Juliana "Jewels" Smith is a writer, educator, and speaker. She is a Glyph Award winner and the honoree of the first annual Excellence in Comics and Graphic Novels Award from the African American Library and Museum at Oakland. Mike Hampton has been a self-published comic book artist and writer for more than 15 years. Ronald Nelson, who specializes in portrait drawing and sequential art, studied at School of Visual Arts, the Art Students League, and Cooper Union. Kiese Laymon is an award-winning black southern writer, the author of Long Division and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America.