Kim Addonizio is the author of several books of prose and poetry, most recently Mortal Trash, a collection of poems (W. W. Norton, 2017) and a memoir, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life (Penguin, 2016).
Kazim Ali’s most recent books include Sky Ward, Resident Alien, and Wind Instrument. He teaches at Oberlin College. A new collection of essays, Silver Road, and a new collection of poems, Inquisition, will both be published in 2018.
J. Mae Barizo is the author of The Cumulus Effect (Four Way Books, 2015). A prizewinning poet, critic, and performer, recent work by her appears in AGNI, Bookforum, Boston Review, Guernica, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from Bennington College, the New School, the Jerome Foundation, and Poets House. Recent collaborative work includes projects with artists such as Salman Rushdie, Mark Morris, and the American String Quartet. She lives in New York City.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf (BOA Editions, 1997), Small Gods of Grief (BOA Editions, 2001), winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize; and of A New Hunger (Ausuable Press, 2007), selected as an ALA Notable Book. Her next book will be published by Four Way Books in early 2019. The editor of four anthologies and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she teaches at the Solstice Low Residency MFA at Pine Manor College.
Kurt Brown’s (1944–2013) first book of poems, Return of the Prodigals, appeared from Four Way Books in 1999, and More Things in Heaven and Earth (also Four Way Books) in 2002. Fables from the Ark, which won the 2003 Custom Words Prize, was published by WordTech. Future Ship (Red Hen Press) came out in 2007, followed by No Other Paradise (also from Red Hen Press, 2010). Tiger Bark Press published Time-Bound in 2013, and I’ve Come This Far to Say Hello: Poems Selected and New in 2014.
Nickole Brown received her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, studied literature at Oxford University, was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson, and worked for ten years at Sarabande Books. Her first collection, Sister, was published in 2007 by Red Hen Press, and Fanny Says came out from BOA Editions in 2015. She was an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for four years until she gave up her beloved time in the classroom in hope of writing full-time. Currently she is the editor of the Marie Alexander Series in Prose Poetry and lives with her wife, poet Jessica Jacobs, in Asheville, North Carolina.
Benjamin Busch is a writer, filmmaker, and illustrator. He served sixteen years as a Marine Corps infantry officer, deploying twice to Iraq. He’s been a stonemason, sculptor, cartoonist, carpenter, and for three seasons he played Officer Colicchio on the HBO series The Wire. He’s the author of the memoir Dust to Dust (Ecco, 2012) and his essays have arrived in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, River Styx, Michigan Quarterly Review, and on NPR. His work has been featured in Best American Travel Writing, notable in Best American Essays, and awarded the James Dickey Prize for Poetry. His poems have appeared in the North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Five Points, Epiphany, and Oberon, among others. He teaches nonfiction in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe, and lives on a farm in Michigan.
Brian Castner is a nonfiction writer, former explosive ordnance disposal officer, and veteran of the Iraq War. He is the best-selling author of All the Ways We Kill and Die (Arcade, 2016), and the war memoir The Long Walk (Anchor, 2012), which was adapted into an opera and named an Amazon Best Book. His journalism and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Wired, VICE, the Atlantic, the Boston Globe Magazine, River Teeth, and on NPR. He is the co-editor of The Road Ahead, featuring short stories from veteran writers, and his newest book, Disappointment River, will be published by Doubleday in the spring of 2018.
Tina Chang is an American poet, teacher, and editor. In 2010, she was the first woman to be named Poet Laureate of Brooklyn. She is the author of the poetry collections Half-Lit Houses (Four Way Books, 2004) and Of Gods & Strangers (Four Way Books, 2011). She is co-editor of the anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (W. W. Norton, 2008). Her poems have been published in American Poet, McSweeney’s, the New York Times, and Ploughshares, among others. She has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Poets & Writers, and the Van Lier Foundation, among others. She teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and was also a member of the international writing faculty at the City University of Hong Kong, the first low-residency MFA program to be established in Asia.
