Anne Raeff is the author of the novels Clara Mondschein’s Melancholia, Winter Kept Us Warm, and Only the River and the short story collection The Jungle Around Us, which won the 2015 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her stories have been published in journals such as The New England Review, Zyzzyva, and Oa.
Zara Raheem received her MFA from California State University, Long Beach. She is the recipient of the James I. Murashige Jr. Memorial award in fiction and was selected as one of 2019's Harriet Williams Emerging Writers. Her debut novel The Marriage Clock was named a "must-read book of the summer” by Cosmopolitan, POPSUGAR, Bustle, BookRiot, among others; and it has already been translated into Italian and Portuguese. Her second novel The Retreat will be forthcoming in 2023, and she is currently working on a short story collection that centers around the South Asian diaspora, the Muslim-American experience, and the struggles and hardships faced by first and second-generation immigrants. She resides in Southern California where she teaches English and creative writing.
Ladette Randolph is the author of two novels: A Sandhills Ballad, selected as a New York Times Editors Choice; and Haven’s Wake, praised by Booklist: “Randolph thoughtfully contemplates truth in a world of evasiveness.” Her debut short story collection, This Is Not the Tropics, was hailed by the reviewer for Publishers Weekly as “utterly remarkable…Quite honestly, this is the finest collection I’ve seen in years.” Randolph’s most recent book is the memoir Leaving the Pink House. A recipient of a Pushcart Prize and the Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, she is the editor of Ploughshares magazine and teaches at Emerson College.
Quarterlife
Devika Rege was born and raised in Pune. Her first novel will be published in 2023 by Fourth Estate, HarperCollins India.
Under the Big Top: A Short Story Collection
Adam Resnick is the author of Will Not Attend, a pseudo-memoir, and is a television and movie writer who has written for The Larry Sanders Show, Late Night with David Letterman and has authored numerous movies, including the classic Death to Smoochy, directed by Danny DeVito.
A keen outdoorsman, David Ricciardi is an avid sailor and has received extensive training from law enforcement and US special operations. These experiences inform his thriller writing, which began with the first book in his Jake Keller series, Warning Light, published by Berkley in 2018.
Anthony Riches is the bestselling author of the Roman epic Empire series and has recently launched a new action/adventure thriller series. He has a degree in Military Studies and a life-long curiosity in all things defence, security and policing related. He lives in rural Suffolk with his life partner and an irritable cat.
The One That Got Away
Charlotte Rixon studied Classics at Leeds University and went on to gain an MA in Screenwriting. She has worked as a journalist, and more recently as a content marketing specialist working on luxury brands.
Chevy in the Hole
Born and raised in Flint, Michigan, Kelsey Ronan's work has been published in Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, Utne Reader, and elsewhere. Her writing has been nominated for Best American Essays 2017, among other prizes and special publications. In 2017, she was chosen as the spring writer-in-residence of the Hub City Writers Project. She lives in Detroit and works for InsideOut Literary Arts.
Leonard Rosen is the author of the award-winning novel All Cry Chaos (Permanent Press), which was translated into 10 languages, and its prequel The Tenth Witness (Permanent Press). A beloved college math professor based in Massachusetts, Leonard has contributed radio commentaries to Boston’s NPR station, written best-selling textbooks on writing, and taught writing at Harvard University.
Swan Light
Phoebe Rowe was born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, and studied history and journalism at NYU. She works as a brand copywriter and resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Playing the Palace
Farrell Covington or the Limits of Style
A novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, Rudnick has written three books and frequently writes for The New Yorker. His articles and essays have also appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and Spy. His screenplays include InandOut and Addams Family Values, and his plays include I Hate Hamlet. Using the pseudonym Libby Gelman-Waxner, Rudnick wrote film criticism for Premiere magazine.
Craig Russell is a multiply published Scottish author whose work has been translated into 22 languages. He is the author of the Lennox detective novel series, set in Glasgow in the 1950’s, as well as the Jan Fabel mystery series, set in Hamburg, Germany, made into a popular series for German television. Aevitas represents the North American rights to his newer novels on behalf of his primary agents, David Higham & Associates.
