Our Team

Rowana Abbensetts-Dobson

Rowana Abbensetts-Dobson is a Guyanese-American writer, mental health advocate, and founder of Spoken Black Girl, a platform that promotes mental health and wellness among women of color through expressive writing, events, and workshops. Rowana has had fiction and poetry published in Moko Magazine, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Culture Push, and Free Verse Magazine. As a freelance health and wellness writer, Rowana has written for Well +Good, Bold Culture by Streamline Media, The Tempest, and Electric Lit. Her intention is to write extensively, read even more, travel the world, and learn new things along her with her family and friends. Spoken Black Girl is an expression of her deepest wish to support freedom of expression and the rights of Black women and girls, as well as people from all creeds and races, to be fully realized human beings whose experiences are honored and deemed worthy.

Personal website: Rowanaabbensettsauthor.com

Maholin Navarro

My name is Maholin Navarro. I am a Journalist and a Writer from Venezuela, currently based in Ireland since 9 years ago. I am passionate about writing and researching topics related to Black Women, especially everything linked to Black People from Latin America. I am a social activist interested in equality, LGBTQ+, racism, and xenophobia. I am constantly expressing my point of view through my writing, which is generally about social topics that are not so comfortable to talk about on a daily basis. My principal mission as a writer is to create that question mark; about topics that people normally think they have clear and understood. I want people to recognize that not everything is black and white but instead there's a lot of nuances. I have a previous writing background in Spanish language, writing theatre plays, and press including: TV, newspapers, social media, and magazines. In 2020 Rowana Abbensetts launched me as a writer and in 2021 as Guest Editor in English for Spoken Black Girl New York, which has been a very enriching and powerful experience.

Social Media @mahohoji

Email: maholinnavarro1@gmail.com

Erika DeShay

Erika DeShay is a Black poet and English teacher living in Denver, Colorado. Erika’s work has been supported by the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and the Kenyon Review’s Writer’s Workshop. Her writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Spoken Black Girl, Fatal Flaw,Castle of our Skins, 45 Magazine, Half and One, and The Cortland Review. Erika DeShay’s poetry explores the juxtaposition of joy in times of harrowing sorrow and how her Blackness affects her view of the world.

Krystal Camacho

Krystal Ann Camacho is an Afro-Latinx Puerto Rican born and raised in New York City. She was raised by a single mother of six at Wald Houses in the Lower East Side. She knew she wanted to help others and is known for her role in working with families who live in public housing. In 2007 she was a finalist in her college annual speech contest. She holds a BA in Social Science/Psychology from Touro College and is looking to pursue her masters in Urban Studies. She is an Alumini of Root Wounds Words, Penning My Pieces writing workshop. Krystal hopes to inspire BIWOC to be informed about maternal and reproductive health. She is also involved in supporting Women of Color owned businesses. Her passion is creative writing, blogging, and singing. Find her on Twitter @Krysinspired & Instagram @krys_inspired

Christine Lee

Emelda DeCoteau

Emelda (“E”) De Coteau is a loving wife, mama, creative (writer, podcaster, spiritual activist / organizer), and believer seeking God anew in each moment. She leads Pray with Our Feet (PWF), an online community lifting up the intersection of progressive Christian faith and social justice; she co-hosts the PWF podcast with her Mom, Trudy.

Her writing has appeared in Good Faith Media, Spoken Black Girl Magazine, Good Life Detroit, Beautifully Said magazine, The Baltimore Times, and on the Pray with our Feet website where she regularly blogs and shares devotionals on spiritual life. Emelda has also written for women-led organizations: Breaking the Silence...Healing the Pain and Modestine Tea.

She is a certified TSD mindfulness coach, trauma informed mindfulness facilitator, and the founder of When Motherhood Looks Different, an organization which helps Mamas raising neurodivergent kids, and Mamas w. chronic illness center mindfulness and connect in community.

Camille Wanliss

Camille Wanliss is a New York-based writer and the founder of Galleyway - an online resource for writers of color. She is a 2023 MacDowell Fellow, a 2023 deGroot Foundation Courage to Write Grantee, a 2022 Periplus Fellow and was selected for AWP’s Writer-to-Writer Mentorship Program (2021), the NYFA/DCLA City Artist Corp Grant (2021), and among the winners of the 2020 Pigeon Pages Essay Contest.

Her work has appeared in Plantin Mag, Raising Mothers, Anomaly, Kweli Journal, Weird Sister, and The Feminist Wire, among others. Additional honors include the Adria Schwartz Award in Women’s Fiction, the Small Axe Literary Prize shortlist, and fellowships and residencies from The Anderson Center at Tower View, Mineral School, Vermont Studio Center, and Writing in the Margins. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York.