Featured Speakers
Kim Addonizio
Kim Addonizio’s most recent poetry collection is Exit Opera (W.W.Norton, 2024). She is the author of eight other poetry collections, two novels, two story collections, and two books on writing poetry, The Poet’s Companion (with Dorianne Laux) and Ordinary Genius, as well as a memoir-in-essays, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life...
Sessions
Chris Appleton
Chris Appleton is founder and CEO of Art Pharmacy, a health care services company providing social prescribing services to address the dual mental health and loneliness crises. Chris holds an MBA from Kellogg School of Management and has spent his career innovating at the intersection of creativity, systems change, and public good....
Sessions
Anne Basting
Anne Basting is a MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient and a leader in creative aging. A theater artist and scholar, she is best known for her work using storytelling and the arts to improve the lives of people with dementia...
Sessions
Danny Caron
Danny Caron has played on numerous CDs and sessions with Clifton Chenier, Bonnie Raitt, Van Morrison, Maria Muldaur, and many others. He was the featured guitarist on the Van Morrison-produced John Lee Hooker album, “Don’t Look Back” which won two Grammy Awards...
Sessions
Steve Carse
Steven Carse is the co-founder of King of Pops, one of Atlanta’s best-loved brands. Steven was named one of Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Most Admired CEOs in 2017 and was included in Georgia Trend’s 40 Under 40 list in 2012, but back in 2009, he had just been laid off from his corporate job during the Great Recession and instead of brushing up his resume to work for another company, he decided to start an ice-pop business, an idea he and his two brothers, Nick and Ashley, had dreamed up during trips through Central America...
Sessions
Ken Carter
Dr. Kenneth Carter is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Psychology...
Sessions
Gerardo Reyes Chaves
Gerardo Reyes Chavez is a key leader of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). Gerardo is a farmworker himself and has worked in the fields since age 11, first as a peasant farmer in Zacatecas, Mexico and then in the fields of Florida picking oranges, tomatoes, blueberries, and watermelon...
Sessions
Roxana Chicas
Roxana Chicas serves as an assistant professor at Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. She is a nurse scientist and advocate for workers’ rights who has dedicated her career to improving the living and working condition of farmworker communities...
Sessions
Mickey Dubrow
Mickey Dubrow is the author of The Magic Maker, Bulletproof, Always Agnes, and American Judas. For over thirty years, he wrote television promos, marketing presentations, and scripts for various clients including Cartoon Network, TNT Latin America, and HGTV...
Sessions
Clint Fluker
Clint Fluker is a curator, writer, and multidisciplinary artist dedicated to expanding public access to libraries, archives, and museums. Raised in Atlanta, he holds degrees from Morehouse College and Emory University...
Sessions
Randy Gue
Randy Gue is the assistant director of collection development at Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library...
Sessions
Jessica Handler
Jessica Handler’s novel The Magnetic Girl was awarded the 2020 Southern Book Prize. She’s the author of the memoir, Invisible Sisters, one of the “25 Books All Georgians Should Read,” the craft guide Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing About Grief and Loss, and the forthcoming novel, The World to See (Regal House, 2026)...
Sessions
Gene Kansas
In his 23+ years in Atlanta commercial real estate — and inspired by a colorful, deep-fried, parade-filled, culturally rich upbringing in New Orleans, LA — Gene Kansas has garnered a reputation as a champion of historic preservation, adaptive reuse, community building, and storytelling through the built environment. Each Gene Kansas project aims to blend an appreciation of culture and history with creative, responsible, and vital refashioning that brings new relevance to space and how it is used by clients, neighborhoods, and the city...
Sessions
John Kessler
John Kessler is a food writer and former longtime restaurant critic for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Now based in Chicago, he contributes to national outlets like the Washington Post and the Bitter Southerner...
Sessions
Brad Lichtenstein
Brad Lichtenstein is an award-winning filmmaker who has been making documentaries since 1998 and founded 371 Productions in 2003. His recent film, When Claude Got Shot (produced with Stick Figure) premiered at the 2021 SXSW film festival, was featured in May of 2022 on PBS series Independent Lens, and won the 2022 Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking...
