Duriel E. Harris is a poet, performer, and sound artist. She is author of three print volumes of poetry, including her most recent, NO DICTIONARY OF A LIVING TONGUE (Nightboat, 2017), DRAG (Elixir Press, 2003) and Amnesiac: Poems (2010). Multi-genre works include her one-woman theatrical performance Thingification, as well as Speleology (2011), a video collaboration with artist Scott Rankin. Cofounder of the avant garde poetry/performance trio The Black Took Collective, Harris is an associate professor of English in the graduate creative writing program at Illinois State University and the editor of OBSIDIAN: LITERATURE & ARTS IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA (Downstate Legacies, 2019).

Sheree Renée Thomas is the author of Sleeping Under the Tree of Life and Shotgun Lullabies: Stories & Poems. She is the editor of the groundbreaking anthologies Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones. Her speculative stories and poems appear in Apex Magazine, Harvard's Transition, Smith's Meridians, NYU's Black Renaissance Noire, Callaloo, ESSENCE, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy, Mythic Delirium, Strange Horizons, Revise the Psalm: Writers Celebrate the Work of Gwendolyn Brooks, The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Specualtive Poetry, An Alphabet of Embers: An Anthology of Unclassiafiables, Jalada Afrofuture(s), Afrofuturo(s), Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delaney, Inks Crawl, Memphis Noir, Mojo Rising: Contemporary Writers, and the anthology, Sycorax's Daughters. Based in Memphis, Thomas is Associate Editor of OBSIDIAN: LITERATURE & ARTS IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA (Downstate Legacies, 2019),