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