Born in Toronto, J. Mae Barizo is a poet, essayist and multidisciplinary artist and the author of two books of poetry: Tender Machines (Tupelo Press, 2023) and The Cumulus Effect. A finalist for the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize and the 2023 Megaphone Prize, her work has been anthologized in books published by W.W. Norton, Atelier Editions and Harvard University Press. Recent writing appears in Poetry, Ploughshares, Esquire, Los Angeles Review of Books, Paris Review Daily, Boston Review, BookForum, among others. An advocate of cross-disciplinary work, she has collaborated with artists such as Salman Rushdie, Mark Morris and the American String Quartet. As a librettist, she is the inaugural recipient of Opera America’s IDEA residency, given to artists who have the potential to shape the future of opera. She is also the recipient of fellowships and awards from Bennington College, Mellon Foundation, Critical Minded, Jerome Foundation and Poets House. She is on the MFA faculty of The New School and lives in New York City.

Ava Chin is the author of Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming (Penguin Press), the critically acclaimed Eating Wildly (Simon & Schuster), winner of the M.F.K. Fisher Book Prize, and the editor of Split (McGraw-Hill). Her writing has appeared in The New York Times (“Urban Forager”), The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, and VIBE. She is the recipient of grants from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York Institute for the Humanities, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. A professor of creative nonfiction at the City University of New York, she lives in New York with her husband and daughter. The Huffington Post named her one of “Nine Contemporary Authors You Should Be Reading.”

Bushra Rehman’s dark comedy, Corona, was chosen by the NY Public Library as one of its favorite books about NYC. She’s co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism and author of the collection of poetry Marianna’s Beauty Salon. Her new novel, Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, is a modern classic about what it means to be Muslim and queer in a Pakistani-American community was chosen as a Best Book and Editor’s Choice by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, People Magazine, Good Morning America, and Ms. Magazine.

Jenny Xie is the author of Holding Pattern, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. Her short fiction has appeared in journals like AGNI, Ninth Letter, and Joyland, while her writing on design and culture has been in The Atlantic, Esquire, The Washington Post, Architectural Digest, and Dwell, where she was previously the Executive Editor. Jenny is the grateful recipient of fellowships from Bread Loaf, MacDowell, Yaddo, and other organizations.