Our Team

Dr. Reynaldo Anderson

Dr. Reynaldo Anderson serves as an Associate Professor of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia Pennsylvania and is the Executive Director and Co-founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM), a network of Artists, Curators, intellectuals and Activists.

Dr. Anderson is the Co-Editor of several publications which include:

—Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness (published by Lexington books)

—Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent (published by Cedar Grove Publishing)

—The Black Speculative Art Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design (published by Lexington books)

—Black Lives, Black Politics, Black Futures, special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies

—When is Wakanda: Afrofuturism and Dark Speculative Futurity Journal of Futures Studies

Dacia Polk

Dacia Polk, better known as InnerGy, is a multi- disciplinary Creative, Director, Consultant and Event Curator.

She has served as the Webmaster and Midwest Field Coordinator for The Black Speculative Arts Movement since 2016.

An award-winning professionally performing Poet, Actress and Model. She has curated exhibitions which have included, film, performing art, fashion, and visual art. .

Digital art of her is featured in “Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent and most recently been selected for “Red Spring” the next installment of BSAM’s online digital Arts collaboration w/ NEW YORK LIVE ARTS and Google Arts & Culture.

She Produces WORDUP! Open mic, a weekly Tuesday Night showcase of live music, poetry, and comedy supporting the creative arts community in St. Louis, MO.

Stacey Robinson

Stacey Robinson, also known as “Black Kirby” is a Graphic Designer and one of the leading Afrofuturist Digital Arts Creatives.

His subject matter examines the African-American experience, more specifically the future. Inspired by Michelangelo, Ernie Barnes, Charles Bibbs and Robert Rauschenberg, Stacey ventured in a different direction, examining the future. His Afro-Futurist works consist of reoccurring motifs, which are symbols of technology and rebirth. Juxtaposing flesh with mechanical objects, the works comment on newness of life beyond the struggles of the past. Currently, Stacey is preparing for graduate school. Balancing family, community activities and art events is an everyday challenge. Having achieved most of his life goals, Stacey is looking forward to an unreached goal, art professor: lecturer, and world-renowned post-modern artist.

Sheree Renee Thomas

Sheree Renée Thomas is an award-winning fiction writer, poet, and editor. Her work is inspired by myth and folklore, natural science and Mississippi Delta conjure. Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future (Third Man Books, May 2020) is her first all prose collection. She is also the author of two multigenre/hybrid collections, Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Press July 2016), longlisted for the 2016 Otherwise Award and honored with a Publishers Weekly Starred Review and Shotgun Lullabies (Aqueduct January 2011). She edited the World Fantasy-winning groundbreaking black speculative fiction anthologies, Dark Matter (2000 and 2004) and is the first to introduce W.E.B. Du Bois’s science fiction short stories. Her work is widely anthologized and appears in The Big Book of Modern Fantasy edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Vintage, 2020). She is the Associate Editor of the historic Black arts literary journal, Obsidian: Literature & the Arts in the African Diaspora, founded in 1975 and is the Editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, founded in 1949. She also writes book reviews for Asimov's. She was recently honored as a 2020 World Fantasy Award Finalist in the Special Award – Professional category for contributions to the genre and is the Co-Host of the 2021 Hugo Awards Ceremony at Discon III in Washington, DC with Malka Older. Sheree is the Guest of Honor of Wiscon 45 and a Special Guest of Boskone 58. She is a Marvel writer and contributor to the groundbreaking anthology, Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda edited by Jesse J. Holland (Feb. 2021). She lives in her hometown, Memphis, Tennessee near a mighty river and a pyramid.

Lonny J Avi Brooks PhD

Lonny Brooks is an associate professor of strategic communication and media studies at California State University, East Bay, where he has piloted the integration of futures thinking into the communication curriculum for the last 15 years. He contributes prolifically to journals, conferences, and anthologies on subjects related to Afrofuturism and forecasting.

Creative Director, Afrorithm Futures Group

Resident Afrofuturist | Co-Executive Producer, Co-Creator with Ahmed Best, Host and Co-Executive Producer, Co-Creator @ The Afrofuturist Podcast with Ahmed Best on iTunes https://www.facebook.com/theafrofuturistpodcast/ "Shifting the Lens: Democratizing, imagining anti-racist futures where Black Futures Matter"--Ahmed Best & Lonny Avi Brooks

Creative Director for California BSAM & BSAM Futures, (Black Speculative Arts Movement) Board member and organizer (Oakland), see the national and global movement at bsam-art.com

Research Affiliate, Institute For The Future

Long Now Research Fellow, Long Now Foundation

Co-Game Designer and Co-Creative Director, Afro-Rithms From The Future game | afrorithms@gmail.com

Editorial Board: Handbook of Universal Foresight: www.universalforesight.com

Schetauna Powell

Schetauna Powell is the Creative Director and lead designer of Artivism Community Art, a community led production company using art to learn cultural perspectives.

https://artivismcommunityart.com/

Ntyam Ernest Jean Blondel

BSAM representative in Yaoundé, Cameroon. He is a rapper, computer scientist and chatbot designer.