Anjali Sachdeva’s fiction has appeared in Gulf Coast, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and Tor.com, among other outlets. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has taught writing at the University of Iowa, Augustana College, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Pittsburgh. ALL THE NAMES THEY USED FOR GOD is her first book and winner of the 2019 Chautauqua Prize and 2022 Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire.
untitled FIYAH ten-year anniversary anthology
DaVaun Sanders is the author of the middle grade book Keynan Masters and the Peerless Magic Crew. He serves as Executive Editor for FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, winner of the WorldFantasy, British Fantasy and Hugo Awards.
The Lost Van Gogh
Jonathan Santlofer is an artist and award winning writer, most recently of the critically acclaimed thriller The Last Mona Lisa, and the memoir The Widower’s Notebook. His debut novel, The Death Artist, an international bestseller, is currently in development for screen adaptation. Anatomy of Fear, won the Nero Award for best novel. He is the creator and editor of several anthologies including It Occurs to Me That I Am America, a collection of original stories and art. His paintings and drawings are included in many public and private collections. He lives in New York City.
Yaffa S. Santos was born and raised in New Jersey. She is the author of A Taste of Sage, which was named an Indie Next List Pick and Amazon Editor’s Pick, Winner of the International Latino Book Award for Best Novel–Romance, and the forthcoming A Touch of Moonlight. Yaffa is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied writing and visual art. She enjoys books, coffee, and the beach, and lives in Central Florida with her family.
Marta Sanz is an award-winning novelist, poet, essayist, and scholar, and one of Spain’s leading feminist writers. In the last two decades she has written 15 novels and four collections of poetry, in addition to her edited anthologies and frequent contributions to major Spanish media publications including EL PAÍS, El Mundo, Público and Infolibre. She is a frequent guest commentator and public speaker at mainstream media outlets and literary events.
Sanz’s novels tackle social issues, challenge contemporary thinking with innovative literary styles, engage readers with insightful treatments of topical themes and entertain with biting satire. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into talian and Hungarian.
BETA VULGARIS
Margie Sarsfield is a Reno-based writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Normal School, Seneca Review, Northwest Review, CutBank, Salt Hill and elsewhere. She was the recipient of the 2019 Calvino Prize and holds a MFA from Ohio State University.
Ayşegül Savaş is the author of the novel Walking on the Ceiling. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Guernica, The Paris Review Daily, Pleiades and her next novel, White on White, is forthcoming from Riverhead.
Sleeping With Friends
Brooklyn Kills Me
Emily Schultz is the cofounder of the influential Joyland magazine. Her newest novel, Little Threats, was published by GP Putnam's Sons and was named an Apple Books Best of November 2020 pick. Her novel, The Blondes, released in the U.S. with St. Martin’s Press and Picador, and in Canada with Doubleday was named a Best Book of 2015 by NPR, BookPage, and Kirkus Reviews. Schultz's writing has appeared in Elle, Slate, Evergreen Review, Vice, Hazlitt, and Prairie Schooner. She is currently a producer at indie media company Heroic Collective and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.
Claire Schultz was born and raised in New Jersey but moved to the UK to study children's literature. She holds a BA from the University of Chicago and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge and now works in publishing. She lives in London with a haunted cat.
Edward Schwarzschild is the author of the novel Responsible Men and the story collection The Family Diamond. His stories and essays have appeared in The Guardian, Hazlitt, Tin House, The Yale Journal of Criticism, The Virginia Quarterly Review, StoryQuarterly, The Believer and elsewhere. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow, NYFA Fellow in Fiction, and Fulbright Scholar, he is now Director of Creative Writing at the University at Albany, SUNY, and a fellow at the New York State Writers Institute.
Alan Shapiro is the author of twelve books of poetry, most recently Reel to Reel. He is also the author of the memoirs The Last Happy Occasion and Vigil, and the novel Broadway Baby. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he is the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Kingsley Tufts Award, and he was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Memoirs of a Justice
Elizabeth L. Silver is the acclaimed author of The Tincture of Time: A Memoir of (Medical) Uncertainty (Penguin Press, 2017) and the novel The Execution of Noa P. Singleton (Crown, 2013). Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, New York Magazine, McSweeney’s, Lenny Letter, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, The Los Angeles Review, The Millions, The Dallas Morning News, among other publications. Her next novel, Memoirs of a Justice, is forthcoming from Riverhead Books.
