Daniel Borzutzky is a poet and Spanish-language translator from Chicago. His most recent books are The Murmuring Grief of the Americas (2024), and Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018 (2021). His 2016 collection, The Performance of Becoming Human, received the National Book Award. Lake Michigan (2018) was a finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. His most recent translations are Cecilia Vicuña’s The Deer Book (2024); and Paula Ilabaca Nuñez’s The Loose Pearl (2022), winner of the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. His translation of Galo Ghigliotto's Valdivia received the American Literary Translator’s Association’s 2017 National Translation Award, and he has also translated collections by Raúl Zurita, and Jaime Luis Huenún. He teaches English and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Macarena Hernández is a multimedia journalist and educational consultant. Formerly, she was an editorial columnist at The Dallas Morning News; the Rio Grande Valley Bureau Chief for The San Antonio Express-News; the Fred Hartman Distinguished Professor of Journalism at Baylor University; and the Victoria Advocate Endowed Professor in the Humanities at the University of Houston-Victoria. She served as founding content editor and production manager for HTI Open Plaza. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and PBS.

Nelly Rosario is the author of Song of the Water Saints: A Novel, winner of a PEN/Open Book Award. She holds an MFA from Columbia University. Her fiction and creative nonfiction work appears in various journals and anthologies, including Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women (Amistad Press/Harper Collins, 2023), Critical Dialogues in Latina and Latino Studies (New York University Press, 2021), and Teaching Black: Pedagogy, Practice, and Perspectives on Writing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021). She has been on faculty at Texas State University-San Marcos, Medgar Evers-CUNY, The City College of New York-CUNY, Columbia University, and was a Visiting Scholar in the MIT Comparative Media/Writing Program. Rosario has served as Assistant Director of Writing for the MIT Black History Project and as founding content editor/webmaster for HTI Open Plaza. Currently, Rosario serves as Chair and Associate Professor in the Latina/o Studies Program at Williams College.

Dr. Marlene Mayra Ferreras is assistant professor of practical theology at the HMS Richards Divinity School at La Sierra University (2017), where she also received BA degrees in Religious Studies and Spanish (2003). Dr. Ferreras’ academic interests intersect social science and theology. She studies the strategies women use to resist systems of violence and oppression for the purpose of providing spiritual care that assists women in identifying and developing preferred futures. Her research on decolonial approaches in care and counseling with working-class Latinx women focuses on the identity and eschatology of Indigenous female maquila workers in Yucatan, Mexico. Dr. Ferreras’ recent book Insurrectionist Wisdoms: Toward a North American Indigenized Pastoral Theology (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) won the 2023 national HTI Book Prize. Awards granted also include the Wills and Dorothy Fisher Award (Claremont School of Theology, 2018), the Forum for Theological Exploration Doctoral Fellowships (2015, 2017) and a HTI Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (Princeton, 2017). She holds a PhD in practical theology: spiritually integrative psychotherapy from Claremont School of Theology (2019). Her two MA degrees in theology are from Claremont School of Theology (2019) and Fuller Theological Seminary (2012), with an emphasis in biblical studies. She also received an MS in Marital and Family Therapy from Loma Linda University (2011). The daughter of a Cuban refugee single-mother, Dr. Ferreras was born and raised in southern California. She is an ordained Seventh-day Adventist minister with fourteen years experience in pastoral ministry, serving communities around Loma Linda, California, as well as a registered associate marriage and family therapist with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.

ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections: the eaters of flowers (Saddle Road Press, 2024); FirstPoems (Flowersong Press, 2021); CUICACALLI/House of Song (Saddle Road Press, 2019); Blood Sugar Canto (Saddle Road Press, 2016); and furia (Mouthfeel Press, 2010). Her two chapbooks are Hibiscus Tacos (Alabrava Press, 2021) and Enduring Azucares (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). ire’ne recently released her first comic book, VENDAVAL (Chispa Imprint of Scout Comics, 2024). She is the recipient of a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award. Her short story collection, flesh to bone (Aunt Lute Books, 2013), won the Premio Aztlán and the short story collection, the light of your body, will be published by Arte Publico Press in spring 2025. ire’ne is currently a Writer at Large for Texas Highways Magazine.

