Festival Authors
Hover over or click on an author’s photo to read their bio.
2024 Headliners & Other Featured Writers
Bonnie Garmus is the author of Lessons in Chemistry, a number-one global bestseller and winner of several national and international awards, including Barnes & Noble’s Book of the Year, Hay Festival’s Book of the Year, Goodreads Choice Award Debut of the Year, British Book Awards Author of the Year, Waterstones Author of the Year, Books are My Bag Author of the Year Award and Readers’ Choice
Award, Germany and Australia’s Booksellers Book of the Year, Australia’s International Book of the Year, and many more. It was also selected by Queen Camilla for the Queen’s Reading Room and has been on the New York Times, Sunday Times and Der Spiegel bestseller lists for nearly two years. Currently published in forty-two territories, it has sold almost seven million copies.
Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of a number of critically acclaimed novels, including Gods of Jade and Shadow (Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, Ignyte Award), Mexican Gothic (Locus Award, British Fantasy Award, Pacific Northwest Book Award, Aurora Award, Goodreads Award), Velvet Was the Night (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Macavity Award), and her newest book, The Seventh Veil of Salome which was a Good Morning America Book Club pick for August 2024. She has edited several anthologies, including She Walks in Shadows (World Fantasy Award winner, published in the USA as Cthulhu’s Daughters). Silvia is the publisher of Innsmouth Free Press. Her fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. She has an MA in Science and Technology Studies from the University of British Columbia. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Alex Espinoza is the author of The Sons of El Rey, a finalist for the 2024 New American Voices Award.
Shahnaz Habib is a writer and translator based in Brooklyn. She translates from her mother tongue, the south Indian language of Malayalam, and has translated two novels, Jasmine Days, winner of the 2018 JCB Prize, and Al Arabian Novel Factory. Airplane Mode is her first book.
Chelsea Henderson is the author of Glacial: The Inside Story of Climate Politics. Based on scores of interviews with key players and research spanning the six decades since climate change was first elevated to a president’s attention as a global catastrophe in the making, Chelsea wrote Glacial inspired by those who have worked year after year, decade after decade, to try to enact comprehensive climate change legislation.
With more than twenty-five years of experience striking bipartisan compromise on federal energy and environmental policy, Chelsea has worked on and off Capitol Hill with lawmakers, administration officials, and a broad array of stakeholders from the regulated community to
environmentalists.
Carrie Sun was born in China and raised in Michigan. She holds an MFA in creative writing from The New School. She lives in Jersey City with her husband. Private Equity is her first book.
Jenny Adams has always had an overactive imagination. She turned her love of books and stories into a career as a librarian and author. She holds degrees in Medieval Studies and Library Science from The Ohio State University and Drexel University, and currently lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her family.
Alisa Alering, author of debut novel Smothermoss, grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania and now lives in Arizona. Their short fiction has been published in Fireside, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Podcastle, and Cast of Wonders, among others, and been recognized by the Calvino Prize. A former librarian and science/technology reporter, they teach fiction workshops at the Highlights Foundation.
Mr. Edwin Bancroft Henderson, II is the namesake of Dr. E B Henderson. He Founded the Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation in Falls Church to preserve the early civil right and African American History of Northern Virginia .He has served on the Falls Church Historical Commission since 1996. Mr. Henderson was appointed to the Falls Church City School Board in 2021. He, and his wife Nikki, successfully nominated Dr. Henderson to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, in 2013.
Jan Beatty’s eighth book, Dragstripping, is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press in fall, 2024. She is the winner of the Red Hen Nonfiction Award for her memoir, American Bastard, October, 2021. A chapbook, Skydog, was published by Lefty Blondie Press in 2022. Beatty’s sixth book, The Body Wars, was published in fall, 2020 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. In The New York Times, Naomi Shihab Nye said: Jan Beatty’s new poems in “The Body Wars” shimmer with luminous connection, travel a big life and grand map of encounters. Beatty is at work on her ninth full-length book, a collection of essays about gender and censorship.
