Tureeda Mikell, @storymedicinewoman

Tureeda Mikell, to-read-ah, story medicine woman, award-winning poet, mental health advocate, lyricist, Qigong therapist, and U.C. BAWP Fellow. As a survivor of child abuse, her passion for youth’s voices to be heard caused her to publish over seventy at-risk student anthologies from five Bay Area counties via California Poets in the Schools. She has Zoomed or traveled nationally and internationally across five continents, from China, Europe, the UK, to Africa. Tureeda was featured in Octavia Butler’s 70th birthday, Black Panther’s 55th anniversary, Afrofuturism, and the de Young Museum’s Soul of a Nation. Her full-length publication, Synchronicity: The Oracle of Sun Medicine (Nomadic Press), released in February 2020, was nominated for the California Book Award. She is co-author and curator with Elena Serrano of EastSide Arts Alliance, of Patrice Lumumba: An Anthology of Writers on Black Liberation (Nomadic Press), released in January 2021.

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Nefertiti Asanti, @electricfl0wer

Nefertiti Asanti is a poet originally from the Bronx and recipient of fellowships from theWatering Hole, Lambda Literary, Anaphora Arts, Winter Tangerine, and PEN America. Nefertiti’s debut chapbook fist of wind won the inaugural Start a Riot! Chapbook Prize. Nefertiti’s work can be found at Foglifter, Apiary, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. Nefertiti serves as prose poetry editor of Stellium Literary Magazine.