MELANIE DENISE DYER has an extensive performance background in improvised, orchestral and new music. She trained under William Lincer, Lee Yeingst, John Jake Kella and Naomi Fellows, and studied viola performance at the LaMont School of Music/University of Denver. After moving to NYC, Melanie began improvising with Makanda Ken McIntyre's Contemporary African American....

Born in Trinidad and raised in Queens, CHERYL BOYCE-TAYLOR is a poet and workshop facilitator. A recipient of the 2015 Barnes and Noble Writers For Writers Award, she is the founder and curator of Calypso Muse and the Glitter Pomegranate Performance Series. Cheryl earned her MFA in Poetry from Stonecoast: The University of Southern Maine. She is the author of three....

CATHERINE GIGANTE-BROWN’s works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry have appeared in publications as diverse as Ravishly, Essence, American Gardener, Diaspora, Huffington Post Woman and Dakota Outdoors.  A number of her short stories appear in women’s fiction anthologies.  

REGGIE NICHOLSON first gained a reputation as an outstanding drummer and percussionist in his home town of Chicago. In 1979 he joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a consortium of composers and performers devoted to the art of improvisation and the creation of original music.

Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1934 WARREN SMITH was the descendant of musical parents. His whole family was involved in professional music. His father was a Saxophonist, teacher and repairman. His mother was a Harpist. Warren’s relatives were also involved on both sides of the family. 

A native New Yorker, SABRINA HAYEEM-LADANI has been a poet and performer for more than 20 years, and her work has been performed across the United States, as well as in Europe. She was an invited author at the Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica and is a former member of the louderARTS Project.

ROBERT GIBBONS is a poet living in New York City. He is originally from Belle Glade, Florida and has been in the City since 2007 in search of his muse -- Langston Hughes. He is published in Brooklyn Poets Anthology; Paragram; Promethean; Turtle Island Quarterly; Deep Water Literary; Killer Whale; and Suisun Valley.

DÉLANA R.A. DAMERON holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from New York University where she was a Goldwater Hospital Writer’s workshop fellow, and.a B.A. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has a strong interest in the intersections of history and literature.