Julian Aguon is a human rights lawyer and writer from Guam. He is the founder of Blue Ocean Law, a progressive firm that works at the intersection of indigenous rights and environmental justice. He serves on the Global Advisory Council of Progressive International—a collective that launched in 2020 to mobilize progressive forces around the world behind a shared vision of social justice.

John Manuel Arias is a gay, Costa Rican and Uruguayan writer. He is a Canto Mundo fellow & alumnus of the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop. His prose has been published in Tor.com, The Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, F(r)iction, Joyland Magazine, and Akashic Books. His poetry has appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including The Offing, PANK, Platypus Press, and Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry. He has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net several times.

Kate Beaton was born and raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. After graduating from Mount Allison University with a double degree in History and Anthropology, she moved to Alberta in search of work that would allow her to pay down her student loans. During the years she spent out West, Beaton began creating webcomics under the name Hark! A Vagrant, quickly drawing a substantial following around the world. The collections of her landmark strip Hark! A Vagrant and Step Aside, Pops each spent several months on the New York Times graphic novel bestseller list, as well as appearing on best of the year lists from Time, The Washington Post, Vulture, NPR Books, and winning the Eisner, Ignatz, Harvey, and Doug Wright Awards. She has also published the picture books King Baby and The Princess and the Pony. Beaton lives in Cape Breton with her family.

Steve Brodner is an award-winning caricature artist, political cartoonist, educator, and author; publications such as The New York Times, Esquire, and The New Yorker feature his work. The 2011 Gold medal in the editorial category from the Society of Illustrators counts among his many accolades. He currently lives in New York City where he teaches at the School of Visual Arts and the Fashion Institute of Technology. His new book, Living & Dying in America: A Daily Chronicle 2020-2021, comes out in September from Fantagraphics.  Connect with him on Instagram (@sbrodner), on Twitter (@stevebrodner), and on his website: https://www.stevebrodner.com.

Margaret A. Burnham is the founding director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University, and has been a staffer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, civil rights lawyer, defense attorney, and judge. She was nominated by President Biden to serve on the Civil Rights Cold Case Review Board. Her new book, By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners, will be published by W. W. Norton & Company in September 2022.

Ada Calhoun is the author of St. Marks Is Dead, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, and Why We Can’t Sleep. She has written for the New York Times, the New Republic, and the Washington Post. 

C. J. Carey is a novelist, journalist and broadcaster. She has worked at the Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph and the BBC, among others. She also writes novels under the name Jane Thynne and lives in London. Widowland is the first novel she has written as C. J. Carey.

Born and raised in Santa Monica, California, Julie Clark grew up reading books on the beach while everyone else surfed. After attending college at University of the Pacific, she returned home to Santa Monica to teach. She now lives there with her two young sons and a golden doodle with poor impulse control. The Last Flight, was an instant New York Times bestseller.

Alice Elliott Dark is the author of Think of England and two collections of short stories, In the Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Times, Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry: Prize Stories, among others. Her award-winning story “In the Gloaming” was made into two films. Dark is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is an Associate Professor at Rutgers-Newark in the MFA program.

Sopan Deb is a writer for The New York Times, where his topics have included sports and culture. He is also the author of the memoir Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me. Before joining the Times, Deb was one of a handful of reporters who covered Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign from start to finish as a campaign embed for CBS News. He was named a “breakout media star” of the election by Politico.

Sarah M. Eden is the author of critically acclaimed Proper Romance series including The Lady and the Highwayman and Ashes on the Moor. Combining her passion for history and an affinity for love stories, Sarah crafts smart, witty characters and heartfelt romances. She happily spends hours perusing the reference shelves of her local library and dreams of one day traveling to all the places she reads about.

Phyllis Biffle Elmore is an author, genealogist, and grandmother. A talented quilter and storyteller, she has been interviewed and appeared in media outlets including PBS, Midwest Book Review, and British Patchwork and Quilting. She grew up between Detroit and rural Alabama and currently lives in Florida with her husband.

Salma El‑Wardany is a writer, poet, and BBC broadcaster. As a half‑Egyptian, half‑Irish woman her work focuses on telling the stories of women, especially women of color, that have for so long been ignored. She has contributed to the anthology It’s Not About the Burqa, and her writing has also appeared in Huffington Post, theMetro and she has given two TedxTalks.

Jonathan Escoffery is the recipient of the 2020 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction. His fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, Prairie Schooner, AGNI, Passages North, Zyzzyva, and Electric Literature, and has been anthologized in The Best American Magazine Writing. He received his MFA from the University of Minnesota, is a PhD fellow in the University of Southern California’s PhD in Creative Writing and Literature Program, and in 2021 was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University. If I Survive You is his debut book.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine is the author of Sabrina & Corina, a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Robert W.Bingham Prize, The Story Prize, and winner of an American Book Award. She is the 2021 recipient of the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has been honored with the Denver Mayor’s Global Impact Award for Excellence in Arts & Culture and the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Book Award for Fiction. She has written for The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, The American Scholar, Boston Review, and elsewhere, and has received fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and Tin House. Fajardo-Anstine holds an MFA from the University of Wyoming and has lived across the country, from Durango, Colorado, to Key West, Florida. She is the 2022–2023 Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University. She is from Denver, Colorado.

Bruce Ferber is the author of two previous novels, Elevating Overman and the Foreword Gold Prizewinner Cascade Falls. He also edited the nonfiction anthology The Way We Work: On the Job in Hollywood. Prior to writing books, Ferber built a long and successful career as a writer-producer for television comedy. A multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominee, his credits include Bosom Buddies, Coach, Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, and Home Improvement, where he served as Executive Producer and showrunner. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, large dog, many musical instruments and, of course, every Beatles album.

Jamie Ford is the great-grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Hoiping, China to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the western name Ford, thus confusing countless generations. His debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list and went on to win the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His work has been translated into thirty-five languages. Having grown up in Seattle, he now lives in Montana with his wife and a one-eyed pug.

Evan D.G. Fraser is the Director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph. He is the author of Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World and Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. He lives in Guelph, ON, with his wife and three children.

Ross Gay is the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights: Essays and four books of poetry. His Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award; and Be Holding won the 2021 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. He is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. Gay has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Indiana University.

Megan Giddings is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. Her first novel, Lakewood, was one of New York Magazine's top ten books of 2020, an NPR Best Book of 2020, a Michigan Notable book for 2021, a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards, and was a finalist for an L.A. Times Book Prize in the Ray Bradbury Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative category. Megan's writing has received funding and support from the Barbara Deming Foundation and Hedgebrook. She lives in the Midwest.

Jennifer Givhan, a National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices fellow, is a Chicana and indigenous novelist, poet, and transformational coach. She is the author of Jubilee, which received an honorable mention for the 2021 Rudolfo Anaya Best Latino-Focused Fiction Book Award, and Trinity Sight, winner of the 2020 Southwest Book Award. She has also published four full-length poetry collections and her honors include the Frost Place Latinx Scholarship and the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. She raises her children in New Mexico.

Kerri K. Greenidge is a historian at Tufts University and the author of Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter, winner of the 2020 Mark Lynton History Prize, among other honors. Her new book, The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family, will be published by Liveright (a division of W. W. Norton & Company) in October 2022.

Mohsin Hamid is the author of five novels, including the Booker Prize finalists and New York Times bestsellers Exit West and The Reluctant Fundamentalist. His essays, some collected as Discontent and Its Civilizations, have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.

Oscar Hokeah is a citizen of Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma from his mother's side and has Mexican heritage through his father. He holds an MA in English with a concentration in Native American Literature from the University of Oklahoma, as well as a BFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), with a minor in Indigenous Liberal Studies. He is a recipient of the Truman Capote Scholarship Award through IAIA and is also a winner of the Native Writer Award through the Taos Summer Writers Conference. His short stories have been published in South Dakota Review, American Short Fiction, Yellow Medicine Review, Surreal South, and Red Ink Magazine. He works with Indian Child Welfare in Tahlequah.

Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, one book of creative nonfiction, and three plays. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Advocate, Time, Garden & Gun, and other publications. A former commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered, House is the winner of the Nautilus Award, the Storylines Prize from the NAV/New York Public Library, an E. B. White Honor, and many other awards.

Angela Jackson-Brown is an award-winning writer, poet and playwright who teaches Creative Writing and English at Ball State University in Muncie, IN. She is a graduate of the Spalding low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing. She is the author of the novels When Stars Rain Down, Drinking From A Bitter Cup and House Repairs. Her latest novel, The Light Always Breaks, is set to release July 5, 2022. 

Peniel E. Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values, Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, and Associate Dean for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of award-winning books on African American history, including The Sword and the Shield and Stokely: A Life. He lives in Austin, Texas.  

Zain Khalid has been published in the New Yorker, the Believer, the Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and elsewhere. He has also written for television. Brother Alive is his first novel. He lives in New York City. 

Ella King is a Singaporean novelist living in Greenwich, UK. A graduate of Faber Academy's novel-writing program, she is an award-winning writer who has worked as a corporate lawyer and for anti-human trafficking and anti-domestic violence charities.

Steve Lopez is a California native who has been an L.A. Times columnist since 2001 and a four-time Pulitzer finalist for his thought-provoking commentaries on housing and homelessness, elder care, and income inequality. He is the author of three novels including the New York Times bestseller The Soloist, which inspired the 2009 movie of the same name starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. His upcoming book, Independence Day: What I Learned About Retirement from Some Who’ve Done It and Some Who Never Will, releasing September 13, 2022 from Harper Horizon, dives into the questions of how we use our time, where we find purpose, and explores the personal relationship people develop with work.

Beth Macy is a Virginia-based journalist, the author of Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America, and an executive producer and cowriter on Hulu’s “Dopesick” series.

Anthony Marra is the New York Times bestselling author of The Tsar of Love and Techno and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, longlisted for the National Book Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, as well as the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in fiction.

Ian McEwan is the best-selling author of eighteen books, including the novels Machines Like Me; Nutshell; The Children Act; Sweet Tooth; Solar, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize; On Chesil Beach; Saturday; Atonement, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the WH Smith Literary Award; The Comfort of Strangers and Black Dogs, both short-listed for the Booker Prize; Amsterdam, winner of the Booker Prize; and The Child in Time, winner of the Whitbread Award; as well as the story collections First Love, Last Rites, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and In Between the Sheets.

Bill McKibben is the author of more than a dozen books, including the best sellers Falter, Deep Economy, and The End of Nature, which was the first book to warn the general public about the climate crisis.

He is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and the winner of the Gandhi Prize, the Thomas Merton Prize, and the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called “the alternate Nobel.” He lives in Vermont with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern. He founded the global grassroots climate campaign 350.org; his new project, organizing people over sixty for progressive change, is called Third Act.

Elizabeth McCracken is the author of eight books, including The Souvenir Museum (long-listed for the National Book Award), Bowlaway, Thunderstruck & Other Stories (winner of the 2014 Story Prize and long-listed for the National Book Award), and The Giant’s House (a National Book Award finalist).

Teresa Messineo is motivated by social justice, and giving voice to the silenced. Her first novel, The Fire by Night, showcased the heroic and often overlooked work of frontline military nurses of the Second World War. Writing that novel involved seven years of research.Teresa is also the mother of four children, whom she home schooled for twenty years. Her varied interests include medicine, swing dancing, lecturing, studying foreign languages, distance swimming, hunger relief, travel, and hiking.

Lecia Michelle is a writer, librarian, educator, activist, and founder of “Real Talk: WOC and Allies for Racial Justice and Anti-Oppression.” She has been a librarian for over 15 years, working in both universities and public libraries, and has a B.A. in Journalism from Eastern Illinois University and a Master’s of Library and Information Sciences degree from San Jose State University. She lives in New Orleans and can be found on twitter @LeciaMichelle11.

Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Eileen, her first novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Death in Her Hands, her second and third novels, were New York Times bestsellers. She is also the author of the short story collection Homesick for Another World and a novella, McGlue. She lives in Southern California.

Todd Myers is the director of the Center for the Environment at Washington Policy Center. He is one of the nation's leading experts on free-market environmental policy. Todd is the author of the landmark 2011 book Eco-Fads: How the Rise of Trendy Environmentalism Is Harming the Environment and was a Wall Street Journal expert panelist for energy and the environment. He has authored numerous studies on environmental issues, including Five Years of Environmental Policy: Are We Making a Difference; Promoting Personal Choice, Incentives and Investment to Cut Greenhouse Gases, and more. He formerly served on the executive team at the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, and was director of public relations for the Seattle SuperSonics and director of public affairs for the Seattle

Heather B. Moore is a USA Today best-selling and award-winning author of more than seventy publications, including The Paper Daughters of Chinatown. She has lived on both the East and West Coasts of the United States, as well as Hawaii, and attended school abroad at the Cairo American Collage in Egypt and the Anglican School of Jerusalem in Israel. She loves to learn about history and is passionate about historical research.

Julie Murphy is a librarian turned #1 New York Times bestselling author of novels for all ages including Dumplin’ (now a Netflix original film), Dear Sweet Pea, and If the Shoe Fits. Julie lives in North Texas with her spouse, who loves her; her dog, who adores her; and her cats, who tolerate her.
Sierra Simone is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling former librarian. Her notable works include Priest, American Queen, and Misadventures of a Curvy Girl, and her books have been featured in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Entertainment Weekly, and Buzzfeed. She lives with her spouse and family in Kansas City.

Rasheed Newson is a writer and producer of Bel-Air, The Chi, and Narcos. He currently resides in Pasadena, California with his husband and two children. My Government Means to Kill Me is his debut novel.

Edafe Okporo was born in Warri, Nigeria. He migrated to the United States in 2016 as an asylum seeker and is now a refugee of the United States. Edafe is a global gay rights activist, the founder of Refuge America Inc, and one of the country’s most visible voices on the issue of displacement, leading an organization with a vision to “strengthen as a place of welcome for LGBTQ displaced people.” A graduate of Enugu State University and the school of Business at NYU, he currently lives in New York City. Edafe is among the inaugural winners of the David Prize, which honors individuals with bold visions for creating a better and brighter New York City. He is also a Logo 30 Honoree. 

Toluse Olorunnipa is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for the Washington Post. He joined the Post in 2019 and previously covered the White House. Before that, he spent five years at Bloomberg News, where he reported on politics and policy from Washington and Florida. Olorunnipa is also an on-air contributor to CNN.

Praised by New York Times bestselling author Dee Henderson as "a name to look for in romantic suspense," Dani Pettrey has sold more than 800,000 copies of her novels to readers eagerly awaiting the next release. Expertly combining suspense with romance, Dani considers herself blessed to be able to write the kind of stories she loves—full of plot twists, peril, love, and a longing for hope and redemption. She researches murder and mayhem from her home in Maryland, where she lives with her husband. For more information about her novels, visit www.DaniPettrey.com.

Robert Pinsky is the author of numerous books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Figured Wheel, and prose, including Democracy, Culture and the Life of Poetry. Throughout his career, Pinsky has been dedicated to identifying and invigorating poetry’s place in the world.  His new memoir, Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet, will be published by W. W. Norton & Company in October 2022.  US. poet laureate from 1997 to 2000, he now teaches at Boston University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Thomas E. Ricks is the author of multiple bestselling books, including First Principles, The Generals, and Fiasco, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A member of two Pulitzer Prize–winning teams in his years at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, he has been called “the dean of military correspondents.” He lives in Maine and Texas.

Erica Ridley is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of witty, feel-good historical romance novels, including the upcoming Nobody’s Princess, featuring the Wild Wynchesters. When not reading or writing romances, Erica can be found riding camels in Africa, zip-lining through rainforests in Costa Rica, or getting hopelessly lost in the middle of Budapest.

Amy Rivers writes novels, short stories, and personal essays. She is the Director of Northern Colorado Writers and was chosen as 2021 Indie Author of the Year by the Indie Author Project. Her novel All The Broken People was recently selected as the Colorado Author Project winner in the adult fiction category. She's been published in We Got This: Solo Mom Stories of Grit, Heart, and Humor, Flash! A Celebration of Short Fiction, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for Nurses, and Splice Today, as well as Novelty Bride Magazine and ESME.com.

Monique Roffey is a senior lecturer in creative writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is the author of seven books, four of which are set in Trinidad and the Caribbean region. The Mermaid of Black Conch won the 2020 Costa Book of the Year Award and was short-listed for several other major prizes. Roffey's work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, Wasafiri, and The Independent. She was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and educated in the United Kingdom. Her website is moniqueroffey.com.

Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of the Divergent series (Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant, and Four: A Divergent Collection) and the Carve the Mark duology (Carve the Mark, The Fates Divide). Divergent received the 2011 Goodreads Choice Award for Favorite Book, Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of 2011, and was the winner of the YALSA 2012 Teens’ Top Ten. The trilogy has been adapted into a blockbuster movie series starring Shailene Woodley and Theo James. Carve the Mark published in January 2017, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and remained on the list for eighteen weeks. The Fates Divide, the second installment of the Carve the Mark series, also debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. She is a board member of YALLFest, the biggest YA book festival in the country, and YALLWEST, its sister festival. She currently lives in Chicago with her husband and their dog, Avi, whose adorable existence is well-documented on Instagram.

