Nigerian poet, novelist, performance artist, educator, and activist best known for centering queer African love, identity, and liberation through literature, multidisciplinary performance, and community-based arts practice.

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a Trinidadian poet, teaching artist, curator, and performer whose work connects Caribbean and New York experiences with motherhood, migration, sexuality, grief, and Black womanhood through poetry and performance.

Nikky Finney is an award-winning American poet, author, educator, and editor whose work explores Black Southern history, memory, social justice, sexuality, family, and African American life.

Samiya Bashir is an African-American poet, writer, librettist, performer, and multimedia poetry maker whose work explores race, gender, sexuality, the body, culture, and identity. She is a co-founder of Fire & Ink, an organization supporting LGBTQ+ writers of African descent, and served as executive director of Lambda Literary from 2022 to 2023.

An African-American lesbian poet, writer, and activist whose work explored race, sexuality, feminism, violence, and women's lives. She also directed a women's health center in Oakland and founded organizations supporting Black feminist and women's organizing.

Dionne Brand is an acclaimed Trinidadian Canadian poet, novelist, essayist, filmmaker, and educator whose work explores Black life, migration, diaspora, sexuality, gender, colonialism, memory, and belonging.

British writer, poet, memoirist, and actress of Jamaican and Nigerian heritage whose work explores identity, sexuality, mental health, healing, and the complexities of Black womanhood across poetry, memoir, fiction, performance, and screenwriting.

Nigerian poet, novelist, memoirist, editor, scholar, and educator whose literary and scholarly work centers sexuality, gender, identity, and the lives of LGBTQ+ Nigerians, with particular significance for the documentation and visibility of lesbian African experiences.

Jewelle Gomez is an American novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, and cultural worker whose work explores Black lesbian identity, Indigenous and African diasporic heritage, feminism, sexuality, history, and community. She is the author of The Gilda Stories, a groundbreaking Black lesbian vampire novel first published in 1991.

Angelique V. Nixon is a Bahamas-born Black Queer writer, poet, artist, scholar, educator, and activist whose work examines sexuality, gender, feminism, diaspora, and social justice across Caribbean literature, culture, and political life.

American poet, essayist, and novelist whose work explores Black womanhood, race, sexuality, mental health, desire, and popular culture through poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

American author, poet, biographer, playwright, and educator whose work has advanced Black feminist literature, LGBTQ+ history, and the preservation of Black women's cultural legacies.

Koleka Putuma is a South African poet, playwright, theatre practitioner, and creative producer whose work explores Blackness, womanhood, queer identity, race, religion, relationships, and the legacies of apartheid.

Sharon Bridgforth is an African-American lesbian writer and performing artist whose work combines theater, poetry, storytelling, music, and ritual. She developed what she calls theatrical jazz, using performance and literature to explore Black Southern migration, queer identity, ancestry, memory, and community.

Arlo Parks is a British Black bisexual singer, songwriter, poet, and musician whose work combines intimate songwriting with indie pop, alternative R&B, soul, and spoken-word influences. Her music explores love, identity, vulnerability, grief, desire, and queer experience.

Nigerian storyteller, visual artist, and author whose award-winning fiction, memoir, poetry, and multidisciplinary work explore indigenous Black realities, spirituality, identity, embodiment, and radical imagination.

Camonghne Felix is a Black queer poet, essayist, writer, and political strategist whose work explores Black identity, sexuality, love, trauma, freedom, and the political possibilities of language. She is the author of Build Yourself a Boat, Dyscalculia, and Let the Poets Govern.

Poet, author, activist, educator, and founder best known for advancing the global body liberation movement through her writing on radical self-love, social justice, and intersectional liberation.

Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of fiction, poetry, memoir, and children's and young adult literature whose award-winning work centers Black childhood, family, memory, identity, and belonging across generations.

Poet, spoken-word artist, memoirist, playwright, and LGBTQ+ activist best known for powerful works exploring Black identity, sexuality, migration, motherhood, and social justice through poetry, performance, and memoir.

Cheryl Clarke is an African American poet, essayist, literary scholar, educator, and lesbian feminist activist whose work explores Black women's lives, sexuality, race, feminism, and LGBTQ+ liberation.

Audre Lorde was a Black lesbian poet, essayist, educator, librarian, feminist, and activist whose writing confronted racism, sexism, homophobia, and class inequality. Her work connected personal experience with broader struggles for liberation and helped shape Black feminist and queer thought.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author, poet, and activist best known for The Color Purple and for coining the term womanism, a foundational concept in Black feminist thought.

American writer, poet, scholar, educator, and community organizer whose work explores Black feminism, ecological justice, spirituality, and collective liberation through literature, education, and movement building.

Khadijah Queen is an American poet, author, essayist, and educator whose work explores race, gender, sexuality, memory, the body, and lived experience through poetry, hybrid prose, creative nonfiction, and performance writing.