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October 7, 2025

Laird Hunt

Laird Hunt is the author of eight novels, including the 2021 National Book Award Finalist Zorrie and, most recently, a collection of linked stories, Float Up, Sing Down, which was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. A professor of Literary Arts at Brown University, he is the winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction, the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine, the Bridge Book Award, and a finalist for both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Prix Femina Étranger.

Erin Entrada Kelly

Erin Entrada Kelly is the author of the Newbery Medal–winning novels Hello, Universe and The First State of Being, which was also a Finalist for the National Book Award. She received a Newbery Honor for We Dream of Space. She grew up in Louisiana, and lives in Delaware. She teaches in the MFA in writing for children and young adults program at Hamline University. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Phillippines Free Press Literary Award for Short Fiction and the Pushcart Prize. Before becoming a children's author, Erin worked as a journalist and magazine editor and received numerous awards.

Octavio Quintanilla

Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collections, If I Go Missing; The Book of Wounded Sparrows, which was Longlisted for the National Book Award; and Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, winner of the 2024 Ambroggio Prize. Octavio is the founder and director of the literature & arts festival VersoFrontera, publisher of Alabrava Press, and former Poet Laureate of San Antonio, TX. His Frontextos (visual poems) have been published and exhibited widely. He teaches literature and creative writing at Our Lady of the Lake University.

francine j. harris

francine j. harris is the author of three collections, including Here is the Sweet Hand, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a 2025 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Originally from Detroit, harris is Professor of English at the University of Houston and serves as Consulting Faculty Editor at Gulf Coast.

Past Authors

October 15, 2024

Anthony Cody

Anthony Cody is the author of The Rendering and Borderland Apocrypha. For his work, he has been awarded a Whiting Award, an American Book Award, a Southwest Book Award, as well as named a Finalist for a National Book Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among others. He was honored as a 2020 Poets & Writers debut poet. Anthony is from Fresno, California with lineage in the Bracero Program and Dust Bowl. Anthony is co-publisher of Noemi Press, a poetry editor for Omnidawn, and is currently visiting professor of poetry at Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop.

Shing Yin Khor

Shing Yin Khor is an Eisner and Ignatz Award–winning graphic novelist, IndieCade Award–winning game designer, and wooden marionette builder based in Los Angeles, CA, by way of Malacca, Malaysia. Their first full length graphic novel memoir, The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66, was one of NPR’s 2019 Best Books of the Year. Their second graphic novel, The Legend of Auntie Po was a National Book Award Finalist.

LaToya Watkins

LaToya Watkins's writing has appeared in A Public Space, The Sun, McSweeney’s, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She has received support for her work from The Camargo Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Hedgebrook. Her latest book is Holler, Child, which was Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction.

Lacy M. Johnson

Lacy M. Johnson is a Houston-based professor, curator, activist, and is author of The Reckonings, The Other Side — both National Book Critics Circle Award finalists — and Trespasses. She is editor, with the designer Cheryl Beckett, of More City Than Water: A Houston Flood Atlas. She teaches creative nonfiction at Rice University and is the Founding Director of the Houston Flood Museum.
September 19, 2023

Darcie Little Badger

Darcie Little Badger is a Lipan Apache writer with a PhD in oceanography. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Elatsoe, was featured in TIME Magazine as one of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. Elatsoe also won the Locus Award for Best First Novel and is a Nebula, Ignyte, and Lodestar finalist. Her second fantasy novel, A Snake Falls to Earth, received a Nebula Award, an Ignyte Award, and a Newbery Honor, and was Longlisted for the National Book Awards. Darcie is an Earth scientist, writer, and fan of the weird, beautiful, and haunting; she is married to a veterinarian named Taran.

