As a Black woman with Cerebral Palsy, Imani Barbarin uses her unique perspective in her writing on social media, her blog, a memoir and even fiction. Ms. Barbarin has a degree in Creative Writing from Eastern University and a Master's degree in Global Communications from the American University in Paris.
Barbarin, I. (2016). About. Crutches and Spice. https://crutchesandspice.com/about/
https://crutchesandspice.com/about/
https://thecurvyfashionista.com/rebdolls-imani-barbarin-collaboration/
https://imanibarbarin.com/
"W. Kamau Bell is a stand-up comedian and the host and executive producer of the Emmy Award winning CNN docu-series United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell. His latest stand-up comedy special, Private School Negro, is available on Netflix. Kamau wrote a book with the easy-to-remember title, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6' 4", African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama's Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian. He’s the ACLU Celebrity Ambassador for Racial Justice and serves on the advisory boards of Hollaback! and Donors Choose."
Bell, W.K. (2018). About. W. Kamau Bell. http://www.wkamaubell.com/
http://www.wkamaubell.com/about
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/30/opinions/united-shades-thank-you-for-your-service-kamau-bell/index.html
https://time.com/6140051/we-need-to-talk-about-cosby-showtime/
"Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts two weekly podcasts, The Chauncey DeVega Show and The Truth Report. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook."
DeVega, C. (2022). Chauncey DeVega. Salon. https://www.salon.com/writer/chauncey_de_vega
https://www.salon.com/writer/chauncey_de_vega
http://www.chaunceydevega.com/
https://thechaunceydevegashow.libsyn.com/about
"Winner of the Emmy, BAFTA and Peabody Awards, Academy award nominee Ava DuVernay is a writer, director, producer and film distributor. Her directorial work includes the historical drama SELMA, the criminal justice documentary 13TH and Disney’s A WRINKLE IN TIME, which made her the highest grossing black woman director in American box office history. Based on the infamous case of The Central Park Five, her next project is entitled WHEN THEY SEE US and will be released worldwide on Netflix in May 2019. Currently, she is overseeing production on her critically-acclaimed TV series QUEEN SUGAR, her new CBS limited series THE RED LINE and her upcoming OWN series CHERISH THE DAY. Winner of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival's Best Director Prize for her micro-budget film MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, DuVernay amplifies the work of people of color and women of all kinds through her non-profit film collective ARRAY, named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies. DuVernay sits on the advisory board of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and chairs the Prada Diversity Council. She is based in Los Angeles, California."
DuVernay, A. (2022). About. Ava DuVernay. http://www.avaduvernay.com/about
http://www.avaduvernay.com/about
https://time.com/optimists-2019/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/ava-duvernay-visionary-filmmaking-reshaping-hollywood-180967217/#Wvk0Xhq4kW7m1COb.01
"Mona Eltahawy is the author of the newsletter, Feminist Giant, and the books Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution and The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls. Ms. Eltahawy is also a regular contributor to the New York Times opinion pages with regular appearances on national news networks and radio programs. "During the 18-day revolution that toppled Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, she appeared on most major media outlets, leading the feminist website Jezebel to describe her as "The Woman Explaining Egypt to the West." In November 2011, Egyptian riot police beat her, breaking her left arm and right hand, and sexually assaulted her and she was detained for 12 hours by the Interior Ministry and Military Intelligence. Newsweek magazine named Ms Eltahawy one of its "150 Fearless Women of 2012", Time magazine featured her along with other activists from around the world as its People of the Year and Arabian Business magazine named her one of the 100 Most Powerful Arab Women. Before she moved to the U.S. in 2000, Ms Eltahawy was a news reporter in the Middle East for many years, including almost six years as a Reuters correspondent and she reported for various media from Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia and China."
"Mona [sic] was born on Aug. 1, 1967 in Port Said, Egypt and has lived in the U.K, Saudi Arabia and Israel. She calls herself a proud liberal Muslim. In 2005, she was named a Muslim Leader of Tomorrow by the American Society for Muslim Advancement and she is a member of the Communications Advisory Group for Musawah, the global movement for justice and equality in the Muslim family."
