Bios 
 
Colin Channer (www.colinchanner.com) is the author of two novels, a novella, and many short stories. His first novel, Waiting in Vain, was selected as a 1998 Critic’s Choice by the Washington Post. His novella, I’m Still Waiting, was published in the best-selling volume Got to Be Real. Mr. Channer is founder and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, the only annual literary festival in the English-speaking Caribbean. A naturalized American, he was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and lives with his family in New York. He has taught fiction writing in London and New York and is the bass player for the reggae band Pipecock Jaxxon. 

Earl Cox (www.writersandpoets.com) is a publishing industry veteran of nearly two decades. As President and Chief Executive of Writers and Poets.com, Mr. Cox acts as a literary manager and publishing consultant for authors seeking agent representation or guidance in promoting, marketing, and distributing their books. Mr. Cox specializes in working with up-and-coming fiction writers. He provides a full range of publishing services, from manuscript development to sales management to complete publication of titles with high potential for strong mass-market sales. For nine years, Mr. Cox worked at John Wiley & Sons, Inc. where he served as a National Accounts Manager. He was responsible for managing the nationwide sales and promotion of Wiley’s African American and multicultural books. 

Ms. Loris Crawford (www.savacougallery.com) is the co-founder and Director of Savacou Gallery, one of the oldest galleries dedicated to fine art by Black artists. Ms. Crawford, a Jamaican native, holds a BS in Economics, an MBA in Marketing and an MS in Finance. She has held various positions in the public and private sectors and since 1985 has been a professor of Management at a New York area college. She has distinguished herself by her vast knowledge of American Art history and her ability to articulate and share this information. Ms. Crawford's knowledge of art combined with a background in Economics and Finance gives her a keen sense of investing, which over the years has served clients in building valuable collections. She also publishes a quarterly newsletter, Let's Talk Art, to further educate the public on issues relating to art collecting. 
Established in 1985, the Savacou Gallery offers art collectors an international collection of work by such renowned artists as Stanley Barnes, Nancy Brandon, Leroy Campbell, Melvin Clark, Sadikisha Collier, Carl Davis, Francks Deceus, James Denmark, Frank Frazier, Eric Girault, Verna Hart, Joseph Holston, Curtis James, Laura James, Eli Kince, Grace Kisa, Karl McIntosh, Frank Morrison, Otto Neals, Ademola Olugebefola, Isha Shabaka, Ernani Silva, Willie Torbert and George Wilson. The "Savacou" warrior bird in Carib Indian mythology, symbolizes the spirit of Savacou Gallery - a pioneer and warrior in the promotion of artists who have traditionally been denied access to the art market. 

Francks Francois Décéus, an award-winning artist who was profiled in a 1998 issue of the International Review of African American Art, is one of the leading young modern painters of his generation. He has garnered critical attention for his innovative and passionate use of mixed mediums and collage on canvas. Victor Smite, curator for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, noted that Décéus is “a promising up and coming artist, a painter whose work depicts a high degree of sensitivity to social issues and his culture.” He is a native of Haiti, currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of Long Island University.  

Kermit Frazier, the acting president of the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center, holds a B.A., and a M.A., from Syracuse University, and a M.F.A., from Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. He is a Eugene O'Neill Playwright, recipient of the McKnight Foundation Fellowship in Playwriting and former head writer for the CTW series Ghostwriter, and the Nickelodeon T.V. series Gullah, Gullah Island. Mr. Frazier has written for television shows Rescue 77 and The Cosby Mysteries. 

Ebony Gibson is a MFA student studying creative writing at Columbia University. 

Thomas Glave is the author of the award-winning book Whose Songs? And Other Stories. Born in a predominantly Caribbean and African American Bronx neighborhood,Thomas Glave grew up in the company of storytellers. The child of expatriate Jamaican parents, the 35-year-old SUNY-Binghamton assistant professor of English spent his youth in Kingston, Jamaica, and Baychester, New York, where his "verbally virtuosic" family and neighbors were always recounting stories. "These are people," marvels Glave, "who can go from irony to outrage to feigned surprise to deep drama with all of these gesticulations, intonations, and coded references in the span of just one sentence." This vibrancy inspires the author's own richly lyrical style, creating voices that he hopes will enable readers to "really sense and really hear and see on the page." In 1997, Glave won the O. Henry Award for Fiction, making him the second black gay writer to win the prize after James Baldwin. 

