Dionne Custer Edwards : literary artist, performing artist, arts administrator, educatorDionne Custer Edwards is a writer and arts educator working in education at The Wexner Center for the Arts. She created Pages, a writing-based program, where she curates a year of learning experiences in and around the arts. In conjunction with her work in the arts and education, in 2012, she presented in Indianapolis, a TEDx talk titled: Beautiful Distractions in 21st Century Learning, and recently spoke in New Orleans at the National Art Education Association on her research and work with the Pages program.
For several years, she was a contributing writer for Alive, has published single works of creative writing, essays, and articles, and most recently published an essay, translated in English and Turkish, Inside Outside: On Creative Practice and Arts Partnership in Sanat Dünyamiz (“Our Art World”). In 2015, Dionne was featured on The Ohio Channel’s 'Book Notes', a series featuring writers from Ohio. Her work appears on several music compilations, most recently 'The Tree of Life', a collaboration with renown jazz artist Pharez Whitted. In early 2016, she facilitated a 12-week writing residency, 'Write the Power', in conjunction with Maroon Arts Group, where she worked with seven other writers to pen an 80-page theater-inspired choreopoem. She was also recently a featured writer for Dare to Be Heard, an exhibition at The Columbus Cultural Arts Center, featuring women artist voices.
www.lifeandwrite.comBarbara Fant : minister, poet, artist facilitatorBarbara Fant, originally from Youngstown, Ohio is a minister, poet, and artist facilitator. She received her bachelor of art degree in English Literature and Language Arts in 2010 and her Master of Theological Studies in 2012. She has been on three National Poetry slam teams from Columbus and has represented the city in four Individual National and World Poetry slam competitions. Her first poetry collection, Paint, Inside Out was released in April 2010 from Penmanship Books of New York City when she was awarded The Cora Craig Award for Young Women Authors. She is a former employee of the Huckleberry House and of Art for a Child’s Safe America, working in shelters, prisons, correctional juvenile facilities, and elementary schools teaching art as a form of healing. She is also a member of ArtFluential of REACH communications, Is Said and the Advance Party, and has also been a regular performer on the radio show Street Soldiers. Commissioned by The Columbus Foundation, her poem “Today, Beginning Again,” written for Columbus’s Bicentennial year can be found in Revealed: Columbus, The Story of Us. She works at The Columbus Foundation as the Nonprofit Outreach Administrator. Barbara considers poetry her ministry.
https://barbarafant.wordpress.com/Carnell WilloughbyCarnell Bey Willoughby is a long time community artist. He is a founding member of one of Columbus' first Hip-Hop groups S.P.I.R.I.T. (Soldiers Poised Infinitely Reinforced in Truth). For over 20 years he has led community based writing workshops, hosted and performed at multiple events in the state from poetry nights to ComFest. Most recently Carnell is part owner of
Willowbeez SoulVeg, a vegetarian, health conscious pop-up and caterer with a community based mission.
Scott WoodsThe author and editor of over nine volumes of poetry and prose (We Over Here Now, 50 Mistakes Poets Make, and Watering Hole: Juke Joint Poems most recently), Scott Woods has performed in a number of venues and with an assortment of accompaniments. His work has been used in creative writing and historical literature classes at numerous universities and high schools, has been featured multiple times on National Public Radio, as well as in print in Paste and Columbus Monthly. He was inducted into the Thomson-Gale Contemporary Black Biography encyclopedia in 2006. He was the founder of the poetry performance group The Black Air Poets, and has published articles, reviews and other prose. He was the coach and a member of Columbus's first-ever National Poetry Slam team in 2001. He spent six years as President of Poetry Slam Inc., which oversees the annual National Poetry Slam, the Individual World Poetry Slam and the Women of the World Poetry Slam. He MCs the highly lauded Writer's Block Poetry Night open mic series in Columbus, Ohio and writes a bi-monthly poetry column - "Poetry Is Doomed" - for GotPoetry.com. In April 2006 Scott made history by performing the first-ever 24-hour poetry feature, a feat he bested with six more annual 24-hour readings without repeating a single poem.
https://scottwoodssays.wordpress.com/about/ 
