UNRULY Book Launch

Antoinette Cooper is a poet, educator, and collective trauma facilitator whose work explores themes of embodiment, ancestral healing, and place-based ceremony. Her first poetry collection UNRULY (2025) examines the intersections of Black feminine wisdom, bodily memory, and collective repair. Cooper holds an MFA from Columbia University and brings over two decades of experience in education and contemplative practice to her role as founder of Black Exhale, creating spaces for collective Black healing.

Photography by Theik Smith

Ruby Mendenhall is the Kathryn Lee Baynes Dallenbach LAS Professor in Sociology and African American Studies. She is an Associate Dean for Diversity and Democratization of Health Innovation at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Her research examines how living in racially segregated neighborhoods with high levels of violence affect the mental and physical health of youth and adults using surveys, interviews, crime statistics, police records, data from 911 calls, art, phone apps, wearable sensors and genomic analysis. She is currently working on a project that trained close to 50 high school students and young adults as community health workers (CHWs) who will assist young people to heal from racial trauma such as police killings, gun violence and higher rates of COVID-19 deaths due to health disparities. The CHWs and CSs are co-creating a Wellness Store with high- and low-tech tools identified by the youth and supported by science.

Karen Crawford Simms, MAMFT, LMHC is an experienced consultant, trainer, facilitator, and coach.  She has dedicated her life building trauma informed, healing centered and equitable systems, organizations, communities, and groups. She also works with healers, activists and leaders flourish and stay well. She is also the founding director of the Trauma & Resilience Initiative and Meridian K Consulting & Coaching services.

Kosha Anja Joubert serves as CEO of the Pocket Project, dedicated to growing a culture of trauma-informed care. Kosha has worked extensively in the fields of systems regeneration, intercultural collaboration, and trauma-informed leadership. She grew up in South Africa under Apartheid and has been dedicated to transformational edgework ever since. She has authored several books and received the Dadi Janki Award (2017) for engaging spirituality in life and work and the One World Award (2020) for building the Global Ecovillage Network to a worldwide movement reaching out to over 6000 communities on all continents.