G. Neri is the Coretta Scott King honor-winning author of Yummy: the Last Days of a Southside Shorty, and Ghetto Cowboy, which was made into the movie, Concrete Cowboy, starring Idris Elba, which debuted at #1 on Netflix. His books have been translated into multiple languages in over 25 countries. They include Tru & Nelle, Grand Theft Horse, Chess Rumble, When Paul Met Artie, and his latest, Christo and Jeanne-Claude Wrap the World. In 2017, he was awarded the first of two National Science Foundation grants that sent him to Antarctica; he is currently co-chair of the Antarctic Artists and Writers Collective. He writes full-time while living on the Gulf Coast of Florida with his wife and daughter. You can find him online at www.gneri.com.

Julie Carmean serves as the Manager of National Teacher Programs for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. She has developed and implemented professional development programs for educators, nationally and internationally, onsite and online. She and her team produced the Gallery’s first Massive Open Online Course, Teaching Critical Thinking through Art with the National Gallery of Art, on the edX platform, serving over 30,000 participants since its launch in 2019; they are currently producing a second course. Julie also leads annually the Summer Institute for Educators, a convening of educators around ideas of integrating art into pedagogy. She is presently exploring the role of art in supporting Social-Emotional Learning. She consults and presents regularly about critical thinking through art, teaching practices, and online learning. Previously, Julie coordinated the National Gallery’s Art Around the Corner partnership programs with DC Public Schools. Before venturing into museum education, she taught as a classroom teacher for five years. She became aware of Project Zero research and pedagogies during her time as an Arts in Education student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and has found powerful applications in both the classroom and museum.

Soul-stirring, interdisciplinary work has garnered Al Letson national recognition and devoted fans. As a journalist Letson has received critical acclaim, and numerous awards, including three Peabody Awards, and four National Edward R. Murrow Awards. In 2015 Letson joined the Center for Investigative Reporting to help launch and host public radio's first hour-long investigative journalism show, Reveal. Since that time Reveal has gained a large audience and is heard on over 500 public radio stations and over 100 million downloads.

As a screenwriter Letson has worked in TV writers rooms for AMC, APPLE TV, and HULU. He’s also sold and developed shows with AMC, FX, and EONE. Letson got his start on stage as a performance poet where he established himself as a heavyweight in the Poetry Slam community, being a featured on venues such as HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, and CBS’s 2004 Final Four PreGame. Drawing on his background as a performance poet, Letson seamlessly weaves spoken word into the fabric of his theatre work. Several of his plays produced on stages across the country. His solo performance Summer in Sanctuary opened at the Abingdon Theatre company off-Broadway in and ran for nine months at the Marsh in San Francisco.

A self-described comic nerd, in 2017 Letson was picked by DC Comics to join the DC Comics Writer’s Workshop. The workshop trains writers to work for DC Comics, writing iconic characters like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Independently, Letson’s been working on a graphic novel, “Imperfect”, with artist Pier Brito, which will be released in 2018. While it may seem like his interests are varied, they are all aspects of who Al Letson is, a storyteller for the new millennium.