Nakeysha Roberts Washington

Nakeysha Roberts Washington is an educator, arts curator, and curriculum strategist who bridges creative expression, education, and social justice. As Founder and Creative Director of Genre: Urban Arts (GUA), she has built an internationally recognized platform supporting more than 3,200 artists, educators, and creatives through publishing, exhibitions, and curriculum innovation.

Her work with the ACLU of Wisconsin focuses on equity-driven literacy, social justice education, and culturally responsive instruction. Washington also collaborates with HarperCollins-Amistad, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee to develop multidisciplinary programs that integrate literature, the arts, and advocacy into education.

Inspired by the anthropological and creative work of Zora Neale Hurston, Anthropologist (2023) explores the act of documentation and archiving. The poem illuminates my purpose for writing and reveals the ancestral truths that shape my Black American existence as part of the African Diaspora. Looking over eons of histories inscribed in my mitochondria—through the eyes of a poet, anthropologist, archivist, storyteller, and griot—my writing and creative work serve as both an altar for my ancestors and undeniable proof of existence for my kinfolx.

Tasneem Jassar

Tasneem Jassar is a Palestinian writer and poet. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a Creative Writing bachelor’s degree and a minor in Women and Gender studies. Jassar was also Woodland Pattern’s Milwaukee Emerging Poet fellow. She hopes that the words she writes and shares, inspire others and give them a deeper insight into themselves and the world they live in. Her poetry often includes themes of motherhood, sisterhood, and Palestinian storytelling.

Kim Khaira

Kim Khaira is an artist and community worker from Malaysia who grew up with indigenous Dayak-Bidayuh/Iban and Indian-Punjabi parentage. She has a bachelor's degree in Political Science and a minor in English Literature. In her country of origin, she worked closely with Burmese and Rohingya leaders, including teaching art at a refugee learning center, supporting a refugee women-led kindergarten, and exploring the intersection of play and solidarity as an art practice. Now based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she is on a lifelong journey to create "home making" via various artforms, including natural dyeing and batiking--a process she learnt from the Lynden Sculpture Garden's artist-in-residence, Arianne King Comer. In poetry, she draws inspiration from Basho, Chairil Anwar, Hafez and her childhood practice of exchanging poetry writing with her late father, DSK. 

CJ Scuton

My creative practice blends poetry, music, and performance/installation art, working in media that are often consumed in isolation (reading silently, listening through headphones, etc.) and making the social interaction of artist-viewer-community public and conspicuous. My recent work is particularly attentive to social conversations of queerness, trans identity, and gendered violence. I use poetry and performance to give voice to the individuality of lived experience and invite audiences into the empathic exercise of listening, while also asking them to question how we are or can be responsible for the wellbeing of those we're in community with.

Rachel Sanders

If I'm not looking at what's around me, I won't know what to draw.

Brenda Cárdenas

Wisconsin Poet Laureate (2025-2026) and Milwaukee Poet Laureate (2010), Brenda Cárdenas was born and raised in Milwaukee and has also lived elsewhere in Wisconin (Beaver Dam, Fond du Lac, Appleton, and Menasha). She obtained her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, a certification to teach English and Spanish at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Michigan.

She has authored Trace (Red Hen Press), winner of the 2023 Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry and silver winner of Foreword Review’s Indie Poetry Prize; Boomerang (Bilingual Press); and three chapbooks. She also co-edited the anthologies Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance and Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest. Her poems have been published in anthologies and literary magazines such as Poetry, American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and the Library of America’s Latino Poetry anthology among many others.

Cárdenas has enjoyed collaborating with musicians, composers, visual artists, and choreographers. In 2024, her poem “Para los Tin-Tun-Teros,” set to choral music by Daniel Afonso, was performed by the National Concert Choir at Carnegie Hall. She is Professor Emerita of English at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she taught Creative Writing and U.S. Latine/x Literatures, and serves on the Board of Directors of Woodland Pattern, a poet- and artist-run nonprofit book center, gallery, and performance space in Milwaukee.

Joshua Balicki

Joshua Balicki is a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. He received an MFA in poetry from the Michener Center for Writers and is currently pursuing an MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He's taught for the Iowa First Nations Program, Iowa Young Writers' Studio, Austin Bat Cave, and Austin Library Foundation. He’s from Waukesha, Wisconsin.