Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of the novel The Book of Joan and the bestselling novel The Small Backs of Children, as well as the the anti-memoir The Chronology of Water. She founded the Corporeal Writing Workshops. 

Garth Greenwell's first novel, What Belongs to You, won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the LA Times Book Prize. He is the 2018–19 Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of National Book Award finalist story collection Her Body and Other Parties. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, Tin House, Guernica, The Believer, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere.

Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, a collection of essays. He is a recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and a NEA in Fiction, and is an associate professor of English at Dartmouth College.