Mo*Con Guests of Honor
Victor LaValle
Victor LaValle is the author of the short story collection Slapboxing with Jesus, five novels, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, The Devil in Silver, The Changeling, and Lone Women, and two novellas, Lucretia and the Kroons and The Ballad of Black Tom. He is also the creator and writer of two comic books Victor LaValle's DESTROYER and EVE.His novel, The Changeling, will soon be airing on Apple TV+ starring LaKeith Stanfield.He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the World Fantasy Award, British Fantasy Award, Bram Stoker Award, Whiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Shirley Jackson Award, American Book Award, and the key to Southeast Queens.He was raised in Queens, New York. He now lives in the Bronx with his wife, the writer Emily Raboteau, and their kids. He teaches at Columbia University.
Dr. Chesya Burke
Dr. Chesya Burke is an Asst. Professor of English and U.S. Literatures and the director of Africana Studies at Stetson University. Having written and published over a hundred stories and articles within the genres of horror, science fiction, comics, and Afrofuturism, her academic research focuses primarily on the intersections of race, gender and genre. Her short story collection, Let’s Play White, is being taught in universities around the world, leading Grammy Award winning poet, Nikki Giovanni, to compare her writing to that of Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison, and Samuel Delany naming her the "formidable new master of the macabre.” Her monograph, Hero Me Not, examines Storm from the XMen as an amalgam of various Black stereotypes, from the Mammy and the Jezebel to the Magical Negro, resulting in a new stereotype she terms the Negro Spiritual Woman. Chesya’s episode for I hear Fear hosted by Carey Mulligan, titled, Under the Skin, was produced by Wondery and Amazon Music and debuted on Halloween 2022 and her story, An American Fable, appears in the upcoming Jordan Peele anthology Out There Screaming. She is represented by Alec Shane of Writer’s House and Sukee Chew and Katrina Escudero of Sugar23.
Dr. Regina N. Bradley
Dr. Regina N. Bradley is an award-winning writer and researcher of the Black American South. She is Associate Professor of English and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University, a faculty editor for Southern Cultures journal, co-director of the Hip Hop Studies Consortium at Georgia State University, and co-host of the critically acclaimed southern hip hop podcast Bottom of the Map with music journalist Christina Lee. She is also an alumna Nasir Jones HipHop Fellow (Hutchins Center, Harvard University, Spring 2016).
A prominent public voice and leading scholar on contemporary southern Black life and hip hop culture, Dr. Bradley's work has been featured on a range of media outlets including Netflix’s hip hop docuseries Hip-Hop Evolution, Washington Post, NPR, and Atlanta Journal Constitution. In May, 2017, Dr. Bradley delivered a TEDx talk, "The Mountaintop Ain't Flat," about the significance of hip hop in bridging the American Black South to the present and future.
Dr. Bradley is also the author of the critically acclaimed book Chronicling Stankonia: the Rise of the Hip-Hop South. Chronicling Stankonia explores how Atlanta, GA hip hop duo OutKast and hip hop influences the culture of the Black American South in the long shadow of the Civil Rights Movement. Chronicling Stankonia was named one of the “Books All Georgians Should Read” in 2022. She is also the editor of An OutKast Reader, a collection of essays about OutKast, and co-editor of the third edition of That’s the Joint!: the Hip Hop Studies Reader with Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal. Dr. Bradley can be reached through her website, www.redclayscholar.com.
Dr. Kinitra Brooks
Dr. Kinitra Brooks is the Associate Chair of Graduate Studies and the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies in the Department of English at Michigan State University. Dr. Brooks specializes in the study of black women, genre fiction, and popular culture as seen in her weekly column for The Root, “The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country” and her multiple visits as a commentator on NPR’s 1A. She has co-edited The Lemonade Reader (Routledge 2019), an interdisciplinary collection that explores the nuances of Beyoncé’s 2016 audiovisual project, Lemonade. She has recently co-edited The Renaissance Reader (Routledge, forthcoming), which is also based on a Beyoncé project. Her two other books are Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror (Rutgers UP 2017), a critical treatment of black women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror and Sycorax’s Daughters (Cedar Grove Publishing 2017), an edited volume of short horror fiction written by black women. Her current research focuses on portrayals of the Conjure Woman throughout history and in contemporary popular culture as seen in her forthcoming graphic novel, Red Dirt Witch (Abrams Books 2025). Dr. Brooks recently served as the Advancing Equity Through Research Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University during the 2018-2019 academic year. Dr. Brooks also served as the Visiting Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and African American Religions in the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School for the 2022-2023 academic year. Dr. Brooks’ current book project, Divine Conjurers: Rootwork, Resistance, and Revolution explores the unique relationship between Black women’s political subversion and Black women’s spirit work.
Linda Addison
Poet Guest of Honor
Linda D. Addison is an award-winning author of five collections, including How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend, and the first African-American recipient of the HWA Bram Stoker Award®. She is a recipient of the HWA Lifetime Achievement Award, HWA Mentor of the Year and SFPA Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry. Her 2025 books: Everything Endless written with Jamal Hodge; An Illegal Feast with Consuelo G. Flores, Andrea Goyan, Elizabeth Eve King & Elizabeth Wong. She has published over 500 poems, stories and articles.