Damon Young
Pittsburgh native Damon Young is the editor-in-chief of VerySmartBrothas (VSB) and a professional Black person. He enjoys selfies with his infant daughter, getting hurt playing pick-up basketball, and unsolicited pancake dinners. He can be reached at @verysmartbros or damon@verysmartbrothas.com
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Herb Boyd
Herb Boyd is an awarding-winning American author and journalist who has published 17 books and countless articles for national magazines and newspapers. Brotherman:The Odyssey of Black Men in America: An Anthology (One World/Ballantine, 1995), co-edited with Robert Allen of the Black Scholar journal, won the American Book Award for nonfiction. In 1999, Boyd won three first place awards from the New York Association of Black Journalists for his articles published in the Amsterdam News.
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In 2006, Boyd worked with world music composer Yusef Lateef on his autobiography The Gentle Giant, which was published by Morton Books of New Jersey. In 2008, he published Baldwin's Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin, and is working with filmmaker Keith Beau -
Victoria Christopher Murray
Victoria Christopher Murray is the author of nine Essence bestselling novels, including The Ex Files; Too Little, Too Late; and Lady Jasmine. Winner of the African American Literary Award for Fiction and Author of the Year (Female).
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She has received numerous awards including the Golden Pen Award for Best Inspirational Fiction and the Phyllis Wheatley Trailblazer Award for being a pioneer in African American Fiction. Since 2007, Victoria has won nine African American Literary Awards for best novel, best Christian fiction and Author of the Year — Female. After four nominations, Victoria finally won an NAACP Image Award in Outstanding Literary Work for her social commentary novel, Stand Your Ground.
Victoria splits her time between Los Angeles a -
Renee Swindle
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Renee Swindle is the author of Francine's Spectacular Crash and Burn, A Pinch Of Ooh La La, Shake Down The Stars, and Please Please Please.
Instagram: reneewritesnovels
Facebook: www.facebook.com/reneeswindlebooks
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Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers was born in 1967 and grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia. Her work examines culture, religion, race, and family. Her first book, The Gospel of Barbecue (2000), won the Stan and Tom Wick poetry prize and was a 2001 Paterson Poetry prize finalist.
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Jeffers’s poetry has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Callaloo, the Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. Her work has been anthologized in numerous volumes, including Roll Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art (2002) and These Hands I Know: Writing About the African American Family (2002). Jeffers has also published fiction in the Indiana Review, the Kenyon Review, the New England Review, and Sto -
Daniel Black
Daniel Black is a native of Kansas City, Kansas, yet spent the majority of his childhood years in Blackwell, Arkansas. He is an associate professor at his alma mater, Clark Atlanta University, where he now aims to provide an example to young Americans of the importance of self-knowledge and communal commitment. He is the author of "They Tell Me of a Home" and "The Sacred Place".
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Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos is the national bestselling author of five books, including Whip Smart, Abandon Me, Girlhood—which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. Her memoir, The Dry Season, is forthcoming on June 3, 2025 from Alfred A. Knopf. Her awards and fellowships include those from the Guggenheim Foundation, LAMBDA Literary, the National Endowment for the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The British Library, The Black Mountain Institute, MacDowell, the Bogliasco Foundation, The Barbara Deming Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, The American Library in Paris, and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The
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Jason Mott
Jason Mott lives in southeastern North Carolina. He has a BFA in Fiction and an MFA in Poetry, both from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His poetry and fiction has appeared in various journals such as Prick of the Spindle, The Thomas Wolfe Review, The Kakalak Anthology of Carolina Poets, Measure and Chautauqua. He was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize award and Entertainment Weekly listed him as one of their 10 “New Hollywood: Next Wave” people to watch.
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He is the author of two poetry collections: We Call This Thing Between Us Love and “…hide behind me…” The Returned is his first novel.
The Returned has been optioned by Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B, in association with Brillstein Entertainment and ABC. It will air -
Mia McKenzie
Mia McKenzie is the award-winning author of The Summer We Got Free and the creator of Black Girl Dangerous Media, an independent media and education project that centers queer Black women and girls. She lives with her parenting partner and two children in the Happy Valley of Western Massachusetts.
