Bruce Morrow has over 20 years of experience in fundraising and nonprofit management. He is the Director of Foundation & Government Grants at The Trevor Project and former Senior Director of Institutional Giving at GLAAD. He is a former fiction editor at Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters and co-editor of “Shade: An Anthology of Short Fiction by Gay Men of African Descent.” His writing has appeared in the New York Times, “Speak My Name: Black Men on Masculinity and thAmerican Dream,” “Ancestral House: The Black Short Story in the Americas and Europe,” and “Imagining America: Stories from the Promised Land: A Multicultural Anthology of American Fiction.” He has a B.S. in Biology from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and a MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. In 2007, he was a Revson Fellow for Mid-Career Civic Leaders at Columbia University.

Veteran nonprofit leader with executive director positions at Writers & Books (2019-2025) and Cave Canem Foundation (2006-2016); Director of Poetry & Marketing, Hill-Stead Museum, CT (2000-2006). Consultant to literary arts organizations, 2017 – present: Adirondack Writing Center, Belladonna, Bloomsday Literary, Bright Hill Press, Geneseo Migrant Center, Hudson Valley Writing Center, Imani House, In This Moment Chapbooks, Just Buffalo Literary Center, Kundiman, Kweli, Nightboat Books, Tupelo Press, Writers & Books. As LitNYS Mentor, designed and implemented a two-phase training: Fundamentals of Arts Management for Small & Emerging Literary Arts Nonprofits. Published poet, twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Ashley Lekwauwa is the founder and principal consultant of Ọrụ Consulting, a boutique consultancy specializing in people operations and organizational effectiveness for nonprofits. Through her work with literary arts and cultural organizations, she provides hands-on support across HR operations, payroll and benefits administration, recruitment, and staff onboarding. Ashley helps organizations build and strengthen the people systems and processes that allow their mission-driven work to thrive. She is available to offer mentorship in the areas of human resources, staffing, and organizational operations.

M. M. De Voe founded the national nonprofit Pen Parentis with its tagline “parenting done, write” in 2013. A Columbia MFA graduate and Writing Fellow, she now serves as Executive Director, helping writers with kids stay on creative track. She has interviewed more than 400 writers during the monthly Pen Parentis Literary Salons. In her creative life, De Voe has published short stories, poetry, articles, essays, and BOOK & BABY a nonfiction guide with wisdom she learned from other author-parents came out from Brooklyn Writers Press in 2021. She also co-wrote the book of a sci-fi musical, R/Evolution, produced off-Broadway in 2015. A FLASH OF DARKNESS: Collected Stories of M. M. De Voe is her first full-length fiction book (Borda Books 2023). Five Pushcart nominations, two Editor’s Prizes, a Shirley Jackson Award, a Hugo nomination, two distinguished alumna awards, two children, and several international writing conferences later, De Voe continues to seek balance between family and a successful writing career. Her debut novel, THE BOY WHO LOVED TREES, an LGBT coming of age story set in Soviet occupied Lithuania is forthcoming in October 2026. mmdevoe.com

Ruth Dickey is the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation and has spent 30 years working at the intersection of community building, writing, and art. Prior to the National Book Foundation, Ruth led Seattle Arts & Lectures, where she was a 2017 fellow with the National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Program, and served as a judge in Fiction for the 2019 National Book Awards. The recipient of a Mayor’s Arts Award from Washington DC, Ruth began her career as a teaching artist, leading poetry workshops in soup kitchens, drop in centers, and the DC Public Schools. Ruth is the author of Mud blooms (Harbor Mountain Press, 2019), a 2017 finalist for the National Poetry Series, and Our hollowness sings (Unicorn Press, 2024). Ruth holds an MFA in Poetry from UNC-Greensboro, and an MA in Latin American Studies and BS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.

Andrea Louie is Executive Director & COO of the Serica Initiative, which amplifies the impact of AAPIs through storytelling, empowering, and convening. Most recently, Andrea was in public service, as Assistant Commissioner, Program Services, at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and as Secretary in the Commissioner’s office at the Nassau County Department of Health. Prior to her work in government, she served as Executive Director of the Asian American Arts Alliance, leading arts advocacy and cultural equity for New York City’s diverse, pan-Asian, multidisciplinary cultural community. She is the author of a novel, Moon Cakes (Ballantine Books) and coeditor of an anthology, Topography of War: Asian American Essays (The Asian American Writers’ Workshop). She was appointed by the governor to serve on the New York State Council on the Arts and the NYS Commission on National and Community Service. Andrea serves on the board of Bellevue Literary Press, and previously a board member for SMU DataArts, Poets & Writers, and New Yorkers for Culture & Arts.

Nathalie Costa Thill has been the Executive Director of the Adirondack Center for Writing for over a quarter-century, serving the entire six-million-acre Adirondack Park with innovative programs in the Literary Arts. She launched ACW’s most beloved programs including its high school writing retreat, prison writing program, Howl Story Slam series, Raining Poetry and Poem Village programs, the Kickass Writers Festival, and the Anne LaBastille Memorial Writers Residency. She has partnered with both arts and non-arts organizations, forming partnerships with institutions as varied as public radio stations, prisons, nature centers, and the state police. As a storyteller, Nathalie has performed on stages all over the Adirondacks’ region for over ten years. Nathalie has told over thirty stories, all of them mostly true.

Ira Silverberg is an editorial and strategic advisor to writers, artists, estates, and organizations working in literary, visual, and performing arts. Silverberg worked in Bloomberg Philanthropies Arts Innovation Management program, a comprehensive capacity development program, as well as the LitNYS program. He's been an advisor to organizations including Academy of American Poets, Art Papers, Barnett Newman Foundation, BOMB, City Lights, Committee on Poetry, Conjunctions, DAP, the Drift, Giorno Poetry Systems, Graywolf, LitQuake, National Book Foundation, Nightboat, Paris Review, Segue Foundation, and Ugly Duckling; and practitioners including Ishmael Beah, Dennis Cooper, Karen Finley, Nan Goldin, Adam Haslett, Nadia Owusu, Dread Scott, and David Wojnarowicz. He's been publisher of High Risk Books/Serpent's Tail, editor-in-chief of Grove Press, literature director of the National Endowment for the Arts, a literary/foreign rights agent, and founding literature curator of The Kitchen. An adjunct faculty member of Columbia University's MFA Writing Program, he's written for ArtForum, Document Journal, Frieze, New York, Paris Review, Rolling Stone, and Vulture. He lives in Bellport, NY and is at work on a memoir.

Elmer Meza earned his BA in Economics from Dartmouth College in 2010. After graduation, he spent a year studying Mandarin Chinese at Fudan University in Shanghai. Elmer began his career as an Americorps VISTA member at New York Cares where he helped to build a local volunteer base for select NYC public schools. Since then, he has focused on technology and data management at Prep for Prep, Oliver Scholars, Delivering Good and most recently at The Brotherhood Sister Sol.