Kathleen Alcalá is the author of six award-winning books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently The Deepest Roots. Honored by the Western States Book Award, PNBA Fiction Award, Governors Writers Award, ArtistTrust, Island Treasure, International Latino Book Award, and Con Tinta, she is the cofounder of Raven Chronicles.

Alicia Gaspar de Alba is a professor of Chicana/o Studies, English, and Gender Studies and Chair of the LGBTQ Studies Program at UCLA. She has published twelve books, five academic and seven creative writing: novels, short fiction, and poetry. Her latest book is Curse of the Gypsy: 10 Stories & a Novella.

Maiah Alicia Merino, emerging Chicana poet, mixed-genre writer, is currently a writer in residence with Seattle Arts & Lectures, teaching poetry to youth. Recently, she had two poems published in Yellow Medicine Review and an essay in Raven Chronicle.

ire’ne lara silva is the author of three poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, Cuicacalli/House of Song, and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán. She and poet Dan Vera are also the coeditors of Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzalduan Borderlands.