Bill Beverly is the author of Dodgers, a novel. He's a past editor of 32 Poems magazine. His book On the Lam is a survey of the criminal fugitive figure in narratives from 1932 to 1952. He teaches at Trinity University in Washington, DC.

Vu Tran is the author of the novel, Dragonfish. He is the winner of a Whiting Award, and his fiction has appeared in publications like the O. Henry Prize Stories and the Best American Mysteries. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago.

Steph Post is the author of the novels Lightwood and A Tree Born Crooked. She is a recipient of the Patricia Cornwell Creative Writing Scholarship and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. She holds an MA from UNC-Wilmington and teaches writing at Howard W. Blake HS.

Megan Abbott is the Edgar Award–winning author of eight novels, including The Fever and You Will Know Me. She received her PhD from NYU and recently served as the John Grisham Writer in Residence at University of Mississippi. She is also the author of The Street Was Mine, a study of noir fiction.

Stephen Jay Schwartz, a Los Angeles Times Bestselling Author, spent a number of years as the director of development for filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen. A judge for the LA Times Book Prize and the Edgars, he received his MFA in creative writing from UC Riverside and teaches at Emerson College Los Angeles.