Sonya Larson's work has appeared in American Literary Review, Salamander, West Branch, Audible.com, Poets & Writers, and more, and she has received awards from Best American Short Stories 2015, Bread Loaf, and Vermont Studio Center. She is assistant director of the Muse & the Marketplace conference, hosted by GrubStreet.

Jonathan Escoffery is an instructor and the program and advocacy manager at GrubStreet. He earned his MFA in fiction from the University of Minnesota. His writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and an AWP Intro Award, and has appeared in Salt Hill Journal, the Caribbean Writer, and elsewhere.

Deborah Plummer is a psychologist, diversity thought leader, and author of three books on diversity and race relations. She has published essays in major magazines and a women of color anthology. She is a proud board member of GrubStreet, one of the nation's leading creative writing centers.

Alison Murphy is the director of programs and marketing at GrubStreet, the nation's leading independent creative writing center. Her writing can be found in Men's Journal, Psychology Today, and WBUR's Cognoscenti, among other publications. She is at work on her first novel.