Shayla Lawson is the author of three books of poetry—A Speed Education in Human Being, the chapbook PANTONE and I Think I’m Ready to see Frank Ocean—and the forthcoming essay collection THIS IS MAJOR (Harper Perennial, 2020). Her work has appeared in print & online at Tin House, GRAMMA, ESPN, Salon, The Offing, Guernica, Colorado Review, Barrelhouse, and MiPOesias. She curates The Tenderness Project with Ross Gay and writes poems with Chet’la Sebree (pronounced Shayla, no relation). A MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow, Shayla currently serves as Writer-in-Residence and Chair of Creative Writing at Amherst College. She is also supported by the Cini Foundation of Venice, Italy, the Allen Fellowship at the New York Public Library and her Havanese, Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. She is a member of The Affrilachian Poets.

Keith S. Wilson is an Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem fellow. He is a recipient of an NEA fellowship as well as fellowships/grants from Bread Loaf, Kenyon College, Tin House, MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, UCross, and Millay Colony, among others. Keith serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at Four Way Review and Digital Media Editor at Obsidian Journal. His first book, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love, was published by Copper Canyon. His work in game design includes “Once Upon a Tale,” a storytelling card game designed for Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago in collaboration with The Field Museum of Chicago, and alternate reality games (ARGs) for the University of Chicago. He has worked with or taught new media with Kenyon College, the Field Museum, the Adler Planetarium, and the University of Chicago.

Chet'la Sebree is the author of Mistress, selected by Cathy Park Hong as the winner of the 2018 New Issues Poetry Prize. She is the Director of the Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts and an assistant professor of English at Bucknell University. Her work has appeared in Guernica, The Kenyon Review, and Colorado Review, among other journals, and she has received support for her work from the Delaware Division of the Arts, Hedgebrook, The MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo.

Amish Trivedi is the author of Your Relationship to Motion Has Changed (Shearsman) and Sound/Chest (Coven). He has poems in Typo, New American Writing, Kenyon and others. He has an MFA from Brown and should (hopefully) soon have a Ph.D. from Illinois State University.

Luma Khabbaz is a student at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. She grew up in Valparaiso, Indiana, a city that magically transforms into Chicago when people overseas ask her where she’s from. Luma combines her passion for advocacy and poetry into poems and spoken word meant to bring human elements to serious topics. She realized she was a poet in sixth grade, after she discovered the songs she’d been writing for years didn’t have any music with them. After taking a break from writing, she found her muse in 2011 when the Syrian revolution began. She hasn’t stopped writing since. A daughter of two immigrants, Luma spent her childhood summers in Syria with family members. She draws on these summers for poems about Syria, since she has been unable to go back. Luma also writes about sometimes taboo topics such as mental health. No community is exempt from these problems, and the more people speak up about their experiences, the more others will realize they are not alone. She is often asked to speak at events and rallies where she uses poetry as a form of persuasion. In her free time, Luma likes to watch The Office with her friends and ruin it by reciting every line from memory. She is loud, angry and shamelessly herself, and she hopes other women know they can be too.

E.G. Asher is the author of Natality, published by Noemi Press in 2017. The recipient of the 2015-16 Stadler Fellowship at Bucknell University and a 2018 TENT: Creative Writing fellowship at the Yiddish Book Center, Asher is currently a PhD candidate and educator at New York University.

Shayla Lawson is the author of A Speed Education in Human Being, the chapbook PANTONE and I Think I’m Ready to see Frank Ocean—and the forthcoming essay collection THIS IS MAJOR (Harper Perennial, 2020). She curates The Tenderness Project with Ross Gay and writes poems with Chet’la Sebree (pronounced Shayla, no relation). A MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow, Shayla Lawson is a member of The Affrilachian Poets & currently serves as Writer-in-Residence and Director of Creative Writing at Amherst College.

The mission of Torch Literary Arts is to promote the work of Black women and girls by publishing contemporary creative writing by experienced and emerging writers alike, to archive contributor's literary work for posterity and educational purposes, and provide resources and opportunities for the advancement of Black women and girls through literary arts.

HOSTED BY TOMMY PICO & MORGAN PARKER

WITH hieu minh nguyen & anastacia-renee

Shayla Lawson, Dao Strom, and Elena Passarello. Reading and multi-media performance in collaboration with Northwest Academy