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MC
Khalisa Rae
Khalisa Rae is a poet, author, and cultural organizer based in Durham, NC. As the co-founder of the Griot & Grey Owl Black Southern Writers Conference and Theater & Literature Director at the NC Arts Council, she champions Black Southern storytelling and community-centered creativity.
Her work explores the intersections of identity, faith, queerness, and Southern memory, with a deep commitment to amplifying voices that have been silenced or erased. Khalisa is the author of Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat and the forthcoming YA novel-in-verse Unlearning Eden. Her writing has appeared in LitHub, Southern Humanities Review, PANK, and more. A self-proclaimed soft life survivor, she believes in the radical act of rest, collective care, and reclaiming joy as resistance.
Performing Artists
Sarah Rizzuto
This Fall Sarah Rizzuto will teach a Disability Studies course she developed through Women and Gender Studies at Southern CT State University. It’s part of their new DS minor. She also holds a MFA in poetry from SCSU. Along with being a poet, Sarah considers herself an advocate for social justice and hopes to publish her first chapbook this summer.
Danny Whitty
Danny Whitty is a nonspeaking autistic writer, leader, and advocate living in San Diego, California. After over 30 years without reliable communication, he now uses Spelling to Communicate (S2C), which has opened up his world immensely. Poetry has always felt like a natural fit for how his brain thinks, and he is delighted to connect, teach, inspire, and provoke through his poems. Join him on social media (Danny With Words on Facebook, @DannyWithWords in Instagram), his website (DannyWithWords.com), and his podcast (All Our Brave Hearts).
Matt G.
Matt G. is an NC poet, political sociologist, and educator. He believes that poetry, like Wu-Tang, is forever and for the children. A graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, Matt G. was a member of the spoken word group Wordsmiths. In addition to hosting open mics and acting as a performance artist on campus, he also competed in the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI). His team ranked top 20 in the nation in 2012 and made semi-finals in 2018. Matt G. also spent a year with Ebony Readers Onyx Theatre (EROT)—the premier spoken word performance group of UNC’s Black Student Movement.
Most recently, beginning in 2023, Matt G. became a fellow of The Watering Hole. Matt G. is also a 2x member of the Bull City Slam Team in Durham, NC. While currently unpublished, Matt G. is far from a stranger in the poet community. He is a familiar face at open mics and event spaces across NC. He has also been a performer in the Los Angeles scene, primarily visiting Da Poetry Lounge during his time living there. Some choice moments in Matt G.’s poetry career have been opening a show for Rudy Fransisco, being called a badass by Buddy Wakefield, freestyling with Alysia Nicole Harris and Joshua Bennett, and beating G Yamazawa in a haiku slam.
Lou Jent
Lou Jent is a writer & disability justice advocate who lives, works & plays in Durham, NC. In their most recent stage work, Lou is committing acts of tarotism against the state, calling upon the collective spirit of their multiracial, trans, intersex and queer ancestry, as well as the strength & resilience of their current chosen family, to bring audiences Out-Tistic Joy: poems centered in their autistic crip expressive experience.
Alanna Catalina Heitman
Catalina is a poet and transfer student at UNC-Chapel Hill. An aspiring documentarian studying Latin American and Latinx Studies, with a focus on the politics of family separation specifically through children immigrating within the adoption industry. Catalina, 33, is from Medellin, Colombia and has been raised in the New York Tristate area with her adoptive parents and biological half-brother. Catalina has spent time working in sexual violence survivor care and is passionate about community understanding rape culture. Catalina lives with her partner of a decade in Durham with their two perfect cats.
Delphine Andrews
Delphine Andrews (she/her) is a disabled writer, advocate, and the force behind The Delta Oracle, a platform dedicated to storytelling, disability justice, and radical pleasure. Her work centers on dismantling ableism and celebrating disabled joy, sensuality, and creativity. Based in Durham, NC, Delphine blends lived experience with sharp insight and witchy reverence, using art as both mirror and megaphone.
River Hedgepeth
River Hedgepeth (he/they) is a queer, trans, autistic, and neurodivergent interdisciplinary artist and arts leader passionate about using art and performance as a tool for social change, education, archiving, and community building in the South. He is the leader and founder of The Gender Gallery; an interdisciplinary documentary performance project exploring the expansiveness of gender through community, creativity, and performance in the South. River feels the most like himself by moving water and see rivers as a creative partner in life and in art. @thegendergallery. thegendergallery@gmail.com
Nik Narain
Nik Narain is a writer, musician, comedian, and science communicator based in Durham by way of Illinois and Texas. He is excited to be sharing his music with you for this incredible event!
Blakely Blackford
Blakely is a writer and storyteller who grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. She worked as a photo editor and arts and culture (and food!) writer in New York before returning to the Carolinas for graduate school in 2010. As a certified ADA Accessibility Coordinator, she focuses on making arts and culture (and food!) venues, events and opportunities fully accessible to all.
Destiny "Desy" Whitaker
Destiny "Desy" Whitaker is a 23-year-old from East Carolina. She is a writer, multi-media artist, marketer, amateur historian, performer in theatre and music and active behind the scenes in those fields as well. Though published, this her first time performing a piece of poetry she has written.