Clint Bowie is the Artistic Director of the New Orleans Film Society, where he manages the curation of the organization’s year-round programming, including the Academy Award–qualifying New Orleans Film Festival. He has served on review committees for ITVS, Creative Capital, National Endowment for the Arts, and Latino Public Broadcasting, and has spoken on panels organized…

LaKesha Glover is a stage, film, and television actor. She was last seen in The St. Louis Black Repertory Theater’s production of Dontrell Who Kissed the Sea, which she also performed with The Nebraska Repertory. Other theatre credits include Seven Guitars with the Saint Louis Black Repertory Theater, String from Mojo and String with No…

Alison Pelegrin is the Louisiana Poet Laureate. Her most recent collection is Our Lady of Bewilderment (LSU Press 2022). Other Books include Waterlines (2016), Hurricane Party (2011) and Big Muddy River of Stars (2007). The recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA and an ATLAS Grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents, she…

Gordon “Nick” Mueller, Ph.D., is President and CEO Emeritus of The National WWII Museum. He assisted historian Stephen Ambrose in founding the institution, initially known as The National D-Day Museum, and led the organization as Chairman of the Board from 1998 through its construction and fundraising to its opening on June 6, 2000. Since stepping…

Robert Becker, Ph.D., was chief executive officer of New Orleans City Park from 2001 to 2021, during which he created a nationally recognized master plan that led to its first public funding—over $200 million in capital investment. Prior to managing City Park, Dr. Becker held senior management positions at the Audubon Nature Institute and was…

Lin Gathright is co artistic director of New Orleans’ new female focused theater company, The Fire Weeds. She is an actress in theater, film and television. She is currently starring in Outraged Hearts: The Pretty Trap and Interior: Panic, written by Tennessee Williams and presented by The Fire Weeds at Big Couch.

Judy Lea Steele is an interdisciplinary actress, playwright, poet and performance artist, receiving her MFAW from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago in 2023. As a writer, her focus is women and the dualities they must employ in order to thrive, sometimes survive. Her work across disciplines has been shared and recognized in…

Christine Kwon writes and teaches in New Orleans. Her debut book of poems, A Ribbon the Most Perfect Blue, is winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize and published by Southeast Missouri State University Press (2023). She lives in a yellow shotgun house with her husband and newborn son, Louis.