Tim Fielder

Tim Fielder is an Illustrator, concept designer, cartoonist, and animator born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

His projects, Matty’s Rocket, INFINITUM, Black Metropolis and High John Conqueror are graphic stories from his company Dieselfunk Studios.

Most recently, his work was showcased in a career retrospective exhibition at The Hammonds House Museum. The show was titled Black Metropolis: 30 Years of Afrofuturism, Comics, Music, Animation, Decapitated Chickens, Heroes, Villains, and Negroes. Very soon Tim will be devoting time the the book variant of Black Metropolis which will be his Memoirs.

He has also worked as an educator for institutions such as New York University, The School of Visual Arts, New York Film Academy and Howard University in the areas of digital animation, concept design, and illustration. Tim has also been an independent animator on his work-in-progress animated film, ‘Harbinger’.

Tim, is an accomplished portrait artist. For decades he has produced illustrations of people from all walks of life from regular folks in the community to Presidents and celebrities. Along with his twin brother Jim, created the art form called Glogging, which showcases his portraits and is implemented in their Youtube and upcoming streaming program called THE DIESELFUNK SHOW.

Quentin Vercetty

Quentin is an international award-winning multi-disciplinary visual engineer, storyteller, community artivist, educator, and one of the world's leading Afrofuturist A-r-tograpers coining the terms Sankofanology and Rastafuturism. Quentin VerCetty is the co-editor Canada first Art Book on Afrofuturism entitled "Cosmic Underground Northside: An Incantation of Black Canadian Speculative Discourse and Innerstandings" which features the works of over 100 Black creatives from across the country.

Additionally, Quentin VerCetty is the winner of the 2020 Joshua Glover Memorial competition, which lead to him creating Toronto’s first Black monument and first Canadian Afrofuturism public art piece in the summer of 2021. Quentin is also the first artist to be commissioned by Carnegie Hall creating the art piece entitled AstroSankofa(https://www.carnegiehall.org/Explore/Articles/2021/11/11/Afrofuturist-Artist-Quentin-VerCettys-AstroSankofa) for their first ever Afrofuturism festival for their 2022 season.

Through his work, he hopes to engage minds, inspire hearts, and help to make the world a better place not only for today but for many tomorrows to come.

Queen Kukoyi & Nicole Nico Taylor

Queen Kukoyi (they/she) is a Black Bajan of Igbo and Lakono Ancestry, Queer, Femme presenting, Mother, Author, Educator, Activist, Award Winning Scholar and International Artist as well as the Executive Director of Operations for BSAM Canada. As a creative, Queen explores spoken word poetry, digital collage, and animations along with installation work that touch on concepts surrounding the Afrofuturistic meditative space.

Queen uses the lens of Afrofuturism 2.0 in her visual arts, mindfulness, and storytelling to facilitate discourse that decolonizes the Black identity and affirms all intersections of Blackness. She practices Afrofuturism 2.0 as an exploration and reclaiming of various black identities through multiple dimensions. Her work is a Meta-analytical Afrofuturistic convergence of meditation, music, art, and Noetic sciences through spoken word poetry, digital collage, animations, and installation work as performed and lived through intersectional Blackness. Her work allows her to speak about all intersections and amplify the voices of those who share similar experiences.

Nicole “Nico” Taylor (she/her) is the Executive Director of Communications for BSAM Canada. Nico is a writer, scholar, dancer, cosplayer, and activist who uses feminism and critical race theory to dissect social constructions surrounding race and representation, especially as they pertain to how we make sense of the images that surround us. As a trained performer in Afro-Caribbean folk dance, Nico has participated in many events showcasing the beauty and vibrancy of Caribbean culture, which included performing in the Opening Ceremony for the Pan Am Games Toronto in 2015.

As a scholar, her interest in pop culture and designation as a proud blerd spurred the pursuit of a Master of Arts degree at Concordia University. Ultimately, Nico’s scholarly work and her engagement and examination of cosplay subculture aims to amplify visibility for cosplayers of African descent, construct space where alternative ways of imagining, creating, and being can be explored, and find ways to weave the liberation of speculative processes throughout lived experiences.