BIOS

Tai Allen Tai Allen is a poet, performer, vocalist, musician, producer and designer. He has toured domestically and internationally. He has been published in magazines such as Bomb and African Voices. Tai's work has been featured on sites such as Okayplayer, CentricTV, Soultracks, and Grown Folks Music. He has performed (or headlined) at the Apollo Theater's Music Café, National Black Writers Conference (Brooklyn), Restoration Rocks (Brooklyn), American Jazz Museum (KC), Art of Cool Festival (Durham), The Nuyorican Poets Café (NYC), CrimeJazz (Rotterdam), Blue Note (NYC), Charles Wright Museum (Detroit), Bambu (Houston) et al.

Tai Allen loves basketball. Sterling Brown. Oscar Brown. Roy Ayers. King Tubby. Kevin McHale. Aretha Franklin. Things Fall Apart (both the book and Roots' LP). Kids. Renaldo. Jeter. 2001 Yankees. 2001 Nets. 2012 Giants. Chef Curry. Gelato not ice cream. Jerk Chicken, made on a drum. Oscar Wilde. Brad Pitt. Octavia Butler. Rakim. Jigga not Shawn Carter. Roti… Veggie and Chicken. Poetry. (Sometimes) Parenting. Blogs on technology or sports or politics. Sitting in the sun, somewhere near a body of water.

George Aumoithe is a scholar of U.S. healthcare, comparative welfare state history, and civil rights law. His research focuses on the effect of anti-inflationary economic policy and colorblind ideology on public hospitals as well as the effect of fiscal policy on epidemic preparedness. His manuscript Medical Scarcity: The Political Economy of Healthcare Rights in America demonstrates that lawmakers under postwar American liberalism used scarcity, and later efficiency, as pretexts to organize who had rightful access to healthcare. Aumoithe earned a B.A. from Bowdoin College with a double major in history and Africana studies (with honors) and a minor in gay and lesbian studies. he received an M.A. and Ph. D in U.S. history from Columbia University. 

Suhaly Bautista-Carolina, Moon Mother, is an AfroKisqueyan herbalist, artist, educator, and community organizer. Her work lives intentionally at the intersection of plant power and people power. In 2018, she founded Moon Mother Apothecary, a platform through which she shares heart-centered, moon-powered medicines created in the traditional wisdom and knowledge of her ancestors. She has hosted plant medicine-making workshops with organizations including Gossamer, The Wing, Creative Time, Weeksville Heritage Center, The Museum of the City of New York, Fotografiska, Ethel’s Club, and The Highline. She is a founding member of the collective, present futures, a member of Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter, and Founder of Black Magic Afrofuturism Book Club: a collective of magical, radical dreamers, and a space to envision, imagine, and co-create other possible futures. She earned her B.A. and MPA from NYU, where she was named one of “NYU’s 15 Most Influential Students.” Her work has been featured in New York Times Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Bustle, The Girl Mob, Healthyish, BitchMedia, and Fierce by Mitú.

The Moon Mother is living + loving in Brooklyn, on Lenape and Canarsee land, with her wife and their baby girl, Luna. @moonmotherapothecary

Kleaver Cruz from Uptown, NYC is a Black queer Dominican-American creative, writer and educator. Kleaver’s work has been featured in various publications in print and online. Cruz has been in community with and created work across the African Diaspora in Brazil, the US, The Netherlands as well as in South Africa and beyond. Cruz is the creator of The Black Joy Project, a digital and real-world affirmation that Black joy is resistance. Kleaver is also a member of We Are All Dominican--A U.S.-based grassroots collective that works in solidarity with movements led by Dominicans of Haitian descent fighting for inclusion and citizenship rights in the Dominican Republic. Photo credit: Stefen Pompée

Tasha Dougé is a Bronx-based conceptual mixed media artist, teaching artist and cultural vigilante. Her work incites conversations around women, health advocacy, sexual education, societal "norms," identity and Black pride. As a proud Black woman of Haitian descent, it's very important and fundamental to her practice to depict a more holistic description of who we are as Black people and what we have contributed. She uses her art to exercise expression, enact empowerment and to serve as a bridge to connect and highlight those that are excluded and overlooked. Tasha's voice is the first tool within her art arsenal. Through provocative works, she aims to activate change. Dougé has been featured in publications like The New York Times, shown work nationally and internationally, in addition to, completing programs like the Laundromat Project's Create Change Fellowship.
BX Bred Mixed Media Artist
Featured in Sugarcane Magazine Forging Monuments, Dismantling Statues
Featured in Essence and The New York Times

Dalaeja Foreman is a Brooklyn born and raised, community organizer, artist, curator, and first-generation Jamaican-descendant. As a hood-intellectual, her work focuses on political education, community control, and empowerment. Pedagogy and praxis are central to Dalaeja’s practice; with the goal of combating internalized misconceptions oppressed people have of ourselves and legitimatizing resistance through direct action and cultural esteem. She is one of three founders of the Black aesthetic collective, Black Folk NY. She graduated from the Visual Presentation and Exhibition Design program at the Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY in 2014. She is a recent graduate of the MA Contemporary Art and Art Theory of Asia and Africa at SOAS, University of London. Black Folk is an aesthetic collective that is dedicated to uplifting, promoting, and protecting the individuality of the Black diaspora in culture through original collaborative projects. @blackfolkny

