Ms. Cicely Tyson is an actress, lecturer, activist, and one of the most respected talents in American theater and film history. From her starring role on Broadway in The Blacks (1961), to the Emmy-nominated 1999 HBO film A Lesson Before Dying, her work has garnered critical and commercial applause for more than sixty years. Her two Emmys for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman made her the first African-American woman to win an Emmy for Best Actress. In 2013, Ms. Tyson won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance as Miss Carrie Watts in The Trip to Bountiful. A capstone achievement came in 2018, when she became the first Black woman to receive an honorary Oscar. The Board of Governors voted unanimously to honor her with the award, which came 45 years after her Academy Award nominated performance in Sounder.

Cleo Wade is a friend, community builder, and the author of the books, “Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life” and “Where to Begin: A small book your power to create big change.” She has been called the poet of her generation by Time Magazine and one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company. Cleo sits on the board of The Lower East Side Girls Club, the National Black Theatre in Harlem, the Women’s Prison Association. When Cleo is not at home in California with her partner, Simon Kinberg, and their daughter, Memphis, she can be found traveling around the country on her sold-out book tours, which have become a safe space to laugh, cry, hug, and offer support to fellow readers. Photo Credit: Rony Alwin

Jennifer Rudolph Walsh sits at the nexus of one of the world’s leading entertainment and media companies, WME. After selling her own small company to the William Morris Agency, Walsh served on the Board of Directors as the first woman ever and continued serving at WME after the company merged with Endeavor. As the head of WME’s Worldwide Literary, Lectures, and Conference Divisions, she steers the industry’s most prominent book business with the largest presence of any agency on the New York Times Best Seller List.  Walsh has stewarded the careers of some of today’s most seminal literary lions. Walsh’s prestigious and best-selling client list includes authors such as Alice Munro, Arianna Huffington, Sheryl Sandberg, Ann Brashares, Sue Monk Kidd, Jeannette Walls, Elon Musk, Tom Clancy Estate, Ken Burns, Curtis Sittenfeld, Amy Bloom, Chris Matthews, Howard Schultz, Brené Brown, Janet Evanovich, and Oprah Winfrey among others. Walsh spearheaded the launch of WME’s conference division, beginning with the creation of the WME Women’s Summit, and constructing national conferences for Oprah Winfrey with The Life You Want Tour, Arianna Huffington’s Thrive, Cosmo Magazine’s Fun Fearless Life, and the premiere Christian women’s conference Women Of Faith. Most recently, Walsh is the founder of Together Live, a multicultural touring event that brings an array of thought leaders, activists, athletes, and celebrity guests to cities across the country for a night of inspired talks and interactive conversation focused on purpose, community, and social action. She also hosts a podcast, Do It on Purpose presented by Together Live. Walsh sits on the Board of Directors for the National Book Foundation. She also sits on the Board of Directors of her alma mater, Kenyon College. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and three children. 

Renée Watson is the New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Author Award-winning author of the novels Piecing Me Together, This Side of Home, What Momma Left Me, Betty Before X, co-written with Ilyasah Shabazz, and two picture books: Harlem's Little Blackbird and A Place Where Hurricanes Happen. Renée is the founder of I, Too, Arts Collective, a nonprofit committed to nurturing underrepresented voices in the creative arts. She lives in New York City.

Abby West is the VP, Editorial Director for Amistad, an imprint at HarperCollins. She drives the editorial direction of the nearly 40-year-old imprint, including all of Zora Neale Hurston books, such as Their Eyes Were Watching God and the newly published The Life of Herod the Great. Her recent titles include Toni at Random by Dana A. Williams, My Father’s House: An Ode to America’s Longest Serving Black Congressman by John Conyers III, and Positive Obsession by Susanna Morris. Abby was previously Director of Inclusive Content Programming at Audible and co-founded the Black Employee Network, an Audible ERG. She is a recovering journalist, whose years at prominent media organizations such as Audible, Essence, Entertainment Weekly, and People gave her a love of stories that explore, empower, and celebrate the narratives that often go untold. She also serves on the board of the Children’s Law Center of New York.