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Dana A. Williams
Dana A. Williams is associate professor of African American literature at Howard University.
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Jacinta Howard
Jacinta Howard is an Atlanta-based culture journalist, editor and author with more than a decade of experience across genres of media. Her bylined articles have appeared at Eater, Atlanta magazine, Shondaland, Denver Westword, BET, and Rock The Bells, LL Cool J’s media company, where she served as managing editor. Jacinta’s 2022 article about the chicken wings served at Magic City, Atlanta’s world-famous strip club, was nominated for an American Society of Magazine Editors Award, and her novels have been featured in USA Today, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Book Riot and OkayAfrica. She digs summertime, flip flops, old fashioneds, deep bass lines, good lyrics, goofy jokes, and kind people. She also believes there’s an Andre 3000 lyric to
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Maris Kreizman
Maris Kreizman is an essayist and columnist for Literary Hub whose work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and more. She hosted The Maris Review, an intimate author interview podcast, from 2018 to 2023. A former board member of the National Book Critics Circle, she has served as a judge for the annual NBCC Awards as well as for the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award. She is the creator of Slaughterhouse 90210, a blog and book that celebrate the intersection of literature and pop culture. She was previously the editorial director of Book of the Month and Barnes & Noble .Com, and a publishing outreach lead at Kickstarter. Her new essay collection is called I WANT TO BURN THIS PLACE DOWN.
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Tiffany D. Jackson
Tiffany D. Jackson is the New York Times Bestselling author of YA novels including the Coretta Scott King — John Steptoe New Talent Award-winning Monday’s Not Coming, the NAACP Image Award-nominated Allegedly, Let Me Hear A Rhyme, and her 2020 title GROWN. She received her bachelor of arts in film from Howard University, her master of arts in media studies from the New School, and has over a decade in TV/Film experience. The Brooklyn native is a lover of naps, cookie dough, and beaches, currently residing in the borough she loves, most likely multitasking.
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Morgan Jerkins
Morgan Jerkins is the author of the New York Times bestseller, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America and the forthcoming Wandering In Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots.
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A graduate of Princeton University and the Bennington Writing Seminars, Jerkins is the current Senior Editor at ZORA of Medium and former Associate Editor at Catapult. She teaches at Columbia University's School of the Arts and most recently was the Picador Professor at Leipzig University in Germany.
She's based in Harlem. -
Cebo Campbell
CEBO CAMPBELL is an award-winning, multi-hyphenate creative based in New York and London. He is a winner of the Stories Award for Poetry, and his writings are featured in numerous publications. As co-founder and CCO of the renowned NYC creative agency Spherical, Cebo leads teams of creatives in shaping the best hotel brands in the world. His range of talents as a creative director have sent him all over the globe infusing creativity, from working with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in the UK, to concepting the Million Miracles humanitarian campaign throughout Africa and India, to writing and directing the VR short film Refuge: Triumph in Tulsa, based on the famed Black Wall Street in Oklahoma. Cebo’s expansive work as a writer, designer,
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Nancy Johnson
Nancy Johnson is the author of the debut novel THE KINDEST LIE, which is available now everywhere books are sold! This is the story of an unlikely connection between an Ivy League-educated Black engineer searching for the son she walked away from and a poor, young white boy who finds himself adrift in a dying Indiana factory town. The novel explores race, class, identity, and the pursuit of the American dream.
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The Kindest Lie is a Book of the Month selection, an Amazon Editors' pick, as well as an IndieNext and LibraryReads pick. This novel was reviewed by the LA Times and The Washington Post. It has been named a most anticipated book of 2021 by O, the Oprah Magazine, Shondaland, Marie Claire, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Post, Good Hou -
Regina Black
Regina Black is a former civil litigator, current law school administrator, and lifelong romance reader who has always been passionate about the depiction of Black women in popular culture. She currently resides in the southeastern United States with her husband and daughter.
