Role: Moderator/Emcee

Chimene Suleyman is a writer from London. She edited The Good Immigrant USA and was a contributing author to the original award-winning best-selling The Good Immigrant. She has spoken on race and immigration politics for the Guardian, The Independent, IBTimes, Debrief, Sky News, BBC Newsnight, and NPR, to name a few. Her poetry collection Outside Looking On was included in a Guardian’s Best Book of 2014 list. She currently lives in New York.

Douglas Jackson lives and writes in Roanoke, Virginia. For the past twelve years at the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), he’s provided strategic support to communities as they create new possibilities around unique cultural, outdoor, and arts assets. He is the Arts and Culture Coordinator in the City of Roanoke. Douglas served as an officer in the US Navy and holds degrees in economics (Duke); urban and regional planning (UC Irvine); and creative writing (Hollins). A book lover, he’s currently leading a community effort to explore equity and engagement at the intersection of books and place through BOOK CITY * Roanoke—a blog, podcast, convening point, and strategic community partner.

Joseph O. Legaspi is the author of the poetry collections Threshold and Imago, both from CavanKerry Press; and three chapbooks: Postcards (Ghost Bird Press), Aviary, Bestiary (Organic Weapon Arts), and Subways (Thrush Press). His works have appeared in POETRY, New England Review, World Literature Today, Best of the Net, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. He cofounded Kundiman, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature. He lives with his husband in Queens, NY.

Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of Haint (Gival Press, 2016), winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She is a Cave Canem fellow and a member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective. She has received fellowships to attend the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Squaw Valley Community of Writers Workshop and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is the recipient of a Meret grant from the Freya Project and a 2019 Sustainable Arts Grant. Her work can be read online and in many journals, including: Academy of American Poets, Auburn Avenue, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Gargoyle, Harvard Review, Kestrel, Little Patuxent Review, Natural Bridge, North American Review, MiPOesias, Mom Egg Review, Pacifica Literary Review, Poet Lore, Poetry Ireland Review, and Tin House. She is the Poetry Coordinator for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. and lives in Maryland with her husband, poet Hayes Davis, and their two children.

Chuck Klosterman is the New York Times bestselling author of Downtown Owl; Chuck Klosterman IV; Killing Yourself to Live; Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; and Fargo Rock City, winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. He is a featured columnist for Esquire, a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and has also written for Spin, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Believer, and ESPN. In 2008, he was the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig’s Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany. Klosterman lives in New York.

Rob Sheffield has been a music journalist for more than twenty years. He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where he writes about music, TV, and pop culture, and regularly appears on MTV and VH1. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Love Is a Mix Tape, which has been translated into French, German, Italian, Swedish, Japanese, Russian, and other languages he cannot read. He lives in Brooklyn, New York

Jonathan Lethem is the author of seven novels. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Lethem has also published his stories and essays in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and the New York Times, among others. His most recent novel is Chronic City.