Maureen Medved is a writer of fiction, stage, and screen, a film reviewer and associate professor at the University of British Columbia. Her writing has been published and produced internationally. Her film adaptation of her novel won a prize at the 57th Berlinale. Black Star is her second novel.

Julie Schumacher is the author of Dear Committee Members, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and nine other books—most recently, The Shakespeare Requirement. She is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Minnesota.

Carrie Jenkins is a professor of philosophy at UBC. Her books include What Love Is And What It Could Be (nonfiction), Uninvited: Talking Back to Plato (poetry, coauthored with Carla Nappi), Victoria Sees It (fiction), and Sad Love: Romance and the Search for Meaning (nonfiction).

Teddy Wayne is the author of The Great Man Theory (2022), Apartment, Loner, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, and Kapitoil. He is the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and a regular contributor to the New York Times, The New Yorker, and McSweeney’s.

Sarah Henstra is the author of The Red Word, a novel about 1990s campus life, feminist activism, and fraternity culture. She also writes fiction for young adults: Mad Miss Mimic and We Contain Multitudes. She is an associate professor of English at Ryerson University in Toronto.