Steven Church is the author, most recently, of the nonfiction books Ultrasonic: Essays (Lavender Ink, 2014), One with The Tiger: Sublime and Violent Encounters Between Humans and Animals (Soft Skull Press, 2016), and I’m Just Getting to the Disturbing Part: On Work, Fear, and Fatherhood (Outpost19, 2018). He edited the anthology The Spirit of Disruption: Landmark Essays from The Normal School (Outpost19, 2018) and is both a founding editor and nonfiction editor for The Normal School: A Literary Magazine. He coordinates the MFA program at Fresno State University.
Adam Dalva is a graduate of NYU’s MFA program, where he was a Veterans Writing Workshop Fellow. He was an associate fellow at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and a resident at the Vermont Studio Center. Adam teaches creative writing at Rutgers University. His work has been published by The Millions, Tin House, Guernica, the Guardian, and others. He is also a dealer of French eighteenth century antiques.
Mark Doty is the author of nine books of poetry, including Deep Lane (W. W. Norton, 2016); Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (Harper Perennial, 2009), which won the 2008 National Book Award; and My Alexandria (University of Illinois Press, 1993), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the T. S. Eliot Prize in the UK. He is also the author of three memoirs: the New York Times-bestselling Dog Years (HarperCollins, 2007), Firebird (Harper Perennial, 2000), and Heaven’s Coast (Harper Perennial, 1996), as well as a book about craft and criticism, The Art of Description: World into Word (Graywolf, 2010). Doty has received two NEA fellowships, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships, a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, and the Witter Byner Prize.
Andre Dubus III’s books include the New York Times bestsellers House of Sand and Fog (W. W. Norton, 1999), The Garden of Last Days (W. W. Norton, 2008), and his memoir, Townie (W. W. Norton, 2011). His most recent book, Dirty Love (W. W. Norton, 2013), was a New York Times Notable Book selection, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and a Kirkus Starred Best Book of 2013. His new novel, Gone So Long, is forthcoming. Mr. Dubus has been a finalist for the National Book Award, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Fiction, two Pushcart Prizes, and is a recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His books are published in over twenty-five languages, and he teaches full-time at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Fontaine, a modern dancer, and their three children.
Camille T. Dungy is the author of four books, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan University Press, 2017). Her debut collection of personal essays is Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History (W. W. Norton, 2017). She edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (University of Georgia Press, 2009) and co-edited the From the Fishouse poetry anthology (Persea, 2009). Her honors include an American Book Award, two Northern California Book Awards, a California Book Award silver medal, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Dungy is a professor in the English Department at Colorado State University.
Martín Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1957. His latest collection of poems is called Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (W. W. Norton, 2016). Other books of poems include The Trouble Ball (W. W. Norton, 2011), The Republic of Poetry (W. W. Norton, 2006), Alabanza (W. W. Norton, 2003), A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (W. W. Norton, 2000), Imagine the Angels of Bread (W. W. Norton, 1996), and City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (W. W. Norton, 1993). His honors include the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award, the PEN/Revson Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Republic of Poetry was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His book of essays, Zapata’s Disciple, was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program outlawed by the state of Arizona, and has been issued in a new edition by Northwestern University Press. A former tenant lawyer, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Dave Essinger’s recent fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry appears in various literary journals, and his new novel about ultrarunning, Running Out (2017), is available from Main Street Rag. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is a fiction reader for Slice magazine and general editor of the AWP Intro Journals Project. He currently teaches creative writing and edits the literary magazine Slippery Elm at the University of Findlay in northwest Ohio.
Siobhan Fallon is the author of You Know When the Men Are Gone (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2012), which won the 2012 Pen Center USA Literary Award in Fiction, a 2012 Indies Choice Honor Award, the 2012 Texas Institute of Letters Award, and was listed as a Best Book of 2011 by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Public Library, and Janet Maslin of the New York Times. Theatrical productions of her stories have been staged in California, Colorado, Texas, and France. More of Fallon’s work has appeared in Women’s Day, Good Housekeeping, New Letters, Publishers Weekly, Huffington Post, Washington Post Magazine, and Military Spouse magazine. Her first novel, The Confusion of Languages (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2017), is about two American women navigating the Middle East during the Arab Spring. Siobhan currently lives with her family in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Beth Ann Fennelly directs the MFA program at the University of Mississippi, where she was named Outstanding Teacher of the Year. She’s won grants and awards from the NEA, United States Artists, a Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil, and a Pushcart Prize. Fennelly has published three books of poetry and one of nonfiction, all with W. W. Norton, and a novel co-authored with her husband, Tom Franklin. She’s currently finishing a collection of micro-memoirs.