Helen Benedict, a professor at Columbia University and the author of seven previous novels, has been writing about refugees and war for years, most recently in the nonfiction, Map of Hope & Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece, published in 2022, and the novels, Wolf Season and Sand Queen. A recipient of the 2021 PEN Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History, the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism, and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, Benedict is also the author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq. Her writings inspired a class action suit against the Pentagon on behalf of those sexually assaulted in the military and the 2012 Oscar nominated documentary, The Invisible War.
K. Avvirin Berlin is an Assistant Professor of English at Washington and Lee University. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity from USC, an M.A. in American Indian Studies from UCLA and a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have been published in The Georgia Review, Boston Review online, Women’s Studies Quarterly and the Beloit Poetry Journal. Her scholarship on Sojourner Truth and Black feminism is forthcoming in Nineteenth-Century Literature; scholarly reviews have appeared in Women’s Review of Books. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with her husband and their two cats. Leda’s Daughters is her debut collection. More on her website: https://www.avvirin.com/
Remy (Phoenix) Boudreau is a Two-Spirit Cree person from Edmonton, Alberta, where they live with their three children. They come from an oral storytelling tradition, with a long line of champion storytellers. They’ve been writing since they were 9, and Hunger is their first published story
Agata Izabela Brewer was born and raised in Poland. A teacher, a mother, an activist for immigrant rights, and a Court Appointed Special Advocate, she is Professor of English at Wabash College. Her creative writing has appeared in Guernica and Entropy. The Hunger Book is her first book of creative nonfiction.
Marina Budhos is the author of award-winning fiction and nonfiction. Her novels for young people are The Long Ride, Watched, Tell Us We’re Home, and Ask Me No Questions. Her nonfiction books are Remix: Conversations with Immigrant Teenagers and two coauthored books, Eyes of the World: Robert Capa, Gerda Taro & the Invention of Modern Photojournalism and Sugar Changed the World, written with her husband, Marc Aronson. Budhos has received an NEA Fellowship in Creative Writing and has been a Fulbright Scholar to India and was a professor of English at William Paterson University.
Aaron Burch is the author of the memoir/literary analysis Stephen King’s The Body; the short story collection, Backswing; and the novella, How to Predict the Weather. He is the Founding Editor of HOBART. He is working on a novel, a maybe-chapbook of short-short prose, and collection of essays, This Was All Before The Internet, about growing up and music and religion, essays from which, about Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, and Alice in Chains, have appeared in Salon, Catapult, and The Smart Set. He teaches at the University of Michigan.
Myriam J. A. Chancy, award-winning author of Village Weavers (Tin House) and What Storm, What Thunder, is a Haitian-Canadian-American writer, the HBA Chair in the Humanities at Scripps College in Claremont, California, and a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Carol Cleaveland is Associate Professor of Social Work at George Mason University, and is the co-author of Private Violence: Latin American Women and the Struggle for Asylum.
Heather S. Cole is a public historian and writer living in Staunton, Virginia. She has worked in a variety of museum and archives, including as an interpreter for the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum in Staunton. She currently works as an editor for Bridgewater College and does freelance work organizing family archives, writing corporate histories and editing personal memoirs. Virginia Presidents is her third book for The History Press.
John Copenhaver’s historical crime novel, Dodging and Burning, won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery. His second novel, The Savage Kind, won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ Mystery. He cohosts on the House of Mystery Radio Show, is the six-time recipient of Artist Fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and for years, wrote a crime fiction review column for Lambda Literary called “Blacklight.”
Nick Couldry is professor of media, communications, and social theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science and faculty associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. He is the coauthor of The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism.
Keith Donohue is the author of six novels: The Stolen Child, Angels of Destruction, Centuries of June, The Boy Who Drew Monsters, The Motion of Puppets, and The Girl in the Bog. His work has been translated into two dozen languages. He also reviews books and wrote speeches for the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC.
J. Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet. Her work has been featured in Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, Poem-a-day @poets.org, and elsewhere. She is the author of I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019) and There Should Be Flowers (The Accomplices 2016). She holds an MFA in poetry from UC Riverside and is currently a professor of creative writing. Jennifer lives in California with her wife, poet/essayist Eileen Elizabeth, and their cat and dog.
