Susan Straight's new memoir is In the Country of Women. She has published eight novels, including A Million Nightingales, Between Heaven and Here, and Highwire Moon. She is critic at large for the Los Angeles Times, and Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at University of California, Riverside.

Bridgett M. Davis is the author of the memoir The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life In The Detroit Numbers, a New York Times Editors' Choice, and the novels Into the Go-Slow and Shifting Through Neutral. She is a professor at Baruch College, CUNY, where she teaches creative writing.

Helena Maria Viramontes is the author of two novels, Under the Feet of Jesus, and Their Dogs Came With Them. She is the Goldwin Smith Professor of English in creative writing at Cornell University and is currently working on her third novel about war The Cemetery Boys.

Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, American Book Award winner and NBCC Finalist, is the author of Shadow Child, Hiroshima in the Morning, and Why She Left Us. She is a U.S./Japan Creative Artist Fellow; Hedgebrook alumna; faculty at Goddard College, advisor for the Clockhouse journal, and founder of Pele's Fire.