Megan Mayhew Bergman is the author of three books with Scribner – Birds of a Lesser Paradise, Almost Famous Women, How Strange a Season, and a forthcoming biography on the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. She is a climate journalist and essayist who has published with the New Yorker, New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She’s a professor of Creative Writing at MIddlebury College, where she directs the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. She’s a short filmmaker and also the co-founder of GreenStory, an environmental narrative agency for clean tech organizations and non-profits. 

Greg Edwards is a fearless comedian from Virginia. Greg moved to San Francisco in 2001 and became a fixture on the Bay Area comedy scene. Greg is known for his distinctive voice, awkward views and social commentary. He’s performed at Jamie Foxx’s Laffapollozza, SF SketchFest, SF Burrito & Comedy Fest, Riot LA, and clubs and colleges all over California. Greg was awarded the prestigious Dan Crawford Award from the San Francisco Punchline in 2009 and moved to Los Angeles in 2010.  Greg has performed at the Laugh Factory, The Comedy Store, The Hollywood Improv, The IceHouse, & all the popular independent shows in LA.

Greg has worked with Dave Chappelle, Paul Mooney, Patrice O’Neal, Damon Wayans, Bill Burr, Charlie Murphy, Maria Bamford, Jim Jeffries, Harland Williams, Bill Bellamy, Deon Cole, W. Kamau Bell and many more outstanding comedians. Greg stars as “Sparky Sweets PhD” of the critically-acclaimed web series THUG NOTES, Greg was also in season 1 of Comedy Central’s Corporate. Currently Greg is a writer on the hit MTV show Ridiculousness. 

Greg has been in Entertainment Weekly, Forbes, The International New York Times and has been on BET, Comedy Central, interviewed on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS & has released 3 independent comedy albums Gregarious, Fuck you Greg & Dopamine.

Denice Frohman is a poet and performer from New York City. A Pew Fellow and Baldwin-Emerson Fellow, she’s received support from CantoMundo, Headlands Center for the Arts, the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures, and Millay Colony.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The BreakBeat Poets: LatiNext, Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, ESPNW and elsewhere. A former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, she’s featured on hundreds of national and international stages from The Apollo to The White House. She lives in Philadelphia.

GennaRose Nethercott is the author of a novel, Thistlefoot, and a book-length poem, The Lumberjack’s Dove, which was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series. A writer and folklorist alike, she helps create the podcast Lore, and she tours nationally and internationally performing strange tales (sometimes with puppets in tow). Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart—her newest book—marks her debut into short fiction. She lives in the woodlands of Vermont, beside an old cemetery.

Patricia Spears Jones was born in Arkansas, but has lived and worked in New York City since 1974.  She is a poet, playwright, educator, cultural activist, and anthologist and has been appointed New York State Poet (2023-25). She is the recipient of 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers. She is author of  The Beloved Community and A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems and 3 full-length collections and five chapbooks. At the Rauschenberg Residency, she published Collapsing Forrest City, Photo Giclée. 

Her poems are widely anthologized among them: 250 Years of African American Poetry: Why African American Poetry Matters Today, Plume Poetry 8; 2017 Pushcart Prize XLI: Best of Small Presses; WORD: An Anthology A Gathering of the Tribes; Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African-American Poets, and in journals such as About Place Journal; Paterson Literary Review; Cutthroat Journal; alinejournal.com/convergence; The New Yorker and The Brooklyn Rail. She co-edited ORDINARY WOMEN: An Anthology of New York City Women Poets (1978) and edited THINK: Poems for Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Day Hat (2009). Her plays “Mother” (music by Carter Burwell) and “Song for New York: What Women Do When Men Sit Knitting (music by Lisa Gutkin) were commissioned and produced by Mabou Mines.

She curated programs as Program Coordinator for The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church and created WORDS Sunday series in Brooklyn. She has taught Creative Writing at Hunter College, Barnard College, Adelphi University and Hollins University as the 2020 Louis D. Rubin Writer in Residence. She has taught summer poetry workshops for the Community of Writers, Fine Arts Work Center, Naropa, Rutgers University, Truro Center for the Arts, and Wild Seeds Workshop for Medgar Evers College. In New York City she has lead workshops for The Poetry Project, Poets House, Brooklyn Poets, and Parachute Literary Arts. She is Emeritus Fellow for Black Earth Institute and organizer of the American Poets Congress.