Noel Black (he/him) is poet, publisher, translator, and radio producer who was born in Tucson and grew up in Colorado Springs. He is the author of three full-length collections: Uselysses (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), La Goon (Furniture Press Books, 2014), and The Natural Football League (The New Heave-Ho, 2016). Black translated Puerto Rican poet Mara Pastor’s Llámame Láctea/Children of Another Hour (Argos Books, 2014). Pastor and Guillermo Rebollo-Gil translated Black’s long poem Prophecies for the Past/Profécias Para El Pasado (2.0.1.3. Editorial, 2015). With Julien Poirier, he is coeditor of Kevin Opstedal’s Pacific Standard Time (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016). His other chapbooks include: Lunch Poem, This is the Strange Part, Night Falls/Under Days, November to June, Vacancy, Shoplifter’s Honor, InnerVisions, and In The City of Word People. His most recent chapbook is High Noon (Blue Press Books, 2018).

Black was the coeditor of Log Magazine with Ed Berrigan in the late 1990s, and from 1998 to 2004 he ran Angry Dog Press and published the Angry Dog Midget Editions. From 2004–2006, he published and edited The Toilet Paper, a satirical monthly newspaper in Colorado Springs. After dropping out of the MA in Poetics program at the now-defunct New College of California in 1998, he will earn an MFA in poetics and creative non-fiction from the Mile-High MFA Program at Regis University in summer 2018. He lives in Manitou Springs, Colorado with his family.

EllaMaria Ray (she/her) is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Cultural and Visual Anthropology at Metropolitan State University, and a ceramicist. She holds a B.A. from Colorado College and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University. Through visual art, she explores the relationship between ethnographic data, literature, and Africana culture and history as a tool for understanding humanity.

As a child, Ray expressed her creativity through the performing arts. Ballet, African dance, music, and oration provided her imagination with rich nutrients for growth. Her mother, who cultivated her deep appreciation for the arts, insisted that Ray embrace her gifts. When her mother died in 1985, her creativity was subsumed by the demands of graduate school and developing her understanding of anthropology as an academic discipline. Following her father’s death in 1997, her muse guided her back to a creative vocation, directing her to focus her intellectual energy towards clay and story telling.

Ray’s ceramic sculpture emerges from a commitment to acknowledge the ways in which continental and diasporic Africans share cultural commonalties, while simultaneously expressing cultural distinctions. As an anthropologist and visual artist, she strives to understand the complex vision diasporic Africans are creating for themselves and for all of humanity as we walk further into the twenty‑first century.

Rochelle Johnson (she/her) was born and raised in Denver, Colorado, where she developed her passion for drawing at an early age. As a child, she discovered the work of Lois Mailou Jones and Jacob Lawrence and was further inspired by the Denver Black Arts Festival in the 1980s. In 1989, Johnson enrolled at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, where she learned to create stories using oils and watercolors and received a B.A. in Illustration.

In 1992, Johnson moved to Seattle, where she worked as a freelance designer, creating community theater posters and identity packages for local businesses. These opportunities paid the bills, but she remained intrigued by the idea of being a storyteller through her work. In 1997, she entered the annual Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle Minority Art Exhibition and sold her first non-commercial piece.

In 1999, Johnson returned to Denver and eventually resumed pursuing the idea of storytelling through painting, a calling that had never left her consciousness. In 2005, her artwork was featured on the cover of the novel When a Sistah’s Fed Up, by Monica Frazier Anderson. Johnson’s work has been published in several journals, including American Art Collector Magazine. In addition to painting in her Denver studio, Johnson has recently taken on several curatorial projects. In 2017, she curated Inclusion: Diverse Voices of the Modern West at the McNichols Civic Center Building in Denver. She is currently curating The Search Within: Daughters of the Diaspora, which opens at the Western Colorado Center of the Art in Grand Junction in December 2018.

Jessica Langley (she/her b. 1981, USA) is a multimedia artist currently based in Colorado. She has exhibited her work internationally, and has been an artist-in-residence in numerous programs including Skaftfell Center of Visual Art in Iceland, Askeaton Contemporary Art in Ireland, the SPACES World Artist Program in Cleveland, and the Digital Painting Atelier at OCAD-U in Toronto. She was a recipient of the J. William Fulbright Scholarship for research in Iceland, and earned her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2008. She is an amateur mycologist, and her artwork and writings have been published in the New York Mycological Society Newsletter, New American Paintings, NPR, Hyperallergic, and Temporary Art Review. She is co-founder of The Yard, a site for public art in Colorado Springs.

