BIOS
Rae Leone Allen (she/they)
Rae Leone Allen is an artist from Mesquite, TX. Allen is a writer, producer, and actress in the 2018 Gotham Breakthrough Series Award-winning series, 195 Lewis. The b series was the 2015 IFP Screen Forward Lab Selection, a 2016 and 2017 IFP Film Week Emerging Narratives Selection, and the 2016 Calvin Klein Spotlight on Women Filmmakers ‘Live the Dream’ Grant winner. 195 Lewis premiered in 2017 to a sold-out screening at BAM, won the Audience Award at the 2017 BlackStar Film Festival, and won a Special Mention Award at the 2017 OutFest LA. Allen’s writing has been featured in No, Dear magazine, Puerto del Sol’s Black Voices Series, about place journal, RaceBaitr, and Brooklyn Magazine. She holds an M.A. in Urban Studies from Fordham University, where her research focused on the evolution of Black consciousness in the New World. She is currently working on her first feature.
Stephanie Alvarado (she/they)
Stephanie Alvarado is a queer disabled femme poet, archivist, researcher, antidisciplinary artist, and facilitator whose work focuses on intentional archiving, social justice, local memory and community building. Stephanie was born and raised in the Bronx, NY by way of Guayaquil, Ecuador. They have over 15 years of experience working as a cultural organizer threading together their experience in youth organizing, reproductive justice, language justice, racial justice, food justice, and queer liberation.
Stephanie has held artist residencies and fellowships at Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center, The Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, Witness for Peace, and The Laundromat Project. She’s had poetry readings at Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden, Pregones Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, and Kelly Street Garden. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for The Literary Freedom Project.
Nissy Aya (she/ze/we)
Nissy Aya is a Black girl from the Bronx. She and all her younger selves tell stories and tall tales -- while helping others to do the same. As a facilitator and cultural worker, we believe in the transformative nature of storytelling, placing those most affected by oppressive systems in the center, and examining how we move forward through healing justice and afrofuturist frameworks. Our creative work reflects those notions while exploring the lines between history and memory, detailing both the absence and presence of love, and giving all the life (and then some) to Black Femmes.
Marci Blackman
Marci Blackman is the author of two novels. Blackman’s first novel, Po Man’s Child, received the American Library Association’s Stonewall Award for Best Fiction and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award for Best New Fiction. Tradition, Blackman’s second novel was noted in Band of Thebes as one of the Best LGBT Books of the year. Their third novel, Elephant, is forthcoming.
BOOKS
Po Man’s Child
Tradition
Beyond Definition: New Writing from Gay and Lesbian San Francisco
Tasha Dougé (she/her)
Tasha Dougé is a Bronx-based, Haitian-infused artist, artivist & cultural vigilante. Her body of work activates conversations around women, advocacy, sex, education, societal "norms," identity, and Black pride. Through conceptual art, teaching, and performance, Dougé devotedly strives to empower and to forge a broad understanding of the contributions of Black people, declaring that her "voice is the first tool within my art arsenal."
She has been featured in The New York Times, Essence, and Sugarcane Magazine. She has shown nationally at RISD Museum, The Apollo Theater & Rush Arts Gallery. Internationally, Dougé has shown at the Hygiene Museum in Germany. She is an alum of the Laundromat Project's Create Change Fellowship, The Studio Museum of Harlem's Museum Education Program, Haiti Cultural Exchange’s Lakou Nou residency, the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute’s Innovative Cultural Advocacy Program, and their inaugural Digital Emerging Artist Retreat.
Dreamseed Collective
We are DreamSeed Collective, a New York-based Black queer non-binary arts collective pursuing healing, joy, and restoration! Our names are Malanya Graham, Blaise Sparda, and Maliika Nia-Imani. We formed our collective with the belief that healing is found within the community. Inspired by holistic wellness practices and Black, Indigenous, POC queer ancestors, this deck will be a living symbol of our beautiful blossoming in the midst of mounting violence.
Blaise Sparda (they/them)
Blaise Sparda is an independent visual artist, model, and professional tarot reader based in Brooklyn, New York. Hailing from Trinidad and Tobago, Sparda’s art navigates the spaces between two disparate worlds. They are inspired by the spiritual technology of their ancestors and have utilized tarot for the spiritual and emotional wellness of their clientele. For Sparda, tarot is a gateway to the facets of the self that needs the most love and understanding. Sparda uses both physical and digital mediums in their art. Art and tarot have always been a form of sacrament to Sparda. Whether through layered symbolism in their pieces or the nature of how the piece is presented, they seek to interact with the viewer by connecting to the divine and finding unity in the collective.
