Lisa Mecham's work has appeared in The Drum, Barrelhouse Online, and Carve. She is an associate editor for Unboxed Books, a reader for Tin House, and she is writing her first novel as part of the "One Book Semester" program at Queens University of Charlotte.

Jeffery Hess served six years in the U.S. Navy aboard the fleet's oldest and newest ships before earning degrees in English and Creative Writing. Editor of the award-winning Home of the Brave anthologies, he leads the DD-214 Writers Workshop for military veterans.

Dawn Raffel is the author of a bestselling memoir, The Secret Life of Objects; two story collection, Further Adventures in the Restless Universe and In the Year of Long Division; and a novel, Carrying the Body. She is the editor of the Literarian at the Center for Fiction in New York.

Erin Harris is a literary agent at Folio Literary Management who represents literary fiction, YA, and narrative nonfiction.

Erika Goldman is publisher and editorial director of Bellevue Literary Press, a nonprofit mission-driven publisher of literary fiction and authoritative nonfiction at the intersection of the arts and sciences, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Tinkers by Paul Harding.