Madison McCartha is a poet, critic, and multimedia artist. FREAKOPHONE WORLD (Inside the Castle, 2021) is their debut book of poetry and visual art. Their second book, THE CRYPTODRONE SEQUENCE, is forthcoming from Black Ocean. McCartha holds an MFA from the University of Notre Dame and is a PhD student at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Originally from Oxford, Ohio, Ava Hofmann is a trans writer currently living and working in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her full length collection, "[...]", was released in November 2021, with more books on the way from Inside the Castle and others. She also edits SPORAZINE, a magazine of experimental writing written by trans people.

Never Angeline North is an artist living in Olympia, WA who makes things in the form of writing, clothing, visual art, tattoos, crafts, books, music and games. She is author of the books Sea-Witch (Inside the Castle, 2020), Careful Mountain (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) and Sara or the Existence of Fire (Horse Less Press, 2014) and co-founder of the print-on-demand clothing line Undying Apparel.

Vi Khi Nao is the author of six poetry collections: Fish Carcass (Black Sun Lit, 2022), A Bell Curve Is A Pregnant Straight Line (11:11 Press, 2021), Human Tetris (11:11 Press, 2019) Sheep Machine (Black Sun Lit, 2018), Umbilical Hospital (Press 1913, 2017), The Old Philosopher (winner of the Nightboat Prize for 2014), & of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize), the novel, Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016). Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She was the Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute.

Anaïs Duplan is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of newly released book I NEED MUSIC (Action Books, 2021), a book of essays, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020), a full-length poetry collection, Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus (Monster House Press, 2017). He has taught poetry at Bennington College, Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, amongst others. As an independent curator, he has facilitated curatorial projects in Chicago, Boston, Santa Fe, and Reykjavík. He was a 2017-2019 joint Public Programs fellow at the Museum of Modern Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2016, he founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an artist residency program for artists of color, based at Iowa City’s artist-run organization Public Space One. 

Photo Credit: Ally Caple