Nick Flynn has worked as a ship’s captain, an electrician, and as a caseworker with homeless adults. His most recent book is My Feelings (Graywolf, 2015). A new collection of poems, I Will Destroy You, is forthcoming from Graywolf.
Kimiko Hahn is the author of nine collections of poetry, including Brain Fever and Toxic Flora. Both of these were triggered by rarefied fields of science in much the same way that previous work was triggered by Asian-American identity, women’s issues, necrophilia, entomology, premature burial, black lung disease, and so on. A passionate advocate of chapbooks, Hahn’s latest is Resplendent Slug (Ghost Bird Press, 2016). She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York.
Cameron Dezen Hammon is a writer and musician whose work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Rumpus, Ecotone, the Houston Chronicle, The Butter, The Literary Review, Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, Columbia Poetry Review, The Brooklyn Review, Literary Orphans, and elsewhere. Her essay “Infirmary Music” was named a notable in Best American Essays 2017. She is cofounder of The Slant reading series, host of The Ish podcast, and teaches creative writing to fifth graders through Writers in the Schools. Cameron’s music has been featured on Houston Public Media KUHF, Houston Pacifica Radio KPFT, as well as the PBS television programs Skyline Sessions and Oxford Sounds. She earned her MFA from Seattle Pacific University and is at work on a memoir about religious and romantic obsessions.
Terrance Hayes is the author of Lighthead (Penguin, 2010), Wind in a Box (Penguin, 2006), Hip Logic (Penguin, 2002), and Muscular Music (Tia Chucha, 1999). How To Be Drawn (Penguin, 2015) is his most recent collection of poems.
Pico Iyer is the author of two novels and ten works of nonfiction, including such bestsellers as Video Night in Kathmandu (Knopf, 1988), The Lady and the Monk (Knopf, 1991), The Open Road (Knopf, 2008), and The Art of Stillness (TED Books, 2014). He has also written introductions to more than sixty other books, as well as liner notes for Leonard Cohen, a screenplay for Miramax, and words for a piece by a New Zealand chamber orchestra. Based in Nara, Japan, since 1992, he contributes regularly to the New York Times, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, and many others, and has seen his books translated into twenty-three languages. He currently serves as Distinguished Presidential Fellow at Chapman University.
Major Jackson is the author of four collections of poetry, including Roll Deep (W. W. Norton, 2015), which won the 2016 Vermont Book Award and was hailed in the New York Times Book Review as “a remixed odyssey.” His other volumes include Holding Company (W. W. Norton, 2010), Hoops (W. W. Norton, 2006), and Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia, 2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Jackson has published poems and essays in the American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The New Yorker, the Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and in several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, among other honors. He serves as the poetry editor of the Harvard Review.
Lacy M. Johnson is a Houston-based professor, activist, and is author of the memoir The Other Side (Tin House, 2014). For its frank and fearless confrontation of the epidemic of violence against women, The Other Side was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography, and was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, an Edgar Award in Best Fact Crime, and the CLMP Firecracker Award in Nonfiction; it was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writer Selection for 2014, and was named one of the best books of 2014 by Kirkus, Library Journal, and the Houston Chronicle. She is also the author of Trespasses: A Memoir (University of Iowa Press, 2012). Her third book, The Reckonings, is forthcoming from Scribner in 2018. She teaches creative nonfiction in the low-residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada College and at Rice University.
