Meet the Fea­tured Performers

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 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. It was named a final­ist for the Eric Hof­fer Book Prize, and was nom­i­nat­ed for a Hurston-Wright Lega­cy Award. With Big Lucks, he released a lim­it­ed edi­tion chap­book, Vin­tage Sad­ness, in sum­mer 2017 (you can­not get it any­more and he is very sor­ry). 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. 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 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.

Indi­go Good­son-Fields is a poet, writer and bird­er based in Brook­lyn but is from Hay­ward, Cal­i­for­nia. She served as a New York Bird­ing Con­sul­tant on the For the Birds exhi­bi­tion com­mit­tee at Brook­lyn Botan­ic Gar­dens. Indi­go is fea­tured on an episode of Always Be Birdin’ pod­cast, Your Bird Sto­ry pod­cast and The Bird Joy Pod­cast. Indi­go facil­i­tates bird out­ings for Field Merid­i­ans, Bird Col­lec­tive, as well as oth­er orga­ni­za­tions. Her recent writ­ings are pub­lished in The Oth­er Almanac, Brook­lyn Bird Clubs’ Clap­per Rail and Mold Mag­a­zine. Her forth­com­ing book, (title TBA), is an anthol­o­gy about the impor­tance of bird­ing in the lives of Black bird­ers across the U.S. and will be pub­lished by OR Books in fall 2026.

Jive Poet­ic is a Brook­lyn-based poet, DJ, and Emmy-nom­i­nat­ed film­mak­er. A grad­u­ate of State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York at Buf­fa­lo and Pratt Insti­tute, he is the founder of Insur­gent Poets Soci­ety and co-founder of the Brook­lyn Poet­ry Slam. His hon­ors include the John Morn­ing Award for Art and Ser­vice and recog­ni­tion from the Maya Angelou Book Award and Pater­son Poet­ry Prize. His work has been fea­tured by Lin­coln Cen­ter and PBS New­sHour, and pub­lished by the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets and Poet­ry Soci­ety of Amer­i­ca. His 2024 col­lec­tion Skip Trac­er is pub­lished by Liveright/​Norton. He is cur­rent­ly an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor at St. Fran­cis College.

SUSAN SAID (led by singer/​songwriter Susan Wil­son-Sed) has released their 4^th stu­dio album UNDER THE DARK TREE. Her song ​“A Great Day” — the first track on the new release, dropped a month ago and received numer­ous down­loads. The song was played on an Ama­zon series and was sub­mit­ted for a Day­time Emmy Award for ​“Best Orig­i­nal Song.” Wil­son-Sed brings her love of poet­ry and melod­ic song­writ­ing togeth­er to cre­ate songs that are orig­i­nal, emo­tion­al, and thought pro­vok­ing. She has had sev­er­al songs in TV and film. Most notably her bal­lad ​“Run You Away” which was fea­tured in the film Fed­er­al Hill. The song had record-break­ing down­loads from all over the world since the movie was released inter­na­tion­al­ly. The band has played Irv­ing Plaza in NYC — open­ing for the cast of Sat­ur­day Night Live—with Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, Janeane Garo­fa­lo and Chevy Chase as part of the New York Com­e­dy Film Fes­ti­val. Her song ​“Mr. Touchy Feely” made its way to the col­lege charts, and the band has played the main stage of the Pleas­antville Music Fes­ti­val in Pleas­antville, NY as well as many oth­er out­door fes­ti­vals. The band has toured all over the world and was vot­ed one of the ​“Bands to Watch.”