Paul W. Morris is director of literary awards for PEN American Center, which annually confers $150,000 in awards, grants, and prizes to writers in multiple genres. He has served as a book and magazine editor, publicist, and marketing specialist, and is an advisor for Guernica and The New Inquiry.

Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and the forthcoming The Queen of the Night. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, an NEA fellowship in fiction, and a MCCA fellowship, and he has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Amherst College, Columbia University's MFA program, and Sarah Lawrence.

Martha Cooley is the author of The Archivist, a national bestseller published in a dozen foreign markets, and Thirty-Three Swoons. Her short fiction, essays, and translations have appeared in numerous literary magazines. She judged the 2011 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. 

Mitchell S. Jackson’s debut novel The Residue Years was praised by The New York Times, the Times, and the Paris Review. It was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Flaherty-Dunnan prize and named an “Honor Book” by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

Alexi Zentner is the author of the novels Touch and The Lobster Kings. His short fiction has won the O. Henry Prize and the Narrative Prize, and has appeared in Tin House, the Atlantic, Glimmer Train, and other magazines. He is an assistant professor at Binghamton University.