Lauren Wilkinson’s debut novel, American Spy, was a Washington Post bestseller, an NAACP Image Award nominee, an Anthony award nominee, and an Edgar Award nominee. It was short-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, was a Barnes & Noble Book of the Month, a PBS book club pick, and was included on Barack Obama’s 2019 Recommended Reading List. Lauren earned an MFA in fiction and literary translation from Columbia University, and has taught writing at Columbia and the Fashion Institute of Technology. She was a Center for Fiction Emerging Writer’s Fellow, and has received support from both the MacDowell Colony and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The Believer, New York magazine and The New York Times, among other publications. Lauren splits her time between New York and Los Angeles where she works as a writer for television (Citadel, Life Undercover, Class of '09, Star Trek: Discovery, Libra).

Dana A. Williams is Professor of African American literature and Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. She is former president of the College Language Association and the Modern Languages Association, and is the author of Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship, In the Light of Likeness—Transformed: The Literary Art of Leon Forrest. She is also the editor of several books. Her work has been published in prestigious journals, including PMLA, CLA Journal, African American Review, Early American Literature, American Literary History, and the Langston Hughes Review. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She co-directs the Center for Medical Humanities and Health Justice, a Mellon Foundation-funded collaboration between Howard and Georgetown universities. Williams lives in Maryland.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Female Persuasion, The Position, The Wife, and Sleepwalking. She is also the author of the young adult novel Belzhar. Wolitzer lives in New York City.

Jon Yaged is Chief Executive Officer of Macmillan Publishers. Jon previously served as President, Macmillan Publishers, and President & Publisher, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group. During his tenure as CEO and President, the company has recorded the highest revenue and operating income in its history. Over the course of his 20-year career in children’s publishing, Jon oversaw the publication of many bestselling books and series while working with critically acclaimed, award-winning authors and illustrators, including Katherine Applegate, Leigh Bardugo, Angeline Boulley, Eoin Colfer, Taye Diggs, Shane W. Evans, Jimmy Fallon, Jules Feiffer, the Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato, Marissa Meyer, Rick Riordan, Mo Willems, and Gene Luen Yang. In addition to fostering publishing programs that are reflective of the communities in which we live, Jon is focused on leading a company that invests in its employees by creating a culture of collaboration, mentorship, and innovation.   Jon began his publishing career at The Walt Disney Company, reaching the level of Vice President, US Publisher, Disney Book Group. He also served as Chief Operating Officer of a social media marketing company and, before joining Disney, he practiced entertainment and technology law.   Jon currently serves on the Boards of the Association of American Publishers and the National Book Foundation. He is also a member of the Advisory Council for the National Coalition Against Censorship, and serves on the finance committee of The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. He has a JD from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from George Washington University. Jon lives with his family in New York City.  

Tiphanie Yanique is a novelist, poet, essayist and short story writer. Tiphanie is the author of the novel, Monster in the Middle, which was published in 2021 and on numerous best of the year lists. Monster in the Middle was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and is a finalist for the Townsend Prize.   Tiphanie is also the author of the poetry collection, Wife, which won the Bocas Prize in Caribbean poetry and the United Kingdom’s Forward/Felix Dennis Prize for a First Collection, the novel, Land of Love and Drowning, which won the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Award from the Center for Fiction, the Phillis Wheatley Award for Pan-African Literature, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Award. Land of Love and Drowning was also a finalist for the Orion Award in Environmental Literature and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. She is the author of a collection of stories, How to Escape from a Leper Colony, which won her a listing as one of the National Book Foundation's 5Under35 and the Bocas Prize in Fiction.   Her writing has won the Boston Review Prize in Fiction, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, an Academy of American Poet's Prize and two Fulbright Scholarships.  Tiphanie is also an outspoken activist on behalf of the Caribbean, having appeared on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, and published an op-ed in The New York Times on the US response to hurricanes in the Caribbean.  Tiphanie is from the Virgin Islands and is Professor at Emory University.

Jenny Zhang was born in Shanghai and raised in Queens. She is the author of the poetry collection Dear Jenny, We Are All Find, the non-fiction chapbook Hags, and the e-book The Selected Jenny Zhang. Her essay "How It Feels" was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2015. She holds degrees from Stanford University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.