Amiri Banks is an ATL native with three generations of roots reaching across the entire metro area, especially on the especially in West End and East Atlanta/Decatur. Amiri is also an Afrofuturist, feminist, and writer with a passion for liberation in all forms. He has a deep love for nature, truth-telling, and action.

Jamye Barnes has a true passion for people, places and pretty things, with a God-given talent for pairing great people with great style. Twenty years in the creative arts industry has afforded Jame the opportunity to work as an Interior Designer and Visual Merchandiser for some of the leading furniture showrooms and retailers. Jamye’s standout accomplishments include an arts degree in merchandising, various roles in interior design, and life and motivation coach.

Emmanuel Freeman is a long term South DeKalb resident. He is a proud Georgia State alumni with a degree in accounting. Freeman previously worked for several state and local agencies. He is retired and enjoys exercising, walking and spending time at Exchange Park.

Shana Laster has been a proud resident of South Dekalb for nearly 20 years. Originally from Montgomery, Alabama, Shana moved to Georgia to attend Spelman College and has since made South Dekalb her home. She has leveraged her professional background as an attorney to help other attorneys and career professionals find meaningful work that suits their desired lifestyle. She enjoys reading, cooking, forming meaningful relationships, and the theater arts.

Photos: “A love letter to South DeKalb’s unsung greenspaces” | Mark Anthony Brown Jr. is an Ohio native and Atlanta adoptee. He is a mixed-media artist and multimedia creative working in the American South. The artist’s identity has evident influences on the work he makes. Subject matter often intersects with culturally significant themes, including: the intersection of the Black experience and the human experience, aesthetics, media, religious and non-religous practices, sports, nightlife, and urban landscape. Mark is currently a MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and will graduate Spring ’24.

Photos: “Can South DeKalb become a food oasis?” | Nicole Buchanan is a freelance documentary photographer based in Atlanta. She is an enthusiastic photographer utilizing her skills and experiences to explore innovative ways to invoke emotional insight into cultural and political events that shape our world. Additionally, she believes that art can bring light to hot topics in a way that inspires real change in the world. Like photographer Gordon Parks, she uses her photography as a weapon to influence, trick, and even change the minds of others.

Visual: The South DeKalb Issue Map | Sean Fahie (pronounced FOY) is a contract graphic designer, illustrator, creative consultant, and author based out of Atlanta. He specializes in print-based media with extensive experience in design, illustration, branding, marketing, and apparel. Fahie also has published three books, written one short film, and coproduced one full-length feature.

Story: “Can South DeKalb become a food oasis?” | Ariel Felton is a writer from middle Georgia, though she’s called Savannah home for a decade now. Her writing has been published in Vogue, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Bitter Southerner, and more. Her essay “A Letter to My Niece,” first published in The Progressive, was listed as notable in “Best American Essays 2020.”

Photos: “The business of South DeKalb” | Gavin Guidry is a creative director based in Atlanta. He spends most of his time leading creatives in advertising to build large-scale campaigns for clients, but he started as a content creator specializing in community storytelling which he uses to guide all of his work today.

Residency | Ann is a Jamaican-born, Ghana-raised, Southern Black-reared woman writer who currently lives in Atlanta. In 2017, she began writing for The Atlanta Voice. In 2019 and 2021, she was the licensee and producer of TEDx Collier Heights, which engaged residents from the Bankhead corridor. She is a Bankhead Senior Fellow and Canopy Atlanta’s inaugural Reporting Resident.

Photos: ‘Trash talk’ | Matthew Pearson is a news photographer for WABE in Atlanta. In a past life, he worked in politics.

Story: “South DeKalb’s affordable housing problem” | Logan C. Ritchie grew up in Marietta, Georgia, and graduated from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, with a degree in writing. She has 20 years of experience as a community journalist writing for Rough Draft Atlanta, Decaturish, Tucker Observer, Atlanta Senior Life Magazine, The Atlanta Jewish Times, The Boston Tab and more. Logan has covered local county and city government, elections, education, the environment, and housing.

Story: “The business of South DeKalb” | A.R. Shaw is an Atlanta-based multimedia journalist/editor and author of the book, Trap History: Atlanta Culture and the Global Impact of Trap Music.

Story: “Trash talk: DeKalb residents and officials point to each other over code enforcement issues” | DorMiya Vance is a North Carolina native and talented Black journalist dedicated to telling stories for Atlanta’s NPR affiliate WABE, covering predominantly Black communities south of Atlanta.

Story: “Trash talk: DeKalb residents and officials point to each other over code enforcement issues” | Ada is an Atlanta-based, award-winning journalist with published stories at Canopy Atlanta, CNN, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta magazine and Georgia Public Broadcasting. She began working with CA doing freelance community engagement by listening to local communities before joining full-time to help with various levels of production across stories, website, social media and the weekly newsletter, Canopy Atlanta Voices. She values journalism that prioritizes authenticity and intentionality.