Katey Funderburgh hails from the Colorado Rocky Mountains. As a current Poetry MFA student at George Mason University, Katey’s focus is on the intersections between literature and liberation. She is a Poetry Alive! fellow at the Fairfax Juvenile Detention Center, where her students recently wrote a chapbook titled “Dry Impulsive Tears”. Katey also serves as the co-coordinator for Phoebe Journal’s Incarcerated Writer’s Program, a literary initiative aimed at providing feedback and community to writers in prison. Her own poems have appeared in The Blood Pudding and Where the Meadows Reside, among others.
John Gallagher is the author of the “Max Meow” kids’ graphic novel series from Random House publishing. He is also art director of National Wildlife Federation’s “Ranger Rick” magazine, as well as co-founder of “Kids Love Comics” (an organization that uses graphic novels to promote literacy). John has spoken at schools and library conferences around the U.S., leading workshops teaching kids and adults about the magic of comics and reading. John lives in Fairfax, Virginia with his wife and their three kids. Visit him at www.MaxMeow.Com
V. V. Ganeshananthan (she/her) is the author of the novels Brotherless Night, longlisted for the Women’s Prize and the Asian Prize, shortlisted for the Carol Shields Prize, and a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, and Love Marriage, longlisted for the Women’s Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post. She has been visiting faculty at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan and at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and now teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota.
Albanian-born writer Ani Gjika is the author and literary translator of eight books and chapbooks of poetry, including Bread on Running Waters, a finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. Her translation from the Albanian of Luljeta Lleshanaku’s Negative Space won an English PEN Award and was shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize, PEN America Award, and Best Translated Book Award. She is a graduate of Boston University’s MFA program where she was a 2011 Robert Pinsky Global fellow, and GrubStreet’s Memoir Incubator program, where she was a 2019 Pauline Scheer Fellow.
Munir Hachemi was born during a rainstorm one Saturday in Madrid in 1989. He has Algerian ancestry on his father’s side. He started selling his stories in fanzines by going around bars in the neighborhood of Lavapies, together with the literary collective Los Escritores Bárbaros. Later on he published his first novel, Los pistoleros del eclipse, and the second, 廢墟, this time published on paper, which he sold not only in Madrid but also in the streets of Granada. In 2018 he published Cosas vivas with Periférica, and in 2021 he was listed by Granta magazine as one of the 25 Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists. He understands the pleasures of literary translation and has published Los restos, his first poetry book. A number of anthologies contain his stories and poems. He admires courage and intelligence.
Rania Hanna is a Syrian–American writer and researcher. She is a neuroscience doctoral student at George Mason University. The Jinn Daughter is her debut novel. She lives in Northern Virginia.
Barry Harrelson is special editor for the Edwin Washington Society. He is the co-author of Dirt Don’t Burn: A Black Community’s Struggle for Educational Equality Under Segregation.
JoeAnn Hart is the author of Arroyo Circle, a novel from Green Writers Press. Her other books include the prize-winning fiction collection Highwire Act & Other Tales of Survival, the crime memoir Stamford ’76, the novel Float, a dark comedy about plastics in the ocean, and Addled, a social satire. Her short fiction, reviews, and essays have appeared in a wide range of publications, including Slate.com, Orion, The Hopper, Prairie Schooner, The Sonora Review, Terrain.org, and others. Her work often explores the relationship between humans, their environments, and the non-human world.
Miles Harvey is the author of The King of Confidence (a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice selection), Painter in a Savage Land, and The Island of Lost Maps. He teaches creative writing at DePaul University in Chicago, where he chairs the Department of English and is a founding editor of Big Shoulders Books, a nonprofit, social-justice publisher. The Registry of Forgotten Objects is his first work of fiction.
Jocelyn Heath is an Associate Professor in English at Norfolk State University. Her debut poetry collection, In the Cosmic Fugue, came out in November 2022. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Crab Orchard Review, Poet Lore, Sinister Wisdom, Fourth River, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Editor for Smartish Pace.
Praveen Herat was born in London to Sri Lankan parents and educated at Oxford and the University of East Anglia. He lived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for several years, a period that marked him profoundly and prompted his research for what would become his debut novel, Between This World and the Next. Since 2010, he has lived in Paris.
