There are free downloads available online of some of these publications and many (if not all) should be available at your local library. If you plan to purchase any of these books, there are many places to buy. We encourage you to purchase from Black and Native owned bookstores (linked above) or other non-Amazon sites (linked above).
About the artists
Sabine Decatur (they/he) is an administrator, producer, and cultural worker with an orientation towards liberation. Currently working as Director of Operations & Culture at HERE Arts Center, they have previously served as Associate Producer for the TEAM and Chief of Staff at Baltimore Center Stage. Named one of American Theatre Magazine’s Theaterworkers to Watch in 2023, Sabine is a co-leader of emerging creative collective The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For, a member of the Advisory Council for Groundwater Arts, and their written work has been published by American Theatre, the Yale School of Drama Magazine, and Howlround.
Annalisa Dias is a Goan-American transdisciplinary artist, community organizer, and award-winning theatre maker working at the intersection of racial justice and care for the earth. She is a Co-Founder of Groundwater Arts and a Co-Director of HERE Arts Center. Prior to joining HERE, Annalisa was Director of Artistic Partnerships & Innovation at Baltimore Center Stage for 5 years. Before that, she was a Producing Playwright and Acting Creative Producer with The Welders, a DC playwright’s collective; and a Co-Founder of the DC Coalition for Theatre & Social Justice. Artistic credits include: WRITING: 4380 Nights, the earth that is sufficient, One Word More, The Last Allegiance, A Legacy of Chains, Crooked Figure, Consider the Dust, Matanuska, Coal, and Servant of the Wind. DEVISING: Wit’s End Puppets: Malevolent Creatures; banished? productions: Tyger; Theater Alliance: I Love DC. DIRECTING: Source Festival: Dust to dust to dust and Dressing Bobby Strong; The Salima Project (film). Annalisa’s work has been produced or developed by Mosaic Theater, Rep Stage, The Welders, Theater Alliance, Signature Theatre (DC), Arena Stage, the Phillips Collection, The Gulfshore Playhouse, the Mead Theatre Lab, The Hub Theatre, Spooky Action Theater, Tron Theatre (Glasgow), and OverHere Theatre (London). Annalisa frequently teaches theatre of the oppressed and decolonization workshops nationally and internationally and speaks about race, identity, and performance. She is a TCG Rising Leader of Color. https://annalisadias.weebly.com/
Melissa Dias-Mandoly is a writer, artist, and book designer living in Pittsburgh, PA. She has been a finalist for the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship, Submerging Writer Fellowship, Jake Adam York prize, Noemi Press Book Award, and Driftwood’s Adrift Chapbook Contest. Her poetry & artwork have been published in Pinwheel, Cordella, Nat. Brut, Gesture, PANK, and more. Her design work has been featured in Electric Lit, Lit Hub, & Spine magazine, and was selected to be part of the AU- Presses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show in 2019 and 2024. She currently works as the Design and Production Manager at the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Madeline Easley is an NYC-based Wyandotte playwright, performer, and fundraiser. Her work tells epic stories to provide a framework for living in decolonial futures. Born and raised in Kansas City, Madeline’s work has been presented at the La Jolla Playhouse, Native Voices at the Autry, Rattlestick Theater, Kansas City Repertory Theater (KCREP), theAmerican Indian Community House (AICH), REACH at the Kennedy Center, the TCL Chinese Theatre, and more. She was the Inaugural Four Directions Playwright in 2023 (Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Tofte Lake Center, Great Plains Theatre Commons, and KCREP), a 2022 Resident at SPACE on Ryder Farm, and a 2021 First Peoples Fund Fellow. As an actor, Madeline has performed regionally and Off-Broadway. As a fundraiser, she has raised nearly ten million dollars in support of the arts, college access, and education equity. https://www.maddieeasley.com/
DeLesslin “Roo” George-Warren is a queer artist, educator, and organizer from Catawba Nation whose recent work centers on unsettling histories and community storytelling. His ongoing Indigenous Corps of Discovery project, launched in 2016, offers critical tours of museums and collections, revealing narratives of colonization, survivance, and resilience. He also continues to create socially engaged performance pieces, blending his lived experience as a Catawba citizen with experimental forms of composition and embodied practices. DeLesslin’s artistic work is deeply tied to his advocacy. While coordinating the Catawba Language Project and leading cultural and food sovereignty initiatives, he maintained an active creative practice, with performances and lectures nationwide. In 2023, he became the first openly LGBT Catawba elected to tribal office. Through his art and organizing, he dreams of a world where everyone is fed, housed, cared for, and able to flourish.
