Sylvie Kandé is a critically acclaimed French-Senegalese poet and scholar who founded the program of Francophone Studies at New York University. She currently serves as a professor in the History & Philosophy department at SUNY Old Westbury, where she recently was a recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities. Her three critically acclaimed poetry collections have all been published by Gallimard, one of the most prestigious publishers in France. Gestuaire (2016) the book from which this translation was drawn, was a recipient of the 2017 Prix Louise Labé and will be appearing in Nancy Naomi Carlson’s translation as Gestuary (Seagull Books, 2026).

Nancy Naomi Carlson won the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award and the Sarah Maguire Translation Prize, she was longlisted for the National Translation Award. Author of 5 titles and translator of eleven others, her poetry and translations have been noted in the New York Times. A recipient of grants from the NEA and the Albertine Foundation, she was decorated by the French government with the Academic Palms. Carlson is the Translations Editor for On the Seawall and the translator of When We Only Have the Earth (University of Nebraska Press: African Poetry Book Series, 2025), by Djiboutian writer Abdourahman A. Waberi.

Charlotte Brathwaite, an award-winning artist and  director, creates genre-defying works that illuminate the realities and dreams of those whose stories have been marginalized, silenced, or ignored. Her projects have been presented internationally at the Whitney Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, The Shed, Park Avenue Armory, the Holland Festival, and Momenta Biennale. She holds an MFA from Yale and has taught at MIT and Fortaleza University (Brazil). Charlotte Brathwaite and Malick Welli are multidisciplinary artists working across photography, film, installation, performance, and community-based projects. 

Malick Welli’s practice engages duality, spirituality, history, and memory, often through a lens of mysticism and personal reflection while tracing intersections of belief systems, material culture, and power. His work has been shown at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Wereldmuseum Leiden, Galerie du 19M, and the Cairo Biennale, and is held in collections worldwide. Brathwaite and Welli’s recent collaborations exhibited at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Dakar Biennale, and Art X Lagos. Together, they co-direct Malidoma Popenguine residency and arts initiative in Senegal and Forgotten Paradise Projects production company.