better place of universal respect for human rights and dignity, justice, equality and non-discrimination, permitting full realization of human potential and contributing to shared prosperity. Over the years, he actively participated in various art exhibitions at his former university, art competitions, commissioned work for painting generations of families, and other commissions. His art forms include; drawing, painting, batik, mosaics, collage, Weaving and basketry. He is a teacher and taught Fine Art in different colleges in Uganda from 2012-2014 before he got fired by the anti-gay principle. He is a playwright and some of his powerful plays have been read in New York City from 2022-2024. He was one of the recipients of PEN AMERICA immigrant writer 2024. He also sits on the Board of Refugee America and many other boards.

Dan Schapiro is a disabled HIV+ Ashkenazi writer, artist, and access worker. Drawing on the disparate teachings and traditions of Disability and Mad Justice, pop music, and birds, his work invites readers to consider and inhabit the conditions of Madness, inattention, chronicity and virality as critical approaches to relation, care, attendance, and knowing. His debut collection of poems and images, HOLEPLAY (Nueoi, 2020), distills his practice down to a singular question: "but what is the point of Poetry— / If not to Infect—!" He has given talks and readings on disability, poetics, and the arts at the Whitney Museum, ONE Institute, Flow Chart Foundation, Creative Time, and elsewhere.

Dominika Ksel is a transmedia artist investigating interspecies intimacies, community consciousness, environmental social justice, and listening. Ksel weaves together alchemical narratives, audio compositions, and sensory experiences that provide meditative space for communing with ecological mysteries and exploring relationships with sentient and non-sentient life. Often, the projects take form as video installations, animations, sonic sculptures, extended reality, and community collaborations. These experiential works draw on speculative fictions, techn0fem1n1sm, embodied cognition, and deep ecology to investigate how technology, community, and mysticism mediate our perception, identities, and interdependent futures. Dominika is also a co-founder of Buena Onda Collective Art Lab and teaches at CUNY. 

Dennis RedMoon Darkeem is a Bronx artist, educator, community, and cultural practitioner. He uses installations, photography, sculpture, drawing, painting, sound, and performance as vessels to convey and balance ideas of transformation, generation, and honor. He has exhibited locally and nationally and received awards and fellowships from the B.C.A, Bronx Museum, the Laundromat Project, and others. He holds a BA and MFA from Pratt Institute.

Mixed media multidisciplinary Artist he is inspired to create artwork based on the familiar objects that he views through his daily travels. He discovers elements in existing architecture and among everyday items found within the home. Ultimately, he sets out to express a meaningful story about events in his life and those found with the communities with whom he works. Darkeem utilizes different media in the creation of his work which allows great versatility and a rich viewer experience as the eye uncovers the multiple layers that often characterize mixed media art.

KT Kennedy (they/them) is a Black queer non-binary multidisciplinary artist, educator, and youth program director based in Brooklyn, NY committed to resource sharing, art education and community practice as tools for liberation. KT's experience as an organizer and artist is reflected in their work as the founder and director of Black Education Matters, a notable education resource hub serving over 53,000k+ folks and BTGNC (Black Trans Gender Non-conforming) Resource. KT received their Masters from NYU in art Education and Community Practice earning the 2021 AECP Student Excellence Award, and continues to explore intentional community engagement while building accessible resources, workshops, and programs that heal and empower system impacted communities. KT's unique artistic community safety engagement practice transcends and translates to various communities, gatherings, and teachings, and is currently at Recess Art, as the Youth & Community Organizer, directing the Assembly youth program as well as sitting as a Board advisory member. KT is also an elected member of ACT UP NYC, and core member of Thank God For Abortion.   

Max Raymond (he/him) is a gay trans man, educator, and multidisciplinary theatre artist who grew up in North Carolina and Texas and has worked with theatre companies throughout NC and NY. He works as the Director of Communications at Theatre of the Oppressed NYC, as a Mentor with the Sam & Devorah Foundation for Trans Youth and the Trans Empowerment Project, and as a freelance gender consultant, trans literacy trainer, and teaching artist. He is moved to creative advocacy by his belief that trans solidarity belongs in all liberation struggles, that meaningful art necessitates gender expansion, and that theatre has the power to re-narrativize the trans body.

Max is the recipient of a 2022-23 Echoes Playwriting Fellowship through Primary Stages, an alumni Mentor with the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition’s Trans Leadership Academy, and an alumni ensemble member of the NYC- and Chicago-based Social Justice Improv Project, and he has taught vocal performance, piano, and music theory to students of all ages, with a special focus on TGNC students. His extensive nonprofit involvement has included work with 826DC, India’s Sehgal Foundation, the New York Neo-Futurists, and The Drama League. Max is a Co-Founding Artistic + Creative Director of Star Pocket Theatre, a Raleigh-based company committed to exploring diverse identities through accessible storytelling which produced Mashallah: Exploring Middle Eastern Identities in America at VAE Raleigh. He has since produced The Gaza Monologues and From Shakespeare to Gaza: Performances for Palestine at The People's Forum. As an actor, recent credits include 808, a short film about safety in queer nightlife, written by JJ Maley and directed by Sierra Schnack, and Frailty, Thy Name, an adaptation of Hamlet in which he played a nonbinary Hamlet.