Kale, S. (2021, April 23). Mona Eltahawy: ‘Feminism is not a T-shirt or a 9 to 5 job. It’s my existence.’ The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/23/mona-eltahawy-feminism-is-not-a-t-shirt-the-seven-necessary-sins-for-women-and-girls
http://www.monaeltahawy.com/
https://www.feministgiant.com/about?utm_source=menu-dropdown
"Nikole Hannah-Jones is a domestic correspondent for The New York Times Magazine focusing on racial injustice. In 2020, she won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her essay in The 1619 Project, which traces the central role black Americans have played in the nation, including its vast material success and democracy itself.
Nikole has written on federal failures to enforce the Fair Housing Act, the resegregation of American schools and policing in America. Her extensive reporting in both print and radio on the ways segregation in housing and schools is maintained through official action and policy has earned the National Magazine Award, a Peabody and a Polk Award.
The 1619 Project won a News Leaders Association Award and received a special honor from the George Polk Awards. Nikole is also a finalist for a Scripps Howard Award in opinion and a National Magazine Award.
Ms. Hannah-Jones earned her bachelor's in history and African-American studies from the University of Notre Dame and her master's in journalism and mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, housed at UNC Chapel Hill.
Ms. Hannah-Jones lives in Brooklyn with her husband and very sassy daughter."
Hannah-Jones, N. Nikole Hannah-Jones. (2022). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/by/nikole-hannah-jones
https://nikolehannahjones.com/
https://www.nytimes.com/column/1619-project
"Michael Harriot is the Senior Writer at TheRoot.com where he covers the intersection of race, politics, and culture. Also, animal attacks. (But mostly the politics and race stuff.) His work has appeared in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, NBC, BET, and on his mother’s refrigerator. He is a frequent political commentator on MSNBC and CNN and earned the National Association of Black Journalists Award for digital commentary as well as TV news writing.
Known for his acerbic wit, biting commentary, and investigative reporting, Harriot’s work has influenced presidential politics and pop culture. He originated the phrase “invited to the cookout” and his social media posts contextualizing history are shared by millions. He served as the sole writer for BET's Midterm Election Special as well as "Young, Gifted and Broke," an examination of the student debt crisis. Although he has jokingly billed himself as a “wypipologist” for years, Michael Eric Dyson hails him as "one of the funniest men out there taking no prisoners on the subject of white supremacy." As a performance poet, Michael has traveled across the country performing his unique blend of comedic verse.
Michael earned degrees in mass communications and history from Auburn University and earned a master's degree in macroeconomics and international business from Florida State University. He also won the 2019 NABJ award for digital commentary[.]"
Harriot, M. (2022). About. Michael Harriot. https://www.michaelharriot.com/about
https://www.michaelharriot.com/
http://www.birminghamtimes.com/2016/10/michael-harriot-black-stories-arent-always-about-the-first-black-president-2/
Lecia Michelle is a veteran academic librarian and an "author of the upcoming book, The White Allies Handbook: 4 Weeks to Join the Racial Justice Fight for Black Women. Lecia is also the founder and leader of the anti-racism group Real Talk: WOC and Allies for Racial Justice and Anti-Oppression and is committed to the fight for Black women."
Michelle, L. (2022). Who am I? Lecia Michelle. https://www.leciamichelle.com/
https://medium.com/@LeciaMichelle
https://www.leciamichelle.com/selected-writings
"Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and a faculty associate with the Programs in Law and Public Affairs, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Jazz Studies. She is the author of 6 books, including Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, which received the Pen Bograd-Weld Award for Biography, The Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award for outstanding work in literary scholarship, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction and the Shilts-Grahn Award for nonfiction from the Publishing Triangle. Looking for Lorraine was also named a 2018 notable book by the New York Times, and a honor book by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It was a finalist for the African American Intellectual History Society Paul Murray Book Prize. Her book May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem, winner of the 2019 American Studies Association John Hope Franklin Book Award for the best book in American Studies, the Hurston Wright Award for Nonfiction, and finalist for an NAACP Image Award in Nonfiction. Her most recent book is: Breathe: A Letter to My Sons (Beacon Press, 2019) which was a finalist for the 2020 Chautauqua Prize and a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Excellence in Nonfiction.
Perry is a scholar of law, literary and cultural studies, and an author of creative nonfiction. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center and a BA from Yale College in Literature and American Studies. Her writing and scholarship primarily focuses on the history of Black thought, art, and imagination crafted in response to, and resistance against, the social, political and legal realities of domination in the West. She seeks to understand the processes of retrenchment after moments of social progress, and how freedom dreams are nevertheless sustained. Her book: Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation (Duke University Press 2018) is a work of critical theory that contends with the formation of modern patriarchy at the dawn of capitalism, the transatlantic slave trade, and the age of conquest, and traces it through to the contemporary hypermedia neoliberal age. Her book More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States (NYU Press, 2011) is an examination of contemporary practices of racial inequality that are sustained and extended through a broad matrix of cultural habits despite formal declarations of racial equality."
