Matthew Burgess is an Associate Professor at Brooklyn College. He is the author of eight children's books, most recently The Red Tin Box (Chronicle) and Sylvester’s Letter (ELB). Matthew has edited an anthology of visual art and writing titled Dream Closet: Meditations on Childhood Space (Secretary Press), as well as a collection of essays titled Spellbound: The Art of Teaching Poetry (T&W). More books are forthcoming, including: As Edward Imagined: A Story of Edward Gorey (Knopf, 2024), Words With Wings & Magic Things (Tundra, 2025), and Fireworks (Harper Collins, 2024). A poet-in-residence in New York City public schools since 2001, Matthew serves as a contributing editor of Teachers & Writers Magazine.

India Choquette (she/her) is an adjunct instructor at the City College of New York where she is a graduate student in the Creative Writing MFA program. In 2023, she was awarded the “Teacher-Writer Award” by the English Department, and she has been an editor at Promethean, the college’s literary journal, since 2021. Outside of CCNY, she is a mentor with Girls Write Now, a NYC-based nonprofit that uplifts the voices of young writers. She was a Katharine Bakeless Nason Scholar at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, and her fiction has been published in Foglifter Journal. She lives with her spouse and two cats in a plant-filled apartment. She is an editorial fellow at Teachers & Writers Magazine.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Abriana Jetté is a poet, essayist, editor, and educator. Her writing has been featured in Best New Poets, Poetry New Zealand, River Teeth, The Moth, Plume, and other places. She teaches various writing courses for Kean University, where she also leads the Common Read program.

Darius Phelps is a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is an adjunct professor at Hunter College, Teachers College, and Assistant Manager at Brooklyn Poets. An educator, poet, spoken word artist, and activist, Darius writes poems about grief, liberation, emancipation, reflection through the lens of a teacher of color and experiencing Black boy joy. His poems have appeared in the NY English Record, NCTE English Journal, Pearl Press Magazine, ëëN Magazine, and many more. Recently, he was featured on WCBS and highlighted the importance of Black male educators in the classroom.