NAFKOTE TAMIRat
Nafkote Tamirat is the author of The Parking Lot Attendant and a graduate of the MFA Fiction Writing program at Columbia University. Her short stories have appeared in Birkensnake, The Anemone Sidecar, Her Royal Majesty, A Tale of Three Cities, and Best Paris Stories. She now lives in Paris.
NINA-MARIE GARDNER
Nina-Marie Gardner s a novelist and playwright, currently based in Paris. A graduate of Yale University, she earned her MA in creative writing and PhD in theatre studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the author of Sherry & Narcotics (2011) and her short stories, essays and reviews have appeared in 3AM Magazine, The Fix, The Frisky, Flavorpill and the anthologies Bedford Square and 3AM London, New York, Paris. She teaches at Sciences Po in Paris and the National Theatre in London.
Silk Jazmyn Hindus
Silk Jazmyne is a reading, writing student of life who loves narrative in all its forms. She was born in New York and grew up all over as a Navy brat. She received her B.S. in Communications at Florida International University and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Tampa. Her work has appeared both online and in print at Black Girl Nerds, Midnight & Indigo, African Writer Magazine, and in Ekphrastic Exhibition in Tandem: Back | Forth . She’s an Account Coordinator at a boutique advertising agency by day and a speculative fiction author by night who loves the artistically strange. She currently lives and works in Florida.
Paul Schmidtberger
Paul Schmidtberger was born and raised in Schooley’s Mountain, New Jersey. He is a graduate of Yale College and Stanford Law School and is a member of the California State Bar. His first novel, Design Flaws of the Human Condition, was published by Doubleday/Broadway. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe Magazine, Post Road Magazine, and Thema. He lives in Paris, and teaches in the Institute of Comparative Law at the University of Paris II Panthéon Assas
Albert Alla
Albert Alla is the author of the novel Black Chalk (Garnet, 2013) and a graduate of the MFA in Fiction at New York University. He is a writer and lives in Paris.
Ellen willson hoover
Ellen Willson Hoover is a freelance writer and former Capitol Hill aide and lobbyist. Specializing in travel, human interest, and personal storytelling, her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Aleteia, Martha's Vineyard Magazine, The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC), and her personal blog Beer and Pretzels, observing expat life in Germany. She currently lives in Charlotte, NC.
sarah fuchs
Sarah Fuchs placed 3rd in the 2019 First Pages Prize. She was the 2016 Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has received fellowships from MacDowell, Tin House, Aspen Words and Writing by Writers. A teacher and writer, she co-founded the School of Social Justice in Oakland and has taught and led curriculum development in international schools in Lomé, Accra, Kampala and Dar es Salaam. She is the collaborative writer for two well-received works of nonfiction and is working on her first novel.
Brian Lin
Brian Lin is a doctoral candidate at USC in creative writing and literature. He has attended the Tin House Summer Workshop and the VONA Summer Workshop. His stories and essays can be found in Electric Literature, The Rumpus, The Margins, Lambda Literary, Hyphen Magazine, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Brian is working on a novel and other books of prose.
CHELSEA CATHERINE
Chelsea Catherine is a native Vermonter who has lived all over the country. In 2018, they won the Mary C Mohr nonfiction award through the Southern Indiana Review and their book, Summer of the Cicadas, won the Quill Prose Award through Red Hen Press. Most recently, they spent a month in Alaska at the Alderworks Artist Retreat. They are part of a cohort of ValleyCreates artist grantees in Western Massachusetts.
Edudzi Adodo
Edudzi Adodo is the Author of Children of Stardust (Norton Young Readers, 2022). He was born and raised in Lomé , Togo and graduated from Durham University in England, where he studied politics, philosophy, and economics. He is currently based in Lomé, Togo.
CARRIE COGAN
Carrie Cogan placed 2nd in the 2020 First Pages Prize. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, AGNI, Nimrod, Louisiana Literature, and elsewhere. She is a past recipient of Nimrod’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction. She won the 2015 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Fiction Prize and the 2023 Kenyon Review Short Nonfiction Contest. She was awarded a 2022 MacDowell Fellowship to work on her first novel. Cogan lives on Salt Spring Island, BC.
Catherine Carberry
Catherine Carberry is a writer and editor living in Woodstock New York. A 2022 MacDowell Fellow and a 2023 Hedgebrook Fellow, she has also received support from the Sewanee Writers Conference and was the 2023 Winner of the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in journals including Guernica, Kenyon Review, Tin House online, North American Review, Harvard Review, and has been broadcast on National Public Radio.
sheree l. greer
Sheree L. Greer is a writer and teacher living in Tampa, Florida. In 2014, she founded Kitchen Table Literary Arts to showcase and support the work of Black women writers and is the author of two novels, Let the Lover Be and A Return to Arms, and the short story collection, Once and Future Lovers. Her essay, "Bars" published in Fourth Genre Magazine, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and notably named in Best American Essays 2019.
Emma Bamford
Emma Bamford is an author and journalist who has worked for the Independent, the Daily Express, the Sunday Mirror, Sailing Today and BOAT International. She is the author of the psychological suspense novels Deep Water and Eye of the Beholder and the travel memoirs Casting Off and Untie the Lines. A graduate of the University of East Anglia’s Prose Fiction MA, she lives in Norwich in the UK.
ruby yayra goka
Ruby Yayra Goka is a dentist by day and an author by night. Ruby writes for all ages but has a special love for young adult books featuring African characters that contemporary young African people and people of African descent can relate to. She has twenty published books to her credit and is the recipient of several literature awards for children and young adults including several Ghana Association of Writers Awards, several Burt Awards, one CABA and two IBBY Honour Books.