Jaquira Diaz was born in Puerto Rico and raised in Miami, Florida. She is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, winner of a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, and a Lambda Literary Awards finalist. Diaz is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Kenyon Review, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

Su Hwang is a poet, activist, stargazer, and the author of Bodega, which received the 2020 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2021 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Born in Seoul, Korea, Hwang has called NYC and San Francisco home before moving to Minnesota. Her many awards include a Jerome Hill Fellowship in Literature and an Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize. She is currently a teaching artist with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.

Brett Biebel, author of the short story collection 48 Blitz, lives in Davenport, Iowa. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Be Holding, a book-length poem about basketball great Julius Erving, and winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Bringing the Shovel Down; and Against Which. His collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released by Algonquin Books in 2019. His many awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free fruit-for-all food justice and joy project, and teaches at Indiana University.