Amirah Orozco is a theology doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame in the area of Systematic Theology, with a minor in Gender Studies. She is also a Doctoral Student Affiliate with the Kellogg Institute of International Affairs. Her interests center on mujerista and feminista latine thought as well as Catholic ecclesiology. Orozco’s scholarship pursues liberation and emancipation of the poor and marginalized, focusing on decolonial theologies and feminist movements in the Catholic Church. Her work is anchored in how social movements relate outside of the Church and why those relationships are important to understanding the role of the Church in public life. Orozco originates from the Border between El Paso,Texas and Juárez, Chihuahua, has worked with Latine immigrants in Boston and Chicago, and conducted research in Zacatecas about the legacy of San Luis Batiz Saenz and Mexico’s post-revolutionary church-state relations. She holds a Master's of Theological Studies from Boston College School of Theology and Ministry (2021) and a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston College (2019).

María Amantina Durán immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic in the mid-1960s. She and her husband Natalio Durán planted roots in Williamsburg (“Los Sures”), Brooklyn, where they began attending Transfiguration Parish. She went on to become a community activist and a leader in the Fraternidad Jesús de Nazaret, a chapter of the international Lay Fraternity of Charles de Foucauld, which helps parishioners meet regularly outside of Mass and strengthen their faith in God and connection with the community. With two daughters in college, she studied English at Solidaridad Humana, a school on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Durán volunteered at the Nuestros Niños Day Care Center in Williamsburg for 20 years and became officially employed as an Educational Aide for 13 years. Her testimonios are documented in various archival resources, including a 1989 oral history recording by the Brooklyn Historical Society as part of its Hispanic Communities Documentation Project. In the early 90s, she organized the first event to feature Dominican folk music, food, and knitting at the central Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza. She has also shared her experience on the New Yorkers for Parks Lots to Grow podcast and in Bargaining for Brooklyn: Community Organizations in the Entrepreneurial City (University of Chicago Press, 2007) by Nicole P. Marwell. Durán is a member of La Casita Verde community garden in Williamsburg and a founding member of Fundación Hijos de Loma Prieta, a Facebook page dedicated to the Loma Prieta community in Santiago, Dominican Republic. A proud wife and mother of five children and three grandchildren, Durán continues attending Mass at Transfiguration Parish and is involved in several charitable works in New York City and in her native country, for which she has received several City Council citations, proclamations, and awards. 

Jesús Rafael Jiménez was born in San José de Guanipa, Anzoátegui State, Venezuela. He works as an Accounting Technician and Social Promoter. Currently, he is Coordinator of Social Programs at the Buenaventura Catholic Parish in the City of San Félix, Bolívar State, Venezuela. In 2023, he was part of the Venezuelan delegation to the Continental Meeting of the Continental Meeting of the Secular Fraternity of Saint Charles De Foucauld América in Medellín, Colombia.

Gene Fowler is a writer-performer based in Texas. Born into a Dallas showbiz family in 1950, he began performing and writing for theater during the Lyndon Johnson administration. His professional appearances include the White Elephant Saloon (Fort Worth), Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston), the San Antonio Rodeo, Downtown Center for the Arts (Albuquerque), the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Nashville Network. He has written on such subjects as the excavation of a 17th-century French shipwreck on the Texas coast, Ernest Tubb, and rattlesnake folk medicine for Texas Highways, True West, Southwest Contemporary and numerous other publications. In addition to Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves (with Bill Craford; Texas Monthly Press, 1987), his books include Crazy Water: The Story of Mineral Wells and Other Texas Health Resorts (Texas Christian University Press, 1991); Mystic Healers & Medicine Shows: Blazing Trails to Wellness in the Old West and Beyond (Ancient City Press, 1997); Glen Rose, Texas (Somervell County Historical Commission, 2002); Mavericks: A Gallery of Texas Characters (University of Texas Press, 2008); and Metro Music – Celebrating a Century of the Trinity River Groove (TCU Press, 2021). See his illustrated talk, “Diamond King Medicine Show,” on YouTube.