Eunice Hong is the director of the Davis Polk Leadership Initiative and lecturer in law at Columbia Law School. She was previously a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, and a law clerk to the Honorable Richard M. Berman in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Eunice received her undergraduate degree from Brown University and her JD from Columbia Law School. She resides in New York, New York.
Laura A. Jacobs LCSW-R (she/he/they/none), is a trans and genderqueer psychotherapist, public speaker, author, and activist with 15+ years specializing in transgender, nonbinary, LGBTQIA+, kink/BDSM, nonmonogamy, and sex work. Laura has authored or coauthored books, chapters, and articles, and their upcoming book, Surviving Transphobia, will be released in Fall, 2023. They served as the first transgender Chair of the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York City. Laura was presented the 2019 Standard of Excellence Award by the American Association for Sexuality Education, Counseling, and Therapy and several others. Earlier in life, she worked as a musician, composer, photographer, and in rather boring corporate middle management.
Willie Lee Kinard III (he/they) is a Black nonbinary poet, designer, educator & musician forged in Newberry, South Carolina. With written work appearing or forthcoming in Obsidian, Best New Poets, Boston Review, POETRY, The Rumpus & elsewhere, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh & has received fellowships & support from The Watering Hole & The Pittsburgh Foundation. An avid believer in evening thunderstorms & loose-leaf tea, go see ‘bout them at www.williekinard.com.
Alyse Knorr is an associate professor of English at Regis University, co-editor of Switchback Books, and co-producer of the Sweetbitter podcast. She is the author of the poetry collections Ardor (2023), a Lambda Literary Award finalist, as well as Mega-City Redux (2017), Copper Mother (2016), and Annotated Glass (2013). She also authored the video game history books GoldenEye (2022) and Super Mario Bros. 3 (2016) and four poetry chapbooks. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Republic, POETRY Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, and The Georgia Review, among others. She received her MFA from George Mason University.
Leah Lax has written award-winning fiction and nonfiction as well as an immigrant opera for Houston Grand Opera, reviewed with acclaim in The New York Times and broadcast on NPR. Her work has appeared in Salon, Longreads, Dame, HuffPost, and Lilith, among many others, and in anthologies by Seal Press and North Atlantic. When Leah isn’t writing, you can find her playing her cello, or with her wife kayaking around the world.
Ananda Lima is a poet, translator, and fiction writer, author of Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil (Tor Books), and Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, winner of the Hudson Prize). Her work has appeared in four chapbooks, including Amblyopia (Bull City Press), as well as Poets & Writers, The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. Craft, her fiction debut, has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, which described it as “one of the most original and unforgettable reads of the year.” Originally from Brazil, she lives in Chicago.
Grace Loh Prasad writes frequently on the topics of diaspora and belonging. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, Longreads, The Offing, Hyperallergic, Catapult, Ninth Letter, KHÔRA, and elsewhere. She is a member of The Writers Grotto and Seventeen Syllables, an Asian American Pacific Islander writers’ collective. She lives in the Bay Area.
Shirley Marshall is a social history researcher extraordinaire and a management consultant. Her collection of eighteenth- to twentieth-century correspondence proves both the complexity and the repetitiveness of history. An air force veteran, Shirley earned a JD from the UVA School of Law and worked in social services. Inheriting Elizabeth Handy’s papers led to a decades-long odyssey, exploring a full and complex life. Elizabeth’s writings include her time in Washington, D.C., in California’s Sonoran Desert and in Peking (Beijing) during the Chinese civil war. Other than writing, Shirley advises nonprofit clients, travels at every opportunity and tends her almost-native overgrown garden. www.elizabethsbook.com.
Michael Martinez is the author of four collections of poetry, including Heredities (LSU Press), which received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Museum of the Americas (Penguin), which was selected for the National Poetry Series Competition and long-listed for the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry; his most recent work is Tarta Americana (Penguin). He is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University.
Siwar Masannat is a Jordanian writer and the author of cue (Georgia Review Books, 2024) and 50 Water Dreams (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2015. Masannat holds a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, an MFA from George Mason University, and a BSC from the University of Jordan. Masannat works as Managing Editor of the African Poetry Book Fund and Prairie Schooner. https://siwarmasannat.com/
Ulises A. Mejias is professor of communication studies at the State University of New York at Oswego. He is the coauthor of The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism.
