Sarvat Hasin is a novelist and dramaturg from Pakistan. She has a masters in creative writing from the University of Oxford. Her first novel, This Wide Night, was published by Penguin Random House India and longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Her second book, You Can’t Go Home Again, was published in 2018 and featured in Vogue India's and The Hindu's best of the year lists. Her third novel, The Giant Dark, was a runaway critical success, won the Mo Siewcharran Prize, and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award. Strange Girls is her US debut. She lives in London.

Jennifer Murphy holds an MFA in painting from the University of Denver and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington. She is the recipient of the 2013 Loren D. Milliman Scholarship for creative writing and was a contributor at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference from 2008 through 2012. In 2015, her acclaimed debut novel, I Love You More (Doubleday, 2014), won the prestigious Nancy Pearl Fiction Award. Her love of art led her to start Citi Arts, a public art and urban planning company that has created public art master plans for airports, transit facilities, streetscapes, and cities nationwide. She hails from a small beachfront town in Michigan and has lived in Denver, Charlotte, Seattle, and Charleston.

Travis Baldree is a full-time audiobook narrator who has lent his voice to hundreds of stories. Before that, he spent decades designing and building video games like Torchlight, Rebel Galaxy, and Fate. Apparently, he now also writes #1 New York Times bestselling books. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Tara Moss is an internationally bestselling author, human rights activist, documentary and podcast host, and model. Her crime novels have been published in nineteen countries and thirteen languages, and her memoir, The Fictional Woman, was a #1 international bestseller. One of her most recent novel is the The War Widow, which was also an international bestseller and is the first book in the Billie Walker series. Tara is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and has received the Edna Ryan Award for significant contributions to feminist debate and for speaking out on behalf of women and children. In 2017, Tara Moss was recognized as one of the Global Top 50 Diversity Figures in Public Life. In 2021, she reported, wrote, and hosted the Audible Original true crime podcast The Man in the Balaclava. Moss lives in Vancouver with her family.

Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He has written extensively on English Renaissance literature and acts as general editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and The Norton Shakespeare. He is the author of fifteen books, including The Swerve, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and Will in the World, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Dark Renaissance is his latest.

Sue William Silverman is an award-winning author known for her fearless explorations of trauma, identity, and personal transformation. Her latest book, “Selected Misdemeanors: Essays at the Mercy of the Reader,” showcases her signature blend of lyricism, insight, and unflinching honesty.

Her previous titles include “Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul,” winner of the IPPY Silver Award and a finalist for two Foreword INDIE Book of the Year Awards in the self-help and reference categories. She is also the author of “How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences,” which received the gold Foreword INDIE Book of the Year Award and the Clara Johnson Award for Women’s Literature. Earlier works include “Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction,” adapted into a Lifetime TV movie; “Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You,” winner of the AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction; and “The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew.”

Silverman co-chairs the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a frequent guest in national media. Her appearances include “The View,” “Anderson Cooper 360,” and “PBS Books.”

Bernice L. McFadden is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Tulane University and the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including Sugar, The Warmest December, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, Glorious, Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors' Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), The Book of Harlan (winner of a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction), and Praise Song for the Butterflies (long-listed for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction). She is a five-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of three awards from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

Kate Russo, author of Until Alison and Super Host, grew up in Maine but now divides her time between Maine and the UK. She has an MFA in painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, and while living in London, she worked with the theatre group, Love Bites, who presented two of her short plays (“The Blind” and “Bernie's Night Off”) at the Calder Bookshop Theatre.  She exhibits widely in the United States and England. Learn more at KateRusso.com and connect on Instagram @RussoKate.

Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World. Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Today Show, Wired, Fox News, and BBC

Megan Abbott is the Edgar-winning author of the novels Beware the Woman, The Turnout, Give Me Your Hand, You Will Know Me, The Fever, Dare Me, The End of Everything, Bury Me Deep, Queenpin, The Song Is You and Die a Little. Her most recent is El Dorado Drive.

Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and The Believer. Her stories have appeared in multiple collections, including the Best American Mystery Stories of 2014 and 2016.

NELL JOSLIN is a native of Raleigh, North Carolina and received her MFA from North Carolina State University. Besides a fiction writer, she has been a public school teacher, medical librarian, copy editor, freelance journalist, stay-at-home mom, and attorney (although not all at the same time). She currently lives in Raleigh. Find her online at measureofdevotion.com

Nancy Kricorian, who was born and raised in the Armenian community of Watertown, Massachusetts, is the author of four novels about post- genocide Armenian diaspora experience, including Zabelle, which was translated into seven languages, was adapted as a play, and has been continuously in print since 1998. Her essays and poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Guernica, Parnassus, Minnesota Review, The Mississippi Review, and other journals.