The Ocean Above Me
Kevin Sites is an award-winning journalist, author and Associate Professor at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong. He has worked as a reporter for more than thirty years, half of that covering war and disaster for ABC, NBC, CNN, Yahoo and Vice News. He’s the author of three books on war: In the Hot Zone, The Things They Cannot Say and Swimming with Warlords. The Ocean Above Me is his first novel.
Beck Dorey-Stein spent five years as a White House Stenographer. Prior to transcribing President Obama and Trump, she taught high school English. Beck graduated from Wesleyan University, where she worked in undergraduate admissions and served as captain of the women's lacrosse team.
Amanda Sthers is a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter and filmmaker. She has written ten novels which have been translated in more than fourteen countries, and was given the title of "Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres" by the French government. Her latest novel, Holy Lands, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury.
Cheryl Strayed is the internationally acclaimed author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail; Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar; and Brave Enough. The New York Times Book Review hailed Wild as “a literary and human triumph." It has sold over four million copies and has been translated into more than forty languages. Wild became a major motion picture starring Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern.
Strayed’s New York Times bestseller Tiny Beautiful Things has been embraced by readers worldwide. The Hulu series based on the book premiered in 2023, and an Off-Broadway play has been staged nationwide. Her book Brave Enough collects more than one hundred of her inspiring quotations. Strayed is also the author of the debut novel Torch and co-host of two hit podcasts, Sugar Calling and Dear Sugars.
Cheryl Strayed’s stories and essays have been published in The Best American Essays, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, and elsewhere and have been widely anthologized. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Lynn Steger Strong is the author of the novels HOLD STILL, WANT, and most recently, FLIGHT. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Time, The Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar, Los Angeles Times, The Paris Review, Bomb, Guernica, Literary Hub, Catapult, Elle.com, The Cut, New York Magazine, LARB, The Millions, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Princeton and her next novel THE FLOAT TEST is forthcoming from Mariner Books
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is the author of the debut novel Big Girl, hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “achingly beautiful.” In a starred review, Publishers Weekly raved “Sullivan charms in her stunning debut novel about a Black girl’s coming-of-age... This is a treasure.” Big Girl has won the highest praise from bestselling authors, including Kiese Laymon, who hails it as “a new American classic.” For Janet Mock, it is “a tender and sumptuous offering of beauty.” And from Jacqueline Woodson, “Sullivan has given us a gift as big, beautiful and complicated as living itself.”
Sullivan’s award-winning short story collection, Blue Talk and Love, won the Lambda Literary Judith A. Markowitz Award for emerging LGBTQ writers. Among Sullivan’s many other honors and awards are the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. She holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Temple University, and a B.A. in Afro-American Studies from Smith College. Sullivan is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University.
Shubhangi Swarup is a writer and educator. Latitudes of Longing, her debut novel, was a bestseller soon after its release in India and has been published in seventeen languages worldwide. It won the Tata Literature Live! Award for debut fiction, was shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Indian Literature, and longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award 2020 and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. She was awarded the Charles Pick Fellowship for creative writing at the University of East Anglia, and has also won awards for gender sensitivity in feature writing. She lives in Mumbai.
Cristina Sánchez-Andrade (Santiago de Compostela, 1968) is one of the most important contemporary female Spanish writers. She is also a literary critic and a translator, and coordinates several writing workshops. She is the author of the novels Las lagartijas huelen a hierba (Lengua de Trapo, 1999), Bueyes y rosas dormían (Siruela, 2001), Ya no pisa la tierra tu rey (Anagrama, Premio Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, 2004), Alas (Trama Editorial, 2005), Coco (2007), Los escarpines de Kristina de Noruega (Roca Editorial, 2011, finalist to Premio Espartaco de Novela Histórica), Ellibro de Julieta (Grijalbo, 2011), Las Inviernas (The Winterlings, Anagrama, 2014), Alguien bajo los párpados (Someone Beneath Your Eyelids, Anagrama, 2017), and La nostalgia de la Mujer Anfibio (The Longing of the Amphibian Woman, Anagrama, 2022). She is also the author of the award-winning short story collection El niño que comía lana (The Boy Who Ate Wool, short stories, Anagrama, 2019). Her work has been translated into English, Portuguese, Italian, Polish and Russian.
