Anderson, JoAnn: JoAnn Anderson is an African‑American poet known for her 1973 broadside Summer Time Haiku (not on nature, but on being natural), published by Detroit’s historic Broadside Press. Her poem was issued as Broadside No. 72, printed as a limited run of 500 copies on single‑sheet heavy stock, a format typical of Broadside Press’s efforts to circulate Black poetry affordably and accessibly during the height of the Black literary movement. Although little biographical information about Anderson survives in public archives, her publication through Broadside Press places her among a significant community of Black poets whose work was nurtured and preserved by one of the most important Black-led literary institutions of the 20th century.

Gabbin, Joanne V.: Joanne V. Gabbin is best known as the founding executive director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and is a professor emerita at James Madison University. She was born in 1946 in Baltimore, Maryland, and earned her doctorate in English from the University of Chicago. Gabbin came to Madison in 1985 after roles at Roosevelt University, Chicago State, and Lincoln University. She directed JMU’s Honors Program for nineteen years and was promoted to full professor of English in 1989. In 1994, Gabbin organized the first academic conference on Black poetry, entitled “Furious Flower: A Revolution in African American Poetry.” She convened a second conference in 2004 and established the Furious Flower Poetry Center at JMU the following year. Gabbin has published a variety of works, including Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition (1985), The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry (1999), and Furious Flower: African American Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present (2004). She also founded the Wintergreen Women’s Writers’ Collective, and her numerous awards include the College Language Association’s Creative Scholarship Award and the Virginia State Council of Higher Education’s Outstanding Faculty Award. In 2021, Gabbin and her husband, Professor Alexander Gabbin, were honored at JMU by the naming of Gabbin Hall. 

Giovanni, Nikki: Nikki Giovanni is one of the most famous voices in black poetry. She has written a number of works of poetry and children's books, and has contributed to many other publications. Some of her most prominent works include: Black Feeling, Black Talk/ Black Judgement (William Morrow & Company Inc, 1970); Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet (1971); Those Who Ride the Night Winds (William Morrow & Company Inc, 1983); Love Poems (William Morrow & Company Inc, 1997); The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 (William Morrow & Company Inc, 2003); Rosa (Henry Holt and Co, 2005); and Acolytes (William Morrow & Company Inc, 2007). Giovanni had received numerous awards throughout her career. Some of the honors and awards she has received include: Seven NAACP Image Awards, the American Book Award, the Langston Hughes Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, the Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement, and keys to over two dozen cities across America. 

Jackson, Major: Major Jackson is the author of six collections of poetry, including Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (2023) and Leaving Saturn (2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of a collection of essays, talks, and reviews, A Beat Beyond: Selected Prose of Major Jackson (2022). Jackson is currently the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University and is poetry editor of the Harvard Review. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Jackson has also been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, and received honors from the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in partnership with the Library of Congress. 

Joiner, Fred: Fred Joiner is a curator and poet. He is the author of one poetry collection, Mirror in Our Music (Birds, LLC, 2024), and one chapbook, Blood Sound (2018). He is the Founder of the Black Ekphrastic website, as well as the cofounder of The Center for Poetic Thought. Joiner has been honored with awards and fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and St. Mary's College of Maryland, as well as winning the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art's Divine Comedy Poetry Contest. Additionally, he was awarded as the 2019 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. 

Renée, L: L. Renée is an interdisciplinary poet, nonfiction writer, and storyteller descended from Black Appalachians of West Virginia and Virginia. She was the 2023 Black Appalachian Storyteller’s Fellow for Virginia and a 2024 recipient of both the Gerald E. and Corinne L. Parsons Fund Award from the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center and a Public Humanities Fellowship from Virginia Humanities. Her writing—nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and two Pushcart Prizes—appears in Tin House Online, Obsidian, Poet Lore, the minnesota review, Southern Humanities Review, Water~Stone Review, Poetry Northwest, American Life in Poetry, and several anthologies.

Taylor, Rockie: Tejumola Ologboni, also known as Rockie Taylor or Teju the Storyteller, is a Black American poet, author, musician, sculptor, and master storyteller. Born in Salina, Kansas, he moved to Milwaukee at age 11 and later earned degrees in Art and Education from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A leading authority on African spirituality, folklore, and oral tradition, he comes from a long line of storytellers and blends African and African American history, rhythm, humor, and cultural teaching in his performances. His contributions to the preservation of African American folklore earned him the Zora Neale Hurston Award from the National Association of Black Storytellers. Ologboni has taught African Literature, African American Literature, Creative Writing, and Africology at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Marquette University, and Dominican College.