Sessions
Anya Marina
Anya Marina is a provocative and gifted live performer, touring nearly non-stop throughout her career, both as headliner as well as support act for such artists as Jason Mraz, Tristan Prettyman, Eric Hutchinson, Chris Isaak, Paolo Nutini, Dandy Warhols, and for the past five years, opening for comedian Nikki Glaser in theaters across the U.S. and Europe.
Marina is also a prolific songwriter, perhaps best known for “Satellite Heart,” from the platinum-selling soundtrack to Twilight: New Moon, and her cover of T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” (7M YouTube views and counting)...
Sessions
Alix Olson
Dr. Alix Olson is a poet, activist, and professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Emory University...
Sessions
Drew Pedrick
MCTIGUE’s founder, Drew McTigue Pedrick, began his career in New York, following family footsteps in design and engineering. He grew up in an environment that promoted creativity and critical thinking.
At an early age, Drew understood his passions were to design buildings and spaces and to do so with care for the planet...
Sessions
Megan Sexton
Megan Sexton’s collection of poems, Swift Hour, received the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry and was published by Mercer University Press. Her chapbook, Insects & Mystics, was awarded the Redbone Press Prize...
Sessions
Kim Ware
Singer, songwriter, and drummer-turned-guitarist Kim Ware of the Good Graces is known for her unique brand of raw, folk-leaning “southern indie” music. Performing with a rotating cast of musicians, Ware has been crafting tracks with both guts and heart since picking up her first guitar in 2006...
Sessions
Matt Whyte
Matt Whyte had his start in the music business leading the late aughts band Earl Greyhound, a 70s rock influenced group that Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and The New Yorker all rallied behind following the release of their debut album, Soft Targets. Their music appeared in multiple video games, films and TV shows while they toured the world on their own and in support of acts like Chris Cornell and Portugal The Man...
Sessions
Zanthia Wiley
Zanthia Wiley, MD, is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Emory Division of Infectious Diseases and Associate Vice Chair of RYSE (DEI) Initiatives in the Emory Department of Medicine. She is the 2024 President of the American Federation for Medical Research where the mission is to “develop and mentor tomorrow’s leaders in medical research”...
Sessions
Jeremy Young
Jeremy Young is a Senior Producer with the award-winning documentary program 'Fault Lines' on Al Jazeera English. He has extensive experience covering a range of topics including human rights violations, environmental issues and international affairs...
Sessions
Kevin Young
Kevin Young is the poetry editor of The New Yorker, where he hosts the poetry podcast, and is widely regarded as one of the leading poets of his generation. He was the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture from 2008 – 2016, and served as Curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library—a 75,000-volume collection of rare and modern poetry housed at Emory University – from 2005 – 2016...
Sessions
Ali John Zarrabi
Ali John Zarrabi, MD, is a palliative care physician, Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, and Director of Psychedelic Research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Brown University through the Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME)...
Sessions
Crystal Sanders
Crystal R. Sanders is an award-winning historian of the United States in the twentieth century...
Sessions
Carol Anderson
Carol Anderson is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of African American Studies at Emory University...
Sessions
Rosanne Cash
When you read the name Rosanne Cash, chances are you think of the singer-songwriter with nearly two dozen Top 40 hits, fourteen Grammy nominations, and four Grammy Awards. If you have paid close attention, you may also think of Cash as an author, whose 2010 memoir Composed garnered praise from high-profile critics and landed on The New York Times’s bestseller list...
Sessions
Robyn Fivush
Robyn Fivush is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology at Emory University, where she has been on the faculty since 1984. She received her PhD from the Graduate Center of The City University of New York in 1983 and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California at San Diego from 1983 to 1984...
Sessions
Rose Scott
Rose Scott is an award-winning journalist and host of the midday news program “Closer Look” heard on Atlanta’s NPR, station 90.1 FM – WABE.
In her role as a co-host and now host, Rose has interviewed foreign heads of states, cabinet members, U.S. ambassadors, numerous consul generals, state and local elected officials as well as civic and social leaders...
Sessions
Hannah Palmer
Hannah S. Palmer is a writer and artist from the southside of Atlanta...
Sessions
Karida L. Brown
Dr. Karida Brown is an NAACP Image Award-winning author and public intellectual...