Bill Crawford was born in New York City and attended the prep school Phillips Academy, Andover, and Harvard, where he received his undergraduate degree in the Comparative Study of Religion. He also earned an MBA in management from the University of Texas - Austin and worked briefly in the oil industry. For more than thirty years, Crawford lived in Austin, Texas where he worked as a media producer, writer, ghost writer and editor. He is a frequent contributor to the Austin Chronicle, Texas Monthly, and a number of other publications. Crawford has written or co-written more than a dozen books, including The United States Border Patrol (Putnam, 1965); Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves (with Gene Fowler; Texas Monthly Press, 1987); Stevie Ray Vaughan: Caught in the Crossfire (with Joe Nick Patoski; Little, Brown, 1993); Cerealizing America: The Unsweetened Story of American Breakfast Cereal (with Scott Bruce; Faber & Faber, 1995); Texas Death Row: Executions in the Modern Era (Longstreet Press, 2000); Austin: A Pictorial History (American Historical Press, 2001); All American: The Rise and Fall of Jim Thorpe (Wiley, 2003); and Please Pass the Biscuits, Pappy (University of Texas Press, 2004). Several of his books have been optioned by the film industry. He has also ghost written or edited more than three dozen other publications, including memoirs, business histories, and self-help books. Crawford is the creator of The Dad Show, a talk-radio show for parents that ran for fifteen years on Austin radio and was funded by Child Incorporated, a manager of Head Start programs. Additionally, he spent five years working as a volunteer court-appointed special advocate for children in foster care with the organization CASA of Travis County. He worked on The Texas Quiz Show, a game show about Texas history for seventh-grade students who take Texas history in school. Crawford has also appeared as a humorous commentator on Fox News Channel, Fox and Friends, MSNBC, and C-SPAN, as well as Westwood I radio networks and dozens of other radio stations across the country. Crawford currently lives in a small town in Nuevo León, Mexico, where he writes creative non-fiction, swims, rides his bike, and drinks tequila.

Emmy Pérez, Texas Poet Laureate 2020, has lived in the Texas borderlands for 24 years and is originally from Santa Ana, California. She is a graduate of Columbia University (MFA) and the University of Southern California (BA). ​Pérez is currently a full professor of creative writing at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV)–formerly University of Texas-Pan American–where she also serves as department chair, teaches in the MFA and undergraduate creative writing programs, and holds the Dr. Robert S. Nelsen Endowed Professorship in Mexican American Studies (2021-2024). For five years, Pérez held various administrative positions—interim director, associate director, and acting director—with UTRGV's Center for Mexican American Studies (B3 Institute), and she is an affiliate faculty member of the Mexican American Studies academic program. ​Over the years, she has also served as a creative-writing workshop facilitator in community-based programs and adult and juvenile detention centers; she has taught writing at three border region HSI institutions, beginning at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and El Paso Community College. 

Pérez is the author of the poetry collections With the River on Our Face (University of Arizona Press, 2016) and Solstice (Swan Scythe Press, 2003, 2011, 2019). Her latest collection, Paper america: New and Selected Poems  (TCU Press, 2025) is forthcoming. Her poetry has also been published with the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series and Split this Rock's The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database, and appeared in journals such as Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Indiana Review, and Pilgrimage Magazine; and anthologies such as Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology (University of Georgia Press), Other Musics: New Latina Poetry (University of Oklahoma Press), Orange County: A Literary Field Guide (Heyday), ​What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy & Outrage (Northwestern U. Press), The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press), and A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (University of Iowa Press).

Pérez is the recipient of a 2022 United States Artist Fellowship, a 2020 Poets Laureate Fellowship with the Academy of American Poets while serving as Texas Poet Laureate 2020. Other honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown; the inaugural Modesta Avila Award from LibroMobile in her hometown Santa Ana, the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award; and residencies at MacDowell, the Ucross Foundation, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Since 2008, she has been a member of the Macondo Writers' Workshop for socially engaged writers and was part of the inaugural cohort of CantoMundo fellows in 2010. In El Paso, she was a member of the Women Writers' Collective and, in 2017, co-founded Poets Against Walls writing collective in the Rio Grande Valley. She also served as the 2021 Consulting Artist-in-Residence with UT San Antonio's Democratizing Racial Justice Mellon Foundation grant in collaboration with the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. 

