Carter Sickels, Nadirah Simmons, Danté Stewart

About

Carter Sickels is the author of the novel The Prettiest Star (Hub City Press), winner of the 2021 Southern Book Prize and the Weatherford Award for Appalachian fiction. His debut novel The Evening Hour was adapted into a feature film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020 and is now streaming. His writing appears in the Atlantic, Poets & Writers, BuzzFeed, Guernica, Joyland, and Catapult. Carter teaches at Eastern Kentucky University.

Nadirah Simmons is a writer and digital content creator committed to preserving Black history, hip-hop history, and pop culture, as well as finding new ways to tell stories on television and the internet. In 2018 she was inspired to put her love of hip-hop, Black history, and Black womanhood and her producing and writing skills into practice. She created The Gumbo Mass Media & Social Club, LLC, an innovative space in media for the creative excellence and activism of Black women in hip-hop and a safe haven free of politics. The Gumbo’s goal is to inspire creative leadership and contribute to a cultural shift that reframes, re-energizes, and reimagines Black women and their relationship with hip-hop through dynamic content, events, and the dissemination of vital information on developments in the genre.

Danté Stewart is a writer, speaker and author of Shoutin' In The Fire: An American Epistle. Named by The Center for American Progress as one of "22 Faith Leaders to Watch in 2022" and by Religion News Service as one of "Ten Up-And-Coming Faith Influencers," his work has appeared in TIME Magazine, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, ESPN's Andscape, Sojourners, and more.