ROS Visionary Architects
Gia Anansi-Shakur
she/her
@giatheconconquerer
Gia Shakur is a writer, exhibit curator and visual artist based in Harlem, New York. Her written work has appeared in Honey Literary, Brown Sugar Literary, Foglifter and Sinister Wisdom. Her visual art has been featured at the Centro Civico Cultural Dominicano Inc., FiveMyles Gallery, Artful Walls at Home To Harlem and the Central Court Building in Brooklyn. She is the director of Honey Head Atelier, the parent company of the literary collective Alligators, Bibles and Hussies and a Watering Hole fellow. She is currently studying Creative Writing at SUNY Purchase.
Mariah M.
they/them
@M_lightsower
M. is a non-binary fat and femme when they feel like it, artist and cultureworker rooting in Greensboro, NC. They are presently the Guest Curator of Cultural Programs at SISTORIES, a Southern-based Black feminist literary magazine for the 2025 szn. They are the Lightsower for & a founding member of SaltWater Sojourn, a Blackqueer-autonomous radical artist collective based in the South. They are in perpetual search and creation of spaces where their fullness is held, honored, stimulated, and celebrated.
2023 Revival of the Seer Artist Cohort
Audria LB
she/her
@Audrialb
Audria LB is a Black transfeminine filmmaker, poet, and interdisciplinary artist, based in Durham, North Carolina. Having published work in Lambda Literary Award-winning The Black Trans Prayer Book, she is currently a co-director on the upcoming Black Trans Prayer Book Documentary. Audria also serves as Festival Coordinator at the Hayti Heritage Film Festival. In these and other creative endeavors, Audria LB seeks to fill the world with dope Black queer and trans art, shifting culture for left and progressive causes.
Ashley Nickens
she/her
@laydeeashley| @sistorieslitmag (IG)
Ashley is a literary artist, storysharer, and the founding director of Sistories—a queer Black feminist publishing and production organization. She is an Artivist in Cypress Fund’s Prismatic Artivist Residency (2022-2024) and a The Roll Up CLT Resident Artists Alum (2020). Born in Maryland, raised in Tidewater Virginia, and made a woman in the Carolinas, her work is grounded in her southeastern roots, and seeks to continue a tradition of Black feminist storysharing that uncovers, recovers, and (re)creates models of possibility across time and space. Read her writing at Black Femme Collective (2021), SISTORIES Literary Magazine (2021), and in the forthcoming issues of Rootwork Journal (2023).
Ebony Fernandez
she/her
@slimpickenss(IG)
I’m a Black af Charlotte native, born & raised on the West side. I live & love to absorb life like a sponge, then squeeeze all the goodness out on my notepad (or blog: Sober Sunday). My goal is to untangle my own string while showing other people that we are more alike than we are different. I believe that every time I raise my freak flag a little higher more of my people find me & I don’t feel so alone. My desire is to be a part of a community of my type of folk & to contribute to one. That’s the ultimate goal, more love & acceptance will heal the world.
Jacqui
she/they
@supercutedame (IG)
Durham's Sweetest, Wonderpuff cotton candy
Randi she/her
@super_saiyan_ran(IG)
I am originally from Charlotte, North Carolina and have recently returned after being away since 2010. I am a professor of English and Africana Studies. In my teaching and writing, I am committed to highlighting radical, Black feminist cultural production in the form of literature, film, essay and cultural criticism. I would hope that my teaching and writing would help advance a wider development of anti-imperialist politics in the service toward Black liberation.
Guest Facilitators for ROS ‘23
2022 Revival of the Seers Artist Cohort
Ayan Felix
they/them
@strictfullness (IG)
I am a Gulf Coast-bred movement artist, dreamy storyteller, and community organizer around food justice. I perform improvisational dance with modern and jazz styles with Southern Black American aesthetics of excess, slowness, and dirt. My practice is site-responsive and collaborative with spirit, people, and the ecosystem. Over the past 6 years, my meandering screendances and public performances centered Black Queer experiences and have premiered at Barnstorm Dance Festival (HOU), Houston Fringe Festival, The Movement Lab ATL, and freeskewl (NYC). Most recently, I've started to string together dance films into an embodied sex/gender/species education which I've been researching through burlesque, dreams, drag, and dance theater. I'm hoping to make a manual (or something to that effect) for those wanting to leave the planet.
Honora Ankong
she/they
@yungwestafricanpoet(IG)
Honora Ankong is a Cameroonian-born poet, writer, educator, and emerging multi-disciplinary artist currently living in Charlotte, NC. They have an MFA in Creative Writing in Poetry and a debut chapbook, our gods are hungry for elegies (Glass Poetry Press, 2022). She has held residencies/fellowships with the Hurston/Wright Foundation, Lambda Literary, and Goodyear Arts. You can find their poems published at CreamCity Review, Foglifter, Poetry Daily, The Maine Review, Lolwe & elsewhere.You can find them on instagram @yungwestafricanpoet & twitter @honooraa & on their website honoraankong.com.
Foster williams
anything but him
@blackintimacypractice | @churchofplay(IG)
im a fat black queer interdependent-disciplinary artist and educator whose work seeks to create safer spaces for ushering fat black queer and trans femmes into play, experimentation and ease. i co-organize black femme brunch, a radical, irreverant celebration of all things black queer, trans and femme, with my best friend, tuere khanyisa, founder. i steward black intimacy practice (intuitive movement for fat black queer folk), AMNS (all my niggas said), a black queer liberatory church service with TJ Willis/@praxispapii and BAPS (black artist processing space) which is a space for black artists to vent, skillshare, collaborate and receive feedback/input.
Ori Yarborough
they/she
@thestoryofoh (IG)
I am a hoodoo, historian, writer, baker and lover of art. My work centers on connection to pleasure through plant medicine and preservation of stories and artifacts to show evidence of our existence . I hope that my work leaves us with more historic models of possibility and reminds us that we have blueprints while offering inspiration for our unique work in this time.
Xhey Estelle Evans-EL
xe/xem
@xoxo.whetherwhich (IG)
I'm Xhey (Shea) Estelle and I am a creative who experiments with representing science through art. That manifests as instant photography, paintings, mosaics made of found and recycled materials, plus art collecting and curating through gallery walls and playlists. My goal is to continue the precedent set by musicians and visual artists before me and force the ivory tower to accept art as science, making graduate study sustainable for those usually targeted by empiricist bullshit. To reach that goal I am steeping in endarkened feminisms and specializing DisCrit/anti-ableist & racist strategies to render the academy meaningless to how my life progresses because white supremacist settler colonial logic has no bearing on how I live or the happiness I am capable of.
Revival of the Seers’ Photographer-in-Residence
Madylin Nixon-Taplet
she/her
I capture souls & the magic of life..."
NORTH CAROLINA based visual & aesthetics architect who specializes in Photographic Hyperrealism.
I truly believe that every single human on this planet has something beautiful about them, even if they aren’t always able to see that within or for themselves. My goal is to show people their wholeness. Exactly and as beautifully as I see them.
I live in the E T H E R E A L realm. My shooting style can best be described as Intentional Etherealism.The way I see the world has a rose gold tint with Black lace wrapped around the edges. As a New Orleans native, I’ve been in loving community with Black folx for as long as I can remember, and have always had a passion for advancing my people in whatever ways I can. For now, I just want us to see the magic within ourselves. Easily accessible & ever-evolving.
Can be found at https://linktr.ee/loveonwaphotosor www.loveonwa.com