aja monet is a surrealist blues poet, musician, and cultural worker whose poems sing to us of love, gender, justice, and spirituality. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, her writing sways between realms where the poetic is both a prayer and a call to action. Her debut poetry collection, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter, a tribute to women and girls in the pursuit of freedom, earned a 2018 NAACP Image Award nomination for Poetry. In 2023, she released when the poems do what they do, a debut album of jazz and blues poetry, and performed live on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert. In 2024, she earned a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album, a testament to her voice, both on the page and in the world. As Artistic Creative Director for the Voices Campaign with V-Day, monet is part of the global movement to end violence against women and girls. monet is a recipient of the EBONY Power 100 Artist in Residence Award, Tribeca Film Festival’s Harry Belafonte Social Justice Award, and the Nelson Mandela Changemaker Award. Her new collection of poetry, Florida Water, will be released in June 2025.

Wilkine Brutus is an award-winning, Haitian-American journalist for WLRN, South Florida's NPR station. The Palm Beach County correspondent produces in-depth local and national stories on topics surrounding current affairs, government accountability, arts and culture — for radio, podcast and web. Brutus was named 2023 Reporter of the Year by the Florida Association of Broadcast Journalists. And he earned a 2023 regional Murrow Award for his investigative reporting. Before joining WLRN, Brutus worked as Digital Reporter for the Palm Beach Post, producing print and video-based profiles of artists and entrepreneurs. Prior to that, he spent many years as a freelance journalist and English educator in South Korea, amassing millions of views on his YouTube channel. He's the host of "A Boat A Voyage," a 5-episode podcast from his Maps & Diaries documentary platform. The podcast explores his Haitian mother’s account of her 1980s refugee experience in Miami. Brutus and his colleagues are the recipients of the 2021 National Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence, the first time the station has won the award at the national level. He earned his bachelor's degree in Multimedia Studies from Florida Atlantic University.