Additional performance credits (selected): Theater Camp (Culture Lab LIC); In the Castle of Eternal Sunset (Brick Aux); Archie's Weird Parody (Don't Tell Mama, Theatre Row); The Member of the Wedding (Star Pocket Theatre); Little Shop of Horrors (Raleigh Little Theatre); Legally Blonde (Temple Theatre); It Shoulda Been You, The Elephant Man (Theatre in the Park); Hay Fever (NCSU TheatreFest); Antigone, Written on the Heart (Burning Coal). Workshops: The Cursed Beast (Song of Avalon Productions); Roaches! (Tumbleweed Collective); Skater Girls (938 Collective); The Grief Plays (Apartment Players); Last Gold (Hunter College); The Golden Ass, Counting by Twos (Playground Experiment). Key, Ring of Keys.

IG: @maxraymond_ / maxraymond.org 

Akeema-Zane is an artist and researcher whose practice centers the literary, music, cinematic and performance traditions. The artist has been a student, employee, fellow or performer at Schomburg-Mellon Humanities Fellowship, Groundation Grenada, Cave Canem, The Maysles Documentary Center, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, UnionDocs and The School of Making Thinking. At The School of Making Thinking, the artist was a part of the 2018 Immersion 2.0 residency and has been a facilitator for Immersions 4.0 and 5.0. Akeema-Zane currently serves on the board of directors of Cucalorus Film Foundation and as board chair of The School of Making Thinking.

Lily (all the pronouns!) is a disabled freelance access consultant, educator, and actor. Lily works on programming that uses storytelling and performance to connect with audiences of all ages and abilities. They use humor and imagination to create an environment where people feel empowered to experiment and speak up for what they need and want. They love talking with other disabled creatives and workers about advocating for change, making art, and community. If you’d like to chat with them feel free to reach out at LilyALipman@gmail.com or visit their website at www.LilyLipman.com.

Antuan Byers (he/him) is a dancer, model, creative entrepreneur, and organizer. Basing his multidisciplinary practice in Lenapehoking, Manhattan, New York, he is using movement as a catalyst for societal change. As a freelance dancer, he regularly works with distinguished institutions as a performer and teacher; however, he shares his time building communities, creating resources, and finding innovative avenues to support his community.

Antuan is the proud Founder and Creative Executive Officer of Black Dance Change Makers, a group of Black dancers redefining performance through choreographed movements of change. He is the Vice President of the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA), and is a founding member of the AGMA Black Caucus. Antuan is also the Operations Director of Darkness RISING Project, a Black mental health and performing arts organization. He is a former Dance Artists National Collective steering committee member, is on the Dancers Amplified leadership team, and serves on DanceNYC’s Dance Workforce Resilience Taskforce. Antuan was also the writer and host of The LLAB on the Pod de Deux podcast where he dissected issues of racial justice as they relate to the world of dance.

Antuan is currently a Thought Partner in Residence for the newly launched Creative Administration and Research Program by the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron. Here, he works alongside Bebe Miller, Dominic Moore-Dunson, and Edgar L. Page to support experimental artists working in the field of dance to break down the barriers of the discipline so that it may achieve new creative heights. Antuan also serves on the Artistic Advisory Committee for The Metropolitan Opera, the largest non-profit performing arts organization in the United States.

After touring internationally with Ailey II, Antuan returned to Lincoln Center to rejoin the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, where he regularly performs in a diverse repertory of in classic and contemporary operas. Performing extensively around the globe he has also appeared with organizations such as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Mark Morris Dance Group, the Washington National Opera Ballet, MorDance, and konverj dans.

In 2022, Antuan was named on Urban Arts Magazine’s 2022 40 Under 40 List for his work as a dancer, activist, and leader.

Antuan is paving his own path, on a mission to create an liberated future for Black people, and the creative class. As a dancer, innovator, and activist he is using his craft to ignite the creative spark in new communities, ensuring that those behind him have the freedom to achieve even their wildest dreams.

x - it’s just x- (they/themme; ze/hir; he/hymn; fae/faer) is a Hypermobile+, disabled, Autistic, TRANSdisciplinary conceptual artist of Afro-Asian descent. They are a performer, mover, wiggler, fidgeter, and multi-faceted entertainer currently based on the unceded land originally stewarded by Lenni Lenape Indigenous folk. Like many artists, x is so self-involved they use their own lived experiences, mishaps, and misfortunes as the premise for all their projects. A repetitive failure, x has mastered the art of "speaking from the I '', so well that even their confusing, abstract art is still about themme and their problems. x's chief complaints and primary antagonists include the Medical Industrial Complex, the Child "Welfare" System, treatment-resistant depression, ADHD, refined carbs, and boys. x is more than their 3 penetrable holes and more than their accolades.