Ashley Minner Jones is a community-based visual artist and folklorist from Baltimore, Maryland where she has lived on the same block her entire life. Her interdisciplinary practice is deeply rooted in place—usually within the context of the U.S. South—and is focused on honoring and celebrating everyday people by lifting up their stories. She delights in pointing out presences marked by absences, and vice versa, within cultural landscapes. Ashley earned an MFA in Community Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art and a PhD in American Studies from University of Maryland College Park. As an artist, she has exhibited widely and her work is represented in several prominent collections. Her research is being archived as “the Ashley Minner Collection” in the Albin O. Kuhn Library of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Ashley is an enrolled citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. ashleyminnerjones.com
Sam Morreale (she/they) is a Facilitator in practice as an Artistic Producer, Director, Dramaturg, and Cultural Strategist who approaches their craft with a lens rooted in the creation of liberatory, human-centered systems. They are an avid supporter of art for social change and gravitate towards stories, people, and communities that uplift the lives of those who have been caught in the margins of society. Previously the Associate Producer at Soho Rep, Sam develops new, “risky,” innovative, and adventurous work that stirs the soul and invites change. Her work has brought her to several arts organizations—physically and virtually—including New York Stage and Film, Penumbra Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf Theater, Theatre Communications Group, Center Theater Group, Boston Court Pasadena, Breaking the Binary Theater, The Goodman Theater, and The New Harmony Project among others. B.A. Wesleyan University.
Tara Moses (she/her) is a citizen of Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, Mvskoke, director, multi award-winning playwright, dramaturg, and co-Founder of Groundwater Arts. Her work as a director and playwright has been seen coast to coast. She is the former Artistic Director in Residence at Red Eagle Soaring; a Cultural Capital Fellow with First Peoples Fund; fellow with the Intercultural Leadership Institute; advisory board member of Broadway for Racial Justice; member of the Directors Lab at Lincoln Center; recipient of the Thomas C. Fichandler Award; recipient of the 2025 Artistic Excellence Award with CompanyOne Theatre; Barbara Whitman Award finalist; associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society; and Dramatists Guild member. She is from the Muscogee Creek Reservation and holds a MFA in Directing from Brown/Trinity. www.taramoses.com Social media: @tara-tomahawk
Linda Parris-Bailey creates story-based plays with music focusing on themes of transformation and empowerment. She is President/CEO of Parris-Bailey Arts, and former Executive/Artistic Director of The Carpetbag Theatre. Linda is a 2019 Creative Capital Awardee, and recipient of a 2015 Doris Duke Artists Award in Theater. Her works include Speed Killed My Cousin, Between A Ballad and A Blues and her signature work, Dark Cowgirls and Prairie Queens. Linda is a founding member of Alternate Roots and a Senior Advisor to the Women Playwrights International. Her works have been published in Alternate Roots: Plays from the Southern Theater, Ensemble Works, and other anthologies. Her latest works are Flushing, an adult puppet piece, in collaboration with Sandglass Theater, centering on generational transitions in leadership, and Yankee Bajan an original play focusing on a Black family’s response to the racism and violence in America and their journey to repatriate to their ancestral home in Barbados. www.parrisbaileyarts.com/
Phaedra Michelle Scott is a dramaturg and writer based in New York City. Phaedra is Resident Dramaturg of New Harmony Project and serves as a member of the Beehive Dramaturgy Studio (NYC). Selected credits include Audible Theater, American Ballet Theater, MCC Theater, New Victory, Play- wrights Realm, Huntington Theater Company, Utah Shakespeare Festival, & Playwright’s Center. She is an alum of Youngblood with Ensemble Studio Theater, Pipeline’s PlayLab, and SPACE on Ryder Farm. She is a playwright, crocheter, horror enthusiast, obscure history fan and member of the Writers Guild of America. www.phaedrascott.com
