Adrienne Cecile Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse". Rich criticized rigid forms of feminist identities, and valorized what she coined the "lesbian continuum", which is a female continuum of solidarity and creativity that impacts and fills women's lives.
Emanuel Swedenborg was a Swedish Christian theologian, scientist, philosopher and mystic. He became best known for his book on the afterlife, Heaven and Hell (1758).
A parry is a fencing bladework maneuver intended to deflect or block an incoming attack.
Iain Sinclair FRSL is a writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, recently within the influences of psychogeography.
James Anthony Patrick Carr is a British-Irish comedian, presenter, writer and actor. He is known for his rapid-fire deadpan delivery of one-liners which have been known to offend some people. He began his comedy career in 1997, and he has regularly appeared on television as the host of Channel 4 panel shows such as 8 Out of 10 Cats, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and The Big Fat Quiz of the Year.
Richard Parry is an English saxophonist. He has appeared as a session musician on various albums, most notably in solo parts on the Pink Floyd songs "Money", "Us and Them", "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and "Wearing the Inside Out". He also played on the Bloodstone album Riddle of the Sphinx.
Cherríe Moraga is a Xicana feminist, writer, activist, poet, essayist, and playwright. She is part of the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Department of English since 2017, and in 2022 became a distinguished professor. Moraga is also a founding member of the social justice activist group La Red Xicana Indígena, which is network fighting for education, culture rights, and Indigenous Rights. In 2017, she co-founded, with Celia Herrera Rodríguez, Las Maestras Center for Xicana Indigenous Thought, Art, and Social Practice, located on the campus of UC Santa Barbara.
June Millicent Jordan was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist. In her writing she explored issues of gender, race, immigration, and representation.
Philip Peter Ross Nichols was a Cambridge academic and published poet, artist and historian, who founded the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids in 1964. He wrote prolifically on the subjects of Druidism and Celtic mythology.
The Inside Out Film and Video Festival, also known as the Inside Out LGBT or LGBTQ Film Festival, is an annual Canadian film festival, which presents a program of LGBT-related film. The festival is staged in both Toronto and Ottawa. Founded in 1991, the festival is now the largest of its kind in Canada. Deadline dubbed it "Canada’s foremost LGBTQ film festival."
John Burnside FRSL FRSE was a Scottish writer. He was one of four poets to have won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for one book. In 2023, he won the David Cohen Prize.
Gary Joseph Lachman, also known as Gary Valentine, is an American writer and musician. He came to prominence in the mid-1970s as the bass guitarist for rock band Blondie. Since the 1990s, Lachman has written full-time, often about mysticism and occultism.
Geoff James Nugent, known professionally as Jim Jefferies, is an Australian comedian, actor, and writer who holds dual Australian and American citizenship. He created and starred in the American FX sitcom Legit (2013–2014) and the Comedy Central late-night show The Jim Jefferies Show (2017–2019).
The Massachusetts Review is a literary quarterly founded in 1959 by a group of professors from Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It receives financial support from Five Colleges, Inc., a consortium which includes Amherst College and four other educational institutions in a short geographical radius.
Joumana Haddad is a Lebanese author, public speaker, journalist and human rights activist. She has been selected as one of the world’s 100 most powerful Arab women by Arabian Business Magazine for her cultural and social activism. In 2021, she was on Apolitical's list of 100 most influential people in Gender Policy. She is founder of Jasad, a quarterly Arabic-language magazine specialized in the arts and literature of the body (2009–2011). Haddad launched a new TV show in November 2018 on Alhurra highlighting the topics of free expression and critical thinking. In September 2019, she founded a youth centered NGO in Beirut called the Joumana Haddad Freedoms Center. In February 2020, in partnership with the Institut Français in Lebanon, she launched the first International Feminisms Festival in the Middle East with a group of local and international co-organizers.
Haralampi G. Oroschakoff is an Austrian painter, writer and publisher. He is considered a pioneer of the East-West dialogue in art and a reviver of the reception of Eastern iconography in Western painting. Oroschakoff participated in TEDxLambeth 2019 as a speaker regarding the subject matter of conceptualism.
Smokii Sumac is a Ktunaxa and transmasculine poet whose first book of poetry, you are enough: love poems for the end of the world was published in 2018 by Kegedonce Press. The unpublished draft manuscript of the book, then titled "#haikuaday," won the inaugural Indigenous Voices Award for Unpublished English Poetry, while the book itself was awarded the 2019 Indigenous Voices Award for English Poetry.
Scarlett Sabet is an English poet and performer based in London. She is the author of four poetry collections, Rocking Underground (2014), The Lock And The Key (2016), Zoreh (2018), and Camille (2019). In 2019 she released Catalyst, a spoken word album produced by her partner, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.
Arielle Twist is a Nehiyaw (Cree) multidisciplinary artist and sex educator based in Halifax, Nova Scotia located in Canada. She is originally from George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan. and identifies as a Two-Spirit, transgender woman She was mentored in her early career by writer Kai Cheng Thom and has since published a collection of poems in 2019 in her book Disintegrate / Dissociate, began working as a sex educator at Venus Envy and become an MFA candidate at OCAD University Graduate Studies in the Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design (IAMD) program. Twist has also expanded her artistry past poetry into visual and performance art. Over her time as an artist, Arielle Twist has had her work featured in Khyber Centre for the Arts, Toronto Media Arts Centre, La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, Centre for Art Tapes, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Twist has also won the Indigenous Voices Award for English poetry and the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for emerging LGBTQ writers in 2020.
Evan Evans, was a Welsh clergyman, poet, hymnwriter, journalist, translator and devotional writer, who was three times chaired at the National Eisteddfod. His works were almost all written in the Welsh language, the poems being published under his bardic name, Ieuan Glan Geirionydd. Seven of his poems are included in The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse. His best-known poems are perhaps Ysgoldy Rhad Llanrwst, Glan Geirionydd and Cyflafan Morfa Rhuddlan, and his hymns include Rwy'n sefyll ar dymhestlog lan and Mae 'nghyfeillion adre'n myned.
