Lisa Lucas is the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, presenter of the National Book Awards. Before joining the Foundation, she served as the publisher of Guernica magazine and the director of education at Tribeca Film Institute.

Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983 and grew up in South Africa. A novelist (Faces in the Crowd and The Story of My Teeth) and essayist (Sidewalks), her work has been translated into many languages. In 2014, Faces in the Crowd was the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award. The Story of My Teeth was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the 2015 Los Angeles Times Prize for Best Fiction.

Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night. He is a recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and an NEA Fellowship in fiction, and is an associate professor of English at Dartmouth College.