Dr. Reynaldo Anderson
Dr. Reynaldo Anderson serves as an Associate Professor of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia Pennsylvania and the Executive Director and Co-founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM), a network of Artists, Curators, intellectuals and Activists.
Dr. Anderson is the Co-Editor of several publications which include:
—Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness (published by Lexington books)
—Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent (published by Cedar Grove Publishing)
—The Black Speculative Art Movement: Black Futurity, Art + Design (published by Lexington books)
—Black Lives, Black Politics, Black Futures, special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies
—When is Wakanda: Afrofuturism and Dark Speculative Futurity Journal of Futures Studies
John Jennings
John Jennings is a professor, author, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times Bestseller, 2018 Eisner Winner, and all-around champion of Black culture.
As Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside (UCR), Jennings examines the visual culture of race in various media forms including film, illustrated fiction, and comics and graphic novels. He is also the director of Abrams ComicArts imprint Megascope, which publishes graphic novels focused on the experiences of people of color. His research interests include the visual culture of Hip Hop, Afrofuturism and politics, Visual Literacy, Horror, and the EthnoGothic, and Speculative Design and its applications to visual rhetoric.
Jennings is co-editor of the 2016 Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art (Rutgers) and co-founder/organizer of The Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. He is co-founder and organizer of the MLK NorCal’s Black Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco and also SOL-CON: The Brown and Black Comix Expo at the Ohio State University.
Sheree Renee Thomas
Sheree Renée Thomas is an award-winning fiction writer, poet, and editor. Her work is inspired by myth and folklore, natural science and Mississippi Delta conjure. Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future (Third Man Books, May 2020) is her first all prose collection. She is also the author of two multigenre/hybrid collections, Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Press July 2016), longlisted for the 2016 Otherwise Award and honored with a Publishers Weekly Starred Review and Shotgun Lullabies (Aqueduct January 2011). She edited the World Fantasy-winning groundbreaking black speculative fiction anthologies, Dark Matter (2000 and 2004) and is the first to introduce W.E.B. Du Bois’s science fiction short stories. Her work is widely anthologized and appears in The Big Book of Modern Fantasy edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Vintage, 2020). She is the Associate Editor of the historic Black arts literary journal, Obsidian: Literature & the Arts in the African Diaspora, founded in 1975 and is the Editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, founded in 1949. She also writes book reviews for Asimov's. She was recently honored as a 2020 World Fantasy Award Finalist in the Special Award – Professional category for contributions to the genre and is the Co-Host of the 2021 Hugo Awards Ceremony at Discon III in Washington, DC
She is a Marvel writer and contributor to the groundbreaking anthology, Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda edited by Jesse J. Holland (Feb. 2021). She lives in her hometown, Memphis, Tennessee near a mighty river and a pyramid.
Dacia “InnerGy” Polk
Dacia Polk, better known as InnerGy, is a multi- disciplinary Creative, Director, Consultant and Event Curator.
She has served as the Webmaster and Midwest Field Coordinator for The Black Speculative Arts Movement since 2016. She is Lead Organizer of BSAM St. Louis Chapter and Deputy Assistant Director of The Black Speculative Arts Movement.
An award-winning professionally performing Poet, Actress and Model. She has curated exhibitions which have included, film, performing art, fashion, and visual art.
Digital art of her is featured in “Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent and her original art is featured in “Red Spring” one of the installments of BSAM’s online digital Arts collaboration w/ NEW YORK LIVE ARTS and Google Arts & Culture.
She is the Executive Producer of WORDUP! Open mic, a 7 year running, weekly Tuesday Night showcase of live music, poetry, and comedy supporting the creative arts community in St. Louis, MO.
She also sits on a curatorial board for the St. Louis Art Museum and is currently a WEPOWER Chisholm’s Chair Fellow.
Stacey “Black Kirby” Robinson
Stacey Robinson, also known as “Black Kirby” is a Graphic Designer and one of the leading Afrofuturist Digital Arts Creatives.
His subject matter examines the African-American experience, more specifically the future. Inspired by Michelangelo, Ernie Barnes, Charles Bibbs and Robert Rauschenberg, Stacey ventured in a different direction, examining the future. His Afro-Futurist works consist of reoccurring motifs, which are symbols of technology and rebirth. Juxtaposing flesh with mechanical objects, the works comment on newness of life beyond the struggles of the past. Currently, Stacey is preparing for graduate school. Balancing family, community activities and art events is an everyday challenge. Having achieved most of his life goals, Stacey is looking forward to an unreached goal, art professor: lecturer, and world-renowned post-modern artist.
Tim Fielder
Tim Fielder is an Illustrator, concept designer, cartoonist, and animator born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
His projects, Matty’s Rocket, INFINITUM, Black Metropolis and High John Conqueror are graphic stories from his company Dieselfunk Studios.
Most recently, his work was showcased in a career retrospective exhibition at The Hammonds House Museum. The show was titled Black Metropolis: 30 Years of Afrofuturism, Comics, Music, Animation, Decapitated Chickens, Heroes, Villains, and Negroes. Very soon Tim will be devoting time the the book variant of Black Metropolis which will be his Memoirs.
He has also worked as an educator for institutions such as New York University, The School of Visual Arts, New York Film Academy and Howard University in the areas of digital animation, concept design, and illustration. Tim has also been an independent animator on his work-in-progress animated film, ‘Harbinger’.
Tim, is an accomplished portrait artist. For decades he has produced illustrations of people from all walks of life from regular folks in the community to Presidents and celebrities. Along with his twin brother Jim, created the art form called Glogging, which showcases his portraits and is implemented in their Youtube and upcoming streaming program called THE DIESELFUNK SHOW.