Ada Calhoun, an award-winning freelance journalist and Alicia Patterson fellow, has written for the New York Times, Time, and the New Republic. She is the author of a narrative New York City history called St. Marks Is Dead.

Tara McKelvey is a writer for BBC News Magazine and a former correspondent for Newsweek and the Daily Beast. She is the author of Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War, and she was awarded a 2011 Guggenheim fellowship.

Stephen Elliott is the author of seven books including The Adderall Diaries. He has also directed two movies: About Cherry, released in 2013, and Happy Baby, based on his novel of the same name, released in 2015. He is the founding editor of the online literary magazine The Rumpus.