Joy Har­jo is an inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned poet, per­former, and writer of the Musco­gee (Creek) Nation. She served as the 23rd Poet Lau­re­ate of the Unit­ed States from 2019 – 2022. 

Har­jo is the author of twelve books of poet­ry, includ­ing her forth­com­ing, Cloud Run­ner: Poems (2026), the high­ly acclaimed An Amer­i­can Sun­rise (2019), which was a 2020 Okla­homa Book Award Win­ner, Con­flict Res­o­lu­tion for Holy Beings (2015), which was short­list­ed for the Grif­fin Prize and named a Notable Book of the Year by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion, and In Mad Love and War (1990), which received an Amer­i­can Book Award and the Del­more Schwartz Memo­r­i­al Award. Her first mem­oir, Crazy Brave, was award­ed the PEN USA Lit­er­ary Award in Cre­ative Non Fic­tion and the Amer­i­can Book Award, and her sec­ond, Poet War­rior: A Mem­oir, was released from W.W. Nor­ton in Fall 2021.

Har­jo’s awards and recog­ni­tions include the 2024 Frost Medal from the Poet­ry Soci­ety of Amer­i­ca, Yale’s 2023 Bollin­gen Prize for Amer­i­can Poet­ry, a Class of 2022 Nation­al Human­i­ties Medal, a Life­time Achieve­ment Award from Amer­i­cans for the Arts, a Ruth Lily Prize for Life­time Achieve­ment from the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion, the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets Wal­lace Stevens Award, a PEN USA Lit­er­ary Award, the Poets & Writ­ers Jack­son Poet­ry Prize, two NEA fel­low­ships, a Guggen­heim Fel­low­ship, and a Nation­al Book Crit­ics Cir­cle Ivan San­drof Life­time Achieve­ment Award, among oth­ers. Her poet­ry is includ­ed on a plaque on LUCY, a NASA space­craft launched in Fall 2021 and the first recon­nais­sance of the Jupiter Trojans.

Har­jo per­forms with her sax­o­phone and flutes, solo and with her band, the Arrow Dynam­ics Band, and pre­vi­ous­ly with Joy Har­jo and Poet­ic Jus­tice. She/​they have toured across the U.S. and in Europe, South Amer­i­ca, India, Africa, and Cana­da. Har­jo has pro­duced sev­en award-win­ning music albums includ­ing Wind­ing Through the Milky Way, for which she was award­ed a NAM­MY for Best Female Artist of the year. Her newest album, Insom­nia and the Sev­en Steps to Grace, co-pro­duced with esper­an­za spauld­ing, was released Spring 2026 from Folkways.

Har­jo served as a chan­cel­lor of the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets and as a found­ing board mem­ber and Chair of the Native Arts and Cul­tures Foun­da­tion. She has been induct­ed into the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Arts and Let­ters, the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Arts and Sci­ences, the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Soci­ety, the Nation­al Native Amer­i­can Hall of Fame, and the Nation­al Woman’s Hall of Fame.

Har­jo holds the Ruth Yel­lowhawk Fel­low­ship from the Ket­ter­ing Foun­da­tion, and is the inau­gur­al Artist-in-Res­i­dence for the Bob Dylan Cen­ter in Tul­sa, Okla­homa. She lives on the Musco­gee Nation Reser­va­tion in Oklahoma 

Safiya Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the internationally bestselling author of the memoir How to Say Babylon, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and was a finalist for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction and the Kirkus Prize. How to Say Babylon was included on over 17 Best Book of 2023 lists, including the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of the year, the Washington Post Top 10 Books of 2023, TIME Magazine’s Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2023, and The Atlantic’s 10 Best Books of 2023. It was a Read with Jenna/TODAY Show Book Club pick and named one of President Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2023. How to Say Babylon was also named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, NPR, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, Vulture, Harper’s Bazaar, and Barnes & Noble, among others, and was an ALA Notable Book of the Year. The audiobook of How to Say Babylon was named a Best Audiobook of the Year by Audible and AudioFile magazine.

She is also the author of the poetry collection Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Cannibal was selected as one of the American Library Association’s Notable Books of the Year, and was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Seamus Heaney First Book Award in the UK, and was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. 

Sinclair’s other honours include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Royal Society of Literature International Writers Prize, and fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the Civitella Rainieri Foundation, the Hawthornden Foundation, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Granta, The Nation, and elsewhere. She is currently a Professor of Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

Tamil Nadu-raised and New York-born critically acclaimed vocalist GANAVYA lives, learns, and loves fluidly from the nexus of many frameworks and understandings. Hers is a deeply profound and rooted voice. A multi- disciplinary creator, she is a soundsmith and wordsmith. Trained as an improviser, scholar, dancer, and multi- instrumentalist, she maintains an inner library of "spi/ritual" blueprints offered to her by an inter-generational constellation of collaborators, continuously anchoring her practice in pasts, presents and, futures.

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Shaw is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, an honorary doctorate from Yale, five Grammys, a Tony nomination, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Caroline has written and produced for iconic artists and ensembles across the musical spectrum, including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, Tiler Peck, Nas, Kanye West, the LA Phil, the NY Phil, and others. Recent projects include the Death of a Salesman on Broadway, Hedda Gabler at the Old Globe, “Leonardo Da Vinci” (Ken Burns/PBS), Fleishman is in Trouble (FX/Hulu), Rosalía's LUX and MOTOMAMI, Pastoral (Pam Tanowitz) The Crucible (National Theatre), Partita (Justin Peck/NYC Ballet), Moby Dick (Wu Tsang), and LIFE (Gandini Juggling/Merce Cunningham Trust). Current touring projects include shows with Sō Percussion, Ringdown, Attacca Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, Graveyards & Gardens, Gabriel Kahane, Andrew Yee, and Kamus Quartet.