Joanna Luloff is the author of the short story collection The Beach at Galle Road. Her stories have appeared in the Missouri Review, Confrontation, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor at SUNY Potsdam.

Mark Brazaitis is the author of six books, including The Incurables: Stories, winner of the 2012 Richard Sullivan Prize and The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala, winner of the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award. He is a professor of English at West Virginia University.

Tyler McMahon is the author of the novel How the Mistakes Were Made. His short work has appeared in Threepenny Review, Antioch Review, and the Rumpus. He studied at the University of Virginia and Boise State University. He teaches writing at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu.

Peter Chilson teaches writing and literature at Washington State University. He has written three books on West Africa. In 2012, on assignment for Foreign Policy magazine, he was one of the first Western journalists to travel the new border with the short-lived jihadist state in northern Mali. 

Susi Wyss’s book of fiction set across Africa, The Civilized World, received the Maria Thomas Fiction Award from Peace Corps Writers and was called a Book to Watch For by Oprah magazine. She earned her writing degree from Johns Hopkins and works for Jhpiego, an international health organization.