Kimberly Divad is a Los Angeles and New York-based first-generation Haitian-American poet, writer, director, and actress. Divad’s films have screened at VC Fest, Outfest, Women of the Lens, and Newark International Film Festival. Her feature Man of Her Dreams was a Top 25 Finalist for Almanack’s Screenwriters 2025 October Colony. She is a 2026 Prelude Fellow and a 2026 JFMS BIPOC Sci-Lab Fellow, for which she is developing the horror/sci-fi pilot Every Other Mother. Divad is committed to creating space for Black and underrepresented voices, where BIPOC characters exist beyond stereotype and shine in their complexity. Raised on the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, Divad found early solace in language that embraced the macabre, melancholic, and strange. In poetry, she creates a space where sadness, absurdity, longing, and contradiction coexist without judgment. Her work explores themes of parental loss, identity, death, and societal expectations. For POETRY X___, she hopes to connect writers and non-writers in a present-focused, judgement-free space, where all can explore their consciousness and shadows, embrace their unique contradictions, and discover the inherent beauty in their darkness.

Nandi Zulu is a South African-born, Los Angeles-based mother, wife, and creator. Zulu received her BA in English Language and Literature as well as Film and Media Studies from the University of Cape Town. Zulu worked as a documentary producer in Cape Town, spotlighting African stories on a world stage. Her first encounter with poetry was at the age of seven, when she read her poem “The Queen Bee” to an audience of students and parents at the Eisteddfod hosted by her school in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Her early experiences with writing and reading poetry included listening to the renowned South African storyteller Gcina Mhlophe and the poet and performer Lebogang Mashile. Witnessing a dramatic shift in identity and culture following her move to Los Angeles in 2020, Zulu’s recent poetry emphasizes themes of motherhood, family, and place—often writing on scraps of paper in moments between making lunch boxes and doing laundry. Recently, she has performed with the choreographer Jasmine Albuquerque and participated in poetry workshops with the poet, teacher, and playwright Dorain Poretz. With POETRY X___, Zulu believes in the power of poetry to enrich the human experience and strives to help other writers move through the world with individual and collective compassion.