Maliika Nia-Imani (She/They)
Maliika Nia-Imani is a Black, queer, fluid femme artist born and raised in NYC. They have a background in anti-violence education, various entrepreneurial endeavors and community organizing. In 2018, Maliika established their small jewelry and adornment business “Mama, I Made It”. The business was reimagined into “Nia Imani Studio” when Maliika expanded their art to include silver and gold smithing. Since then, Maliika has been re-imagining, studying and creating wearable art from healing crystals, to exploring the power of self exploration through self portraiture and video projects, to loving the community with offers of herbal tinctures. They love to daydream about different worlds in the style of their favorite afro- futuristic author, Octavia Butler. Their philosophy is grounded in the principle of cooperative economics and the belief that with community a better future is imaginable.
Malanya Graham, (they/them)
Malanya is a nonbinary sovereign artist and cultural worker of Jamaican descent. They explore the radical ties between ancestral veneration, generational healing, and erotic energy. Inspired by Audre Lorde’s definition of the erotic as, "a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings”, their paintings celebrate Black genderqueer culture by expanding the collective consciousness around intimacy, spirituality, and world-building. For them, image-making is tied to personal transformation through divination. Inspired by independent artist collectives during a curatorial residency program with RAW Material Company in Dakar, Senegal, Malanya formed their creative production company Taurus Moon Lab, LLC. While ideating collaborative projects, they are re-reading Octavia Butler's Seed to Harvest, listening to Chiiild's Synthetic Soul, and learning playing card cartomancy.
Tanya Fields
Inspired by her experiences as a single working mother living in a marginalized community, Tanya Denise Fields founded the Black Feminist Project (formerly the BLK Projek) in 2009 as a response to sexist institutional policies, structurally reinforced cycles of poverty, and harsh inequities in wealth and access to capital that result in far too many women being unable to rise out of poverty and sustain their families. For additional information visit Black Feminist Project
Beryl Briane Ford
Passionate about liberation, Black studies, and Black cultural production, Beryl Briane Ford strives to build community and work alongside Black folx to map and preserve our histories and geographies. Beryl Briane holds a B.A. in Art History with a concentration in Museum Studies from Smith College and an M.A. in Arts Administration from Columbia University’s Teachers College. She is an experienced arts administrator, culture fundraiser, grant writer, and creative consultant working at the intersections of the visual and performing arts, urbanism, and design. She is proud to have worked and contributed to the growth and development of The Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Smith College Museum of Art, Aperture Foundation, and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
Kamaria J. Hodge (She/Her)
Kamaria J. Hodge (She/Her) is a director, filmmaker, playwright, musician, writer of most things, a US Army Veteran who is native and based in Brooklyn NY &. She also cofounded queer and black-owned production company Golden Boi Productions (2018-2021), a production company that uses the mediums of Theatre, Film, and music to shed light on the intersectionalities of Black, Brown, Queer stories & experiences. As of May of 2020, her short film Bill & Robert has premiered in film festivals such as the UrbanWorld Film Festival & Out on Film and is currently available to stream on HERETV. To find out about her latest performance documentary short film Golden: A Reflection, you can visit goldenboiproductions.com.
Briona Simone Jones
Briona Simone Jones (she/they) is a writer, scholar, and professor of English and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Connecticut. Jones is a Black lesbian feminist of Jamaican and African American descent from Rochester, New York, and the editor of Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought (The New Press), the most comprehensive anthology centering Black Lesbian Thought to date.
Jamilah King
Jamilah King is a writer, reporter, and podcaster based in Brooklyn, New York. Currently, she's the deputy inequality editor at BuzzFeed News. Before that, she was the race and justice reporter at Mother Jones, where she explored how Black women navigate political power through the lens of figures like Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, Lucy McBath, and Carole Fife. She was also the inaugural host of the Mother Jones Podcast. Jamilah also worked at Mic, Colorlines, and with W. Kamau Bell on CNN's United Shades of America. She's a frequent co-host of In the Thick, a political roundtable from a POC perspective.
