I met Ebukun Gbemisola Ogunyemi when I got into SprinNG as a poetry mentee; she was my mentor and she taught me a lot about poetry (structuring, form and style) and writing in general. The most profound of it all is her ability to make me understand that I don't need to have any reservations or shame because my advocacy plays out in my writing, and at the same time I should explore diverse forms and not box myself. She taught me to find my voice and own it and above all because of her, I know that my art cannot be home for all; I have an audience and I can't possibly please everybody or cater to everything in my work and that's okay. I am completely smitten by her. She's great!

Ebukun is a creative writer, researcher, editor and content writer with more than four years experience in creating and writing stellar, original and engaging contents for digital and non-digital brands such as African freelancers, glance magazine, The odyssey etc. Ebukun is also the manager of the SprinNG Women's Authors prize (the_swapng) a literary award committed to promoting and empowering female Nigerian Authors by investing yearly in the buying and distribution of a select author's book.

                                                  ~Roseline Mgbodichinma

I was introduced to artist Hillary Jones McCullough by a mutual friend after Hillary indicated she was looking for a writer to help her develop a grant application. We teamed up to work on the application, and I ended up helping Hillary develop her personal website in the process, learning quite a bit about her work with photography and digital storytelling. Primarily a photographer, Hillary's work focuses on conveying the complexity of the human experience. Her current project, which is titled The Birthmother Series, uses photography and interviews to tell the stories of women who made adoption plans for their children. Follow McCullough on Instagram @hillarymccullough 

                               ~Kristin LaFollette

your black inscriptions cite a kino lau,
whose feathered wingspan, nighttime eyes & pun-
ishing beak comprise mo‘okū‘auhau.
                                           – kino
​
​Noʻu Revilla is a poet from Maui, "invested in creative projects grounded in aloha ʻāina and intersectional justice and often center discussions of gender, sexuality, belonging, and Indigeneity." I had the honor of meeting Noʻu briefly at my first AWP conference in Portland in 2019, where I was struck by her magnetic presence on a panel of (equally phenomenal) Indigenous writers. Revilla's poetry is seductive and sonically fluid and anchored in the na'au place with great love & attention given to her mo'oku'auhau, her lineage. I find myself, even now, thinking back to her breathtaking performance last spring –– a compelling collaboration of photography and poetry, a love letter to both the photographer and Revilla's ʻaumakua, the lizard. 

Noʻu Revilla's chapbook, Say Throne, was published by Tinfish Press in 2011, and her latest chapbook, Permission to Make Digging Sounds, was published in Effigies III in 2019.

                                                                                                             ~ Charity Yoro 

"Her voice echoing through my mind like the fluttering of a thousand butterflies, light and airy. I can feel the smile in it as one feels the gentle breeze flowing through a field of poppies." 
                                                       ~Kaity Altu 


Kaity Altu and I met at a new writer's group at one of our local libraries. I sat next to her bold, humorous self. Her imagination caught my attention. Kaity responded to each prompt with great sensitivity, and a colorful attitude, being from Puerto Rico. Her writing of short stories stirs curiosity. They often touch on LGBTQ issues. Her talent to keep a reader interested comes naturally and is very authentic. Kaity is a writer to keep an eye open for success. 
                                                                                                           ~Jerrice J. Baptiste 

              Kristin Robertson

I first met Kristin Robertson in a graduate poetry course we both took from Marilyn Kallet (another poet well worth knowing) at the University of Tennessee. This was more than twenty years ago, but even then, her way of capturing a transformative moment in all its human strangeness while connecting it beautifully to natural images struck me as a talent few of us will ever achieve. Her book Surgical Wing won the Alice James Book Award and was published in 2017, and it illustrates the poet’s fondness of the bird as a symbol for a variety of human experiences, including the contradictory phenomena of freedom and entrapment. Her poems are at times mystical and mysterious, at times grounded in earthy worlds of loss, business, food and drink and cigarettes, but the music of her language and the surprising trajectories of each poem often leave the reader stilled and stunned, like a bird tossed by a storm.

                           ~Jo Angela Edwins

​They can’t feel the heart of our people
beating on 116th or
understand the holy words
of El Shabbazz
 
that live in the God-coiled ropes
that crown my head,
and they don’t know my soul
 
 
                 From “Beyond the Brownstones”
                 by Maria James-Thiaw
                               
 
I met Maria in 2015 while we were attending the Virginia Center for the Creative Art’s Poetry Workshop in France. Maria had begun interviewing older women for her remarkable American Griot Project, a historical account of first-hand experiences during the era of Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights Movement. Since 2015, Maria has taken the interviews and stories “…of learning about race and privilege and experiencing second class citizenship and love across color lines…” and translated them into a choreopoem brought to the stage in the theatrical production, Reclaiming My Time: An American Griot Project.
 
Maria James-Thiaw is an award-winning poet, performer, playwright, and educator. She’s the author of “Talking White” and her poetry and reviews appear in journals such as New Letters, Cutthroat, and Black Magnolias.
                                            ~​Jules Jacob