Michael Graf

Michael Graf is an Emmy Award winning filmmaker and was named one of the “Top 25 Screenwriters To Watch in 2021” by the International Screenwriters Association. He’s been shortlisted twice for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s prestigious Nicholl Fellowship and has won top screenwriting honors at film festivals in Paris, Park City and Nassau. He’s produced and optioned scripts include WINTER OF FROZEN DREAMS, THE LAST INDIAN WAR, THROWING HAMMERS and GOD LOVES THE PACKERS.

He’s also a member of the Director’s Guild of America, directed two Super Bowl campaigns and was the inaugural Writer In Residence at the UW Institute For Discovery. Michael’s directing style has been referred to as an “actor first approach” and he brings that same method to working with his writing students.

Deshawn McKinney

Deshawn McKinney is a writer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, whose work appears in journals such as Lolwe and Glass. His debut chapbook, father forgive me, was published by Black Sunflowers Poetry Press in 2021.

Deshawn has performed for and built with audiences around the world, including as one of the headlining acts at the Boys and Girls Club’s Keystone Conference – one of the largest gatherings of teen leadership in the US – meeting with students in Kingston, Jamaica, to share art and speak to collective freedom, and headlining Toast Poetry at the Norwich Arts Centre in Norwich, England, with an exhilarating set that blended poetry and rap in novel ways.

His work focuses on intersectional, diasporic liberation. He seeks to build coalition across peoples and movements to create sustainable, proactive, and effective bases of power. His art, grounded in hip-hop, is used to invite folks into the conversation and disrupt the status quo, with a focus on opening up spaces to those who have historically been absent or barred from them.

As a member of the First Wave Hip-Hop arts community at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he earned a BA in Creative Writing, pursuing his passion for service through his creative enterprises. He is a Truman Scholar, the nation’s premier public service fellowship, as well as a recipient of the prestigious Marshall Scholarship for graduate study in the United Kingdom. He holds a Master in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Master in Creative Writing – Poetry from the University of East Anglia.

Tamara Dean

Tamara Dean is the author of Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless, an essay collection forthcoming in 2025 from the University of Minnesota Press. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The American Scholar, Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, the Guardian, One Story, Orion, Seneca Review, The Southern Review, Story Magazine, and other publications. She’s also the author of a book on sustainable living, The Human-Powered Home, and bestselling college textbooks on computer networking. She earned an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her essay "Safer Than Childbirth" received a 2024 Pushcart Prize Special Mention and "Slow Blues" was named a 2021 National Magazine Award finalist.