Manuel Gonzales is the author of the collection, The Miniature Wife and other stories, as well as the novel, The Regional Office is Under Attack! He currently serves as the fiction editor for The Bennington Review and as a contributing editor for American Short Fiction and One Story magazine. He lives in New England where he teaches literature and creative writing at Bennington College and serves as a faculty member for the Bennington Writing Seminars.

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is the author of, most recently, the story collection, American Estrangement, a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. His memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free, was selected as one of the 10 best books of the year by Dwight Garner of The New York Times, and his story collection, Brief Encounters With the Enemy, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fiction Prize. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The Best American Short Stories, Granta, and McSweeney’s, among other publications. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction and a Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers’ fiction fellowship. He leads the Creative Nonfiction track in Hunter’s MFA program, and teaches undergraduate writing at NYU, where he received an outstanding teaching award. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan

Hannah Tinti is the co-founder and executive editor of One Story magazine. She is the author of the bestselling novel The Good Thief, which won The Center for Fiction’s first novel prize, and the story collection Animal Crackers, a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her most recent novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, is a national bestseller and is in development for television. She co-founded the Sirenland Writers Conference in Italy and has taught writing at New York University’s Graduate Creative Writing Program, Columbia University’s MFA program, CUNY, and at the Museum of Natural History in New York City.  For more information please visit hannahtinti.com.

Allison Amend is a graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She is the author of the award-winning short story collection Things That Pass for Love and the novels A Nearly Perfect Copy and Stations West, which was a finalist for the 2011 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Oklahoma Book Award. Her most recent book, Enchanted Islands, was on the longlist for the International Dublin Award. Allison teaches creative writing at Lehman College CUNY in New York City where in 2012 she completed a project in which she visited every single museum in the city (all 115 of them!).

Jennifer Baker is an author/editor, the creator & host of the Minorities in Publishing podcast, and on faculty at Bay Path University’s MFA program in creative nonfiction. In 2017, she received a NYSCA/NYFA grant and Queens Council on the Arts grant in Nonfiction. She is the editor of the short story anthology Everyday People: The Color of Life (2018) and the author of Forgive Me Not (2023), a finalist for the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an NYPL 2023 Best Book for Teens and 2023 Best of the Best by the BCALA. Her website is: jennifernbaker.com. (Photo: Gabby Deimeke)

Jai Chakrabarti is the author of the novel A Play for the End of the World, which won the National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction, was the Association of Jewish Libraries Honor Book, was short-listed for the Tagore Prize, and was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is also the author of the story collection A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness, one of The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2023. His short fiction has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, and awarded a Pushcart Prize.

Denne Michele Norris is the editor-in-chief of Electric Literature, winner of the 2022 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize, where she is the first Black, openly trans woman to helm a major literary publication. A 2021 Out100 Honoree, her writing has been supported by MacDowell, Tin House, and the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction, and appears in McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, and ZORA. She is co-host of the critically-acclaimed podcast Food 4 Thot, and her debut novel, When The Harvest Comes, will be published by Random House in Spring, 2025.

Jeanne Thornton is the author of Summer Fun, winner of the Lambda Literary Award, A/S/L (forthcoming), The Dream of Doctor Bantam, and The Black Emerald. She’s the coeditor, with Tara Madison Avery, of We’re Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology, as well as the copublisher of Instar Books. Her work has appeared at n+1, Wired, Harper’s Bazaar, and other places. She lives in Brooklyn, and more information is available at jeannethornton.com.