Elizabeth Larison is director of the Arts & Culture Advocacy Program at the National Coalition Against Censorship, leading initiatives to advise and educate artists, writers, playwrights, as well as curators and other cultural intermediaries, in how to address the presentation of controversial works. Elizabeth is also an active member of Don’t Delete Art, a collaboration between free speech organizations and activists working to defend the freedom of artistic expression online. With academic degrees in Human Rights (BA) and Curatorial Studies (MA), and over fourteen years of working with and in support of artists and curators, Elizabeth brings a depth of understanding to the fundamental importance of defending artistic expression. Prior to joining NCAC, Elizabeth worked in curatorial, programmatic, and directorial capacities for arts organizations and venues such as Flux Factory, the Park Avenue Armory, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and apexart.

Che Gossett is associate director of the Center for Feminist, Queer and Transgender Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and is finishing their final semester as a postdoctoral scholar at Columbia University. Che is currently completing a political and intellectual biography of queer Japanese American AIDS activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya, which brings the critique of the individuated subject active in Black studies to bear on biography as the literary genre of the human. Che has an article, “The Dark Sublime,” on Blackness, aesthetics, oceanic ontology, and the work of John Akomfrah and Sylvia Wynter forthcoming in Transition Magazine from the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University this spring.

Gavilán Rayna Russom is an artist, composer, curator, and scholar based in New York City. Over the past two decades she has produced a complex body of works oriented towards providing alternatives to binary thought and fixed modes of categorization. In addition to an extensive discography of recorded music, she has presented solo and collaborative works in performance, video, and installation at a range of international institutions. Since her teens, Rayna has been involved with clubs, artist-run venues, and other “underground” spaces of artistic exchange and community. She has presented her own work and curated events in and for these spaces for more than thirty years and has consistently advocated for their cultural value in her writing and public speaking.

Rayna is the founding director of Voluminous Arts, a cultural organization whose mission is to foreground, nurture, and advance the experimental artistic culture of transgender people and communities. Through Voluminous Arts she co-curated and co-directed the summer 2023 residency program “Bloom How You Must, Wild Until We Are Free” at the Center for Art, Research, and Alliances, as well as the accompanying Cooler Nights experimental performance series and Traces: Sonic and Material closing exhibition.

Salil Tripathi was born in Mumbai and lives in New York. He is an award-winning journalist and the author of three works of non-fiction. Salil has reported out of Asia, Europe, and Africa. His articles have appeared in many prominent publications. He studied at the University of Bombay and at the Tuck School at Dartmouth College, and served as chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee and is now a member of its board.

Saw Wai is a poet, artist, and activist based in Buffalo, New York. He is a Buddhist. His first short story was printed in the magazine Sar Pay Lote Thar in 1984. In 1996, he received the Readers’ Choice Award for his poetry, published in the magazine Ma Har Thi. In 2000, he received the Readers’ Choice Award for his poetry in the magazine Cherry. In 2008, he received the PEN Award from the World Association of Writers. In 2009, he received an award from the Human Rights Watch, US. and was a finalist for the Freedom to Create Imprisoned Artist Prize. He has published three collective works of poems and one satire book. In 2008, he was imprisoned for 28 months and 5 days for his poem that criticized the Senior-General. During the military occupation of Myanmar, almost a hundred of his poems were censored. He is also doing installation art and performance art shows in Myanmar and in ASEAN countries. With Myanmar’s current government, he received permission to write articles and poems again. Being a member of PEN Myanmar, he is involved with the social networks and micro-political movements in many regions of Myanmar.