Our purpose is to sustain and encourage the growth of a vibrant and diverse community at the intersection of the arts, activism, and the environment.  We do this via a community-based, online festival exploring the intersections of environmental and social justice through art and poetry. This year, poets involved in the Writing the Land project, which pairs poets nationwide with land-trust protected lands to help support land protection, will be augmented by poets being recruited to the project as a cohort: From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast. We see this as essential because while the 3 other groups across the country are 1/2 BIPOC writers, our percentages in the Northeast are around 7%. So, in order to emphasize and increase under-represented voices in environmental writing, we are reaching out to these writers to have them join the Writing the Land project and the Authors and Artists festival and workshop series. Through creative expression we encourage deep contemplation of how our human activities effect the environment , and encourage humans to shift their interactions with the rest of Nature toward a more environmentally-sustainable and socially-just relationship. This year both our workshop leaders are BIPOC, helping us focus on the creative and political intersection of the arts and activism, specifically the intertwined nature of racial, cultural and environmental justice.