For Major Jackson, poetry is a vehicle of exploration. His poem "Stand Your Ground" responds to Florida's law that was famously invoked in the killing of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old boy. Jackson gives his Brief But Spectacular take on leaving his mark.

You can choose not to see the sky, but it exists. That’s how Reni Eddo-Lodge responds when somebody tells her they don’t see race. Trying to raise the topic in white-dominated social circles often led her to an immediate shutdown, one that might spring from others’ fear of being wrong, she says. Eddo-Lodge offers her Brief but Spectacular take on talking to white people about race.

Daniel Lubetzky, founder and CEO of the “Kind” snack company, believes kindness requires courage and action. After law school, Lubetzky founded a company to bring people of conflict regions together through business ventures, and it all started out with a jar of sun-dried tomato paste.

When journalist Anjan Sundaram travelled to Rwanda in 2009, he encountered a repressive government that targeted and imprisoned the journalists he worked with. His experience opened his eyes to the courage needed to report on the stories and people that can easily hide from the world’s collective consciousness. Sundaram offers his Brief but Spectacular take on covering the forgotten.