Schooled on Poetry

Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, Emmy-winning producer and #1 New York Times bestselling author of 42 books, including the new release How Sweet The Sound, Black Star, the second installment of his Door of No Return trilogy, This Is The Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, Why Fathers Cry at Night, An American Story, the Coretta Scott King Award-winning book illustrated by Dare Coulter, The Door of No Return, Becoming Muhammad Ali (co-authored with James Patterson), Rebound, which was shortlisted for the prestigious UK Carnegie Medal, and The Undefeated, the National Book Award nominee, Newbery Honor, and Caldecott Medal-winning picture book illustrated by Kadir Nelson.

Kwame is also the Emmy-winning Executive Producer, Showrunner, and Writer of The Crossover TV series, based on his Newbery-Medal winning novel of the same name, which premiered on Disney+ in April 2023. The series was produced in partnership with LeBron James' SpringHill Company and Big Sea Entertainment, Kwame's production company that is dedicated to creating innovative, highly original children’s and family entertainment. Other current projects in development at Big Sea include America’s Next Great Author, the groundbreaking reality television series for writers.

A regular contributor to NPR’s Morning Edition, Kwame is the creator and host of the Why Fathers Cry podcast, premiering September 2023, featuring conversations about love and parenting and loss, with fathers and sons. He regularly shares his passion for literacy, books and the craft of writing around the world at events like the Chautauqua Lecture Series, the Edinburgh Book Festival, Aspen Ideas, and the Global Literacy Symposium in Ghana, where he opened the Barbara E. Alexander Memorial Library and Health Clinic in Ghana. Most recently he was appointed the Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and Writer-in-Residence at the Chautauqua Institution.

His mission is to change the world, one word at a time.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry and was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest with University of Texas press in February 2019 and the book became a New York Times Bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune For Your Disaster, was released in 2019 by Tin House, and won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. In 2021, he released the book A Little Devil In America with Random House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. The book won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Gordon Burn Prize. Hanif is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

Chris Montel Byrd is an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan. He is an artist, producer, entrepreneur, fitness connoisseur, poet and rapper. He grew up on the west side of Chicago and also lived on the south side for many years. Most of his childhood, Chris lived in homeless shelters, attics, trains, and airports. Those life situations are the reason he is the man he is today and helps him strive to be the best person he can be. It taught him to always appreciate today, work towards tomorrow, never forget his past. This is his first time in Ohio.

Cynthia Amoah is a Ghanaian-American poet, national speaker, and teaching artist. She received her MFA from The New School where she was cited for Excellence in Poetry and has been featured on three TEDx stages, The Lincoln Theatre, as well as the United Nations Information Center in Accra, among many. Her writing and performances often concern the foraging questions that have to do with identity and belonging, with displacement, migration and uprootedness. Cynthia’s chapbook 'Handrails' was published by Akashic Books in Fall 2021. She currently resides in Columbus, OH with her family where she facilitates workshops in poetry, positive-thinking, confidence-building, and using our voice as an instrument for strength and social change. For more information and inquiries, please visit www.cynthiaamoah.com.

Steven Byron Waddell is an educator and award winning poet from Chicago IL, he began writing poetry as a way to cope with his depression and refined his skills under the mentorship of poets such as Peter Kahn, Avery R Young, and Daniel Borzutzky. Steven has been featured in the Academy of American Poets for his work Then/Now which describes the legacy of policing and slavery in America. Steven has worked with students at the highschool and collegiate level through his work supporting Schooled On Poetry as well as helping establish the Columbus State Community College Annual Poetry Slam. Steven is currently working on his first collection of poems entitled "Do It Myself" which is a poetic autobiography.