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Mattie Lubchansky
Mattie Lubchansky is a cartoonist and illustrator living in Queens, NY. Her work has appeared in The Nib, New York Magazine, VICE, Eater, Mad Magazine, Gothamist, The Toast, The Hairpin, Brooklyn Magazine, and their long-running webcomic Please Listen to Me. They are the co-author of Dad Magazine (Quirk, 2016), and the author of The Antifa Supersoldier Cookbook (Silver Sprocket, 2021), Boys Weekend (2023, Pantheon), and Simplicity (2025, Pantheon).
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Adam Aleksic
Adam Aleksic is a linguist and content creator best known for creating videos as the “Etymology Nerd” to an audience of over three million.
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Sara Kehaulani Goo
Sara Kehaulani Goo is a journalist and senior news executive who has led several news organizations including Axios, NPR and The Washington Post. She is the former editor-in-chief at Axios, where she launched the company’s editorial expansion into national and local newsletters, podcasts and live journalism. Before Axios, she led online audience growth as a managing editor at NPR, overseeing the newsroom's digital news operation. Goo also served as news director at The Washington Post, where she also served as a business editor and reporter. Originally from Dana Point, California, she graduated from the University of Minnesota's journalism school. She lives in Washington, D.C.
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Lawrence Burney
Lawrence Burney is a writer, critic, and the founder of True Laurels, an independent magazine covering Baltimore's music and culture scene. His work has appeared in publications such as New York magazine, GQ, and Pitchfork. He has also worked at The Fader, VICE, and The Baltimore Banner. No Sense in Wishing is his first book. Follow him on Instagram and X @TrueLaurels.
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Malcolm D. Lee
Malcolm D. Lee is an award-winning writer, director, and producer celebrated for a string of box office successes, including The Best Man, Girls Trip, Night School, and Space Jam: A New Legacy. With Girls Trip, Lee made history as the first filmmaker to helm a feature with an all–African American creative team—both in front of and behind the camera—that grossed over $100 million at the domestic box office.
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In 2022, he returned to his beloved franchise with The Best Man: The Final Chapters, the critically acclaimed Peacock limited series that became the first original on the platform to break into Nielsen’s Top 10. Most recently, Lee completed filming his 12th feature film an Untitled collaboration with Blumhouse Productions and Universal Pic -
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Tarana Burke
Tarana Burke is an American activist from The Bronx, New York who started the Me Too movement. In 2006, Burke began using metoo to help other women with similar experiences to stand up for themselves.
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Morgan Jerkins
Morgan Jerkins is the author of the New York Times bestseller, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America and the forthcoming Wandering In Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots.
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A graduate of Princeton University and the Bennington Writing Seminars, Jerkins is the current Senior Editor at ZORA of Medium and former Associate Editor at Catapult. She teaches at Columbia University's School of the Arts and most recently was the Picador Professor at Leipzig University in Germany.
She's based in Harlem. -
Rémy Ngamije
Rémy Ngamije is a Rwandan-born Namibian author, editor, publisher, photographer, literary educator, and entrepreneur. His debut novel The Eternal Audience Of One was first published in South Africa by Blackbird Books and is available worldwide from Scout Press (S&S). In 2022 it was honoured with a Special Mention at the inaugural Grand Prix Panafricain De Litterature and won the inaugural African Literary Award from the Museum of the African Diaspora.
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Only Stars Know The Meaning Of Space, his collection of award-winning fiction, will be published in December, 2024 by Scout Press (S&S).
He won the Africa Regional Prize of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and was shortlisted for the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing in 2021 and 2020. H -
Jamel Brinkley
Jamel Brinkley was raised in Brooklyn and the Bronx, New York. He is a Kimbilio Fellow and is an alum of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. He has been awarded scholarships from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. A recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he was also the 2016-17 Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in A Public Space and Gulf Coast, and his debut short story collection will be published in 2018 by Graywolf Press. He is currently at work on a novel, Night is One Long Everlasting.
