Assetou Xango (they/them) is a poet and community activist born and raised in Colorado. They have been writing since they were in 8th grade. As a teenager, Xango was featured on HBO’s Brave New Voices 2010. They are a two-time TEDxMileHigh Speaker. Xango has represented Denver in spoken word poetry competitions across the nation and has been featured as one of Westword’s Top 100 Creatives. Their work has been published in Glyph, Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s literary journal.

Xango is currently the Poet Laureate of Aurora, Colorado (2017–2021). They run their own coaching business, helping Black Femmes heal their unworthy stories and live the lives they desire. In all of their work, Xango is dedicated to advancing the visibility and rights of womxn and gender non-conforming people of color and to promoting the use of storytelling to dismantle binaries and divisions.

Bobby LeFebre (he/him) is an award-winning writer, performer, and cultural worker from Denver, Colorado. He is a two-time Grand Slam Champion, a National Poetry Slam Finalist, an Individual World Poetry Slam Finalist, and a two-time TEDx speaker. His work has been showcased nationally and internationally on NPR, the Huffington Post, and The Guardian, and the LA Times. LeFebre has performed at hundreds of cultural events, social actions, detention centers, conferences, and colleges and universities across the United States and abroad. He is co-founder of Café Cultura, a non-profit organization that uses poetry as a tool for youth development and he is also founder of #WeAreNorthDenver, a grassroots and digital campaign dedicated to using art as an entry point for discussing gentrification in Denver. LeFebre has been named a 100 Colorado creative by Westword Magazine, is a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures fellow, and has recently been appointed by the Mayor of Denver to serve as the Co-Chair of the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Metro State University and a master’s degree in Art, Literature, and Culture from the University of Denver.

Suzi Q. Smith (she/her) is an artist, activist, and educator who lives with her brilliant daughter in Denver, Colorado. She has shared her poetry on stages throughout the U.S., sharing stages with Nikki Giovanni, Talib Kweli, the late Gil Scott Heron, and many more over the years. Her work has appeared in Union Station Magazine, Suspect Press, Muzzle Magazine, Malpais Review, Peralta Press, and more, and her collection of poems, Thirteen Descansos, is available from Penmanship Books. She currently serves as the Executive Director of Poetry Slam, Inc.

Mark Addison (he/him) has been looking at, reading about and talking about contemporary art for over forty years. He taught the oxymoronic contemporary art history at CU Boulder for ten years. Works by over sixty Colorado artists have passed thru the Addison collection and many have gone on to museums.

Erin Clark (she/her) is a member of the Denver City Planning Board, a real estate attorney and a land use consultant with a solo practice in Denver and Boulder. She is committed to seeing development of thoughtful and sustainable urban infill projects that promote walkability and community cohesion. A Denver native, Erin has worked in the fields of planning and development since 2001, starting with a role in real estate and affordable housing at the Lowry Redevelopment Authority. She later spent five years in the City of Pasadena, CA, as a planner in both long-range planning and economic development. There, she participated in the drafting and adoption of a citywide Recreation & Parks Master Plan, and she also oversaw large commercial and institutional development projects, including environmental review for renovation of the Rose Bowl stadium. Erin holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Brown University, a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Southern California, and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Gregg Deal (he/him) is a husband, father, and a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. He is a provocative contemporary artist-activist. Much of Deal’s work deals with Indigenous identity and pop culture, touching on issues of race relations, historical consideration, and stereotype. With his work — including paintings, mural work, performance art, filmmaking and spoken word — Deal critically examines issues within Indian country such as decolonization, the Native mascot issue, and appropriation.

Deal was recently showcased on PBS Arts District. He was a Native Arts Artist-in-Residence at the Denver Art Museum in 2015–2016 and an Artist-in-Residence at UC Berkeley for the 2017–2018 academic year. His art has been exhibited nationally since 2002. Deal has lectured widely at prominent educational institutions and museums including: Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Columbia University, New York City, NY; University of Maryland, College Park, MD; Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA; Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC; Creative Mornings, DC and Denver; University of Colorado, Boulder, CO; and Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO. His television appearances have included PBS, “The Daily Show,” and W. Kamau Bell’s “Totally Biased,” as well as appearances on Aljazeera, ESPN, and ABC News.

Bianca Mikahn (she/her) is a power-house emcee, poet, composer, cultural activist, and educator who wears many hats. She is Executive Director of Check Your Head, a non-profit focused on youth mental health, and a Partner Artist with leading creative educators, Youth On Record. Bianca’s writing style is described as experimental and thought-provoking, fearlessly addressing themes of self awareness and community engagement. Whether performing alone or with various musician collectives in Denver, her stage presence and lyrical content have earned her multiple nominations for “Best Emcee” in Denver’s Westword. Mikahn has shared stages locally at Regis University and Denver University and in Stockholm, Sweden at the historic Fylkengin Theatre. Her lyrical work has also been featured in social justice courses at Wyoming University. Currently Mikahn is honing social emotional learning and art based facilitation to encourage trauma informed care and mental health first aid (adult and youth modules) in marginalized communities.

Yasmeen Siddiqui (she/her) is the founder of Minerva Projects, minervaprojects.org, an incubator space in Denver, Colorado, that is tailored for artists and curators who seek to contextualize and historicize their ideas in an environment that encourages experimentation and new possibilities. Minerva Projects is committed to clarifying, by accurately describing and theorizing, the practices of artists and curators through engaging with leading thinkers and writers who animate its traveling exhibitions program and the Minerva Press book series. The project was launched in October 2017. Siddiqui is also a writer and curator; pasts subjects have included Do Ho Suh, Consuelo Castañeda, Hassan Khan, Linda Ganjian, Pia Lindman, Lara Baladi, Mary Carothers, Matt Lynch and Chris Vorhees, and Mel Charney. Her writing has appeared on Hyperallergic and in ART PAPERS, The Cairo Times, Medina Magazine, Flash Art, Modern Painters, NKA, and The Brooklyn Rail, and in books and exhibition catalogues including: Fault Lines Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes. inIVA, London, 2003; A Contingent Object of Research. Storefront Books, New York, 2010; Do Ho Suh: Home Within Home. Leeum: Samsung Museum of Art, 2012; “Do Ho Suh” in If you were to live here: The 5th Auckland Triennial, 2013; and On Architecture: Melvin Charney, a Critical Anthology. Edited by Louis Martin. Montreal: McGill — Queen’s University Press, 2013.