Sylvia Thomas is a poet writing and creating works about the Queer and Trans Experience in the Midwest. She has performed for WorldPride, EuroGames, The United Nations Envoy on Youth, and many Universities and Institutions. She is an Artist and Public Life Resident through Big Car Collaborative.

Artist, performer, educator, and community worker living and working in Peoria IL.

Rachel Buse is an artist currently living and working in Des Moines, Iowa. She is the Director of Creative at Raygun Shirts and a Creative Strategist for Group Creatives. Buse also co-owns Portrait Studio, a participatory drawing experience designed to have artists drawing portraits at events.

Rita Mae Reese is the author of two poetry collections: The Alphabet Conspiracy and The Book of Hulga. She holds degrees in American Studies and Creative Writing. Rita Mae has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Stegner fellowship, and a “Discovery”/The Nation award. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She has served as the resident poet for a bluegrass band and designs lesbian poet trading cards. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her family where she serves as the co-director of Arts + Literature Laboratory (ALL).

Tangible Collective, founded in 2017 by Ricki Williams and Za’Nia Coleman, is a platform dedicated to elevating Black Millennial thought and expression. The collective's intention is to create space for meaning-making, community building, and self-reflection through arts programming and artist development.

Yashi Davalos (Yashira Lopez Davalos) b.1995, is an emerging artist, writer, and independent curator. Her upbringing as an Afro Latine, Atlanta native mobilizes her objective as a curator to build artistic dialogue critiquing hyper-capitalist focus on cultural tokenism vs. non-monolithic aspects of identity. As an experimental lens based artist she explores the social intersections of fantasy and reality through editorial realism and archival manipulation. Yashi is a member of the 501c3 artist run collective gallery, The Front Gallery New Orleans. Yashi is currently the curatorial fellow at The Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City where she currently lives and works. Her past curations include Echolocation: Industrialized Persona, Past Present and Afro-Futurism at The Front Gallery and Miss/They Camaraderie 2024 at The Charlotte Street Gallery. Yashi is the Program Lead for the Timbre Arts Writing Incubator at Charlotte Street, Editor of Timbre KC Arts Reader, and current KC editor for MDW’s Atlas Publication. Davalos’ writing has been featured in Burnaway and Sixty Inches from Center. Her art has also been exhibited throughout New Orleans, at Plug Gallery in KCMO, Mint Gallery ATL, and In Partnership with Elevate ATL for Atlanta Art Week.