José Orduña, author of The Weight of Shadows, teaches creative writing at the University of New Mexico and contributes to Buzzfeed, Guernica, and TriQuarterly.

Dylan Nice, author of Other Kinds, teaches creative writing at Chatham University and the University of Pittsburgh, and is a MacDowell Colony Fellow.

Angela Morales, author of The Girls in My Town, teaches creative writing at Glendale College and has won multiple awards, including PEN America's 2017 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award.

Lucas Mann, author of Attachments and Lord Fear, has received prestigious fellowships and teaches at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

Yiyun Li, author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, teaches creative writing at Princeton and is a MacArthur Fellow with multiple prestigious literary awards.

Amy Leach, author of The Salt of the Universe and Things That Are, has received a Pushcart Prize and Whiting Writers Award for her nature essays.

Aviya Kushner, author of The Grammar of God, directs the MFA Program at Columbia College Chicago. Her essays appear in The Gettysburg Review and Poets & Writers.

Jeremy Jones, author of Bearwallow, teaches creative writing at Western Carolina University. His essays have been cited in The Best American Essays.

Kerry Howley, author of Thrown and Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs, is a staff writer at New York Magazine and has contributed to Harper's, Slate, and more.

Riley Hanick’s Three Kinds of Motion explores American history and identity, blending stories of Kerouac, Pollock, and highways. Award-winning nonfiction editor for New Madrid.

Stephanie Elizondo Griest, author of Mexican Enough and Around the Bloc, teaches creative writing at UNC and has won numerous prestigious awards.

T Fleischmann, author of Time is the Thing a Body Moves Through, reimagines the essay and teaches creative writing at Columbia College.