Cynthia Manick is the author of No Sweet Without Brine (Amistad, 2023) which received 5 stars from Roxane Gay, editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry, winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry, and author of Blue Hallelujahs. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, MacDowell Colony, and Château de la Napoule among other foundations.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is the author of several books, including We are The Leaders We Have Been Looking for, Democracy in Black and the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, winner of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Book Prize. He frequently appears in the media as an MSNBC contributor on programs like Morning Joe and Deadline: White House. A native of Moss Point, Mississippi, Glaude is the James S.
Jeff Duncan is a sports columnist for The Times-Picayune, where he has worked for more than two decades. He was a member of the team that won two Pulitzer Prizes for the paper’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Duncan is the author of three books on the Saints -- “Payton and Brees”; “Tales from the Saints Sideline”; and “From Bags to Riches” – and is currently collaborating with Steve Gleason on his memoir, which is scheduled for release in April 2024.
Ken Burns has been making documentary films for almost fifty years. Since the Academy Award nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Ken has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made, including The Civil War; Baseball; Jazz; The War; The National Parks: America’s Best Idea; Prohibition; The Roosevelts: An Intimate History; The Vietnam War; Country Music; The U.S. and the Holocaust; The American Buffalo; and, most recently, Leonardo da Vinci.
Jessica Abughattas is the author of Strip, winner of the 2020 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, selected by Fady Joudah and Hayan Charara. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in POETRY, Guernica, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Yale Review, and elsewhere.
Adolph Reed Jr. is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught at Howard, Yale, and Northwestern Universities, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the New School for Social Research.
General David H. Petraeus (US Army, Ret.) (New York) joined KKR in 2013. He is a Partner at KKR, Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, and Chairman of KKR Middle East. He is also a member of the boards of directors of Optiv and OneStream, a Strategic Advisor for Sempra and Advanced Navigation, a personal venture investor, an academic, and the co-author (with British historian Andrew Roberts) of the New York Times best selling book “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Gaza”. Prior to joining KKR, General Petraeus served over 37 years in the U.S.
Brandan “BMike” Odums is a New Orleans-based artist, speaker, and activist who uses his art and his voice to reflect and amplify the beauty and strength of Black people. He is a public artist engaged in a deeply thoughtful dialog with the communities where he shows his work. He is an educator happy that he can help students who visit his Studio BE gallery better understand Black history.
Jamila Minnicks’ novel Moonrise Over New Jessup (Algonquin Books, 2023) won the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. In 2022, she was awarded a Tennessee Williams scholarship for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and she also earned a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her short fiction and essays have been published in CRAFT, Catapult, Blackbird, The Write Launch, and elsewhere. Her piece, Politics of Distraction, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Corey J. Miles is an assistant professor of sociology and Africana Studies at Tulane University. He is the author of Vibe: The Sound and Feeling of Black Life in the American South (University Press of Mississippi). His research is a conversation between the intimacies of blackness, hip hop, racialized emotions, carcerality, and ethnography. He has received funding from numerous organizations such as the American Sociological Association to engage in work that challenges disciplinary bounds and demands thinking beyond discipline altogether.
