crushing

Marcus Brown is a writer and creative currently headquartered in Brooklyn, NY after attending the University of Iowa, where he studied creative writing and English. He enjoys riding his bike, looking out of windows, and not being asked personal questions.

Mia Diawara is a lifelong poet, dancer, and performer who has taken the stage professionally with the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Company and who chairs the Nominating & Governance Committee on the board of Robert Moses’ Kin—a Black-led dance company in San Francisco. She's also a climate tech investor on sabbatical from the grind and a recovering management consultant with a master's degree in civil & environmental engineering from Stanford. She's interested in the complexity of identity, the lifelong work of healing from trauma, and the power of storytelling. She lives in Oakland with her fiancé and six housemates where she practices reiki on her friends, revels in the art of ikebana, and creates mediocre-but-improving watercolor paintings.

Matthew Fay is a sketch, improv, and standup comedian, actor, and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a member of the Walking Juxt sketch comedy team based at the People's Improv Theater and a co-producer of the Mixed Nuts character show at the Brooklyn Comedy Collective. His one-man show, 'Compassion Fatigue: Or A Gradual Descent Into Hating Everybody' premiered at the PIT Solocom Festival in 2018.  He was once told he sounded like Beck Bennett and he's been living off this compliment for years.

Omri Hazan is an artist from the Bay Area currently residing in Nashville with his partner, Halle. He writes poetry, short stories, and songs. This summer, you can find him on tour with his partner for the release of her debut EP. When he’s not playing guitar, walking, or writing code, he can be found cooking for his friends or planning a surf trip. Omri is having a good time.

Ashley J. Hobbs is a multidisciplinary artist who dreams a world where all great stories get airtime. She is a writer, voiceover artist, and 2x NAACP Image Award-winning podcast producer. Ashley is the founder and executive producer of Temple & Riot Productions, through which she develops and produces audio experiences like Holding Court with Eboni K. Williams and Jemele Hill's Unbothered Network in partnership with Spotify. She previously produced ESSENCE Magazine’s Webby Award-nominated Podcast Network. Creating in community is her caffeine. She thinks in R&B lyrics, feels in Disney quotes and emotes in Toni Morrison prose.

Peter Litzow, 27, is a writer and aspiring multi-hyphenate from up and down the West Coast. Think: Glee adult in denial; sense of self rooted in his mustache; final form, he suspects, is Venice Beach Wellness Mom. He might be very prominent in the Ariana stan Twitter community, but you’d have no way of knowing if that’s true, and starring in a production of RENT: School Edition in high school once saved his life. He graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Public Policy and spent four years working on Disney’s corporate strategy team. He is currently pursuing an MBA at Harvard Business School. 

Claudia Mallea is a writer and archivist-librarian from and based in Brooklyn, New York. She has BAs with honors in Classical studies and Art History from the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College and an MLIS from University of Pittsburgh. She has worked in the archives and libraries of the Richard Avedon foundation, Frick museum and Phillips Auctioneers. Her work in archiving has helped cultivate a writing practice documenting and contextualizing her own lived experience. Her writing practice includes poetry, essays, academic writing and Op-Eds. Her interests include film, classical singing, classics, art history, medical history, craft theory, and disability justice organizing.  She is a member of the NY Caring Majority, a coalition of care workers, seniors and people with disabilities advocating for fair pay for care workers.

Natachi Onwuamaegbu writes about race, art, and culture with bylines at The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, The Boston Globe, Seattle Times and 5280 magazine. She currently has a blog for the National Geographic. As a Nairobi-based writer and journalist, she aims to cover underreported stories, issues, and communities that may have gone unheard otherwise. 

Dylan Zwickel is an NYC-based writer and director. Her plays have been Finalists or Semifinalists for the Orchard Project, the SheNYC Festival, the Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival, and the O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference and she recently served as Director's Assistant on the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect, starring Jennifer Hudson. Dylan also runs a murder mystery party company, Ghost Ship Murder Mysteries, which has been featured in Real Simple, Oprah Daily, and Los Angeles Magazine. BA Wesleyan University, MFA NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. Member of Lincoln Center Directors Lab and TedxBroadway Young Professionals Cohort.