She has taught at Barnard, Columbia, Yale, and New York University, as well as for Teacher & Writers Collaborative in the New York City Public Schools and for the Palestine Writing Workshop in Birzeit. She has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Gold Medal from the Writers Union of Armenia, and the Anahid Literary Award. She lives in New York City.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn is a novelist and screenwriter. She graduated with a BA in English from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy.  Born and raised in Berkeley, California, Elizabeth lived in Los Angeles for fifteen years while working in production and writing for television.  She is married with two children and currently lives in New Mexico. In addition to traveling and exploring nature with her family, Elizabeth loves rolling fresh pasta, swimming in the Pacific Ocean, and looking for rainbows in the desert sunsets.

Acclaimed as the Oliver Sacks of fiction and the Michael Crichton of brain science, Lisa Genova is the New York Times bestselling author of More or Less Maddy, Still Alice, Left Neglected, Love Anthony, Inside the O’Briens, and Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting. Still Alice was adapted into an Oscar–winning film starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, and Kristen Stewart. Lisa graduated valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in biopsychology and holds a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard University. She is featured in the documentary films To Not Fade Away and Have You Heard About Greg. Her TED talks on Alzheimer’s disease and memory have been viewed over eleven million times. Her latest novel is More or Less Maddy.

Jessica Soffer is the author of This Is a Love Story and Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots. She grew up in New York City, attended Connecticut College, and earned her MFA at Hunter College. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Real Simple, Saveur, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She teaches creative writing to small groups and in the corporate space and lives in Sag Harbor, New York, with her husband, young daughter, and dog.

Nancy Slonim Aronie has been a commentator for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. She was a Visiting Writer at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, wrote a monthly column in McCall’s magazine and was the recipient of the Eye of The Beholder Artist in Residence award at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Nancy won teacher of the year award for all three years she taught at Harvard University for Robert Coles.

LILLY DANCYGER is the author of First Love: Essays on Friendship (2024), which Leslie Jamison called "fiercely felt and finely etched;" and the memoir Negative Space (2021), which was selected by Carmen Maria Machado as a winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards; and the editor of Burn It Down (2019), a critically acclaimed anthology of essays on women's anger.

Dancyger's writing has been published by New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and more. She writes the Substack newsletter The Word Cave.

A 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in nonfiction from The New York Foundation for the Arts, Dancyger lives in New York City and teaches creative nonfiction at Columbia University School of the Arts and Randolph College. She has taught creative writing workshops for Tin House, Corporeal Writing, Catapult, Barrelhouse, and more; and she is a nonfiction editor at Barrelhouse Books.

Sebastian Smee is an art critic for the Washington Post and the author of "Paris in Ruins: Love, War and the Birth of Impressionism" (Norton) and “The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art” (Random House), which was translated into a dozen languages. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism while at the Boston Globe in 2011, after being runner up in 2008. Living in the UK between 2000 and 2004, he worked for the Daily Telegraph, The Art Newspaper, The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, The Financial Times, Prospect, and The Spectator. In Australia, he worked as the art critic for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian. He was awarded the Rabkin Prize for art journalism in 2018 and was a MacDowell Fellow in 2021. He taught the Garis Seminar for Creative Non-fiction at Wellesley College between 2010 and 2022. 

 He has authored books on Mark Bradford and Lucian Freud and contributed essays to books on an array of other artists. He has been invited to speak at, among other places, Harvard University, Boston College, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences. He lives in Boston with his wife and two children.

David Rocklin is the author of The Luminist and Foreward LGBTQIA award-winning The Night Language. He also wrote The Write Formula: Twelve Weeks From Concept To Completion, a craft book which accompanies his editorial and book coaching services. He hosts and curates “Roar Shack,” a long-running Los Angeles reading series, and has established a writers’ retreat based in Idyllwild, CA. The Electric Love Song of Fleischl Berger is his latest novel.

Jeffery Deaver is the award-winning #1 international and New York Times bestselling author of the Lincoln Rhyme, Colter Shaw and Kathryn Dance series, among many others. Deaver’s work includes forty-seven novels, one hundred short stories, and a nonfiction law book. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into twenty-five languages. 

Isabella Maldonado is the award-winning and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Nina Guerrera, Daniela Vega and Veranda Cruz series. Her books are published in twenty-four languages. 

Their co-authored book, FATAL INTRUSION, is the launch of a new series featuring Homeland Security agent Carmen Sanchez and Professor Jake Heron.