Camille Boxhill is a Jamaican-American writer currently based in South Florida. She earned an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from the University of Bristol. Boxhill is an alumna of the 2022 Madeleine Milburn Mentorship Program and a 2022 Space to Write Project award recipient. She has also enjoyed support and recognition from Iowa Writers’ Workshop Summer Program, Renaissance House, and Hurston/Wright Foundation. Her debut novel will explore themes of multigenerational trauma, legacy, and identity, alongside elements of Jamaican folklore. Boxhill is represented by the Madeleine Milburn Agency.

Dawnie Walton is a writer, editor, and author of the award-winning novel The Final Revival of Opal and Nev, named one of the best books of 2021 by The Washington Post, NPR, Esquire, and former U.S. President Barack Obama, among others. Her work explores identity, place, and the influence of pop culture. Formerly an editor at Essence and Entertainment Weekly, she has received fellowships from MacDowell and Tin House, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (where she has since taught a fiction seminar). In partnership with acclaimed writer Deesha Philyaw and Longreads founder Mark Armstrong, she is the co-founder of Ursa Story Company, a podcasting and storytelling venture, and co-hosts and produces its shows. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Oxford American, Bon Appetit, NPR, and Lithub. 

Loretta Lopez is a Mexican-American author living in Brooklyn, NY.  She is also a therapist and board member at The Brave House. Her debut novel, City Girls, published by Seven Stories Press will be released in Spring 2024. 

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City Girls was inspired by the lives of the girls she has worked with at The Brave House, a non-profit offering holistic services to immigrant girls. Part of the book's proceeds will go to supporting their mission. 

Buy Loretta's Book

Maisy Card is the author of the novel These Ghosts Are Family, which won an American Book Award, the  2021 OCM Bocas Prize in fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the LA Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, AGNI, The New York Times, Guernica, and other publications. Maisy was born in Portmore, Jamaica, and raised in Queens, NY.  She’s currently a public librarian and lives in Newark, NJ. 

Her second novel Difficult Patrons is set to be released in 2026.

Riham El-Ounsi is a WGA-nominated writer and producer, primarily working in the world of game and competition series. She has produced and written for shows on networks such as ABC, NBC, and FOX. She also works heavily in unscripted development, creating and fleshing out game, travel, and lifestyle series. Riham has collaborated with companies like SMAC Entertainment, TurnerMedia, and Sony, to bring ideas from pitch to stage, like "Snoop Dogg: Presents the Joker's Wild."

In addition, Riham has also worked on the development of live events, working alongside Disney talent to bring interactive dance parties to LiveNation venues.  So far, she and her team have produced over 30 live performances across the US. 

Riham is currently working on her memoir, but most importantly, on herself.

Robert Lopez is the author of seven novels and one non-fiction book (listed below with links to purchase). His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has appeared in dozens of publications, including Bomb, The Threepenny Review, Vice Magazine, New England Review, The Sun, and the Norton Anthology of Sudden Fiction – Latino. He teaches at Stony Brook University and has previously taught at Columbia University, The New School, Pratt Institute, and Syracuse University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Shaan Sachdev is an essayist, cultural critic, journalist, and writer based in New York. He writes about a range of topics including philosophy,  America's preoccupations with race thinking, masculinity, biases in media, city life, and his two favorite divas, Beyoncé and Hannah Arendt. 

Tyrrell is a director and storyteller whose work threads the needle between drama, comedy, and romance—regularly spotlighting characters on the fringes, told from a distinctly female point of view.

She studied directing at USC Film School, and earned her MFA in screenwriting from UCLA. Tyrrell began her career as a staff director/producer for Oscar-winning producer Rob Fried’s SVOD channel Feeln (bought by Hallmark) and director Jon Chu’s Google-funded channel DS2DIO. She has since crafted hundreds of pieces of content for clients including Lionsgate, M ss ng P eces, and Crypt TV.

Her debut feature, Katie’s Mom, stars Dina Meyer and premiered at Dances With Films, where it won the Audience Award for Best Fusion Feature. 

Tyrrell is currently developing her second feature and a comedy series inspired by her real-life experience substitute teaching.