Karin Tanabe is the author of the historical fiction novels The Diplomat's Daughter and The Gilded Years (soon to be a major motion picture), as well as The List and The Price of Inheritance, all published by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Her latest novel, A Hundred Suns, is out now from St. Martin's Press.A former Politico reporter, her work has appeared in dozens of publications including The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Miami Herald, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer and in the anthology Crush: Writers Reflect on Love, Longing and the Lasting Power of Their First Celebrity Crush.
Pilgrim's Rest
Untitled book in Maggie d'Arcy series
Untitled book in Maggie d'Arcy series
Agony Hill
Sarah Stewart Taylor is a fiction writer and journalist who lives with her family on a farm in Vermont; her published mysteries include the Maggie d’Arcy series, starting with The Mountains Wild, the Sweeney St. George mystery series (the first book in the series, O’ Artful Death, was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel), The Expeditioners series of adventure novels for middle grade readers, and Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean, a graphic novel for younger readers, which was nominated for an Eisner Award.
Souvankham Thammavongsa is a prize-winning poet and fiction writer, and author of three books of poetry, Light (2013) which received the Trillium Book Award, Found (2007), and Small Arguments (2003) which won the re-Lit Prize. Her stories have been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Harper’s, Granta, Ploughshares, NOON, and Best American Non-Required Reading. Her newest collection of poems, Cluster, was published by McClelland & Stewart in Canada in 2019 and her collection of stories, How to Pronounce Knife, is out now from McClelland & Stewart and Little, Brown.
Maybe Love Is Like That
Michelle Theall is the editor of Alaska magazine and the author of the acclaimed memoir Teaching the Cat to Sit (Gallery, 2014). Her writing and photography have been featured in National Geographic, Sierra Magazine, Backpacker, UtneReader, Outdoor Photographer, and elsewhere. She lives in Boulder, CO.
Bright Objects
Ruby Todd is the author of the debut novel, Bright Objects. Her novel is set in a small town in Australia, where the appearance of a comet that has not been visible for centuries sets off a series of dramatic events for a young widow, an American astronomer, and a Doomsday prophet. Bright Objects will be published in the United States and Australia in 2024.
Winner of the Ploughshares magazine Emerging Writer’s Contest, the AAWP Chapter One Prize, and the inaugural Furphy Literary Award, Australia’s largest prize for a short story, she is also a creative researcher, poet, and essayist. Todd holds a PhD in poetics from Deakin University, Australia, and a B.A in Creative Writing and Visual Media from the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Monique Truong is the award-winning Vietnamese American author of the bestselling novels The Book of Salt, Bitter in the Mouth, and The Sweetest Fruits. She’s also a former refugee, essayist, food writer, lyricist/librettist, and intellectual property attorney. Truong’s first novel, The Book of Salt, was a national bestseller and the recipient of many awards, including the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fellowship, and an Asian American Literary Award. The Book of Salt was a New York Times Notable Fiction Book, a Chicago Tribune Favorite Fiction Books, a Village Voice 25 Favorite Books, and a Miami Herald’s Top 10 Books, among other citations. Truong’s second novel, Bitter in the Mouth, received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rosenthal Family Foundation Award and was named in 2010 as a 25 Best Fiction Books by Barnes & Noble, a 10 Best Fiction Books by Hudson Booksellers, and the adult fiction Honor Book by the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association. Among other honors, her third novel, The Sweetest Fruits, received the 2020 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Truong received the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature in 2021.Co-authored with Thai Nguyen, her debut children’s picture book, Mai’s Áo Dài, is forthcoming in May 2023 from Atheneum.
Dana Vachon is a novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of the novel Mergers & Acquisitions (Riverhead, 2007) and the co-author, with Jim Carrey, of the New York Times bestseller Memoirs & Misinformation (Knopf, 2020). His writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair and Slate.
Donna VanLiere is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 13 books, including The Christmas Shoes, The Christmas Hope, and The Good Dream (St. Martin’s Press). Four of her books have been adapted into movies for CBS, Lifetime, and The Hallmark Channel. She has won a Retailer’s Choice Award for Fiction, a Dove Award, a Silver Angel Award, and two Audie Awards for best inspirational fiction and has been nominated for a Gold Medallion Book of the Year. She also serves on the board of directors for the National House of Hope.
