Julia Fierro is the author of the novels The Gypsy Moth Summer and Cutting Teeth. She founded The Sackett Street Writers' Workshop in 2002, home to over 5,000 writers in NYC, LA and online, named "New York City's Best Writing Class" (TimeOut NY) and "Top Alternative to MFA" by Poets & Writers.

Vu Tran is the author of the novel Dragonfish. He has received a Whiting Award and an NEA Fellowship, and his fiction has appeared in 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.

Brandon Taylor is the associate editor of Electric Literature's Recommended Reading and a staff writer at Literary Hub. His writing has received fellowships from Lambda Literary, Kimbilio Fiction, and the Tin House Summer Writer's workshop. He is a fiction MFA student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop.

Lan Samantha Chang is the author of two novels, All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost and Inheritance, and a collection of short fiction, Hunger. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is professor of creative writing and director of the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.

Gabriel Packard is the author of the novel The Painted Ocean and is the associate director of the creative writing MFA program at Hunter College in New York City.