Joselia Rebekah Hughes (she/her/hers) is a Mad and disabled Afro-Caribbean writer, artist, and educator based in the Bronx. She is a poetry editor at Apogee Journal. Joselia's work focuses on the lineage of Black disabled aesthetics and linguistics of access. She uses wordplay, oral traditions, and the archetype of The Fool as measures to question and provoke societal perceptions and values regarding madness, illness, capacity, debility, and disability. Joselia’s poetry has been nominated for Best of Net and has been published in Apogee Journal, Massachusetts Review, The Poetry Project, Split This Rock, Blackflash Magazine, Leste Magazine, Jewish Currents, and Ocean State Review.

Kadie |  I am a Black, Queer, Gender Expansive Lesbian & Houston native. I draw from astrology, story, and ancestry to create multi-disciplinary performance art and community programming. A Very Well-Read Black Girl, highly trauma-informed, Baptist-church raised, and a practicing astrologer, I use my creative process to disrupt and challenge systems of oppression with the hope of arriving at new and expansive possibilities.

Darkness -or the concepts, practices, people etc- that are often relegated to the dark or margins (birth, death, sex, grief, loss) is my playground. Working in capitalism often feels like sex work, in that I pick and choose which parts of my body are for sell and for how much. So in my work I'm interested in crafting worlds with this in mind, pulling from Strip Clubs, Skating Rinks, Peep Shows etc, understanding that darkness is not in conflict with light because some lights shine the brightest in the dark.  

In my current solo practice I use story, astrology, vocal improvisation and movement to create living performance spaces. I'm currently exploring the question "Where is My Home From Here? Drawing from my experiences as a young girl in Houston and placing them against my lived adult experience in New York, I'm hoping to sit inside of the process and contradictions of becoming an adult. In this work, I revisit wounds with the intention to rewrite/replace/ recenter myself and necessary narratives, so that I may live with more space to express, explore and evolve. Playing with memory and harmony and sensations, I hope that audience members are both nurtured and challenged by the work.
You can keep up with me by listening to my weekly episodes of Erotic Embodiment, becoming a patron, or following me on IG.

Website: https://kadiesmiles.weebly.com

Podcast:https://open.spotify.com/show/4C9QspNeSIWuirdlW8yQWQ?si=4af624bdc4e04a12 

Madison Zalopany is a disabled artist and access worker based in New York City. For over a decade, she has worked with museums, theatres, galleries, and other cultural institutions to eliminate or mitigate socially constructed barriers and foster a more inclusive space for people of diverse backgrounds and abilities. Notable institutions have included:

• New York Foundation for the Arts

• The Whitney Museum of American Art

• Oral History Association

• United States Artists

Rohan Zhou-Lee, pronouns They/Siya/祂/Elle, is a dancer, writer, and public speaker. They are also known for founding The Blasian March, a Black-Asian solidarity initiative through education and celebration. At CUNY's first ever LGBT-themed conference, Queeribbean Crossings (Caribbean Equality Project,) the Blasian March received a certificate from The Public Advocate For the City of New York in affirmation of the “work to unite diverse Brooklyn communities in love, fellowship, and support.” Now with multiple chapters across the United States, Zhou-Lee will use this residency to further the Blasian March's mission, including to organize the second annual Blasian March Book Fair (April 29 1-5 PM at Immigrant Social Services, 137 Henry Street,) and third annual Black Asian Pride Rally (Date TBA.) As a dancer, siya trained at Ruth Page Center for the Arts in Chicago and the 2015 Dance Theatre of Harlem summer intensive. Elle has danced the roles of Bluebird in Sleeping Beauty (Victoria Ballet Theatre, 2019) Toro in West Side Story (New Bedford Festival Theatre, 2018), made their Off-Broadway debut in Over Here! (Triad Theatre, 2019) to warm reviews, and François and the Rebels (New York Theatre Barn, 2022) a musical about the Haitian Revolution by Jaime Cepero, choreographed by Angela Nicole Patmon. They performed their own choreography, the ballet solo Homage, at the 2022 Unite Festival in Zürich, Switzerland, which pays tribute to Asian Americans killed by police (2016 A-Squared Theatre Asian American Performing Arts Festival, world premiere.) At the same festival they sang the National Black Anthem and premiered a poetry commision, The Obsidian Wings of Heaven, to honor Nzoy, a South African immigrant killed by Swiss police during a mental health crisis. Their poetry, essay writing, and journalism has also appeared in Anathema Magazine, Mochi Magazine, Prism Reports, Reappropriate, NextShark, them, and Newsweek. Siya's essay Reaching Asian Power was the co-Grand Prize Winner of the Mochi Magazine Writing for Change Essay Contest, and their first ever professional article in journalism, Why Abolition Is Essential for Black-Asian Solidarity (them 2021) was incorporated into Asian American studies courses at California State University, Los Angeles. Zhou-Lee has spoken on human rights, LGBT rights, Asian American and Black social justice movements, The Blasian March, and more at many places including but not limited to UCLA Berkeley, Queens Museum, Ma-Yi Theater, the 2022 Enough Festival in Zürich, Switzerland, and Harvard University. Zhou-Lee holds a Bachelor of the Arts in Ethnomusicology from Northwestern University. For bookings and commissions, please contact them at www.diaryofafirebird.com. @diaryofafirebird on all platforms.

