Adrienne Samuels-Gibbs

I’m an award-winning journalist who has served as the Senior Editor of Ebony magazine and as a feature writer and columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. I’ve worked at the Miami Herald, the St. Petersburg (Tampa) Times and The Boston Globe. I’m that rare bird who has both magazine and newspaper experience. Chicago has a huge story right now with all the violence, and I’m uniquely positioned to write it. I live on the South Side and trust me, it’s not all guns and death. I’m able to write nuanced and balanced stories. Let’s talk.

I write cover stories and wrangled covers for Ebony, so I also have a pretty deep celebrity rolodex. If you need celebrity comment for a story, or need to set up a photo shoot, I can easily manage that as well.

Fatimah Asghar

I am also a photographer and am doing a series called “Let Me Love Me”, a nude photo project for people of color to shape a public dialogue about our bodies and journeys with self love.

Topics

Kovie Biakolo

I’m a Senior Writer and Cultural Advocate at Thought Catalog currently and freelance for Hello Beautiful weekly. Always looking to publish writers with unique perspectives and intelligent social commentary on current events and anything culture-related.

Thelonious Legend

I have eclectic taste. I’m an old skool hip hop head(Rap really was better back in the day) Wine drinker with a fondness for the Reds. Off and On again athletic trainer usually high school students and only if I can squeeze it in. Love reading of course but tend to read more classics than anything. Also enjoy rock climbing and finishing and win, lose, or draw I’m rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Kelsey Riley

Kelsey is a live tweeter, cultural critic, militant millennial and proud HBCU grad who has traveled the world. She is surviving her Quarter-Life Crisis and is a Chicago native.

Deborah Jian Lee

Accolades: Livingston Awards for Young Journalists, Finalist, 2012; Newswomen’s Club of New York Front Page Award for Radio Feature, 2012; Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Grant Recipient, 2011; Scripps Howard Grant Recipient for religion reporting abroad, 2008.

Erika L. Sánchez

Erika L. Sánchez is a poet, writer, and consultant living in Chicago. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from the University of Illinois at Chicago, holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico, and was a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to Madrid, Spain. She has been a CantoMundo Fellow, Bread Loaf Scholar, and winner of the “Discovery”/Boston Review Prize. In the fall of 2014, the Guild Complex of Chicago invited Erika and four other writers to participate in Kapittel, the International Festival of Literature and Freedom of Speech in Stavanger, Norway. Her poetry has appeared in Pleiades, Drunken Boat, Witness, Hunger Mountain, Crab Orchard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ostrich Review, Copper Nickel, diode, The Southeast Review, Boston Review, “Latino USA” on NPR, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Viking 2015), and is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine. Erika is currently the sex and love advice columnist for Cosmopolitan for Latinas, and has contributed to The Guardian, NBC News, NBC Latino, Elle, Rolling Stone, Al Jazeera, Truthout, Salon, The Grio, BuzzFeed, Cosmopolitan, Common Ground News Service, AlterNet, Jezebel, The Huffington Post, and Ms. Magazine. Her articles have been republished all around the world and have been translated into several languages. She has also written and edited book reviews for Kirkus Reviews and has appeared on American Public Media, The Huffington Post Live, and National Public Radio. Erika has lived in Spain, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico, and is fluent in Spanish. She is currently working on a novel and poetry collection. In addition to her writing career, Erika works as an independent consultant focused on social justice, particularly sexual health and reproductive rights.