Katie Blount became director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History February 1, 2015. Blount began her career at MDAH in 1994 in the public information section. She went on to serve as deputy director for communication, overseeing the department’s strategic planning process and working with the team that planned the new Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, which opened in 2017 in celebration of the state bicentennial.

Blount earned her B.A. from the University of Michigan in English and history and her M.A. in southern studies from the University of Mississippi. She lives in Jackson with her husband and their two children.

Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown’s first book, Please (2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. He is also the author of the collection The Tradition (2019), which was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award and the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His poems have appeared in Buzzfeed, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Time, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry anthologies. He is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta.

Historian, author, curator, and educator, Lonnie G. Bunch, III is the 14^th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum, education and research complex, who was appointed in June 2019.

Prior to assuming this position, Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). In this position he provided strategic leadership in areas of scholarship, collections, fundraising and academic and cultural partnerships.

As a public historian, a scholar who brings history to the people, Bunch has spent nearly 30 years in the museum field and is one of the nation’s leading figures in the historical and museum community.

Prior to his July 2005 appointment as director of NMAAHC, Bunch served as the president of the Chicago Historical Society, one of the nation’s oldest museums of history.

Bunch has held several positions at the Smithsonian, and spent a number of years at both the National Museum of American History and the National Air and Space Museum.

A prolific and widely published author, Bunch has written on topics ranging from slavery, the black military experience, the American presidency, and all black towns in the American west to diversity in museum management and the impact of funding and politics on American museums.

In service to the historical and cultural community, Bunch has served on the advisory boards of several professional organizations. Among his many awards, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Commission for the Preservation of the White House in 2002 and reappointed by President Barack Obama in 2009.

Bunch has received honorary doctorates from an array of Universities including: Harvard University, Princeton University, Brown University, Dominican University, Roosevelt University, Rutgers University, Northwestern University, and Georgetown University.

Born in the Newark, N.J. area, Bunch has held numerous teaching positions across the country including American University; the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth; and The George Washington University. He received undergraduate and graduate degrees from American University in African American and American history.

He is married to Maria Marable Bunch, a museum educator. They have two daughters, Sarah and Katie.

Adam Clay is the author of To Make Room for the Sea (Milkweed Editions, 2020), Stranger (Milkweed Editions, 2016), A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World (Milkweed Editions, 2012), and The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006). A fifth book of poems, Circle Back, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Denver Quarterly, Tin House, Bennington Review, Georgia Review, Boston Review, jubilat, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Recently he received a Literary Arts Fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission. An editor of Mississippi Review and a Contributing Editor for Kenyon Review, he directs the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Matt de la Peña is the New York Times Bestselling, Newbery Medal-winning author of seven young adult novels (including Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here, and Superman: Dawnbreaker) and six picture books (including Milo Imagines the World and Last Stop on Market Street). In 2016 he was awarded the NCTE Intellectual Freedom Award. Matt received his MFA in creative writing from San Diego State University and his BA from the University of the Pacific where he attended school on a full basketball scholarship. In 2019 Matt was given an honorary doctorate from UOP. de la Peña currently lives in Southern California. He teaches creative writing and visits schools and colleges throughout the country.

James Dickson teaches English and Creative Writing at Germantown High School, just outside of Jackson, MS. An MFA graduate from the Bennington Writing Seminars, he is the recipient of Mississippi Arts Commission fellowships, was named High School Literary Magazine Advisor of the Year by the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association, and was invited to speak at the National Educators Association 50th anniversary celebration "The Promise of Public Education." His poems, book reviews, and essays appear in The Common, Ruminate, Hospital Drive, The Louisiana Review, Spillway, Slant, Poetry Quarterly, McSweeney's, Sylvia, and other publications. He lives in Jackson with his wife, their son, and a small menagerie of animals.

Saddiq Dzukogi's poetry collection Your Crib, My Qibla (University of Nebraska Press, 2021) was named one of the 29 best poetry collections by Oprah Daily. His chapbook Inside the Flower Room was selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the APBF New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Series. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Cincinnati Review, Poetry London, Guernica, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Society of America, Poetry Wales, and other literary journals and magazines. He was a finalist for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize and a recipient of fellowships and grants from the Nebraska Arts Council, Pen America, the Obsidian Foundation, Ebedi International Writers' Residency, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Jennifer Egan’s 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, has been awarded the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Egan was born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco. She is also the author of The Invisible Circus, a novel which became a feature film starring Cameron Diaz in 2001, Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2001, Emerald City and Other Stories, The Keep, and A Visit From the Goon Squad, which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the LA Times Book Prize. Her latest novel is, The Candy House, a sibling to A Visit From the Goon Squad.

Egan’s short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, Granta, McSweeney’s and other magazines. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Also a journalist, she has written frequently in the New York Times Magazine. Her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award, and “The Bipolar Kid” received a 2009 NAMI Outstanding Media Award for Science and Health Reporting from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She recently completed a term as President of PEN America.

