Words and Sh*t Gem.In.Eyes Productions

Diamond Braxton (she/they) is a queer, mixed-race Black-Xicanx writer, editor, and educator based in Texas. Their work appears in Best Microfiction 2023, Sundress Publications Best of the Net anthology, The Forge, Stanchion, Hellebore Press, ANMLY, and others. She is a Lambda Literary retreat fellow (2023) and a Tin House 21′ workshop alum. She is the Founder of a new intersectional, anti-racist publishing press called Abode Press, and she is working on her first collection of genre-bending short stories. Learn more at www.diamondgizellebraxton.com or @DiamondGBraxton on everything else.


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Andre Bradford, a.k.a. S.C. Says, is an Austin based slam poet who has been performing slam poetry since 2013. He's toured and featured at venues and universities across the country, and his work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Write About Now, The Edge radio, The Culture Trip, and Blavity. He is a two time Austin Poetry Slam Champion, the 2022 Texas Grand Slam Champion, and is the author of the poetry collection Golden Brown Skin. He also once popped a bag of popcorn without burning a single kernel, which is arguably one of his greatest achievements. 

His poetry covers a gamut of topics ranging from being mixed race, to social justice, to mental health awareness, to never settling in relationships. Slam poetry is an art form he loves due to its raw vulnerability and its ability to cultivate transparency and dialogues into many different walks of life.


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Lacey Roop is a queer, non-binary poet & performer. They perform their work nationwide at bookstores, festivals, and college campuses. They have previously ranked 6th in the world at the Women of the World Poetry Slam, a former Austin Poetry Slam Champion, and have been featured on PBS’s, Roadtrip Nation, which reaches over 60 million households worldwide. Their work is a powerful exploration on gender and sexualiity, identity, and the complexities of being human. A Mississippi native, they currently reside in Austin, TX with their spouse and two incredibly large dogs (Cassiopeia & Artemis).


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Ayanna Florence is a poet, creative, and teaching artist originally from Chesapeake, VA and currently residing in Charlotte, NC. She is a Brave New Voices alum, a Southern Fried Poetry Slam finalist, and has been performing spoken word across the country since 16 years old. Ayanna is the 2023 Slam Charlotte Grand Slam champion, the current North Carolina Regional Slam champion, a 2023 Queen of the South slam champion, and the 2023 Womxn of the World Poetry Slam champion. She is passionate about using her poetry as a method of healing for herself and others.


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jason b. crawford (They/He/She) is a writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. Their debut Full-Length Year of the Unicorn Kidz is out from Sundress Publications. crawford holds a Bachelor of Science in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University. They are a 2023 Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Voices fellow. They are the winner of the Courtney Valentine Prize for Outstanding Work by a Millennial Artist, the winner of the Rhino’s Founders Prize, and a finalist for the Frontier’s Open prize. crawford was a finalist for the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid 2021 and 2022 Poetry Contest. Their work can be found or is forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, Metro Weekly, AGNI Magazine, Foglifter Magazine, RHINO Poetry, Four Way Review, Cincinnati Review, Frontier Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, among others. They hold an MFA in poetry from The New School.


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C.L. “Rooster” Martinez is an educator, writer, and spoken word poet from San Antonio, Texas. He is the author of A Saint for Lost Things and As it is in Heaven. His work has appeared in such publications as Huizache, Voices de la Luna, Write About Now Poetry, Button Poetry, Huffington Post Latino Voices, Acentos Review, and others. He was co-editor on Contra: Texas Poets Speak Out, a poetry anthology, and a writer on the 2016 play, American Pride, which won two ATAC Globe awards for Writing of a Drama and Overall Production of a Drama. Rooster earned a MA/MFA from the Creative Writing, Literature and Social Justice program at Our Lady of the Lake University and teaches English at Palo Alto College in San Antonio, TX. His latest poetry collection is Mexican Dinosaur from Write About Now Publishing.


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