Mieke Eerkens graduated from University of Iowa’s Nonfiction MFA program. She teaches for UCLA Extension's Writers' Program and has published in The Atlantic and Creative Nonfiction, among others. Her book, All Ships Follow Me: A Family Memoir of War Across Three Continents, is forthcoming.

Marie Myung-Ok Lee is the author of the novel Somebody's Daughter and one forthcoming. Fiction has appeared the Kenyon Review, FiveChapters, TriQuarterly, Witness, Joyland, Guernica. Nonfiction has appeared in The Atlantic, The Paris Review, New York Times. She teaches creative writing at Columbia.

Huan Hsu the author of The Porcelain Thief: Searching the Middle Kingdom for Buried China. He teaches journalism and creative writing at Amsterdam University College in the Netherlands.

Mexican writer Reyna Grande is the author of the novels Across a Hundred Mountains and Dancing with Butterflies, which received several awards including an American Book Award. Her memoir, The Distance Between Us, is about her life before and after illegally immigrating from Mexico to the US at nine.