Joe Milan, Jr. is a second-generation Korean American who taught in South Korea for nine years and is the author of the novel The All-American (W.W. Norton). His work has appeared in Electric Literature, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, and others. Joemilanjr.com
Sean Murphy is founder of the non-profit 1455 Lit Arts and directs the Center for Story at Shenandoah University. He has been publishing fiction, poetry, reviews (of music, movie, book, food), and essays on the technology industry for over twenty years. He was previously the writer-in-residence at Noepe Center for Literary Arts at Martha’s Vineyard, and in 2017 founded the arts non-profit 1455. His memoir Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone was released in 2013. His novel Not to Mention a Nice Life (2015) was followed by his first two collections of non-fiction, Murphy’s Law, Vol. One and Vol. Two (2016, 2017). His chapbooks The Blackened Blues (Finishing Line Press) and Rhapsodies in Blue (Kelsay Books) were published in 2021 and 2023. His next poetry collection, Kinds of Blue (Kelsay Books) and his collection of short fiction This Kind of Man(Unsolicited Press) both published in 2024.
K.T. Nguyen is a former magazine editor. Her features have appeared in Glamour, Shape, and Fitness. After graduating from Brown University (just barely), she spent her twenties and thirties hopping from New York City to Taipei, Beijing, Shanghai, and San Francisco. She’s now settled just outside Washington, D.C. with her family and their adopted terrier Alice.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Jamar Nicholas is an award-winning artist and educator who has dedicated his career to helping young people realize the power of cartooning. Jamar aims to promote anti-bullying, healing, and kindness in his work. He enjoys the 1980s, podcasting, video games, and spending time with his family and pets.
Tanya Olson lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her first book, Boyishly, was published by YesYes Books in 2013 and received a 2014 American Book Award. Her second book, Stay, was released from YesYes Books in 2019. In 2010, she won a Discovery/Boston Review prize and she was named a 2011 Lambda Fellow by the Lambda Literary Foundation. Her poem 54 Prince was chosen for inclusion in Best American Poems 2015. Born Backwards is forthcoming from YesYes Books in June 2024.
Kate Partridge is the author of the poetry collection Thine.
Noley Reid writes on the subjects of body, food, family, and dogs. The author of four books of fiction, her latest is the award-winning themed short story collection Origami Dogs, in which dogs rove the grounds of their companions’ emotions. By turns tender, playful, and devastating, Origami Dogs is a celebration of the bond of devotion possible between humans and dogs, and presents an intimate rendering of the lives we share. Origami Dogs made Independent Book Review’s “30 Indie Books to Look Out for in 2023” and won Bronze in the Feathered Quill Book Awards. Reid’s novel Pretend We Are Lovely was an Oprah Magazine Editors’ Pick and Publishers Weekly Best of the Season. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Southern Review, The Rumpus, Meridian, Pithead Chapel, Split Lip Magazine, The Lily, Bustle, Tin House, Arts & Letters, and Los Angeles Review of Books.
Nicholas Ritter (he/him) is a poet in the MFA program at George Mason University where he is the recipient of the Thesis Fellowship. He is a fellow with Poetry Alive!, a program that teaches creative writing at juvenile detention centers in Northern Virginia. He is originally from the woods in Brandywine, Maryland, and now resides in NOVA. His poems can be found in The Shore Poetry, Fauxmoir, and Ballast.
Larry Roeder is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of the Edwin Washington Society. He is the co-author of Dirt Don’t Burn: A Black Community’s Struggle for Educational Equality Under Segregation.
Diana Rojas is the author of the debut fiction Litany of Saints: A Triptych, which will be published by Arte Público Press in April 2024. A graduate of NYU, she has written in everything from large daily newspapers to niche newsletters. Diana grew up in Connecticut and New Jersey, has lived in five different countries and currently lives, taxed and unrepresented, in Washington, DC.
Etaf Rum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York by Palestinian immigrants. She has taught English Literature in North Carolina, where she lives with her two children. Etaf also runs the Instagram account @booksandbeans and is a Book of the Month Club Ambassador.
