VERONICA CHAMBERS is currently a John S. Knight fellow at Stanford University. She’s a prolific author, best known for her critically acclaimed memoir Mama’s Girl and the award-winning memoir Yes Chef, which was co-authored with chef Marcus Samuelsson. She has collaborated on four New York Times bestsellers, most recently 32 Yolks, which she co-wrote with chef Eric Ripert. The New Yorker called Mama’s Girl “a troubling testament to grit and mother love … one of the finest and most evenhanded in the genre.” Mama’s Girl has been course-adopted by hundreds of high schools and colleges. Born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, she writes often about her Afro-Latina heritage. She lives with her husband and daughter in northern California. You can connect with her on Twitter @vvchambers. You can sign up for email updates here.
Nominated for two Academy Awards and four Golden Globes, writer/director AVA DUVERNAY’S most recent feature Selma was one of 2015’s most critically acclaimed films. She is currently writing, directing and producing her first television series, Queen Sugar, for Oprah Winfrey’s OWN. Winner of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival’s Best Director Prize for her previous feature Middle of Nowhere, DuVernay’s earlier directorial work includes I Will Follow, Venus Vs, My Mic Sounds Nice and This is The Life. She founded ARRAY, a distribution collective for filmmakers of color and women, in 2010, and was named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in Hollywood 2016. DuVernay was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.
BENILDE LITTLE is the bestselling author of the novels Good Hair, The Itch, Acting Out, Who Does She Think She Is? and Welcome to My Breakdown. She has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Essence, Jet, People Magazine, Heart and Soul and MORE, among many others as well as on NPR, the Today Show and the Tavis Smiley show. The national book club, the Go On Girls, selected Good Hair as the best novel of the year. Natalie Cole bought the film rights. Benilde’s writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Honey, Hush! and About Face. She was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. A former reporter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Star Ledger and People magazine, she was also a senior editor at Essence. She has been a creative writing professor at Ramapo College and now teaches writing at The Writers Circle. She graduated from Howard University and attended graduate school at Northwestern. She and her husband live in Montclair, New Jersey, with their teenage son, Ford. Their daughter, Baldwin, is away at college.
DAMON YOUNG is the editor-in-chief of VSB. He is also a contributing editor for EBONY.com. And a columnist for EBONY magazine. And a founding editor for 1839. Damon is busy. He lives in Pittsburgh, and he really likes pancakes. Reach him at damon@verysmartbrothas.com. Or don’t.
With signature style, humor and irreverence, ALICIA HALL MORAN’S style combines the world of Broadway (starring as “Bess” on the 9-month National Tour of the Tony-winning production), the world of visual art (her musical work can currently be seen in the 56th Venice Biennale) and the languages of classical music and jazz.
Since 2010, Ms. Moran’s critically acclaimed chamber music soul revue, Alicia Hall Moran + the motown project, has been thrilling audiences at The Highline Ballroom, (Le)Poisson Rouge, as well as at universities across America. Ms. Moran upholds the traditions of her great-great-uncle Hall Johnson (legendary choral director, composer and preserver of the Negro Spiritual) and her greatest teachers (Shirley Verrett, Adele Addison, Hilda Harris, David Jones and Warren Wilson) while exploring new ways to celebrate the repertoire of the classics and the genius of American song.
Jazz pianist, composer and performance artist JASON MORAN was born in Houston, Texas, in 1975 and earned a degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Jaki Byard. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 and is the Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center. Moran currently teaches at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
Moran’s rich and varied body of work is actively shaping the current and future landscape of jazz. He has collaborated with such major figures as Adrian Piper, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Stan Douglas, Adam Pendleton, Lorna Simpson, and Kara Walker; commissioning institutions of Moran’s work include the Walker Art Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Dia Art Foundation, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Jazz at Lincoln Center and Harlem Stage.
Moran has a long-standing collaborative practice with his wife, the singer and Broadway actress Alicia Hall Moran; as named artists in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, they together constructed BLEED, a five-day series of live music.
Moran will have his first solo museum exhibition at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in spring 2018.
BRITTNEY COOPER is Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University. A Black feminist theorist, she specializes in the study of Black women’s intellectual history, Hip Hop generation feminism, and race and gender representation in popular culture. Her forthcoming book, Race Women: Gender and the Making of a Black Public Intellectual Tradition, examines the long history of Black women’s thought leadership in the U.S., with a view toward reinvigorating contemporary scholarly and popular conversations about Black feminism.
Dr. Cooper is also a sought-after public speaker and commentator. In addition to a weekly column on race and gender politics at Salon.com, her work and words have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Cosmo.com, TV Guide, the Los Angeles Times, Ebony.com, The Root.com, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show, All In With Chris Hayes, Disrupt with Karen Finney and Third Rail on Al-Jazeera America, among many others. She is also a co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective, a popular feminist blog. Dr. Brittney Cooper is a proud alumna of Howard University (class of 2002) and proud native of North Louisiana.
YLONDA GAULT CAVINESS is author of the parenting memoir Child, Please and a New York Times Op-Ed contributor. An award-winning journalist, she has specialized in issues related to child advocacy, family and motherhood for more than a decade. Gault’s work has appeared in Essence, The New York Times, Redbook and Salon.com. She is a single mom of three awesome children.
CHIRLANE MCCRAY is the First Lady of New York City, a writer and a passionate advocate for the underserved.
Ms. McCray is the driving force behind ThriveNYC, the most comprehensive mental health plan of any city or state in the USA. ThriveNYC is changing the culture around mental health and substance misuse, reimagining the way government and its partners deliver services and making it easier for people to get help in the places where they live, work, worship, and learn.