Nancy Gavilanes is an accomplished writer, a gifted communicator, and a passionate evangelist and Bible school instructor who loves to encourage, empower, and inspire women of diverse backgrounds to walk by abounding faith. She has been on short-term missions trips to five countries. Gavilanes has hosted several events and conferences and has spoken to numerous groups, including to Christians working at the United Nations and students at Nyack College. She has a master’s degree in journalism from New York University and has authored five Christian-living books and devotionals. Her new book is God-Given Dreams: 6 Ways to Live Your Divine Purpose (NavPress, 2024). She has also written for The New York Times, the SpiritLed Woman’s and Charisma’s magazine websites, among other publications. Gavilanes is currently the host of the Abounding Faith for Today podcast and a contributing writer for Our Daily Bread Ministries.  She attends Times Square Church in New York.

Willian Olmos lives Christian values ​​and the Gospel, and is a follower of the spirituality of Brother Carlos de Foucauld. He is a researcher of Venezuelan pre-Columbian art. He also creates artistic paintings, crafts, and percussion instruments. In Venezuela, Olmos is a primary school teacher in the ​​visual arts at a state school and is a promoter of culture, reading, and writing. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Education, with honorable mention in the Visual Arts, a Master's degree in Curriculum Development, specializing in Participatory Research for Local Development, and a doctorate in Educational Sciences. From 2018 to 2023, he served as coordinator of the Charles de Foucauld Secular Fraternity of the Americas and is a member of the Charles de Foucauld Secular Fraternity's international team. Olmos lives in Venezuela with his wife Elsy Mayela Seijas.

Elsy Mayela Seijas is committed to the values of the Gospel and the spirituality of Saint Carlos de Foucauld. She writes stories, designs mini gardens, and makes jewelry. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Education, with a specialty in participatory research for Local Development, and a doctorate in Educational Sciences. She works as a researcher in participation methodologies and accompaniment of training processes. In 2002, she retired from Venezuela’s National Institute of Prevention, Health, and Occupational Safety, having served as a promoter and trainer in occupational health. From 2018 to 2023, she served as the coordinator of the Charles de Foucauld Secular Fraternity of the Americas and is a member of the Charles de Foucauld Secular Fraternity’s international team. She lives in Venezuela with her husband Willian Olmos.

Dr. Jose L. Saldivar, Jr. is a first-generation college graduate who holds BA (Chicana/o Studies) and MEd (Social Sciences of Education) degrees from Stanford University, and a PhD (Cultural Studies in Education) from The University of Texas at Austin. He is an educational consultant and coach, specializing in college, career, and life readiness coaching, and faculty development. Dr. Saldivar, a Rio Grande Valley native, is a full-time faculty member at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is the founder of CREO (College and Career Readiness and Educational Opportunity Consultants), which provides college, career, and life readiness consulting services to a variety of clients, including K-12 institutions, higher education, community organizations, and private companies. As part of CREO’s initiatives, Dr. Saldivar hosts The Way to College Podcast.

César Leonardo de León is the author of speaking with grackles by soapberry trees (FlowerSong, 2021), winner of the Texas Institute of Letters John A. Robertson Award for the best first book of poetry (2021) and of the Philosophical Society of Texas Best Book of Poetry award (2022).  Also a Golden Circle Award recipient from The University of Columbia Press, he holds an MFA in creative writing, with a certificate in Mexican American studies from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is an educator, one of four poet-organizers for Poets Against Walls, and a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop. His work has appeared in Queen Mob’s Tea House, Pilgrimage, The Acentos Review, Yellow Chair Review, La Bloga, Zócalo Public Square, and in the anthologies Asina is How We Talk: A collection of Tejano poetry written en la lengua de la gente (Flowersong Press, 2022), Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando (Damaged Goods Press, 2018), Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute Books, 2016), The Border Crossed Us: An Anthology to End Apartheid (VAGABOND, 2015), and Texas Weather Anthology (Lamar University Press, 2016), among others.