Christian Kiefer is the author of the novels The Infinite Tides (Bloomsbury, 2013) and The Animals (Liveright, 2015), and the novella One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place Left to Hide (Nouvella, 2016). He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for his short fiction and is a contributing editor at Zyzzyva and a fiction reader for VQR. Kiefer has a long second career in music, under the auspices of which he has collaborated with members of Smog, Sun Kil Moon, Wilco, Low, and the Band. He holds a Ph.D. in American literature from the University of California at Davis and is the director of the low-residency MFA at Ashland University. He lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada northeast of Sacramento, California, with his wife and family.
Matthew Komatsu is a writer based in Anchorage, Alaska. A veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is a graduate of the University of Alaska with an MFA in nonfiction. His work has appeared online and in print in the New York Times; War, Literature & the Arts; Brevity; The Normal School, and other fine literary establishments. As he is still in uniform, he is obliged to remind the reader that his words do not represent official policy or position.
Ilyse Kusnetz (1966–2016), poet, essayist, and journalist, is the author of Small Hours (Truman State University Press, 2014), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, and The Gravity of Falling. Her next book, Angel Bones, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2019. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Orion, Rattle, Guernica Daily, Islands Magazine, and Crab Orchard Review, among others, as well as in anthologies, including The Room and the World; The Book of Scented Things; Devouring the Green: Fear of a Transhuman Planet; and Monstrous Verse: Angels, Demons, Vampires, Ghosts, and Fabulous Beasts. She also guest-edited Scottish poetry features for Poetry International and the Atlanta Review. Kusnetz taught at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida, where she lived with her husband, Brian Turner. Ilyse and Brian recently collaborated on a poetic text called “Vox Humana,” which premiered with the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra.
Ada Limón is the author of four books of poetry, including Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015), which was named a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a finalist for the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Award, and one of the Top Ten Poetry Books of the Year by the New York Times. Her other books include Lucky Wreck (Autumn House Press, 2006), This Big Fake World (Pearl Editions, 2006), and Sharks in the Rivers (Milkweed Editions, 2010).
Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Borrower (Penguin, 2012) and The Hundred-Year House (Penguin, 2015), and the collection Music for Wartime (Penguin, 2016)—six stories from which have appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. The recipient of a 2014 NEA Fellowship, Makkai has taught at the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently on the faculty of the MFA programs at Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University.
John Mauk grew up on the Ohio flatland. He has a Ph.D. in English from Bowling Green State University. His stories have appeared in a range of fine magazines such as Arts & Letters, New Millennium Writings, and Salamander. He has also contributed essays to online magazines including Writer’s Digest, Beatrice.com, Three Guys One Book, The Portland Book Review, and Rumpus. His first short collection, The Rest of Us (Michigan Writers Cooperative Press, 2012), won the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press chapbook contest. His first full collection, Field Notes for the Earthbound (2014), is available from Black Lawrence Press. He currently teaches at Miami University and lives whenever possible in Traverse City, Michigan.
Christopher Merrill has published six collections of poetry, including Watch Fire (White Pine Press, 1995), for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; many edited volumes and translations; and six books of nonfiction, among them Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999); Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain (Random House, 2005); The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War (Milkweed Editions, 2011); and Self-Portrait with Dogwood (Trinity University Press, 2017). His writings have been translated into nearly forty languages; his journalism appears widely; and his honors include a Chevalier from the French government in the Order of Arts and Letters. As director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, Merrill has conducted cultural diplomacy missions to more than fifty countries. He serves on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, and in April 2012 President Obama appointed him to the National Council on the Humanities.
Philip Metres is the author of Pictures at an Exhibition (University of Akron Press, 2016), Sand Opera (Alice James Books, 2015), I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2015), A Concordance of Leaves (Diode Editions, 2013), To See the Earth (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2008), and others. His work has garnered a Lannan Fellowship, two NEAs, six Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Hunt Prize for Excellence in Journalism, Arts & Letters, the Beatrice Hawley Award, two Arab American Book Awards, the Watson Fellowship, the Creative Workforce Fellowship, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant. He is a professor of English and the director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Program at John Carroll University in Cleveland.