Dr. Brenda M. Greene is Professor of English and Executive Director of the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York. Professor Greene served as coordinator of the National Black Writers Conferences at Medgar Evers and was Director of the 2003 NBWC (www.nbwc.org). In addition to serving as Director of the Center, she coordinates the English BA Program and teaches composition and literature. Her research interests are in the areas of the literature of women of color, multicultural literature, and English studies, and she has written a number of essays in these fields. Professor Greene is the co-editor of Defining Ourselves: Black Writers of the Nineties, by Peter Lang Publishers and Rethinking American Literature, published by the National Council of Teachers of English. She is currently working on a personal and professional memoir. 

Melissa Hile is a notable Brooklyn photographer and artist. 

Jacqueline Johnson is a prize-winning poet and author of A Gathering of Mother Tongues. She is a former member of the Harlem Writers Guild and a founding member of New Renaissance Writers. 

Joanna Kyd, Esq., a former journalist, is an intellectual property specialist whose clients include writers, publishers, theatre producers, playwrights, designers, performance and visual artists. She uses her expertise to help artists negotiate contracts and disputes over money and copyright issues. She has also worked closely with agents, unions and guilds. Ms. Kyd has served as a staff lawyer and project director at Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and while studying law at the Cardozo Law School, she worked at the Author's Guild, the Libel Defense Resource Center and in the legal affairs department of Henry Holt publishing company. 

Elizabeth Nunez (www.elizabthnunez.com) is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Medgar Evers College. She has a Ph.D. in English from New York University and has published several monographs on Caribbean literature in scholarly journals. She is the author of five novels: Grace; Discretion; Bruised Hibiscus; Beyond the Limbo Silence; and When Rocks Dance. A former fellow at Yaddo and MacDowell colonies, co-founder of the National Black Writers Conference, and director from 1986-2000, Elizabeth Nunez currently chairs the PEN American Center Open Book program. She is executive producer of the CUNY TV series Black Writers in America, hosted by Ossie Davis. Her awards include the American Book Award for Bruised Hibiscus, the 2002 Go On Girl! National Author of the Year Award and the1999 Independent Publishers Award in the multicultural fiction category for Beyond the Limbo Silence. Her audiobooks include Discretion (Recorded Books, 2003), and Grace (BBC/ America, 2003).  
Elizabeth Nunez emigrated from Trinidad, where she was born, to the United States of America after she completed secondary school. 

Debbie Officer, a reporter for the Amsterdam News and a Brooklyn College professor, serves as the Book Review Editor for African Voices magazine. She is a published writer whose works have appeared in many literary publications. She is also a recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s award for scholars and the Brooklyn Arts Council grant to artists. 

Mali Olatunji has over thirty years of photojournalism experience, including credits in over thirty books and catalogs. He was co-author of The Business of Art and spent 20 years as the fine arts photographer at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. 

Jaïra Placide's novel Fresh Girl was published by Random House. She holds a Master's degree in Dramatic Writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She is a winner of the Doris Jean Austin Fellowship and the Frederick Douglass Fiction Writing Fellowship.  

Julia Shaw is the founder and CEO of the Shaw Literary Group. Ms. Shaw has been a part of the literary arena for over ten years. During this time she has been involved in various roles relating to the sales, marketing, and publicity of African American books and authors. She has worked with authors such as Iyanla Vanzant, Michael Baisden and Dr. Jeff Gardere, early in their literary careers, These authors along with others have gone on to become nationally acclaimed best sellers.  The Shaw Literary Group is currently providing promotion and marketing services for Tonya Marie Evans and Susan Borden Evans, co-authors of the Literary Law Guide for Authors; Dr. Lindamichelle Baron, motivational speaker and author of The Sun Is On and several other books for children and young adults; and Dr. Elizabeth Nunez, author of Grace and several other titles. 

Fania Simon, the founder of Bois-Caiman-Books, was born, in Gros Mornes, Govaive Haiti in 1972. At the age of nine, she migrated to New Jersey and resided for many years in the foster home of a very influential Baptist Preacher in Hillside, New Jersey. While there, she struggled to learn English and made tremendous effort to fit into a new culture and a home where no one spoke her native language. After completing her primary education, she moved to New York to pursue her dreams. She currently lives in Brooklyn. She is the author of Sofi’s Load, a literary memoir about a nine-year-old girl fighting to overcome discrimination, oppression and abuse in the late 70’s Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Mariahadessa “Ekere” Tallie (www.ekeretallie.com), a contributing staff writer for African Voices, is a poet, writer, performer and educator whose works have been published in several journals and anthologies including Beyond the Frontier, Bum Rush the Page, Role Call, Listen Up! and Catch the Fire. Her poetry and short stories have been featured in magazines and literary journals in the United States, France, Holland, England and South Africa. She is the author of a chapbook, Permanent Rain (Savage Goddess). Ekere has been a featured reader at venues in the United States and Europe. She has shared her ideas about healing and writing with students in Oakland, New York City, Ramapo, Amsterdam, and London.  
 
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