Marivi Soliven has taught writing at the University of the Philippines and University of California, San Diego, and authored seventeen books. She landed a Hedgebrook writing residency in 2012. Her debut novel The Mango Bride won Grand Prize at the Palanca Awards, the Philippine counterpart of the Pulitzer Prize.

Hope Wabuke is the author of The Leaving and Movement No.1: Trains. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Award in 2017, and has been published widely in various magazines. She is also an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and a contributing editor for The Root.

Mahtem Shiferraw is a poet and visual artist from Ethiopia and Eritrea. Her work has been published in many literary journals. She won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets for her poetry collection Fuchsia. She received her MFA from Vermont College.

Huda Al-Marashi is the author of the memoir, First Comes Marriage: My Not-So American Love Story.

Natalia Sylvester is the author of the novels Chasing the Sun and Everyone Knows You Go Home. She is a faculty member of the Creative Writing MFA program at Regis University. Her work has appeared in Latina magazine, Writer's Digest, and NBCLatino.com. Twitter/IG: @NataliaSylv.