Kathryn Miles is the author of four books, including Quakeland: On the Road to America’s Next Devastating Earthquake (Dutton, 2017). Her essays and articles have appeared in dozens of publications, including The Best American Essays, the Boston Globe, Ecotone, the New York Times, Outside, Popular Mechanics, and Time. She currently serves as writer-in-residence for Green Mountain College.
Dinty W. Moore is author of The Story Cure: A Book Doctor’s Pain-Free Guide to Finishing Your Novel or Memoir (Ten Speed Press, 2017), the memoir Between Panic & Desire (Bison Books, 2010), and many other books. He has published essays and stories in the Southern Review, the Georgia Review, Harper’s, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Arts & Letters, The Normal School, and elsewhere. A professor of nonfiction writing at Ohio University, Moore lives in Athens, Ohio, where he grows heirloom tomatoes and edible dandelions.
Honor Moore’s most recent book is The Bishop’s Daughter (W. W. Norton, 2009), a memoir, a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award and a Los Angeles Times Favorite Book of the Year. Her most recent collection of poems is Red Shoes (W. W. Norton, 2006). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Paris Review, American Scholar, Salmagundi, the New Republic, Freeman’s, and many other journals and anthologies. For the Library of America, she edited Amy Lowell: Selected Poems (2004) and Poems from the Women’s Movement (2009), an Oprah summer readings pick which is featured in the documentary about American feminism, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry (2014). She has been poet-in-residence at Wesleyan and the University of Richmond, visiting professor at the Columbia School of the Arts, and three times the Visiting Distinguished Writer in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Moore currently lives and writes in New York, where she is on the graduate writing faculty of the New School.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of four collections of poems, most recently Oceanic (Copper Canyon Press, 2018). Her collection of lyric nature essays is forthcoming from Milkweed. Honors include a Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is poetry editor of Orion magazine and a professor of English in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi.
Bich Minh Nguyen, who also goes by Beth, is the author of three books: the memoir Stealing Buddha’s Dinner (Penguin, 2008), which received the PEN/Jerard Fund Award; the novel Short Girls (Penguin, 2010), which received an American Book Award; and most recently the novel Pioneer Girl (Penguin, 2015). Her work has been widely anthologized and featured in numerous university and community reading programs. She is a professor in the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco.
Téa Obreht’s debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife (Random House), won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction, and was a 2011 National Book Award finalist and a New York Times bestseller. Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and has appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s, Vogue, Esquire, and Zoetrope: All-Story. She was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and was named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty. She lives in New York, teaches at Hunter College, and is married to Dan Sheehan, with whom she often revives the debate outlined in their essay in this book.
Kristen Radtke is the author of the graphic nonfiction book Imagine Wanting Only This (Pantheon, 2017). She is the art director and New York editor of The Believer magazine. She lives in Brooklyn.
Suzanne Roberts is the author of the award-winning memoir Almost Somewhere (Bison Books, 2012), as well as four collections of poetry. Her work has been published in Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, and National Geographic Traveler, among others. She holds a doctorate in literature and the environment from the University of Nevada, Reno, and teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at Sierra Nevada College Tahoe and Chatham University. She lives in South Lake Tahoe.
Roxana Robinson’s most recent novel, Sparta (Picador, 2014), was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the BBC, and was short-listed for the Dublin IMPAC Award. It won the James Webb Award from the USMCHF and the Maine PWA for Fiction. She is the author of four other other novels, Cost (Sarah Crichton, 2008), Sweetwater (Random House, 2007), This Is My Daughter (Random House, 1988), and Summer Light (Viking, 1988), as well as three story collections and a biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. Four of these books were New York Times Notable Books. Robinson’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s, and The Best American Short Stories, as well as the New York Times, Harper’s, Tin House, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. Robinson was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library, and has received fellowships from the NEA, the MacDowell Colony, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She teaches in the MFA program at Hunter College. She lives in New York City.