Alejandro Enríquez is a Boiler Engineer for the New York City Department of Education (DOE) and a parishioner of Transfiguration Parish in Brooklyn, NY, where he worked in maintenance at the parochial school Our Savior for many years. He also worked as Second Chef at a French restaurant in Manhattan. For more than a decade, Enríquez has led a Jesús de Nazaret [Jesus of Nazareth] Fraternity at Transfiguration, which he represented as a delegate at the 2023 Encuentro Continental Fraternidad Secular San Carlos de Foucauld América [Saint Charles de Foucauld Secular Fraternity Continental Meeting] in Medellín, Colombia. Born in Puebla, Mexico, Enríquez lives in Ridgewood, NY with his wife Petra; they have three daughters and live with a daughter and two grandchildren.

Daniel García Ordaz, a.k.a. The Poet Mariachi is a singer-songwriter, teacher and author from Mission, Texas. He is also a TEDx Speaker, Navy veteran, 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee, and the 2023 McAllen Poet Laureate, City of McAllen, Texas. García Ordaz’s Christian faith permeates much of his writing, which is seasoned with influences from his Mexican American upbringing. He earned a BA in English from The University Of Texas-Pan American (UTPA, now the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) and an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), and he appears in the documentary ALTAR: Cruzando fronteras/Building Bridges (2009). His books include You Know What I'm Sayin'? (El Zarape Press, 2006), Cenzontle/Mockingbird: Songs of Empowerment (FlowerSong Press, 2018) and its YA Edition, as well as Read Until You Bleed: Funny & Thoughtful Poems For Funny & Thoughtful Children (El Zarape Press, 2023). García Ordaz's work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Asina Is How We Talk (FlowerSong Press, 2022); Good Cop/Bad Cop (FlowerSong Press, 2021); Living Beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican In America (Penguin Random House, 2021); Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century (Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, 2020); Poetry of Resistance: Voices For Social Justice (University of Arizona Press, 2016); Twenty: In Memoriam (El Zarape Press, 2014); and Boundless, the anthology of the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival, which he founded. He may be found on social media at @poetmariachi.

Paolo Piscitelli is a Visiting Lecturer in Sculpture in the Department of Studio Arts at University of Pittsburgh. Influenced by the atmosphere of the Arte Povera movement, he has worked in a broad range of techniques and disciplines including drawing, sculpture, installation, digital media, phenomenological experimentation with materials and their interaction with time. His sculpture prioritizes a sustainable ecological practice developed, in part, through traveling and teaching. Piscitelli’s current work and research involve the use of simple hand tools to carve small-scale sculptures assessed with sight and touch. Piscitelli has exhibited internationally, doing many shows in private spaces–like Studio Tucci Russo, Torre Pellice and e/static, Turin (Italy); Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam (Holland)--as well as in public spaces like Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GAM) in Torino and in Bologna, Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea (MLAC) - Sapienza, Rome; and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (Italy); the FRAC-Bourgogne in Dijon (France); Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX and the Museum of Art, Denver, CO (United States). He holds BFA and MA degrees in Sculpture from Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti in Turin, Italy, and an MFA in Creative Practice from the Transart Institute in the School of Art and Media at University of Plymouth, UK. Piscitelli lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. See more of his work at: artpaolo.com.

Dr. José E. Balcells Gallarreta is the Executive Director of Iodea, a non-profit organization providing religious educational programs. At Iodea, Balcells explores how to make theological studies more engaging and effective by using proven methods of instruction that integrate Digital Tutor (DT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. Prior to this, he taught at several universities in California and in Puerto Rico. Dr. Balcells holds an MA in Biblical Languages from the Jesuit School of Theology of Berkeley and a PhD in Biblical Studies, with an emphasis on texts of Second Temple Judaism and the archaeology of the Ancient Near East of the Persian period, from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. His article “Old Testament Archaeology.” appears in The Jerome Biblical Commentary for the Twenty-First Century (Bloomsbury, 2022). Part of his research has focused on the integration of archaeology with biblical studies. One of his most important projects in this area was the publication of Household and Family Religion in Persian-Period Judah: An Archaeological Approach (SBL Press, 2017) as part of the Society of Biblical Literature’s Ancient Near East Monograph Series. He has participated in archaeological excavations in Tel Akko and Tel Azekah, Israel. He also has been involved with other projects related to the archaeology of the ancient Near East. Professional memberships include: American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), Asociación Bíblica Española (ABE), and Society of Biblical Literature (SBL).