Alex Kapitan

Radical Copyeditor

Alex Kapitan is a queer and trans trainer, speaker, consultant, editor, and activist who left the world of nonfiction book publishing to start Radical Copyeditor, an anti-oppressive language project. Alex works with clients as varied as publishing companies, academic journals, activist organizations, museums, and healthcare professionals, helping people align their words with their values with regard to race, class, dis/ability, sexuality, gender, religion, and more, rooted in the idea that because words describe and create reality, we have a responsibility to describe and create the best possible reality we can imagine.

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Eliana West

Founder of Writers for Diversity

Eliana West writes contemporary interracial romance. Her Heart of Colton series features small town romance with diverse characters and stories infused with history, hope and heart. When not writing, you can find Eliana exploring the many wineries in Oregon and Washington with her husband in their vintage Volkswagen Westfalia named Bianca. Eliana is passionate about encouraging writers to create diverse characters and worlds, uniting writers through thoughtful and respectful dialogue. She is the founder of Writers for Diversity (https://www.facebook.com/groups/writersfordiversity), a community for writers interested in creating diverse characters and worlds.

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Crystal Swain-Bates

Founder of Gold Karat Publishing

Crystal Swain-Bates is a celebrated children's book author and the owner of Goldest Karat Publishing. Fed up with the lack of black children's books on the market, Crystal founded Goldest Karat Publishing in order to address the lack of diversity in children's literature. With over 500,000 books sold, Crystal and her books have been seen on platforms such as Forbes, Black Enterprise, Essence, Entrepreneur, INC., a nationally televised Amazon commercial, hit television shows such as BET's Being Mary Jane and The Game, and Shaquille O’Neal’s TNT docu-series Game Plan. Named by the Huffington Post as one of "21 Children's Books Every Black Kid Should Read", her book "Big Hair, Don't Care” is one of Amazon's most highly reviewed Black children's books on the market. Known as a “Diversity Publishing Pro”, Crystal won the 2019 Digital Book World Medal for Leadership in Diversity and offers free and paid courses to an online community of over 10,000 aspiring underrepresented authors who want to bring their stories to life through self-publishing. A native of Atlanta, GA, Crystal holds a Master's degree in International Affairs from Florida State University and is an avid world traveler.

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