Dr. Kerby Lynch (she/they) is a community-engaged scholar, educator, and cultural strategist whose work bridges Black geographies, queer studies, and racial justice. She serves as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at Cosumnes River College and holds a Ph.D. in Geography from UC Berkeley. Dr. Lynch also leads participatory research on reparations, youth justice, and community reinvestment as Director of Research at Ceres Policy Research.

As Executive Director of the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, she works to preserve and elevate intergenerational LGBTQ+ memory. Her creative work includes Sister Hold On, an exhibit on Third World lesbian organizing, and ButchBrood, a multimedia oral history project rooted in Black queer masculine memory and sound. Grounded in Black feminist and abolitionist traditions, Dr. Lynch centers collective care, cultural preservation, and systems change across academia, the arts, and grassroots organizing.

Avé-Ameenah is a multidisciplinary artist and cultural worker based in Vallejo and born in Oakland. Her practice centers on photography, video, and community storytelling, with a commitment to preserving and celebrating Black and diasporic narratives. Since 2015, Avé-Ameenah has developed Keep It Diasporic, an ongoing photo and video project documenting the lives, landscapes, and cultural practices of African-descended communities in Havana, Cartagena, Bastimentos, and the Bay Area.

Avé-Ameenah teaches fiber arts and coiled basketry at the Richmond Art Center, offering classes for youth and adults. Beyond the classroom, her work engages land stewardship through urban gardening and hands-on chicken education in Vallejo.

Rooted in cultural preservation, nourishment, and visual storytelling, Avé-Ameenah is dedicated to uplifting Black and queer creative expression. Her work builds connections across communities while amplifying narratives of resilience, identity, and joy within the African diaspora.

Danny Castillo (they/them) is a queer, nonbinary, Latine Nicaraguan-American artist, scholar, and advocate. They are the founder and vocalist of Radio Vixen, a punk-influenced multimedia band blending music, performance art, and cultural critique to explore body autonomy and queer futurism. Their practice—rooted in community care, lived experience, and research in Queer Studies—confronts exclusionary narratives while creating unapologetically queer, femme, and Latine spaces of joy and resilience. Beyond performance, Danny is pursuing an Interdisciplinary M.A. at San Jose State University, studying on Queer Anthropology in Child Development.

Sabina Khan-Ibarra is a writer, poet, and educator with an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. A VONA alum and featured artist at APAture 2025, her work appears in Panoplyzine, Anomaly, iO Literary, SWWIM, Faithfully Feminist, and the anthologies Show Us Your Papers and Women, Taboos, and Transgressions, and more. She is the Co-Director of Rooted & Written, a tuition-free fellowship and conference advancing writers of color, where she leads equity-centered programming and community partnerships. She teaches at The Writers Grotto and Litquake's Elder Project. Khan-Ibarra lives in Northern California with her family and is completing a poetry chapbook, a new vocabulary, and her novel, The Poppy Flower.

With over 20 years in the creative sector, Nichole Talbott has built a career at the intersection of multimedia production, arts education, and community engagement. As the founder of Asé Arts, she expands access to high-quality, community-rooted arts experiences through classes, workshops, consulting, and public art initiatives. Her practice weaves design, education, and advocacy, using the arts as a catalyst for healing, innovation, and civic engagement.

A daily advocate for the arts, Nichole champions creative place-making and equitable access to the arts. She is recognized for her expertise in education, arts integration consulting, project management, curriculum design, and professional development for educators and nonprofits. Passionate about building a sustainable ecosystem for artists in the Bay Area, Nichole centers the arts as part of the social and cultural fabric that strengthens communities.

Cleopatra is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and sex worker born and raised in the Bay Area. Their work has been shown in Queer Arts Featured, SF Art Expo, gallery 300, SFMOMA, and more! Their adult film productions have been shown in Sex Worker Fest and Blush: SF Porn Film Festival.

Nicole Zapata is a Bay Area born and raised Peruvian-American artist and organizer based in Oakland. Under the moniker of “Yuca Frita,” she DJs high-energy, percussive, genre-blending sets that synthesize Latin, Afro-Caribbean and club rhythms. Nicole has worked across the Bay Area organizing towards worker, tenant and immigrant justice. Through her involvement in The Heartbeat Collective, an all women, trans, gender non-conforming, femme of color street drumming crew (f.k.a BoomShake Music) since 2014, she serves as one of the collective's musical leads and class instructors.

Maria Judice (M) is a filmmaker and cultural organizer celebrated for her radical storytelling. M has directed 8 films in San Francisco. Hailed by Wired as a "filmmaker provocateur," her award-winning short Palm Trees Down 3rd St. (2008) was deemed "a masterpiece" by Film Threat. Her debut feature elephant (2022) received screenings at over 25 film festivals. She is a founding member of Red Clay Soundhaus and 465 Collective. In 2021, she produced Neptune Frost (Cannes premiere), Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s Afrofuturist manifesto on decolonization and radical imagination. A participant in Haile Gerima’s inaugural Sankofa Film Intensive, M’s practice is deeply engaged with liberatory filmmaking. In 2024, Maria launched The BlackMaria Microcinema in San Francisco, amplifying decolonized narratives and education on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land. As a generational San Franciscan navigating erasure, she serves vulnerable communities as the Development Director at Code Tenderloin.