Cecily Nicholson volunteers with community impacted by carcerality and food insecurity. She is the author of five books of poetry and past recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award. Her most recent work, Crowd Source, follows the diurnal movement of crows in metro Vancouver. She is an assistant professor in the School of Creative Writing at UBC and the current Holloway Lecturer in the Practice of Poetry.

Leila Weefur (He/They/She) is an artist, writer, and curator based in Oakland, CA. Through film and architecture, they examine the performative elements connected to systems of belonging, present in Black, queer, gender-variant embodiment. Their research, across disciplines, explores religion, Black colloquial language, Transnational Blackness, and practices of collectivity.  

Weefur’s writing has been published in SEEN by BlackStar Productions, Sming Sming Books, Baest Journal, and more. Weefur has worked with local and national institutions including BlackStar Productions, Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, CCA’s Wattis Institute, McEvoy Foundation, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Museum of the African Diaspora, and The Kitchen.

Weefur is a lecturer at Stanford University and a member of The Black Aesthetic.

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