Janice A. Lowe, the composer of Olio: A Syncopated Citizenry of Sun-drenched Sable Soliloquies, is a pianist and poet who collaborates to create musical multimedia works. She is the author of LEAVING CLE poems of nomadic dispersal, and is composer-librettist of the chamber opera Dusky Alice. Her compositions for musical theater include Lil Budda, text by Stephanie L. Jones, which was presented at the Eugene O’Neill Musical Theater Conference and at National Alliance for Musical Theater’s Festival of New Works, This Esther, book and lyrics by Charles E. Drew, Jr., and Sit-In at the Five & Dime, words by Marjorie Duffield. Lowe arranged and performed the music of Montague Ring for the performance piece Impossible Man by Tracie Morris. She has composed music for plays including Dream, Girl! by Lisa Rposetta Strum, 12th & Clairmount by Jenni Lamb, Chiron’s Homegurl Healer Howls by Liza Jessie Peterson and Door of No Return by Nehassaiu DeGannes. Lowe tours and records with her band, Janice Lowe & NAMAROON. She composed and co-wrote the multimedia piece Desegregation Remix: Three Women Sing the Borders, a collaboration with Lee Ann Brown. Lowe is a co-founder of The Dark Room Collective.

Yahdon Israel is an educator, entrepreneur, editor, writer and founder of Literaryswag, a cultural movement intersecting literature and fashion. He teaches creative writing at The New School and City College. He is the former editor-in-chief of Brooklyn Magazine. He has written for Avidly, The New Inquiry, LitHub, Poets and Writers and Vanity Fair. And he hosts the Literaryswag Book Club, a Brooklyn-based subscription service and book club that meets every last Wednesday of the month.

Tyehimba Jess presents American history through an innovative and engaging mix of poetry, performance, and song. He is the author of two books of poetry, Leadbelly and Olio. Olio won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The Midland Society Author’s Award in Poetry, and received an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It was also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Jean Stein Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Leadbelly was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. The Library Journal and Black Issues BookReview both named it one of the “Best Poetry Books of 2005.” Jess, a Cave Canem and NYU Alumni, received a 2004 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was a 2004-2005 Winter Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Jess is also a veteran of the 2000 and 2001 Green Mill Poetry Slam Team, and won a 2000-2001 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry, the 2001 Chicago Sun-Times Poetry Award, and a 2006 Whiting Fellowship.