Perry, I. (2022). Imani Perry. Department of African American Studies Princeton University. https://aas.princeton.edu/people/imani-perry
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/02/american-south-books-du-bois-baldwin/621508/
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/25/1075316109/imani-perry-south-to-america
https://aas.princeton.edu/people/imani-perry
"Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen books for young people, including Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks, All American Boys, Long Way Down, and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, and the upcoming Stuntboy, in the Meantime. The recipient of a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, an NAACP Image Award, and multiple Coretta Scott King honors, Reynolds is also the current National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. He lives in Washington, DC.
He is an American author who writes novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade audiences, including Ghost, a National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature.
Born in Washington, DC and raised in neighboring Oxon Hill, Maryland, Reynolds found inspiration in rap to begin writing poetry at nine years old. He focused on poetry for approximately the next two decades, only reading a novel cover to cover for the first time at age 17 and publishing several poetry collections before he published his own first novel, When I Was The Greatest, in 2014. He won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent for this first work of prose and seven more novels followed in the next four years, including Ghost (2016) and two more books in what became his New York Times best-selling Track series, Patina (2017) and Sunny (2018); As Brave As You (2016), winner of the 2016 Kirkus Prize, the 2017 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Youth/Teen, and the 2017 Schneider Family Book Award; and a Marvel Comics novel called Miles Morales: Spider-Man (2017).
Reynolds returned to poetry with Long Way Down (2017), a novel in verse which was named a Newbery Honor book, a Printz Honor Book, and best young adult work by the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Awards."
Reynolds, J. (2022). Writin' and whatnot. Jason Reynolds. https://www.jasonwritesbooks.com/
https://www.jasonwritesbooks.com/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/books/review/jason-reynolds-by-the-book-interview.html
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/04/03/interview-jason-reynolds
https://guides.loc.gov/jason-reynolds/about
Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr. (@SaiduTTJ) is a poet, writer, and producer born in Freetown Sierra Leone. He's the host of Resistance , a show about people refusing to accept things as they are. Saidu is currently at Gimlet Media.
Ugwu, R. (2021, February 25). Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr. and the voices of ‘Resistance.’ New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/arts/saidu-tejan-thomas-jr-resistance.html
https://gimletmedia.com/shows/resistance
https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2021/04/24/990170722/fresh-air-for-april-24-2021-podcaster-saidu-tejan-thomas-jr-actor-courtney-b-van
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/arts/saidu-tejan-thomas-jr-resistance.html
Reggie Ugwu is a pop culture reporter for the New York Times and a former reporter for Buzzfeed News. "He is known both for memorable profiles of artists in need of a second look like Carly Rae Jepsen, and inventive features about burgeoning trends and modern peculiarities. His reconsideration of early YouTube’s most notorious punching bag, Rebecca Black; his deconstruction of what Selena Gomez and Halsey do with their vowels; and his definitive portrait of the anonymous laborers responsible for 20 percent of all plays on music streaming services captivated serious and casual readers alike. He brings new insights to subjects you thought you knew, and uncovers currents influencing pop culture you never knew existed. Reggie consistently reimagined the contours of the beat, stretching them to encompass racial purists in the alt-right in search of their own musical genre, and country singers whose political stoicism has been tested by Donald Trump. A profile of the creative director of Adidas revealed how the legacy brand rehabilitated itself in the athleisure era. And a personal essay about the house his family built in Enugu, Nigeria, will be anthologized in “The Best American Travel Writing 2017.” Reggie is a proud Houstonian and Longhorn with a degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. Before he joined BuzzFeed in 2014, he was a staff writer for Billboard magazine, and began his career as a Time Inc. editorial intern and researcher for Frontline.”
Ugwu, R. (2017, August 8). Reggie Ugwu named pop culture reporter. New York Times. https://www.nytco.com/press/reggie-ugwu-named-pop-culture-reporter/
https://www.nytimes.com/by/reggie-ugwu
https://redef.com/author/5362cdaa3e444ea6353b1178
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/reggieugwu
