Sequoia Nagamatsu is the author of the novel How High We Go in the Dark, a national bestseller and New York Times Editors’ Choice, as well as the story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone. His work has been a finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, short listed for both The Barnes and Noble Discover Prize and The Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, long listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Dublin Literary Award, and has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the U.S. Embassy. His short stories have appeared widely in publications such as Conjunctions, Tin House, The Iowa Review, Lightspeed Magazine, and One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories. He is an associate professor at St. Olaf College and serves as a faculty mentor in the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA program. He resides in Minneapolis with his partner, a cat, a dog, and a robot dog named Calvino. More at SequoiaNagamatsu.com

Margot Livesey grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands and has taught in numerous writing programs including Emerson College, Boston University, Bowdoin College and the Warren Wilson low residency MFA program. She is the author of a collection of stories and nine novels, including Eva Moves the Furniture, and The Flight of Gemma Hardy. The Hidden Machinery: Essays on Writing was published in 2017. She is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and goes back to Scotland whenever she can. Her most recent novel, The Boy in the Field, was published in August 2020.

Maya Shanbhag Lang is the author of What We Carry, named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a “Best Memoir Of 2020” on numerous international lists. She is also the author of The Sixteenth of June, named a Must-Read Novel by CBS and InStyle and long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Lang’s essays been widely published and anthologized. The American Civil Rights Museum named her a “Woman You Should Know.” She is the incoming President of the Authors’ Guild.

Asali Solomon’s latest novel, The Days of Afrekete has been called “a feat of engineering” by the New York Times. She is also the author of Disgruntled and Get Down: Stories. Her previous novel, Disgruntled, was named a best book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle and The Denver Post. She is the recipient of a Pew Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honor. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Vibe, Essence, The Paris Review Daily, McSweeney’s, on NPR, and in several anthologies including The Best Short Stories of 2021: The O. Henry Prize Collection. Solomon is the Bertrand K. Wilbur Chair in the Humanities at Haverford, where she is a Professor of English and director of Creative Writing.

Claire Dederer is a bestselling memoirist, essayist, and critic. Her books include the critically acclaimed Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning, as well as Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses, which was a New York Times bestseller. In April 2023 Knopf will publish Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, Dederer’s nonfiction book investigating good art made by bad people. A hybrid of essay, criticism, and memoir, Monsters is based on her globally viral 2017 essay for the Paris Review, “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” Dederer is a longtime contributor to The New York Times. Her essays, criticism, and reviews have also appeared in The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The Nation, Vogue, and many other publications.

Chen Chen’s second book, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions), has been named a best book of 2022 by the Boston Globe, Electric Lit, NPR, and others. It is also a 2023 Notable Book according to the American Library Association’s Reference and User Services Association. His debut, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), was long-listed for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. His work appears in many publications, including Poetry and three editions of The Best American Poetry. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists. He teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast.