Susan Straight has published eight novels, including Between Heaven and Here, A Million Nightingales, and Highwire Moon. Her stories and essays have appeared in O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.

Barrie Jean Borich is the author of Body Geographic, winner of a Lambda Literary Award and an IPPY Gold Medal in Nonfiction, and My Lesbian Husband, winner of a Stonewall Book Award. She is a faculty member at DePaul University in Chicago, where she edits the nonfiction journal Slag Glass City.

Amitava Kumar is the author of several works of nonfiction and a novel. His new book, A Matter of Rats: A Short Biography of Patna, a book Teju Cole calls “recklessly courageous,” was described by The New York Times as "a cleareyed ode to an implausible place." He teaches English at Vassar College.