Mohammad Salama is Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature & Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at George Mason University. His academic interests include modern and classical Arabic literature, Qur’anic Studies, and Comparative Cultural Studies. He has published in scholarly venues that include der Islam, PAMLA, JAL, ASJ, ALIF, AHR, Boundary2, among others. His books include Islam Orientalism, and Intellectual History (I.B. Tauris, 2011), German Colonialism: Race, the Holocaust and Postwar Germany (Columbia University Press, 2011); The Qur’an and Modern Arabic Literary Criticism (Bloomsbury, 2018) and Islam and the Culture of Modern Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2019). His latest book, God’s Other Book: The Qur’an Between History and Ideology, is scheduled to be published by the University of California Press in September 2024.
Constance Sayers is the author of the best-selling novels: A Witch in Time, and The Ladies of the Secret Circus (all from Hachette), the latter receiving both a Publishers Weekly and Library Journal starred review. Her work has been translated into six languages and her third novel, The Star and the Strange Moon (Hachette) was released on November 14, 2023. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Sayers received an MA in English from George Mason University and a B.A. in Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She lives outside of Washington D.C. and can be found at www.constancesayers.com and on Instagram @constancesayers.
Katharine Schellman is a former actor and one-time political consultant. When not writing about mystery, history, and other improbable things, she can be found in her garden or finding new ways to skip steps while baking. She currently lives and writes in the mountains of Virginia in the company of her family and the many houseplants she keeps accidentally murdering. Her books include Last Call at the Nightingale and The Last Drop of Hemlock.
Jason Schneiderman is the author of five poetry collections and the editor of the anthology Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford UP 2016). His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. His awards include the Emily Dickinson Award, the Shestack Award, and a Fulbright Fellowship. He is a longtime cohost of the podcast Painted Bride Quarterly Slush Pile and has guest hosted American Public Media’s The Slowdown. He is a professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson. He lives in New York City.
K.E. Semmel is a writer and translator. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Ontario Review, Lithub, The Writer’s Chronicle, The Southern Review, Washington Post, and elsewhere. His translations include novels by, among others, Naja Marie Aidt, Karin Fossum, Simon Fruelund, and Jussi Adler Olsen. He is a former Literary Translation Fellow from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Book of Losman is his debut novel. Find him online at kesemmel.com.
Debra Kempf Shumaker started reading at the age of four and hasn’t stopped since. She grew up on a small dairy farm in Wisconsin but now lives in the suburbs of Northern Virginia with her husband, three sons, and two cats. When she isn’t reading or writing, she enjoys hiking, gardening, and watching Jeopardy. She is the author of Freaky, Funky Fish, Tell Someone, Peculiar Primates, and Wind is a Dance. Visit her online at her www.debrashumaker.com.
Alfred Bennett (A. B.) Spellman (Washington, DC) is a poet and jazz critic whose books include Between the Night and Its Music: New and Selected Poems (10/2024), The Beautiful Days (1964), Four Lives (1966), and Things I Must Have Known (2008). His work at the NEA was honored with the establishment of the A. B. Spellman Award for Jazz Advocacy. He has served on panels such as the Rockefeller Panel and as a member of the Advisory Group for the African-American Museum of the Smithsonian Institute.
Amy Stuber’s writing has appeared in the New England Review, Flash Fiction America, Ploughshares, The Idaho Review, Cincinnati Review, Triquarterly, American Short Fiction, Joyland, and elsewhere. She’s the recipient of the Missouri Review’s 2023 William Peden Prize in fiction, winner of the 2021 Northwest Review Fiction Prize, and runner-up for the 2022 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize. Her work received a special mention in Pushcart Prize XLIV, appeared on the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2021, has been nominated for Best of the Net, and appears in Best Small Fictions 2020 and 2023. She has a PhD in English, has taught college writing, and worked in online education for many years.
Karin Tanabe is the author of seven novels, including her most recent, The Sunset Crowd. A former Politico reporter, her writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, and Newsday. She is a frequent book reviewer for The Washington Post and has appeared as a celebrity and politics expert on Entertainment Tonight, CNN, and the CBS Early Show. Karin is a graduate of Vassar College and lives in Washington DC.