Beth Ann Fennelly, a 2020 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, is the former poet laureate of Mississippi and teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi. She’s won grants and awards from the N.E.A., the United States Artists, a Pushcart, and a Fulbright to Brazil. Fennelly has published three books of poetry and three of prose, most recently, Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, which was a Goodreaders Favorite and an Atlanta Journal Constitution Best Book. She lives with her husband, Tom Franklin, and their three children In Oxford, MS. www.bethannfennelly.com

First elected to Congress in 2009, Gregg served five terms representing Mississippi’s 3^rd Congressional District. During his time in Congress, he served as a member of the influential House Committee on Energy and Commerce which has jurisdiction over a broad swath of the economy including healthcare, energy, transportation, and telecommunications. On the Energy and Commerce Committee, Gregg served as Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee and Vice Chairman of the Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection subcommittee. In addition, Gregg was selected by Speaker Paul Ryan to serve as the Chairman of the Committee on House Administration for the 115^th Congress where he was instrumental in reforming the ways that Congress handles sexual harassment allegations. He was also the Chairman of the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress and served two terms on the Committee on Ethics.

Prior to being elected to Congress, Gregg practiced law for twenty-seven years, including serving as the prosecuting attorney for the cities of Brandon and Richland, Mississippi. He served on the Mississippi Oil and Gas Board, remained active in his community as a member of both the Pearl and Rankin County Chambers of Commerce, and served as the board attorney for the Mississippi Baptist Children’s Village.

Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, Kiese Laymon, Ottilie Schillig Professor in English and Creative Writing and the University of Mississippi, is the author of the novel Long Division, the memoir Heavy, and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America.

Candice Millard is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The River of Doubt and Destiny of the Republic. Her book Hero of the Empire was named Amazon's number one history book of 2016. She lives in Kansas City with her husband and three children.

Joshua Nguyen is the author of Come Clean (University of Wisconsin Press), winner of the 2021 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, and the chapbook, "American Lục Bát for My Mother" (Bull City Press, 2021). He is a Vietnamese-American writer, a collegiate national poetry slam champion (CUPSI), and a native Houstonian. He has received fellowships from Kundiman, Tin House, Sundress Academy For The Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. He has been published in Wildness, The Texas Review, Auburn Avenue, and elsewhere. He has also been featured on both the "VS" podcast and "The Slowdown". He is the Wit Tea co-editor for The Offing Mag, the Kundiman South co-chair, a bubble tea connoisseur, and loves a good pun. He is a PhD student at The University of Mississippi, where he also received his MFA.

Catherine Pierce is the author of four books of poems: Danger Days (2020), The Tornado Is the World (2016), The Girls of Peculiar (2012), and Famous Last Words (2008), winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Each of her last three books received the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Prize. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize winner and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mississippi Arts Commission. Pierce’s work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, American Poetry Review, The Nation, The Southern Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. She is professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State University.

Robert St. John is the author of eleven books and owns the Crescent City Grill, Mahogany Bar, Tabella, Ed's Burger Joint, The Midtowner, and El Rayo Tex-Mex in Hattiesburg Mississippi. For twenty years, St. John has written a weekly syndicated newspaper column and has been named Mississippi's top chef numerous years. St. John is also the creator, producer, and co-host of the PBS series Palate to Palette. In 2009, he founded Extra Table, a nonprofit organization providing healthy food to soup kitchens and pantries. He is a founding member of the Independent Restaurant Coalition and was an integral part of a small group that recently secured $28.6 billion in grants to aid independent restaurants affected by the COVID crisis. He and his wife, Jill, have two children, Holleman and Harrison.

Anthony Thaxton has won awards as a painter, an educator, and a television producer and filmmaker. He produced the acclaimed documentary Walter Anderson: The Extraordinary Life and Art of The Islander with Robert St John and wrote/designed the companion book. Anthony's vibrant paintings have been featured on television and in numerous books and magazines. Anthony filmed/directed/edited Palate to Palette with Robert St. John and Wyatt Waters, and his photos and videography have been featured on Good Morning America, Fox and Friends, and CNN.com. He was the 2019 Mississippi College Distinguished Art Alumnus of the Year. Anthony lives in Raymond, Mississippi, where he runs Thaxton Studios with his wife and children. He is currently working on a film on the life of Eudora Welty.

Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer, poet, and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, four children’s books, and volumes of essays and poetry. For her seminal work The Color Purple, Ms. Walker won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983.

Walker has written many bestsellers, including The Temple of My Familiar; By the Light of My Father’s Smith; Possessing the Secret of Joy; and We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness. In collaboration with the British-Indian filmmaker Pratibha Parmar, she published Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Binding of Women, which led to a documentary film of the same name.

Her work has been translated into more than two dozen languages, and her books have sold more than fifteen million copies. In 2006, Ms. Walker became one of the inaugural inductees of the California Hall of Fame, and in 2007, her archives were opened to the public at Emory University in her birth state of Georgia. Ms. Walker was awarded the Mahmoud Darwish Literary Prize for Fiction in 2016.

As an activist and social visionary, Walker believes that learning to extend the range of our compassion is activity and work available to all—and she has a proven record as a staunch defender of the rights of all living beings. Her latest book, Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, edited by Valerie Boyd, will be released in April.