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Eli Erlick
Eli Erlick is an New York City-based author, activist, and educator. In 2011, she founded Trans Student Educational Resources (TSER), a national organization dedicated to transforming the educational environment for trans students. In the years that followed, Eli has been at the forefront of transgender justice through her organizing, writing, and research. Blending innovative research with cutting-edge activism, she undertook her doctoral studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Eli’s work and writing have been featured in hundreds of outlets, including the New York Times, Time Magazine, and the Washington Post. She has been honored by Teen Vogue, the University of California, Refinery29, and many other institutions for her org
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Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Nafissa Thompson-Spires earned a doctorate in English from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois. Her work has appeared in Story Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, and The Feminist Wire, among other publications. She was a 2016 fellow of the Callaloo Writer’s Workshop.
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Leonard Pitts Jr.
Leonard Pitts Jr. was born and raised in Southern California. He is a columnist for the Miami Herald and won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. He was also a finalist for the Pulitzer in 1992. In 1997, Pitts took first place for commentary in division four (newspapers with a circulation of more than 300,000) in the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors' Ninth Annual Writing Awards competition. His columns on the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman have garnered much attention from his peers and readers alike.
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Pitts's column, "We'll Go Forward From This Moment," an angry and defiant open letter to the terrorists, generated upwards of 30,000 emails and has since been set to music, reprinted in poster form, r -
Lawrence Burney
Lawrence Burney is a writer, critic, and the founder of True Laurels, an independent magazine covering Baltimore's music and culture scene. His work has appeared in publications such as New York magazine, GQ, and Pitchfork. He has also worked at The Fader, VICE, and The Baltimore Banner. No Sense in Wishing is his first book. Follow him on Instagram and X @TrueLaurels.
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Dana A. Williams
Dana A. Williams is associate professor of African American literature at Howard University.
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Renee Swindle
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Renee Swindle is the author of Francine's Spectacular Crash and Burn, A Pinch Of Ooh La La, Shake Down The Stars, and Please Please Please.
Instagram: reneewritesnovels
Facebook: www.facebook.com/reneeswindlebooks
Pre-order Francine's Spectacular Crash and Burn: https://bit.ly/FrancinesCrashandBurn -
Phoebe Robinson
Phoebe Robinson is a stand-up comedian, writer, and actress whom Vulture.com, Essence, and Esquire have named one of the top comedians to watch. She has appeared on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and Last Call with Carson Daly; TBS's Conan, Comedy Central’s Broad City, and @midnight with Chris Hardwick; as well recently landing a recurring role on the new Jill Soloway show for Amazon I Love Dick.
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Robinson’s writing has been featured in The Village Voice, NY Mag, and on Glamour.com, TheDailyBeast.com, VanityFair.com, Vulture.com, and NYTimes.com. She was also a staff writer on MTV’s hit talking head show, Girl Code, as well as a consultant on season three of Broad City.
Most recently, she created and starred in Refinery29’s web series Wok -
Daniel Bergner
Daniel Bergner is a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine and the author of two previous books of nonfiction, IN THE LAND OF MAGIC SOLDIERS: A STORY OF WHITE AND BLACK IN WEST AFRICA, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, and GOD OF THE RODEO: THE QUEST FOR REDEMPTION IN LOUISIANA’S ANGOLA PRISON, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
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Bergner’s writing has also appeared in Granta, Harper’s, Mother Jones, Talk, the New York Times Book Review, and on the op-ed page of the New York Times. -
Reginald Dwayne Betts
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, essayist, and national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice. He writes and lectures about the impact of mass incarceration on American society. He is the author of three collections of poetry, Felon, Bastards of the Reagan Era, and Shahid Reads His Own Palm, as well as a memoir, A Question of Freedom. A graduate of Yale Law School, he lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife and their two sons.
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Ilhan Omar
Ilhan Abdullahi Omar, along with Rashida Tlaib was one of the first two Muslim women to serve in the United States Congress.
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