Events

Alicia is the founder of the New York City Latina Writers Group and is the 2018 recipient of the BRIO Award (Bronx Recognizes its Own) for fiction. She is a Cave Canem and VONA Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation alum. In 2011, she published her memoir, Finding Your Force: A Journey to Love and her one-woman show I WAS BORN was part of the ONE Festival in New York in 2010. In 2008 Anabel joined Creador Pictures, as the Writer & Producer for the documentary series Afrolatinos The Untaught Story. She is currently working on a historical fiction memoir where she merges prose, poetry and witchcraft, and is simultaneously working on “I.D.G.A.F: One Hundred Years of Rage”, a memoir.  These days she can be found practicing brujería, reading tarot and facilitating writing workshops for senior citizens in the Bronx and Manhattan. She attended New York University and lives with her partner in the Bronx, New York.

Dr. Cobb earned a PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at University of Pennsylvania, as well as a graduate certificate in Africana Studies. Prior to her appointment at Duke, Cobb spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Africana Research Center, Pennsylvania State University and four years on the faculty at Northwestern University. She is a recipient of the American Fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW). Jasmine Nichole Cobb is the Bacca Foundation Associate Professor of African & African American Studies and of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University. She is the author of Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century (NYUP 2015) and New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair After Emancipation (forthcoming). She has written essays for MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, American Literary History and Public Culture and she is the editor for African American Literature in Transition, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, forthcoming).

Dr. Contreras-Byrd is a New Jersey state licensed psychologist with over 35 years of clinical practice. She specializes in meeting the psychological, and spiritual needs of all women, and both men and women of color. Dr. Contreras-Byrd’s general areas of expertise involve issues of class, gender, ethnicity and faith; while her clinical areas of expertise are Major Depression and Anxiety Disorders. She has worked as a school psychologist in urban and suburban districts; a clinical psychologist for juvenile offenders, homeless men, and adult substance abusers. Dr. Contreras-Byrd has directed programs for bilingual preschoolers and the intellectually gifted. She has been a professor of Psychology, Christian and Pastoral Counseling, Black Studies, and Multicultural Counseling.

Nickolas Gaines did his undergraduate work in American Multicultural Studies with an emphasis in African American Humanities at Minnesota State University Moorhead. His graduate work in Divinity and Chaplaincy at Moody Theological Seminary and Tennessee Temple University. He later went to study Veteran’s Behavioral Health at Uniformed Health Services University and did his Clinical Pastoral Education at Loyola University in Chicago. Nickolas also graduated in the top of his class from the United States Army Chaplain School and Center.

Dr. Lorick-Wilmot is a writer, sociologist, public scholar and digital creator. She is the 2020 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Award Recipient from the American Studies Association's Committee on Gender and Sexuality.

Dr. Hobson is Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York, where she currently serves as Department Chair. She is the author of Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2005, 2nd ed. 2018) and Body as Evidence: Mediating Race, Globalizing Gender (SUNY Press, 2012).