our team

  Bryan "Harvest Blaque" Hancock is a Perry F. Kendig Award Nominated actor, Slam poet, and musician. Bryan works at The Jefferson Center music lab as their lead Hip-Hop studies teacher. His acting credits include the Showtimers production of "12 Angry Men", and Hollins Playwright's festival "Pheromones". He is currently a cast member of The Big Lick Conspiracy Comedy Troupe. Harvest also is the Host/ Curator of the bi-weekly poetry show Soul Sessions. He also is in his second-year residency at Carillon Healing Hearts working in grief and loss, the teen psych unit, and with fellow colleagues for the essential soul project that connects essential workers on Friday evenings to share poetry and talents.

Adria Cintron is a writer of poetry and fiction, an educator, and a general lover of words. Her inspiration for her writing comes from her interactions and experiences and her desire to use words to make the world a more beautiful and equitable place for her two daughters. She is a native of New York but has lived up and down the East coast, settling with her family in Roanoke in 2016 where she, gratefully, found Soul Sessions and a community of writers that has fueled her creative spirit.

Brenda McGuire is the co-creator of Roanoke Doesn’t Suck & Geek Mob Roanoke. She’s been a board member for MystiCon multiple times as well as the Programming Director and resident Graphic Artist. She’s been doing progressively more responsible Administrative Assistant work for almost 30 years. She’s a graphic designer and owner of PushButton Design, and a co-owner of GeNERDation X. She’s worked on many of the Soul Session design projects including Harvest Blaque’s album covers. She’s not a poet, but enthusiastically supports her husband, M. Jason Turner’s poetic endeavors along with many of the other artists who have the courage to bare their soul. She’s a stepmom and a Mimi to her adorable grandson Chance.

 M. Jason Turner is a local writer, performer, creator and occasional Zombie. He’s happily married to his wife Brenda McGuire , has 4 awesome adult children and a grandson way cooler than he will ever be. He and his wife run an award winning Facebook page called “Roanoke Doesn’t Suck”. Plus FB pages “geNERDationX” and more. He’s a big supporter of the community, he’s allergic to bananas and writes about himself in the third person.