Ron Kavanaugh is a lifelong resident of the Bronx. He is executive director of the Literary Freedom Project, an arts nonprofit committed to creating spaces that help elevate cultural narratives. Kavanaugh has worked with numerous arts organizations in the Bronx including The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx Council for the Arts, En Foco, Hostos Arts Center, and the Bronx River Arts Center. For 22 years, he has also served as the editor and publisher of Mosaic Literary Magazine; and has written for BX200.com.

Fred Joiner is a poet and curator based in Chapel Hill, NC. He is a 2019  Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow.  His work has appeared in Callaloo, Gargoyle, and Fledgling Rag, among other publications. Fred has read his work nationally and internationally. Joiner has received awards and fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Most recently, one of Joiner’s poems was selected by curator and critic A.M. Weaver as part of her 5 x 5 public art project, Ceremonies of Dark Men. Another one of Joiner’s poems recently won the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art’s Divine Comedy Poetry Contest, in response to  Abdoulaye Konate’s textile work. Image Courtesy of Jati Lindsey.

Linda LaBeija is a multidisciplinary artist, teacher and curator from the Boogie Down Bronx of New York. Her work explores the complexities of living as a transgender woman of color in today’s America. With origins in both Black America and the English/Spanish-speaking Caribbean, Linda's transnational experience of living at the intersection of embodied, social, and national borders hones in on the critiques of hegemonic power. Born out of the Iconic House of LaBeija in the underground New York City Vogue Ballroom scene, Linda’s pursuit of spoken word infused musical sound has been featured in articles in both AFROPUNK and The Fader. She has been featured in The New Yorker, Timeout New York, W Magazine, and Coveteur Mag.

Dimitry Elias Léger is a Haitian-American novelist, journalist, and humanitarian. Léger is best known for the acclaimed novel God Loves Haiti (2015), which The New York Times praised as "a powerful portrait of a nation in peril and the citizens who inhabit it." His writing has appeared in many magazines and newspapers. Since 2010, he has worked as a communications advisor at the United Nations around the world, including in Haiti, Switzerland, and Mali. https://www.instagram.com/dimitryleger 

Janice A. Lowe, composer-poet, is the author of LEAVING CLE. Her poems appear in Callaloo and Best American Experimental and Radiant Re-sisters. Lowe composed “Desegregation Remix,” a collab with Lee Ann Brown. Lowe’s musicals include Lil Budda, text by Stephanie L. Jones and Sit-In, words by Marjorie Duffield. Lowe composed Millie and Christine McKoy Sisters’ Syncopated Sonnets in Song, from Tyehimba Jess’ OLIO. She composed music for the play 12th and Clairmount by Jenni Lamb. Lowe performs with her band NAMAROON.

Paula Ramirez is a native NYC poet. She represents The Bronx and Uptown NYC. She is honored to have had the opportunity to coach, support, advocate, and collaborate with young people across NYC and throughout the East Coast.

MutShat Shemsut-Gianprem Kaur is a Kemetic Snwt (healer) Priestess, Practitioner and Master Teacher of Ankh Kemetic Energy Medicine since 2013, having studied with Rekhit Kajara Nia Yaa Nebthet, founder of Ra Sekhi Arts Temple of Healing. MutShat has been practicing Kundalini Yoga and Meditation for over 20 years. She is a Therapeutic Reflexologist. A Sacred Art facilitator and artist, she infuses her work with positive vibrational energies, stones, and words of power, offering patrons not only aesthetic experiences but healing ones as well. Helping others on their spiritual path is her stated divine purpose. She is the author of, Meditations for An Evolving People. www.inlightyogaandhealth.com

Uptown Vinyl Supreme is a Bronx based DJ collective and community organization paying homage to the analogue roots of music, party and dance culture. Records have the power to uplift, inspire, and heal the people. Friends and lovers of vinyl, Sunny Cheeba, Buddy, Josh Hubi, and Brujo Boogie take this responsibility seriously and continue to explore progressive ways in which this power can reach audiences all over the world, be it through dance gatherings, individual sessions, workshops, private functions, or cultural institutions. https://www.instagram.com/uptownvinylsupreme/ 

Ash Williams is a non-binary femme from Fayetteville, NC. As a Black Lives Matter organizer, Ash has educated the NC community about state-sanctioned violence as it relates to trans and queer people of color. Ash is a core organizer of Charlotte Uprising, a collective focusing on gender justice and prison abolition. Since 2013, this work has included leading rapid response/ guerilla actions, building solidarity and coalitions across differences, developing press strategies, designing campaigns, educating and mobilizing people on social media, and training other organizers.