Quita Sullivan (nákum/they/she) (Montaukett/Shinnecock) (Kee-tah Suh-lih-ven) is Senior Program Director for Theater where nákum directs the National Theater Project. They hold Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in Theatre from Knox College and SUNY Stony Brook, respectively, as well as a Juris Doctorate from Wayne State University Law School. Before law school, nákum worked as a Stage Manager at ETA in Chicago and was the first stage manager for ETA’s production of Checkmates by Ron Milner, directed by Woodie King, Jr. They later worked at Great Lakes Performing Artist Associates, a not-for-profit artist management office, creating contracts and managing booking and performing fees for musicians in the Great Lakes area. After law school, they practiced Environmental Justice law for 10 years in Detroit and Boston. Quita is a Senior Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program, and a 2016 alum of the artEquity Facilitator Training. They are also a former Associated Grant Makers Diversity Fellow, the mission of which was to identify, recruit and cultivate emerging practitioners of color who represent the next generation of philanthropic leaders and offer them training, support and strong community. Quita is Chair Elect of the Grantmakers in the Arts Board of Directors, a founding Steering Committee member of Western Arts Alliance’s Advancing Indigenous Performance program, and a frequent speaker on supporting Indigenous Artists and Racial Equity. Nákum continues to work to support equity at all levels of theater and grant making. Prior to joining NEFA as a staff member, Quita was an Advisor for NEFA’s Native Arts Program. Outside of work, they continue to develop their own artistic talents as a beadwork artist. Nákum is part of a group of community language researchers working to restore Long Island Algonquin to spoken language status, as well as a learner of their language. Quita has achieved the rank of Shodan (first degree) in Ueichi Ryu karate. Kiskash naquti runskitôpák—every day is Indigenous People’s Day.
Stephanie Ybarra is a program officer specializing in the performing arts for the Mellon’s Arts and Culture team. Before her role at the Mellon Foundation, Ybarra was the Artistic Director of Baltimore Center Stage, where she advanced the theater’s role as a local civic partner and national thought leader. Prior to her tenure in Baltimore, Ybarra served as the Director of Special Artistic Programs for The Public Theater where she helmed the Mobile Unit and Public Forum programs, as well as Producing Director for The Play- wrights Realm. Additional credits include Yale Repertory Theater, Dallas Theater Center and Dallas Children’s Theater. Throughout her thirty years of experience on stage and off, Ybarra has emerged as a leading voice in advocating for justice-centered practices within the American Theatre community. She is on faculty at The Juilliard School and serves on the boards of Citizen University and Make Believe Association; Ybarra is a proud member of the artistic Council for the People’s Theatre Project and a former resident dramaturg for The Sol Project. She holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a BFA from Baylor University.
Dillon Yruegas (he/él) is a queer trans mixed coahuiltecan/xicano theatremaker from his ancestral lands in Central Texas. He holds both a BFA in Theatre and a BA in Spanish from Texas State University. On stage, off stage, and online, he has collaborated with theatre companies and cultural institutions across Turtle Island. He is a steering committee member of the Latinx Theatre Commons. Recently, he was the HowlRound Theatre Commons fellow and a selected playwright for Breaking the Binary Festival, Texas State University’s Black + Latino Playwrights Celebration, SolFest, Company One Theatre’s PlayLab, Trans Theatre Fest-Madison, and the Boston Theatre Marathon. As an actor, his recent credits include Shape Shifter at Long Wharf Theatre, Pigeon for the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program, and Lottery Boy at SolFest. dillonyruegas.crevado.com/