Mosley, Walter: - "Walter Mosley is one of the most versatile and admired
writers in America. He is the author of more than sixty critically acclaimed
books that cover a wide range of ideas, genres, and forms including fiction
(literary, mystery, and science fiction), political monographs, writing guides including
Elements of Fiction a memoir in paintings, and a young adult novel called
47. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages.

From a collection of short stories, The Awkward Black Man,
to his daring novel John Woman, which explored deconstructionist
history, and his standalone crime novel Down the River and Unto the
Sea, which won an Edgar Award for Best Novel, the rich storylines that
Mosley has created and deepened the understanding and appreciation of Black
life in the United States. He has introduced an indelible cast of characters into
the American canon starting with his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress,
which brought Easy Rawlins, his private detective in postwar Los Angeles and his
friends Jackson Blue and Raymond "Mouse" Alexander into reader's lives. Mosley has
explored both large issues and intimate realities through the lens of characters
like the Black philosopher Socrates Fortlow; the elder suffering from Alzheimer's,
Ptolemy Grey; the bluesman R L; the boxer and New York private investigator Leonid
McGill; Debbie Dare, the porn star of Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore; and
Tempest Landry and his struggling angel, among others.

Mosley has also written and staged several plays including The
Fall of Heaven, based on his Tempest Landry stories and directed by the
acclaimed director Marion McClinton. Several of his books have been adapted for
film and television including Devil in a Blue Dress (starring Denzel
Washington, Don Cheadle and Jennifer Beals) and the HBO production of Always
Outnumbered (starring Laurence Fishburne and Natalie Cole). His short
fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction - long form essays and op-eds-have
appeared in the New York Times, and The Nation among other publications.
He is also a writer and executive producer on the John singleton FX series, "Snowfall."

Concerned by the lack of diversity in all levels of
publishing, Mosley established The Publishing Certificate Program with the City
University of New York to bring together book professionals and students hailing
from a wide range of racial, ethnic and economic communities for courses,
internships, and job opportunities. In 2013, Mosley was inducted into the New
York State Writers Hall of Fame, and he is the winner of numerous awards, including
a O. Henry Award, The Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award, a Grammy
, several NAACP Image awards, and PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award. In
2020, he was named the recipient of the Robert Krisch Award for lifetime
achievement from Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Born and raised in
Los Angeles, Mosley now lives in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

"

Jennings, John: - 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
at the University of California at Riverside (UCR), Jennings examines the visual
culture of race in various media forms including film, illustrated fiction, and
comings 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-winneg
collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics
and Sequential Art (Rutgers) and co-founder/organizer of the The Schomburg
Center's Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. He is co-founder and organizer of
the MLK NorCal's BlackComix Arts Festival in San Francisco and SOL-CON: The
Brown and Black Comix Expo and The Ohio State University.