Emanuelee Bean, also known as “Outspoken Bean,” is the founder and creative force of Woodson Black Fest in partnership with Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Born in New Jersey and raised in San Antonio, he currently serves as Houston’s 2021–23 Poet Laureate. In 2022, Bean received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. He was the first poet to perform on Houston Ballet’s main stage with their production, Play. He has been commissioned to write and perform a national campaign on diversity for Pabst Blue Ribbon and VICE while creating and producing his own festival, Plus Fest: The Everything Plus Poetry Festival.

Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton is an internationally-known, multi-hyphenate literary artist, director, performer, critic and the first Black Poet Laureate of Houston, Texas. She is the author of the 2019 poetry collection Newsworthy with Bloomsday Literary (and its German counterpart Berichtenswert with Elif Verlag), which was a finalist for the The Writer’s League of Texas Book Award. Her poems have garnered her a pushcart nomination and been translated across multiple genres and languages. She has been a contributing writer for Glamour, Texas Monthly, Muzzle, and ESPN’s The Undefeated. She has been a Resident Artist with the American Lyric Theater, Rice University, and the Houston Museum of African American Culture.

Stacey Allen is a performance artist, curator, and advocate for arts education, educational equity, and reproductive justice all while being a wife and mother to three beautiful children. Maintaining her artistic practice while navigating Motherhood has come with challenges, but integrating the art of mothering with her insistence on telling Black stories through movement and material culture has been worth the while. From starting with Urban Souls Dance Company to co-founding Pretty Cultured to founding and directing Nia’s Daughters Movement Collective, her work is to be delivered back to the people. Nia’s Daughters Movement Collective received a Congressional Recognition for their mission aligned work of creating and supporting art and wellness initiatives through the lens of Black women and girls. Stacey wrote the children’s book “A Little Optimism Goes a Long Way ” and created “The Fairytale Project,” a dance theater production centering the Texas Freedom Colony, Shankleville, that is currently touring. Other recent works include  “Formed in My Grandmother’s Womb” (2019), “A Single Thread Weaves a Future” (2021), and “it’s about our FREEDOM” (2022), “Aesthetic Inheritances” (2023) and more. Stacey Allen, based in Houston, Texas, holds a B.A. in Dance from Sam Houston State University and a M.A. in Cross Cultural Studies from University of Houston-Clear Lake. Learn more about her work at www.staceyallencde.com or on Instagram at @theblackartysmom.

Nia’s Daughters Movement Collective, founded in 2018, is a multigenerational group of like-minded black women dance and multidisciplinary artists with the mission is to create and support art and wellness initiatives through the lens of Black women and girls. Nia’s Daughters was organized to perform culturally competent dance works while telling the stories of Black women and girls. The organization has grown to be a hub for artistic expression across disciplines and a place where collaboration thrives. This multigenerational and multidisciplinary approach is what makes Nia’s Daughters Movement Collective a unique, yet necessary offering. Since its founding, Nia’s Daughters has evolved from occupying less traditional theater spaces and forged into more multidisciplinary art spaces while remaining committed to telling the stories of Black women and girls. Nia’s Daughters can be found on Instagram at @niasdaughters and on Facebook at Nia’s Daughters.

A native of Houston, Texas, Fobbs is a graduate of Texas A&M University with over a decade of professional media experience. Fobbs’ background is in news, working at KRHD-TV in Bryan, Texas,  WABG-TV in Greenville, Mississippi and WCTI-TV in New Bern, North Carolina. He left news in 2015 to pursue independent creative opportunities. In 2017 Fobbs had the idea for the concept that would become the horror series Becky. Becky is the first book series from Fobbs.  From there, Fobbs has created a library of subjects and titles covering a wide spectrum of interest. From the historical tales of the Black Facts series to the action and adventure of Richard Green, Fobbs has books for all ages and interests. He believes that Black audiences have been underserved as far as their wide range of interests and aims to close what he calls the “creative gap.”

Byron Canady is a unique balance of artist and academic. Canady used his Masters in Business and lifelong passion of comics and graphic novels to open one of Houston’s most popular comic book shops, Gulf Coast Cosmos Comics. Throughout almost five decades, Byron has read and collected multiple comic titles and genres. This extensive background has helped him curate comic book centered experiential events. In addition to radio/television appearances he has written articles and posts on the medium. True to his talent for balance, Canady devotes time away from work with family and  friends, watching movies and of course, indulging in his love of comic books.

Chelsea “Astronym” Blackwell is a Texas-born illustrator and comic artist with an affinity for bright colors, eccentric themes, and quirky characters. Creating narrative with art is one of her favorite parts of being an artist, allowing her to build stories in imagery and develop immersive universes to communicate with her audience. She finds inspiration in the world around her, with big influences from anime and film.  Astronym has been drawing since she was a child, maintaining her interests in the arts into adulthood. She graduated from University of Houston Clear Lake with a BFA in Graphic Design and is working in the comic industry as a freelance illustrator and comic artist working with publishers such as Scholastic and Oni Press.

Composer. Producer. Arranger. Engineer. Sometime musician. Russell Guess (Guess for short) is a Houston native who is obsessed with music and audio. His purpose is getting the great to their greatness.