Deshawn McKinney

Deshawn McKinney is a writer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, whose work appears in journals such as Lolwe and Glass. His debut chapbook, father forgive me, was published by Black Sunflowers Poetry Press in 2021.

Deshawn has performed for and built with audiences around the world, including as one of the headlining acts at the Boys and Girls Club’s Keystone Conference – one of the largest gatherings of teen leadership in the US – meeting with students in Kingston, Jamaica, to share art and speak to collective freedom, and headlining Toast Poetry at the Norwich Arts Centre in Norwich, England, with an exhilarating set that blended poetry and rap in novel ways.

His work focuses on intersectional, diasporic liberation. He seeks to build coalition across peoples and movements to create sustainable, proactive, and effective bases of power. His art, grounded in hip-hop, is used to invite folks into the conversation and disrupt the status quo, with a focus on opening up spaces to those who have historically been absent or barred from them.

As a member of the First Wave Hip-Hop arts community at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he earned a BA in Creative Writing, pursuing his passion for service through his creative enterprises. He is a Truman Scholar, the nation’s premier public service fellowship, as well as a recipient of the prestigious Marshall Scholarship for graduate study in the United Kingdom. He holds a Master in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Master in Creative Writing – Poetry from the University of East Anglia.

Christopher Chambers

Christopher Chambers is the author of two books of fiction, Delta 88 and Kind of Blue, and former editor of Wisconsin People & Ideas, Midwest Review, Black Warrior Review and New Orleans Review. His work has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories and been noted in Best American Essays. 

Christopher was born in Madison, and has since lived in North Carolina, Michigan, Minnesota, Florida, Alabama, Texas, and Louisiana. He's worked as a farmhand, a carpenter, a bartender, and a lifeguard. He's worked in a warehouse, a slaughterhouse, and in an English Department. He's an erstwhile Teamster and he's given up tenure. He's repossessed cars. He taught creative writing and screenwriting in New Orleans for 16 years. He's lived a rock's throw from the Mississippi River at both ends, on the west bank in Minneapolis and downriver in Algiers.

His work has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 5 Pushcart Prize nominations, and has been anthologized in French Quarter Fiction, Knoxville Bound, Maple Street Rag, and in the Best American Mystery Stories series.

He taught creative writing for twenty-five years, at the University of Alabama, Loyola University New Orleans, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Chambers retired from UW-Madison in 2020 when Continuing Studies discontinued its writing program. He currently teaches with the Madison Writers Studio and the Oakhill Prison Humanities Project.

Susanna Daniel

Susanna Daniel is the author of three novels. Girlfriending, a spinoff of her award-winning short story, "The Goddess of Illicit Choices," is coming in February of 2026 from Third Rail Press. Her debut novel, Stiltsville, was awarded the PEN/Bingham prize, and her second novel, Sea Creatures, was a Target Book Club pick.

In 2013, Susanna founded the Madison Writers’ Studio with author Michelle Wildgen. She’s a graduate of Columbia University and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and was a Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Writers’ Workshop and a Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellow at the UW Institute for Creative Writing. She’s been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony and UCross, and has been published in the Sewanee Review, Newsweek, Slate, One Story, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Significant Objects, Epoch, and elsewhere. Before co-founding MWS, she taught creative writing at universities for ten years.

You can learn more about Susanna at her website, and you can contact her via email.