Lupita Aquino

Lupita Aquino—better known as Lupita Reads—is a passionate literary enthusiast amplifying and highlighting books written by authors of color through her Instagram blog. She currently lives in the greater Washington D.C. area, and you can find her on Instagram at @lupita.reads, on Twitter at @Lupita_Reads, or catch her writing about books for She Reads or via her column over at Washington Independent Review of Books.

Bridgett M. Davis

Bridgett M. Davis is the author of the memoir, The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life In The Detroit Numbers, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a 2020 Michigan Notable Book, and named a Best Book of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews, BuzzFeed, NBC News and Parade Magazine. She is writing the screenplay for the film adaptation of the book, which will be produced by Plan B Entertainment and released by Searchlight Pictures.

She is author of two novels, Into the Go-Slow, named a Best Book of 2014 by The San Francisco Chronicle, and Shifting Through Neutral, shortlisted for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award. Davis is also writer/director of the award-winning feature film Naked Acts, now part of the permanent collection at Indiana University’s distinguished Black Film Archive.

Davis is a professor in the Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where she teaches creative, narrative, and film writing.

Her essays have appeared most recently in The New York Times, The Millions, Real Simple, the LA Times and O, the Oprah Magazine. A graduate of Spelman College and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, she lives in Brooklyn with her family. Visit her website at www.bridgettdavis.com.

Nancy Jooyoun Kim

Nancy Jooyoun Kim is the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Story of Mina Lee, a Reese's Book Club pick. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, NPR/PRI’s Selected Shorts, Salon, Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, and elsewhere.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Cassandra Lane

Cassandra Lane is the 2020 winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and author of We Are Bridges (Feminist Press), which NPR named a “Books We Love” in 2021. Lane received her MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. She formerly worked as a newspaper reporter, teacher, and in communications and community relations. Her stories have appeared in the New York Times’s “Conception” series, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, LitHub, The Millions, and elsewhere. She is editor in chief of LA Parent magazine.

Margot Atwell

Margot Atwell (she/her/hers) is a writer, editor, publisher, community funding expert, and executive director of the Feminist Press. She spent eight years on the creative outreach team at Kickstarter, PBC, where she helped over a thousand writers, publishers, and other literary projects raise tens of millions of dollars. In 2019 Margot created and led The Next Page conference, Kickstarter’s free digital conference focused on the publishing, comics, and journalism fields. She also founded and ran the micro-press Gutpunch Press.