P. J. Vernon was born in South Carolina and has been called “a name to watch in the thriller genre” (Booklist). Library Journal and Book Riot compare his critically-acclaimed Gothic debut When You Find Me to Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects. His most recent thriller, Bath Haus, was published in June 2021 (Doubleday). Vernon is represented by Aevitas Creative Management and Sugar 23 (TV/film). He lives in Canada with his partner and two wily dogs.
Vanessa Veselka is the author of the novel Zazen, which won the PEN/Robert Bingham prize for fiction. Her work has been published in GQ, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, Tin House, Zyzzyva and in Best American Essays. She has been, at various times, a teenage runaway, a sex-worker, a union organizer, an independent record label owner, a train-hopper, a waitress, and a mother, and her second novel The Offshore Grounds is out now from Knopf.
Zachary Tyler Vickers is the author of the award-winning story collection Congratulations on Your Martyrdom! He is the recipient of the Richard Yates Prize, judged by novelist Adam Haslett, and the Clark Fisher Ansley Prize for excellence in fiction, and he was a finalist for the Graywolf Press Fiction Prize and the Italo Calvino Prize. His work has appeared in the Iowa Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, the KGB Lit Bar Journal, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Please Don't Kill My Black Son Please
The Body Family
Hope Wabuke is a poet, academic, and essayist. The author of the poetry collections The Leaving, Movement No.1: Trains, and Her, her work has been published in various journals and magazines, including NPR, The Guardian, The Paris Review Daily, Los Angeles Magazine, Ms. Magazine online, The Daily Beast, The Hairpin, and others. She is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her forthcoming memoir Please Don't Kill My Black Son Please is forthcoming from Vintage.
Lazarus Species
Devon Walker-Figueroa is the author of Philomath, winner of the 2020 National Poetry Series by and shortlisted for the 2021 National Book Critic Circle’s John Leonard Prize. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, Poetry, the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere.
A graduate of Bennington College, she earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Devon is a 2022-2023 Amy Lowell Traveling Scholar and the recipient of the 2018 New England Review’s Emerging Writer Award; the 2021 Poetry Society of America’s Lucille Medwick Award; scholarships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Community of Writers, and Bucknell University, and she is the current Jill Davis Fellow in fiction at NYU, where she teaches undergraduate creative writing courses.
Closer to Okay
Amy Watson is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas. She studied creative writing at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. She is a married mother of two boys and three cats, as well as an avid baker and coffee drinker.
Based in London, Holly Watt is an investigative journalist for the Guardian. She has also written for the Sunday Times and the Telegraph. To the Lions is her first novel. Aevitas represents the North American rights on behalf of her primary agents, David Higham & Associates.
THE COLDEST CASE
Tessa Wegert is the author of the Shana Merchant mysteries, including Death in the Family, The Dead Season, Dead Wind, and The Kind to Kill (2022). A former freelance journalist, Tessa has contributed to such publications as Forbes, The Huffington Post, Adweek, The Economist, and The Globe and Mail. Tessa grew up in Quebec and now lives with her husband and children in Connecticut, where she studies martial arts and is currently at work on her next novel.
Aliya Whiteley writes across many different genres and lengths. Her first published full-length novels, Three Things About Me and Light Reading, were comic crime adventures. Her 2014 SF-horror novella The Beauty was shortlisted for the James Tiptree and Shirley Jackson awards. The following historical-SF novella, The Arrival of Missives, was a finalist for the Campbell Memorial Award, and her noir novel The Loosening Skin was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award.She has written over one hundred published short stories that have appeared in Interzone, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Black Static, Strange Horizons, The Dark, McSweeney’s, Internet Tendency and The Guardian, as well as in anthologies such as Unsung Stories’ 2084 and Lonely Planet’s Better than Fiction.She also writes a regular non-fiction column for Interzone.
