Braxton Shelley, assistant professor of music at Harvard University, is a musicologist who specializes in African American popular music. His research and critical interests, while currently focused on African American gospel performance, extend into media studies, sound studies, phenomenology, homiletics and theology.

Author and editor Kathryn Kulpa, winner of the Vella Chapbook Contest for her flash fiction chapbook Girls on Film and the Mid-List Press First Series Award for her short story collection Pleasant Drugs, is also the author of Who’s the Skirt?, a micro-chapbook published by the Origami Poems Project. Kupla, whose work has also been featured in anthologies and literary magazines will read from her recent work.