Yusef is one of the most compelling voices in American poetry. His Pulitzer Prize winning collection, Neon Vernacular, pulls together all of the most powerful strands of his poetic vision. The images are those of the South and its culture, of Black resilience to white supremacy, of war in Southeast Asia, of urban experience, and of musical forms such as blues and jazz. In 2011 Komunyakaa was awarded the Wallace Stevens Award. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the William Faulkner Prize from the Université de Rennes, the Thomas Forcade Award, and has published dozens of books of poetry, essays, operas, and plays. Currently he serves as Distinguished Senior Poet in New York University’s graduate creative writing program.
She is a comic book artist, writer, & creator from Chicago known for her work on the Niobe, Ladycastle and Tomb Raider series. She got her start through self-publishing her action-fantasy comic series Millennia War which led to her career in comics and TV. Her most prominent work is Niobe: She is Life with actress Amandla Stenberg and Sebastian A. Jones of Stranger Comics. Her latest artwork can be seen with Marvel, Image Comics, VAULT Comics, and HBO.
A filmmaker, publisher and founder of Rattapallax based in New York City and New Delhi. He produced, edited and directed the feature documentary, The Karma Killings, which was shot in India and released on Netflix. Recently, he produced The Russian Woodpecker, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. He is the creator of the interactive social-activist comic books, Priya’s Shakti, which received the Tribeca Film Institute New Media Fund from the Ford Foundation and supported by the World Bank, and honored by UN Women as a “gender equality champion.”
Eric has illustrated many stories of popular icons, from Spider-Man, The X-Men, to Young Justice, the teen superhero group from the Cartoon Network animated series. His collaborators include bestselling novelist, L.A. Banks on her Vampire Huntress Legends novel series, World Fantasy award winning author Nnedi Okorafor, and Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. Eric’s project with George R.R. Martin, Wild Cards, is being developed as a feature film by Universal/SyFy Films. Eric presently acts as curator, art director and illustrator on a coffee table book for the Philadelphia Jazz Project and “BLAM! Black Lives Always Mattered!: Hidden African American Philadelphians in the 20th Century” original graphic novel for Temple University’s Charles L. Blockson Library.