The First Lady is honored to serve as Chair of the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City. The Mayor’s Fund is the City’s official nonprofit—a one-of-a-kind organization that brings together government, philanthropies and the private sector to work on some of the most pressing issues of our time, including mental health, youth workforce development and immigration and citizenship. She is also Honorary Co-Chair of the Commission on Gender Equity, and is guiding efforts to create a city where every girl and woman is treated equally and feels safe.
Ms. McCray and Mayor Bill de Blasio have two remarkable children, Chiara and Dante. You can learn more about the First Lady’s work on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr. She invites New Yorkers to help her make the greatest city in the world even greater.
CATHI HANAUER is the author of three novels, Gone, Sweet Ruin and My Sister’s Bones and the editor of the #10 New York Times bestselling essay collection The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth about Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood and Marriage, which was called out in Deborah Felder’s A Bookshelf of Our Own: Must-Reads for Women. She has written articles, essays and/or reviews for The New York Times, Elle, O, Self, Glamour, Whole Living, Mademoiselle, Parenting, Child, Redbook and other magazines; she was the monthly books columnist for both Glamour and Mademoiselle and wrote the monthly advice column Relating in Seventeen for seven years. She has taught writing at The New School, in New York, and at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, as well as privately. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her husband, writer and New York Times Modern Love editor Daniel Jones, and their daughter and son.
Named to Fast Company’s League of Extraordinary Women, TIFFANY DUFU was a Launch Team member to Lean In and is Chief Leadership Officer to Levo, the fastest-growing millennial professional network. She is a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, a sought-after speaker on women’s leadership and has presented at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit, MAKERS and TEDWomen. She earned a BA and MA in English from the University of Washington. She is the author of Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less.
TANISHA C. FORD is Associate Professor of Black American Studies and History at the University of Delaware. She is the author of Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul, which narrates the powerful intertwining histories of the Black Freedom movement and the rise of the global fashion industry. Liberated Threads won the 2016 Organization of American Historians’ Liberty Legacy Foundation Award for best book on civil rights history. Ford is an expert on social movement history, feminist issues, material culture and fashion, beauty and body politics. Her public writing and cultural commentary has been featured in diverse media outlets and publications including The New York Times, The Root, The New Yorker, Ebony, NPR’s Code Switch, Fusion, News One, New York magazine’s The Cut, Yahoo! Style, Vibe Vixen, Feministing, The Journal of Southern History, NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, The Black Scholar and New York City’s HOT 97.
MARCUS SAMUELSSON is an internationally acclaimed chef who has thrilled the food scene with a blend of culture and artistic excellence. Marcus caught the attention of the culinary world at Aquavit. During his tenure as executive chef, he received an impressive three-star rating from The New York Times, the youngest person ever to receive such an accolade.
In addition to being a successful cookbook author, Marcus released his New York Times bestselling and James Beard–winning memoir Yes, Chef in 2012 to rave reviews. In 2009, Marcus was honored as a guest chef at the White House under the Obama administration, where he planned and executed the administration’s first state dinner for the first family, Prime Minister Singh of India and 400 of their guests. He has been a UNICEF ambassador since 2000, focusing his advocacy on water and sanitation issues, specifically the Tap Project. Marcus also had the honor of speaking at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and TEDxHarlem in 2012.
His iconic Red Rooster Harlem celebrates the roots of American cuisine in one of New York City’s liveliest and most culturally rich neighborhoods. It has earned two stars from The New York Times and countless accolades for its food, style and connection to the community.
SARAH LEWIS received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard, an M. Phil from Oxford University, and her Ph.D. from Yale University in the History of Art. Lewis’s research interests focus on representations of race in contemporary art and nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American culture and across the Black Atlantic world and the Black Sea region. Her scholarship has been published in many academic journals as well as in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America and in publications for the Smithsonian, The Museum of Modern Art and Rizzoli. Lewis is also the author of The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, which has been translated into six languages.
Lewis has served on President Obama’s Arts Policy Committee and currently serves on the advisory council of the International Review of African-American Art and the board of the Andy Warhol Foundation of the Visual Arts, Creative Time and The CUNY Graduate Center. Before joining the faculty at Harvard, she held curatorial positions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Tate Modern, London, and taught at Yale University School of Art. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York City.
KAREN HILL ANTON is the author of Crossing Cultures, a collection of her long-running column in the Japan Times. The popular column, praised for its sensitive and no-nonsense approach to cross-cultural living, chronicles her unique life experience as an American woman (from Washington Heights) married to an American (from Greenwich Village) living and raising four bilingual children in rural Japan since 1975.
REBECCA CARROLL is a producer of special projects on race at WNYC/New York Public Radio, among them the critically acclaimed podcast on gentrification in central Brooklyn, New York, There Goes the Neighborhood. She is a regular opinion writer at The Guardian US, a critic-at-large for the Los Angeles Times and the author of five nonfiction books, including Saving the Race and the award-winning Sugar in the Raw.
PHILLIPA SOO received a 2016 Tony nomination for her Broadway debut as Eliza Hamilton in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s gargantuan hit, Hamilton. She originated the role off-Broadway at the Public Theater. Soo also starred as Natasha in the acclaimed off-Broadway run of the immersive musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. Her other stage credits include A Little Night Music and School for Wives.
ROXANE GAY’S writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, and Difficult Women and Hunger forthcoming in 2017. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel.