Schooled on Poetry

Jacqueline Woodson, a National Book Award-winner and MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow, is a one of the nation’s most acclaimed authors writing for children, adolescents, and adults. Weaving together lyrical language and powerful imagery to create rich and emotional stories, her work explores the complex intersections of race, class, gender, family, and American history. With more than two dozen award-winning books to her credit, her bestsellers include Red at the Bone, the National Book Award-winning Brown Girl Dreaming, and the Newbery Honor-Winning titles: After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way.

While she struggled with reading as a child, she recognized early on that writing made her happiest. An enduring love of narrative drove her to create worlds that reflect the lives of people from all walks of life. The breadth of her storytelling is remarkable, ranging from fiction, to poetry, to picture books—and she moves fluidly between adult fiction and writing for young people. Her readership across age cohorts continues to grow, and her most recent adult fiction title, Red at the Bone, was a 2019 New York Times bestseller and Notable Book of the Year, as well as a NAACP finalist for outstanding literary work in fiction.

Among her many accolades, Woodson served as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, received the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and was the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress for 2018-2019. In 2020, she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, the most prestigious international award recognizing authors and illustrators of children’s literature, and then later that year named a MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellow. A recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, Woodson is the founder of the Baldwin for the Arts in New York State, an artist residency program providing a safe and nurturing space for Artists of The Global Majority. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. For more information on Jacqueline Woodson, please visit her on Instagram and Twitter and at jacquelinewoodson.com.

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.