Molina Speaks (he/him) is an artist, musician, writer, poet, and filmmaker, a cultural futurist, living word architect, and human bridge.  His first film, ROOT, is an independent venture that premiered in his home city of Denver, Colorado on March 31st, 2018.  ROOT then captured the Premio Ometeotl Award for New Media at its film festival debut at Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center XicanIndie Film Fest. In addition to his own music, poetry and film work, Molina performs regularly with Chicano Afrobeat orchestra Pink Hawks and punk/hip-hop act Roots Rice and Beans (Best of Denver 2018 Best New Band). Molina was named 2017 Mastermind by Westword Magazine, and was voted top Solo Rap Artist in Westword’s 2018 Music Awards.

Offstage, Molina is a community-focused educator. He teaches cultural and media studies courses at the university level and works with young people at all age levels to develop their imaginations, creativity, and sense of wonder about their existence. Most notably, Molina coordinates Youth On Record’s Fellowship program for 18-23 year-old emerging artists. The Fellowship program was recently recognized with a Westword Best of Denver 2018 award for Best Place to Find the Future of the Music Business. This program is also the recipient of a 2018-19 Arts in Society Award, for its role in addressing race and class inequities in the creative industries.

Sheree “lovemestiza” Brown (she/her) is a writer, poet, AfroMestizaFuturist, deep creative, educator, and mother. She dances with the cosmos and writes the futures of her people in her spare time. A great deal of her writing is a blend between poetry and prose, and an amalgamation of experience and dreams. Sheree is a writing instructor with Lighthouse Writers, and she is the founder of Ancestral Herbalism—a community collective of dozens of kitchen herbalists, holistic health practitioners and healers of many traditions. Sheree has featured at Lighthouse Writer’s Annual Literary Festival, Cafe Cultura, Queenz of Hip-Hop, The Renaissance Poetry Night at the Kasbah, and has taught and led workshops at dozens of school and community events through Lighthouse Writers and other arts and literary organizations.

Sheree’s first book is titled lovemestiza, and is an ode to her mixed ancestry. A self-described “Woman of many colors,” she reflects on her journey as a Black woman and Chicana with mixed “Mestiza” and Indigenous roots. Her four-part book also traces her experiences becoming a mother, and healing from intergenerational, personal, and social traumas. In addition to poetry and prose, lovemestiza contains polaroids, quotes, and original plant-based medicinal recipes crafted by la “lovemestiza” herself. LoveMestiza is love work. What does your love work look like?

Sarah Wambold (she/her) is the executive producer and content strategist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she leads a team of editors and producers who create interpretive media, including videos, articles, essays, and podcasts. With more than 18 years in the arts and culture sector, she has also worked for the Clyfford Still Museum and the MCA Chicago, and is the co-founder of Denver-based non-profit Tilt West, an organization whose mission is to promote critical discourse on arts and culture in Denver.

Laura Shill (she/her) is an artist based in Denver, Colorado whose work is a collision of sculpture, installation, performance, printmaking, and photography. Her work addresses ideas of the viewer and the subject, disclosure and concealment, absence and intimacy. Her works explore the transformative potential of people and objects through early and experimental forms of image making that pair the sinister and beautiful.

Shill earned an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2012 and has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at the 2017 Venice Biennale at the European Cultural Center, The Gallery Of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs, Redline Gallery, Denver, and Hyperlink Gallery, Chicago. Her recent solo exhibition, Phantom Touch took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver.

Conor King (he/him) is an artist based in Denver, Colorado whose work is rooted in the medium of photography. His work focuses on myth, truth, the uncanny, the fantastical, and the human condition. He investigates these concepts through photography, maquettes, optical devises, video, and digital manipulation.

King received his BFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his MFA from Pratt Institute. His work has been shown nationally and internationally, and he has curated exhibitions in Colorado. King was a RedLine artist and a founding member of Tank Studios. He served on the Board of Directors at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center where he also assisted with exhibition development. King teaches courses on photography at the University of Colorado Denver and owns and operates Third Dune Productions, a video production and photo services company.

Andrea Moore (she/her) is a social artist using writing, performance, and photography to foster connection and dialogue across social and cultural lines. She is also the co-founder and Executive Director of a nonprofit organization called The Wayfaring Band, which creates opportunities to increase leadership and life skills through travel for adults with and without cognitive and developmental disabilities. As a working artist Andrea explores themes of social and cultural belonging, creating original stories that reflect her experiences and travels near and far. In her capacity as Executive Director for The Wayfaring Band, Andrea helps facilitate opportunities for independence, socialization, and adventure as part of a neurodiverse community. http://www.andreamoorearts.com/