Samina Najmi, professor of English at CSU Fresno, writes essays centered on her life in Pakistan, UK, and the U.S. She has just completed a book-length memoir of her home in Karachi. Her work has appeared in World Literature Today, Massachusetts Review, Entropy, The Rumpus, The Progressive, and elsewhere.

Shadab Zeest Hashmi, author of Ghazal Cosmopolitan, Kohl & Chalk, and Baker of Tarifa, is the winner of the San Diego Book Award and the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize. Her work has been published worldwide and has been translated into Spanish, Turkish, and Urdu. She has an MFA from Warren Wilson.

Alison Mandaville has received two UNESCO cultural heritage grants for her work supporting women writers and artists in Azerbaijan. A poet, scholar, and translator, she teaches at Fresno State. Her creative and scholarly work has appeared in dozens of US and international journals and books.

Lena Mahmoud is the author of Amreekiya, an Arab American Book Award winner and a finalist for the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize. Her work has also appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Sukoon, and A Gathering Together, among others; she has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes.

Umm Juwayriyah (Maryam A. Sullivan) is an urban Muslim fiction author of five books, a teaching artist who has staged three plays throughout New England, and an Autism advocate.