Rudy Ruiz is an award-winning author. His novel, The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez, received two Gold Medals at the 2021 International Latino Book Awards. It was also a finalist for the Western Writers of America Silver Spur Award for Best Contemporary Novel. His short-story collection Seven for the Revolution captured four International Latino Book Awards, including the Mariposa Prize for Best First Book. In 2017, he garnered the Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction. A bilingual native of the US-Mexico border, he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Harvard and now resides in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife and children. Visit his website at RudyRuiz.com.

Jess Ruliffson is an award-winning cartoonist who teaches comics, gouache, and drawing at The Sequential Artists Workshop in Gainesville, FL and at The School of Visual Arts in NYC. Her work has been featured by Buzzfeed, The Boston Globe, The Nib, and Pantheon books. In 2017, she was shortlisted for the Cartoonist Studio Prize. Her new book, Invisible Wounds: Graphic Journalism, comes out in August from Fantagraphics. Connect with her on her website: jessruliffson.com.

Jamal Saeed spent 12 years as a prisoner of conscience in Syria before being invited to Canada in 2016. He continues to raise awareness about Syria’s ongoing civil war and humanitarian crisis through his work as an activist, editor, visual artist, and author. He lives in Kingston, ON.

Robert Samuels is a national political enterprise reporter for the Washington Post who focuses on the intersection of politics, policy, and people. He previously told stories about life in the District for the Post’s social issues team. Samuels joined the Post in 2011 after spending nearly five years working at the Miami Herald. 

Bobbie Scopa is a retired firefighter, author, podcast host, and public speaker. She has forty-five years of firefighting experience and has received numerous professional awards and industry recognition. She was a featured speaker at the U.S. Forest Service's "Pride Outside" diversity, equity, and inclusion event in June 2021. She is also the host of the podcast BobbieOnFire.com.

Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. She received a 2020 Windham-Campbell Prize, the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing, and a 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her debut novel, The Old Drift, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, and the Los Angeles Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; it was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review and one of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of the Year. Her nonfiction book, Stranger Faces, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. She is a professor of English at Harvard.

Zarqa Nawaz is a writer and filmmaker who created Little Mosque on the Prairie. Premiering on the CBC in 2007, it ran for six seasons, was watched in over sixty countries, and landed Nawaz in the public eye. When not writing, producing or directing for the show, she has spent much of the past six years writing comedy pilots for ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX, and touring the world as a sought-after public speaker. Her memoir, Laughing All the Way to the Mosque, was published in 2014. A contributor to CBC's DNTO, Zarqa Nawaz lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, with her loving but long-suffering family.

Toni Shiloh is a wife, mom, an avid fan of the Dallas Cowboys, and a multi-published Christian contemporary romance author. She writes to bring God glory and to learn more about his goodness. Her novel Grace Restored was a 2019 Holt Medallion finalist, and Risking Love is a 2020 Selah Award finalist. You can learn more about her writing at ToniShiloh.com.

Eve Stano is the Collections Development and Electronic Resources Librarian at Ball State University, Muncie, IN. Before heading back to school to become a librarian, she drudged away in the world of finance for several years, but eventually her love of books and reading rather than numbers or money got the better of her. She has strong interests in collection development, especially electronic resources, as well as readers’ advisory and has reviewed romances for LJ since November 2014.

A. S. Thornton has evolved from book blogger to author with a particular fondness for writing forbidden love in ancient deserts. She lives in Northern California, where she works as a veterinarian. Learn more about her on IG @as_thornton and visit her website asthornton.com.

Steven W. Thrasher, PhD holds the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg chair at Northwestern University's Medill School, the first journalism professorship in the world created to focus on LGBTQ research. He is also a faculty member of Northwestern’s Institute of Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing. A columnist for Scientific American, his writing has been widely published by The New York Times, Nation, The Atlantic, Journal of American History, BuzzFeed News, Esquire and New York Magazine. 

Vauhini Vara has worked as a Wall Street Journal technology reporter and as the business editor for The New Yorker. Her fiction has been honored by the O. Henry Prize and the Rona Jaffe Foundation. Her first novel, The Immortal King Rao, will be published by W. W. Norton & Company in May 2022. From a Dalit background, she lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Kevin Wilson is the New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here, The Family Fang, and Perfect Little World, as well as the story collections Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, and Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife and two sons.