Lethal Beauty
Triple Threat
Winning Every Time
The Truth Advantage
Lis Wiehl is a former legal analyst for Fox News. She is also the former co-host of WOR radio's “WOR Tonight with Joe Concha and Lis Wiehl,” has served as legal analyst and reporter for NBC News and NPR’s All Things Considered and as a federal prosecutor in the United States Attorney’s office, and was a tenured professor of law at the University of Washington. Today, she appears frequently on CNN as a legal analyst.Lis Wiehl is considered one of the nation’s most prominent trial lawyers and highly regarded commentators. She earned her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School and her Master of Arts in Literature from the University of Queensland.Wiehl is the author of 19 books including Hunting The Unabomber, Hunting Charles Manson, The 51% Minority, which won the 2008 award for Books for a Better Life in the motivational category, and Winning Every Time.
When Ghosts Speak
The Book of Illumination
The Ice Cradle
Mary Ann Winkowski, paranormal investigator and consultant to CBS’s Ghost Whisperer, is author of When Ghosts Speak (Grand Central) and co-author, with Maureen Foley, of The Book of Illumination and The Ice Cradle (Three Rivers/Crown), the first two titles in the Ghost Files mystery series.
Pennyblade
Untitled: Pennyblade 2
Jim Worrad spent ten years as a terrible rock and roller before settling into life in the midlands. He's always wanted to write fantasy books. He lives in Leicester with his cat and boyfriend.
Holding Pattern
Jenny Xie is a writer and editor based in Oakland, California. Originally from Shanghai, she graduated from UC Berkeley and earned her MFA at Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in AGNI, Ninth Letter, Joyland, Adroit Journal, Narrative, The Offing, and the Best of the Net Anthology, among other publications, and she is the recipient of a Bread Loaf scholarship and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Kundiman, Aspen Words, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her debut novel Holding Pattern is forthcoming from Riverhead in 2023.
Hester Young has an MFA from the University of Hawaii and is the author of The Gates of Evangeline, The Shimmering Road, and The Burning Island (Putnam).
Heather is the author of two novels. Her debut, The Lost Girls, won the Strand Award for Best First Novel and was nominated for an Edgar Award. The Distant Dead was published on June 9, 2020, and was named one of the Best Books of Summer by PeopleMagazine, Parade, and CrimeReads. A former antitrust and intellectual property litigator, she traded the legal world for the literary one and earned her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2011. She lives in Mill Valley, California.
Emma Young is an award-winning science and health journalist and author. She has a degree in psychology from the University of Durham and 20 years’ experience working on titles including the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald and New Scientist, for which she worked as a senior online reporter in London and Australasian Editor in Sydney. Now employed by the British Psychological Society as a Staff Writer, she also freelance articles and writes books.A regular contributor to Mosaic and New Scientist, her work is carried widely by other media outlets, including BBC online and The Atlantic.As E.L. Young, Emma is also the author of a series of science-based thrillers for children.Emma’s awards include Feature of the Year, awarded by UK Medical Journalist’s Association, 2017; Australian Health Journalist of the Year (2010), Writer of the Year at the Australian magazine industry Bell Awards and a European Online Journalism award for best news story.
Jung Yun’s work has appeared in Tin House (the “Emerging Voices” issue); The Best of Tin House: Stories; and The Massachusetts Review. She has an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Yun received an honorable mention for the Pushcart Prize and was awarded an Artist’s Fellowship in fiction from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her debut novel, Shelter, was published in 2016 by Picador.
Yara Zgheib is the author of the critically acclaimed novel No Land to Light On (Atria, 2022), which has been longlisted for the 2023 Dylan Thomas Prize and selected as an Indie Book Read. Lauded as a “masterful story of tragedy and redemption” written in “soul-searing prose,” the novel was chosen by The Washington Post, The L.A. Times, and Newsweek as one of the top books of 2022. From Alki Joshi, bestselling author of The Henna Artist, “Zgheib writes so lyrically about rootlessness, separation and a fierce longing for home.”
Yara’s debut novel, The Girls at 17 Swann Street (St. Martin’s Press, 2019), was a People Pick for Best New Books, which hailed it as “an absorbing page-turner,” as well as a Barnes and Noble pick for Best Books of 2019, and a BookMovement Group Read. Her new novel, Why Paris, and her essay collection An Absolute Necessity are forthcoming from Harper Via.
Zgheib is a Fulbright scholar and holds a PhD in International Affairs in Diplomacy. She publishes a weekly essay on “The non-Utilitarian,” and her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, Glimmer Train, Lithub, Holiday, The European, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been adapted for two musical albums, Dust and Ions (2020) and City Rhapsodies (2022)