Born in Jakarta and raised in Singapore, Patricia (Pat) Tanumihardja writes fun, heartwarming stories that often reflect her multicultural upbringing in Southeast Asia. Pat’s Chinese Indonesian parents encouraged her appetites for both delicious foods and good books, resulting in a writing career that spans both cookbooks and children’s books. Her debut picture book Ramen for Everyone, an indie bookstore favorite and a JLG Gold Selection, was followed by Jimmy’s Shoes: The Story of Jimmy Choo, Shoemaker to a Princess, and The Sugar Plum Bakers: A Tale of 12 Holiday Treats. Pat lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
Joseph M. Thompson is assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University. He is the author of Cold War Country: How Nashville’s Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism.
D.H. Trujillo is a storyteller born of Pueblo and Mexican descent. The desert is her happy place and serves as inspiration for many of her works. She holds degrees in Anthropology and Forensic Behavioral Science. She currently resides on the East Coast with her husband, two eerie black cats, an elder chihuahua named after jeans, and the plethora of ghosts inhabiting her 1949 home. She writes Adult Romance under the name Dani Trujillo and Horror under D.H. Trujillo.
Emily Tuszynska’s first collection, Surfacing, received the Grayson Books Poetry Award. Recognitions include a Pushcart Prize special mention, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize, and PRISM International’s Earle Birney award, and her work has appeared in many publications including Mom Egg Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review. She has been awarded a Tennessee Williams Scholarship in poetry from the Sewanee Writers Conference and a Sustainable Arts Foundation Parent Residency Fellowship from Mineral School, as well as fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives in Virginia and teaches at George Mason University.
Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (enrolled Mackinac Bands of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians) is the Tilikum Professor and Chair of Indigenous Nations Studies at Portland State University. He is the author of Chicago-set award-winning mosaic novels Sacred Smokes and Sacred City as well as the editor of The Faster Redder Road: The Best UnAmerican Stories of Stephen Graham Jones. His co-edited (with Shane Hawk) Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology was published in September 2023 by Vintage / Penguin Random House. A bestseller in both the US and Canada, it received its tenth printing less than a month after release and has been nominated for the Bram Stoker, Locus, and Shirley Jackson Awards. His Southern Gothic novella Pour One for the Devil was released by Lanternfish Press in March 2024 and his third collection of linked stories, Sacred Folks, will be published Fall 2024 by the University of New Mexico Press.
Michele Waslin is the assistant director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minneapolis – Twin Cities. In her role, Waslin tracks and analyzes immigration research and policy, writes on related topics, coordinates the work of the IHRC, and builds relationships with academics and other experts. Waslin has written extensively on immigration policy, has authored multiple book chapters and publications, and has appeared in English and Spanish-language media.
Tim Wendel is the author of Rebel Falls.
Langston Collin Wilkins, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Folklore and African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Wilkins is the author of Welcome to Houston: Hip Hop Heritage in Hustle Town, which was released through the University of Illinois Press in August of 2023. His research interests include African American folklife, African American music, urban folklore, car culture and public folklore. Before moving into academia, Dr. Wilkins served as the State Folklorist for Washington State. Dr. Wilkins is a native of Houston, Texas and received his PhD from Indiana University’s Department of Folklore & Ethnomusicology in 2016.
Sharon J. Wishnow is a transplanted New Englander who makes her home in Northern Virginia. In addition to writing upmarket fiction with environmental themes, Sharon writes and regularly speaks about non-fiction research in science, technology, and business. Sharon is the former VP of Communications for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, the founder of Women’s Fiction Day, and is the Executive Editor of the magazine, WriteOn! She has an MFA from George Mason University. She also publishes a regular newsletter, Research for Writers and Other Curious People.
Aliah Wright worked her way through college simultaneously as an editorial assistant for the Philadelphia Daily News and as a stringer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. A successful journalist, she spent her career working for a variety of news outlets. Those include the Associated Press, where she was a political correspondent, and the USA Today Network as the former entertainment editor for Gannett News Service. A graduate of Temple University, she lives with her family just outside her hometown of Philadelphia. This is her first novel.