Janelle Lawrence (they/them/elle)
Janelle is an Afro-Latinx interdisciplinary artist who specializes in highlighting the complexity and layers to and of our lives. What does it mean to specialize in this? Well, it means they use every tool: music, soundscaping, dialogue, poetry, conversation, body, movement, etc., to present and occasionally replicate the parts of us that are unique, special, and still shared. They have had their musicals, plays, and performance art presented in various theater's in NYC, DC, and California - but they no longer want that to define their artistic depth and experience. They have been crafting stories, examining (people), and attempting to dis/uncover how we grow together their whole life; storytelling is what they do. www.janellelawrence.com
Roya Marsh (she/her)
Bronx, New York native, Roya Marsh is a nationally recognized poet, performer, educator, and activist. She is the author of dayliGht (MCDxFSG, 2020) and works feverishly toward LGBTQIA+ justice and dismantling white supremacy. Roya is the co-founder of the Bronx Poet Laureate initiative, a PEN America Emerging Voices Mentor, 2021 faculty with Lamda Literary's Writer's Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ+ Voices, and the awardee of the 2021 Lotus Foundation Prize for poetry.
Roya’s work has been featured in numerous places including, The Academy of American Poets, Poetry Magazine, the Village Voice, Nylon Magazine, Huffington Post, The Root, Button Poetry, Carnegie Hall, The Apollo Theater, Lexus Verses & Flow, NBC, BET, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket 2018). Find out more & help to support Black futures at BLKJOY.COM
Bl3ssing Oshun Ra
Bl3ssing Oshun Ra is a self-described Trans-jeliw, or a Blues woman of trans/metagender experience. Born and raised in the Bronx, where they are a local organizer and educator, Bl3ssing's craft weaves together theatre, ritual, storytelling and music into an immersive and participatory performances.
LaMonda Horton-Stallings (she)
LaMonda Horton-Stallings is a Professor of Black Studies at the Georgetown University. She is the author of Mutha is Half a Word!: Intersections of Folklore, Vernacular, Myth, and Queerness in Black Female Culture (2007), Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures (Univ. of Illinois Press,2015), and A Dirty South Manifesto: Sexual Resistance and Imagination in the New South (Univ. of California Press, 2020).
BOOKS
Mutha is Half a Word!: Intersections of Folklore, Vernacular, Myth, and Queerness in Black Female Culture
Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures
A Dirty South Manifesto: Sexual Resistance and Imagination in the New South
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Ph.D., is the author of The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora (2021) and the short story collection Blue Talk and Love, winner of the Judith Markowitz Award from Lambda Literary. Her work on black genders and sexualities has appeared in Kenyon Review, American Literary History, Public Books, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Best New Writing, NY Magazine's The Cut, and many others. A 2016 Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the winner of the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the Glenna Luschei Fiction Award, the James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award, the 2021 Pride Index Esteem Award, as well as support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Yaddo Colony, the Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat, and the Center for Fiction in New York City, where she received an inaugural Emerging Writers Fellowship. She is Assistant Professor of English at Bryn Mawr College. Her novel, Big Girl, will be published by W.W. Norton/Liveright in 2022.
BOOKS
The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora
Blue Talk and Love
Big Girl
Ash Williams (he/him)
Ash Williams (he/him) is a Black non-binary transfemme from Fayetteville, North Carolina. Since 2012, Ash’s work has included theorizing dance and performance art as tools for understanding bodies and corporeality within The Movement for Black Lives; leading rapid response and guerilla actions, particularly as an architect of Charlotte Uprising, which followed the murder of Keith Lamont Scott; and abolitionist organizing at the intersections of gender justice, racial justice, reproductive justice, and anti-carcerality to build alternatives to police and policing. 2014, Ash disrupted business as usual at a private fundraiser for presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, demanding that Clinton apologize to Black people for mass incarceration, and for her racist use of the word “superpredator.” For the last 2 years, Ash has been vigorously fighting to expand abortion access by funding abortions and training other people to become abortion doulas. He holds a Master’s degree in Ethics and Applied Philosophy, and a Bachelor’s in Philosophy, and Minor in Dance from UNC-Charlotte. He is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at UNC-Charlotte and a former member of the Greenpeace USA Actions Team.