afaq is a philly based daughter, with grandmother tendencies. assembled in yemen (from sudanese parts) afaq considers herself a  global citizen of her own country. this international award winning poet, museum exhibiting photographer, activist, and educator seeks to love the world until it loves her back. she has collaborated with Netflix, Pen America, Beautycon Media, Poetry Out Loud, the Barnes Foundation, and several universities including NYU, Columbia, and UPenn. Continuously targeted and previously arrested for her activism, afaq uses her art, experiences, and the violence she has witnessed to combat injustice while spreading messages of empathy and change. She’s writing for Camden’s Gateway Park.

Ari is an arts advocate and Latinx creative based in South Philadelphia, who began their career in Philadelphia’s spoken word scene. Her work focuses on the interesectionalities between queer identity, trauma, and the Latinx experience as an outsider. Ari is currently working as the coordinator for DELPHI programs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her works have been featured in Bedfellows, Drop The Mic, Magic Gardens, the Barnes Foundation, and the Cineteca Nacional de México. Ari is currently filming a documentary about Mexican cooks in Philadelphia and lives with an orange cat that smells like a wet rag. She is writing for the Chester Valley Trail.

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House, the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods, and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of “The New Vanguard,” one of “15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.”

Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She lives in Philadelphia and is the former Abrams Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.. She’s writing for the northern portion of the Schuylkill River Trail.

Denise Valentine was a Master Storyteller, historical performer, consultant and founder of the Philadelphia Middle Passage Ceremony & Port Marker Project. Valentine was a storyteller of forgotten and neglected histories of the African Diaspora with special emphasis on the early history of Pennsylvania. Her workshop, Historytelling, integrated archival research, folk heritage and oral history to demonstrate the role of the expressive cultural arts in creating sustainable communities. Additionally, Denise worked as a program facilitator for the Museum of the American Revolution and served as advisor to the curatorial team of the new Early American Art Galleries of the Philadelphia Museum of Art opening in 2020. She wrote for the Tacony Creek Trail.

donia salem harhoor (they/she) is an egyptian-american bibliophile and believer in game nights. Executive director of The Outlet Dance Project, founder of the Duniya Collective, vice-chair of the Odissi Alliance of North America, they are an alum of Community of Writers, Open Mouth Poetry Retreat, Urban Bush Women’s Summer Leadership Institute, Swim Pony’s Cross Pollination residency, and The Speakeasy Project. A 2022 Lambda Literary Retreat Fellow and finalist in Frontier Poetry’s New Voices Award, they were a 2021 runner-up for Spoon River Poetry Review’s Editor’s Prize and finalist for Palette Poetry’s Sappho Prize. donia’s work has appeared in Mizna/AAWW’s I WANT SKY, Swim Pony’s TrailOff project, Anomaly, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Sukoon magazine. harhoor was Ground For Sculptures’ inaugural Performing Artist in Residence. An herbalism apprentice of Karen Rose of Sacred Vibes Apothecary, their MFA in Interdisciplinary Art is from Goddard College. More on donia at doniasalemharhoor.com. She’s writing for the Perkiomen Trail. 

Eppchez Yo-Sí Yes brings the fullness of eir musicianship, movement training, and designer’s mind to the urgent themes that imperil humanity. Eppchez is a gender-expansive, Cuban and Jewish Quaker troll with clowning tendencies. These liminal identities and discerning modalities bring integrity and open-hearted experimentation to eir calling as a writer for performance. In 2012 Eppchez started up Alma’s Engine; a process-focused production company/creative ministry developing eir new work across a variety of mediums—spreading whimsical and earnest dis-ease. Ey has self-produced 8 original plays through Alma’s Engine and collaborated as a writer, performer, and deviser with Philly companies such as Pig Iron, Simpatico, The Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Swim Pony, and Applied Mechanics among others. Eppchez’s has institutional connections to Wesleyan University (BA in theater & creative writing), Headlong Performance Institute, and Play Penn (where ey is currently a member of The Foundry). Ey is also a member of Azuka Theatre’s New Pages writer’s group.  To explore more of Eppchez’s work visit www.almasengine.com. Ey are writing for the southern section of the Delaware River Trail.

Born and raised in Guåhan, Islan Marianas, Jacob is a CHamoru writer, educator, and activist. He received his Creative Writing MFA from Rutgers University, Camden. He is an alum of The University of Guam and UCLA’s Extension Writers Program. Currently, he is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Stockton University. He is a co-founder of the nonprofit, the Move Mountains Project in San Luis, CO; previously a tutor for All Things Are Possible in Willingboro, New Jersey; former English Teacher at Philadelphia’s alternative high school, CADI, and NJ’s YMCA of Burlington & Camden Counties’ Academic Coach. His short story, “Proclamation,” appears in University of Guam’s Storyboard 18; short story “Half-Moon” in Philadelphia’s MadHouse Magazine Volume 4, and poem, “Kao sina hao fumino’ Chamoru?,” in University of Hawai’i Press’ Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia. He’s writing for the north Delaware River Trail. 

Jacob is working with Trinity Norwood, a citizen of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation in South Jersey. She serves her people as an adviser to the tribal youth group as well as the head coordinator for the Tribal Royalty program. As an advocate for indigenous peoples, Trinity works to promote and educate about indigenous issues through multiple mediums including art, film, and literature. She is on the board for Philadelphia Indigenous People’s Day, has been featured on Comcast newsmakers, and interviewed by Kathy O’Connell for WXPN Kids Corner. As a writer, Trinity creates poetry and short stories that focus on her experience of being a Lenape woman. Some of her pieces have been published in the Voices poetry anthology collection and used for local art projects like the Ghost Ship exhibit at Race Street Pier. She has also appeared in local historical documentaries like the Philadelphia Experiment and the Kings Highway.

Li Sumpter is a mythologist and multidisciplinary artist based in Philly. She employs strategies of world-building, D.I.Y. media, Afrofuturism and gameplay to cultivate eco-awareness and community action around the “art of survival.” Li’s artistic practice addresses existential threats to mind, body and spirit through speculative stories that illuminate patterns of resilience and possibilities for change. She has completed various residences for arts and technology, arts and ecology and the literary arts and participated in exhibitions nationwide. Li is a recipient of the 2018 Sundance Institute/Knight Alumni grant, a 3-time recipient of the Leeway Art and Change Grant and a 2020 recipient of the Leeway Transformation Award. She’s writing for the Schuylkill River Trail at Bartram’s Mile.