Ellen Marie Wiseman is the New York Times bestselling author of the highly acclaimed historical fiction novels The Orphan Collector, What She Left Behind, The Plum Tree, Coal River, The Life She Was Given, and The Lost Girls of Willowbrook. Born and raised in Three Mile Bay, a tiny hamlet in northern New York, she’s a first-generation German American who discovered her love of reading and writing while attending first grade in one of the last one-room schoolhouses in New York State. Her novels have been published worldwide, translated into twenty languages, and named to “Best Of” lists by Reading Group Choices, Good Housekeeping, Goodreads, The Historical Novel Society, Great Group Reads, and more. A mother of two, Ellen lives on the shores of Lake Ontario with her husband and dog. Visit her online at EllenMarieWiseman.com

Ed Yong is a Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer on the staff of The Atlantic, where he also won the George Polk Award for science reporting, among other honors. His first book, I Contain Multitudes, was a New York Times bestseller and won numerous awards. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic, Wired, The New York Times, Scientific American, and more. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Liz Neeley, and their corgi, Typo.

Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador in 1990. His father fled the country when he was one, and his mother when he was about to turn five. Both parents' migrations were caused by the U.S.-funded Salvadoran Civil War. When he was nine Javier migrated through Guatemala, Mexico, and the Sonoran Desert. His debut poetry collection, Unaccompanied, explores the impact of the war and immigration on his family. Zamora has been a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard and holds fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.

Lillian Dabney received her MLIS from the University of Washington. She works as the Adult Services Librarian (indeed the only librarian) and is in charge of Library Operations at the Seattle Athenaeum, one of three membership libraries on the West Coast. She is currently serving on the ALA Notable Awards Committee for 2021- 2022.

Matt Enis is senior editor, technology, for Library Journal magazine, where he has covered news and trends in ebooks, electronic resources, integrated library systems, and more for the past eight years. He has an MLIS from Queens College, CUNY, and an MA from the University of Georgia.

Liz French, Senior Editor, LJ Book Reviews

Luke Gorham is a reference librarian and network administrator during the day, and a film, book, and music writer during other parts of the day, serving as Editor-in-Chief of In Review Online. He also has two adorable dogs named Cricket and Artie, and a cat who's the size of a dog.

Barbara Hoffert, Prepub Alert Editor, LJ

Leah Huey is an Adult Services  and Teen Librarian at the DeKalb Public Library in DeKalb, Illinois.  She holds an M.L.I.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and reviews non-fiction that focuses on African American topics and issues. 

Julie Kane received her MSLIS from Simmons College and an MA in English from Lynchburg College. She works as an Associate Professor and Head of Collection Services at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. She currently serves on the ALA Stonewall Awards – Barbara Gittings Literature Award Committee, reviews for Library Journal, and is a columnist for College and Undergraduate Libraries. You can find her and her goofball rescue Plott hound, Hobbes, on Twitter @juliekane99 and on Instagram @kanedomain.

Barrie Olmstead is the Outlying Branch Dept Head for the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District. Born and raised in Fayetteville, Arkansas, she has B.A. in History from Hendrix College and an MLIS from the University of British Columbia. She worked for the Sacramento Public Library for 12 years, 8 of which were spent doing full-time book selection for the adult collections. After serving as an adult services librarian in Lewiston, ID, for 4 years, she is now based in Laughlin, NV. She loves reading, writing about books, knitting, and hiking and boating.

Marianne Paterniti, Book Group Coordinator, Darien Library, CT

Lynnanne Pearson is the Patron Engagement Manager at the Skokie Public Library. She has presented at several library conferences on readers advisory, genres,  book discussions and eBooks, among other topics. She has also served on state wide committees as well as the Library Journal Best of Popular fiction subcommittee. She currently writes book reviews for both Library Journal and Booklist and was named one of 2020 Library Journal Reviewers of the Year.

Lisa Peet is the News Editor at Library Journal, and Senior Editor at the literary website Bloom (https://bloomsite.wordpress.com/).

Eve Stano is the Collections Development and Electronic Resources Librarian at Ball State University, Muncie, IN. Before heading back to school to become a librarian, she drudged away in the world of finance for several years, but eventually her love of books and reading rather than numbers or money got the better of her. She has strong interests in collection development, especially electronic resources, as well as readers’ advisory and has reviewed romances for LJ since November 2014.

Patricia Sheary,Head of Adult Programming, Darien Library, Darien, Ct