Keya Mitra is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at Pacific University. Her work has appeared in Best New American Voices, the Kenyon Review, and Ontario Review in addition to other journals. She was a 2008 Fulbright Scholar in creative writing in India.

Tiphanie Yanique is the author of How to Escape from a Leper Colony. Her writing has won a BOCAS Fiction Prize, the Boston Review Prize, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship, and an Academy of American Poets Prize. She is a professor at the New School.

Shann Ray is the author of American Masculine: Stories; Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity; and Balefire: Poems. His work has been honored with an American Book Award, and he has served as an NEA Fellow. He teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University.

Cristina Henríquez is the author of three books: Come Together, Fall Apart; The World in Half; and The Book of Unknown Americans, forthcoming in June 2014. She is also the recipient of an Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award.

Matt Burgess is the author of Dogfight, A Love Story, which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and a New York Times Editors' Choice.