Sonia Sanchez is a World-renowned Poet, Playwright and Author who is known as an activist for racial equality and pioneer of black studies.  She has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories, critical essays, plays, and children’s books. She was a recipient of 1993 Pew Fellowships in the Arts.   She formed a writer’s workshop in Greenwich Village, attended by such poets as Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), HakiMadhubuti (Don Lee) and Larry Neal Sonia along with Madhubuti, Nikki Giovanni and Etheridge Knight formed the “Broadside Quartet” of young poets, introduced and promoted by Dudley Randall. She earned her BA in Political Science from Hunter College, Postgraduate work at New York University.

Some of her noted awards are: Robert Creeley Award, the Frost Medal, the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Lucretia Mott Award, the Outstanding Arts Award from the Pennsylvania Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Peace and Freedom Award from Women International League for Peace and Freedom, the Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Humanities, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. In 2018, she received the Wallace Stevens Award, given annually to recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.

 James Dupree an American artist, educator, and activist. He has received both fellowships and artist’s residencies in Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and Wales, as well as various awards, including the Living Legend Award of the Black Alumni Society of the University of Pennsylvania.  Born in 1950 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and spent parts of his childhood in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Bridgeville, Pennsylvania. As a child, he attended free classes at the Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia. Dupree received a full scholarship to Columbus College of Art and Design, he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1972. He attended Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania, becoming one of the first African Americans to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Fine Arts program, in 1977.

Blurring the boundaries between painting, collage, printmaking and draftsmanship, Dupree delves wholeheartedly into the realm of complete abstraction.

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