Chris Myers is a New York born and based actor, writer, and educator. He is an alumnus of Harlem School for the Arts, LaGuardia High School, the British American Drama Academy, and The Juilliard School. As an actor, he has worked on Broadway and Off-Broadway at venues including The Public, Lincoln Center, Roundabout, Second Stage, MTC, and MCC. On screen, he has appeared in shows for Netflix, Amazon, CBS, FOX, and VH1, among others. He won an Obie Award for his performance in Branden Jacobs - Jenkins An Octoroon. As a writer, he has self-produced two short films and a pilot, GUAP, a comedy about gentrification. As an educator, organizer, and founding member of Anticapitalism for Artists, he received the 2021 Segal Center Award for Civic Engagement in the Arts.

Krishna Christine Washburn is the artistic director and sole teacher of Dark Room Ballet, a pre-professional dance curriculum designed for the educational needs of blind and visually impaired people like herself, the only course of its kind in the English-speaking world. Dark Room Ballet is sponsored by Movement Research, a progressive movement arts institution in New York City.

Krishna holds a Masters of Education from Hunter College, a BA from Barnard College, and multiple certifications from the American College of Sports Medicine with a focus in biomechanics.

Dark Room Ballet has been featured in USA Today (Green Bay Gazette, North Jersey News), BLOOM Magazine, Speak Out for the Blind podcast, the Eyes on Success podcast, Bloomberg Quicktake news, and more.

Krishna has performed with many leading dance companies including Jill Sigman’s thinkdance, Infinity Dance Theater, Heidi Latsky Dance, Marked Dance Project, and LEIMAY.

She has collaborated with many independent choreographers, including Patrice Miller, iele paloumpis, Perel, Vangeline, Micaela Mamede, Apollonia Holzer, and notably with A. I. Merino.

Krishna has been a popular guest educator, in particular in the fields of self-audio description and curriculum development for blind and visually impaired dance students. She has taught workshops at The New School, Philadelphia’s Hook and Loop, Gibney Dance, Indiana Blind Children’s Foundation, and has been company mentor to the ShaLeigh Dance Works dance company for the development of their interactive dance theater project, enVISION, led by her mentee, DJ Robinson.

She has spoken about ableism in dance education at the 92nd Street Y, New York University, National Dance Educators Organization, and ArtSpark Texas.

Krishna is also co-director of The Telephone Dance and Audio Description Game, or Telephone, an on-going activist screen dance documentary project meant to promote innovative artistic philosophies relating to audio description for dance with choreographer and filmmaker Heather Shaw. (photo by Micaela Mamede)

Nadia Naomi Mbonde is a Mad Black mother, scholar, multimedia artist, and mental health doula in Brooklyn, New York. A doctoral student in Medical and Sociocultural Anthropology at New York University, Nadia’s research addresses how perinatal mental health disparities contribute to the ongoing Black maternal mortality and morbidity crisis in the United States. She has trained as a birth and postpartum doula and a mental health peer specialist facilitating support groups and regularly speaking and teaching about mental health and reproduction at academic conferences as well as grassroots mental health and doula organizations. As a multimedia artist, Nadia translates her lived experience with madness and motherhood through dance, film, photography, and digital art. Through her art, activism, and scholarship, Nadia seeks to integrate Mad liberation and reproductive justice for birthing people and their families to thrive.

Namel “TapWaterz” Norris is a paraplegic hip hop artist and disability rights advocate, who uses music as a tool for change and to inspire others to never give up. He has performed at the United Nations, spoken at the White House, and worked with music icons Snoop Dogg and Stevie Wonder. As a teen, Namel was accidentally shot and left paralyzed. Despite his setback he became cofounder of a hip hop group called 4 Wheel City, whose mission is to create more opportunities for people with disabilities and promote anti gun violence. He is also a founding member of RAMP'D (Recording Artist and Music Professionals with Disabilities).