Schafer John c is a writer, actor, and fisherman. Born and raised on the north side of Chicago, where he was shot, he was a member of the Latino Chicago Theater Company and earned a degree in sociology from Illinois State University . . . after playing basketball for five different colleges. As an actor, he’s appeared in a number of films and on The Drew Carey Show, Dharma & Greg, and SeaQuest DSV. He’s played everyone from a jealous boyfriend, to a brooding sculptor, to a horny vampire. His screenplays for Bruised Orange and The Unconcerned have been produced and his short stories have appeared in Amor Fati, the Writer’s Compass, Short Story magazine, and Guernica. He’s fished in Brazil, Vietnam, the Baja, the Yucatán, and . . . northern Michigan. He lives in Virginia, where has just finished Transcendental Blues, a novel in three parts, and is at work on more. He can’t stop.
Dan Sheehan is an Irish fiction writer, journalist, and editor. His writing has appeared in the Irish Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, TriQuarterly, Words Without Borders, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and numerous other publications. He lives in New York, where he is the Book Marks editor for Literary Hub and a contributing editor at Guernica magazine, and was a recipient of the 2016 Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellowship. His debut novel, Restless Souls, will be published in 2018 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK) & Ig Publishing (U.S.).
Tom Sleigh’s many books include Station Zed (Graywolf, 2015); Army Cats (Graywolf, 2017), winner of the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and Space Walk (Mariner, 2008), which received the Kingsley Tufts Award. In addition, Far Side of the Earth (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003) won an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Dreamhouse (University of Chicago Press, 1999) was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The Chain (University of Chicago Press, 1999) was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize. He’s also received the PSA’s Shelley Prize, a Guggenheim, two NEAs, and many other awards. His poems appear in The New Yorker, Poetry, and many other magazines. In February 2018, Graywolf is publishing The Land Between Two Rivers: Poetry in an Age of Refugees, and a book of poems, House of Fact, House of Ruin. He is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College and has worked as a journalist in the Middle East and Africa.
Patricia Smith is the author of eight books of poetry, including Incendiary Art (TriQuarterly, 2017); Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (Coffee House, 2013), winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler (Coffee House, 2013), a National Book Award finalist; and Gotta Go, Gotta Flow (CityFiles, 2015), with photographer Michael Abramson. Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Paris Review, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Tin House and in The Best American Poetry, The Best American Essays, and The Best American Mystery Stories. She is a Guggenheim fellow, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, and a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize. Smith is a professor at the College of Staten Island and in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College.
Ira Sukrungruang is the author of The Melting Season (Burlesque, 2016), Southside Buddhist (University of Tampa Press, 2014), In Thailand It Is Night (University of Tampa Press, 2013), and Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy (University of Missouri Press, 2010). He teaches in the MFA program at the University of South Florida and edits the online journal Sweet: A Literary Confection.
Christopher Paul Wolfe, a North Carolina native, graduated from West Point in 2000 and spent six years serving as a U.S. Army officer. Wolfe holds an MBA from Duke University and is currently completing his MFA at Columbia University, where he also has served as a teaching fellow and led the Veterans Writing Workshop at Columbia University. His writing has appeared in Penthouse, Guernica, Veoir, and, more recently, in BOMB and the veterans anthology The Road Ahead: Fiction from the Forever War. Wolfe resides in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, with his wife and three children, and is working on a novel.
Sholeh Wolpé is an Iranian-born poet, writer, and public speaker, and is a recipient of a 2014 PEN/Heim Translation Grant, 2013 Midwest Book Award, and the 2010 Lois Roth Persian Translation Prize. Wolpé’s literary work includes four collections of poetry, two plays, three books of translations, and three anthologies. About Wolpé’s latest collection of poems, Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths (University of Arkansas Press, 2013), Shelf Awareness magazine writes, “A gifted Iranian-American poet beautifully explores love and the loss of love, beauty and war and the ghosts of the past.” Wolpé’s modern translation of The Conference of the Birds by the twelfth-century Iranian mystic poet Attar (W. W. Norton, 2017) has been hailed by Reza Aslan as a translation that “is sure to be as timeless as the masterpiece itself.” She has lived in the UK and Trinidad and is presently based in Los Angeles.