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Aurielle Marie is a Black, Atlanta-born, Queer poet, essayist, and social strategist. She was selected by Fatimah Asghar as the 2019 winner of the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Award, the 2019 winner of the Los Angeles Review Poetry Award, and the 2019 Lambda Literary Emerging Writer’s Retreat Writer in Residence.
She’s received invitations to fellowships from the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for LGBTQ writers, Tin House, The Watering Hole, VONA Voices, and Kopkind Colony. Aurielle’s essays and poems have been featured in or are forthcoming from The Guardian, TriQuarterly, Adroit Journal, Teen Vogue, The Florida Review, VINYL, BOAAT Magazine, Black Warrior Review, Essence, Allure, and the Huffington Post.
Seema Reza is a poet and essayist and the author of two books: A Constellation of Half-Lives and When the World Breaks Open. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Writing and Community Building from Goddard College. In 2010 Seema began working with service members, veterans, and their families at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and has since developed a unique multi-hospital arts program that encourages the use of the arts as a tool for narration, self-care and socialization. In 2015, the USO of Metropolitan Washington-Baltimore awarded Seema the Col John Gioia Patriot Award for her work with service members in military hospitals. Seema is a 2019 George W. Bush Institute Stand-To Veteran Leadership Scholar.