Roger Reeves

Roger Reeves is the author of the poetry collections King Me and Best Barbarian, a National Book Award Finalist and winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize and Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; and the essay collection Dark Days: Fugitive Essays. A 2021-2022 Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow, Reeves is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a 2015 Whiting Award, among other honors. His work has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Marytza K. Rubio

Marytza K. Rubio's debut story collection Maria, Maria: And Other Stories, was Longlisted for the National Book Award. She lives in Santa Ana and is the Vice President of Community & Culture at Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

Tomás Q. Morín

Tomás Q. Morín is the author most recently of the poetry collection Machete and the memoir Let Me Count the Ways. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches at Rice University.
November 10, 2022

November 10, 2022 Author

Adam Johnson

Adam Johnson is the is the Phil and Penny Knight Professor of Creative Writing at Stanford University. Winner of a Whiting Award and Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Academy in Berlin, he is the author of several books, including Fortune Smiles, which won the 2015 National Book Award, and the novel The Orphan Master’s Son, which was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize. His fiction has appeared in Esquire, GQ, Playboy, Harper's Magazine, Granta, Tin House and The Best American Short Stories. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages.
March 29, 2022

March 29, 2022 Authors

Christopher Paul Curtis

Christopher Paul Curtis is the author of nine books for young people including Bud, Not Buddy, The Mighty Miss Malone, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, and most recently, The Journey of Little Charlie, a 2018 National Book Awards Finalist.

In addition to being translated into 12 languages and selling over seven million copies, his work has been performed as an off-Broadway musical, adapted into a motion picture, and more. In 2000, Curtis became the first African-American male to be awarded the prestigious Newbery medal.

He is originally from Flint, Michigan and currently lives in Windsor, Ontario with his wife and three children.

https://nobodybutcurtis.com/

Diana Khoi Nguyen

A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen's debut collection, Ghost Of (Omnidawn, 2018), was selected by Terrance Hayes for the Omnidawn Open Contest.

In addition to winning the 92Y "Discovery" / Boston Review Poetry Contest, 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and Colorado Book Award, she was also a finalist for the National Book Award and L.A. Times Book Prize.

A Kundiman fellow, she is currently a writer-in-residence at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and teaches in the Randolph College MFA.

https://dianakhoinguyen.com/

Kimberly King Parsons

Kimberly King Parsons is the author of the short story collection Black Light (Vintage), longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award, and the novel The Boiling River, forthcoming from Knopf.

A recipient of fellowships from Columbia University and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, her fiction has been published in The Paris Review, Best Small Fictions 2017, Black Warrior Review, No Tokens, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.

She lives with her partner and sons in Portland, OR, where she is completing a novel about Texas, motherhood, and LSD.

https://www.kimberlykingparsons.com/

Moderated by Daniel Peña

Daniel Peña is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer and Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Houston-Downtown. Formerly, he was based out of the UNAM in Mexico City where he worked as Fulbright-García Robles Scholar.

A graduate of Cornell University and a former Picador Guest Professorin Leipzig, Germany, his writing has appeared in Ploughshares, The Rumpus, Kenyon Review, Texas Monthly, NBC News, and the New York Times Magazine among other venues. He’s currently a regular contributor to the Guardian. His novel, Bang, is out now from Arte Publico Press. He lives in beautiful Houston, Texas.
April 15, 2019

April 15, 2019 Authors

Erika L. Sánchez

Erika L. Sánchez is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. A poet, novelist, and essayist living in Chicago, her debut poetry collection, Lessons on Expulsion, was published by Graywolf in summer 2017, and her debut young adult novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, was released by Knopf Books for Young Readers in fall 2017. She was recently named a 2017-2019 Princeton Arts Fellow. Erika grew up in the Mexican working class town of Cicero, Illinois, so close to Chicago that she could have hit it with her shoe if she flung it out the window. (Maybe she tried this, maybe she didn't.) As a daughter of undocumented Mexican immigrants, Erika has always been determined to defy borders of any kind. Ever since she was a 12 year old nerd in giant bifocals, she's dreamt of becoming a successful writer.

Monica Youn

Monica Youn grew up in Houston, Texas. She received a BA from Princeton University, a JD from Yale Law School, and an MPhil from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. Youn is the author of Blackacre (Graywolf Press, 2016), a finalist for the 2016 National Book award in poetry; Ignatz (Four Way Books, 2010), a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award; and Barter (Graywolf Press, 2003). Youn has received poetry fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Rockerfeller Foundation, and Standford University. She is also known for her work as a lawyer specializing in election law. She has previously taught at Bennington College, Columbia College, and Warren Wilson College, among others. She currently teaches at Princeton University and lives in New York City.

Karan Mahajan

Karan Mahajan grew up in New Delhi, India and moved to the US for college. His first novel, Family Planning (2008), was a finalist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. It was published in nine countries. His second novel, The Association of Small Bombs (2016), was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Awards and was named one of the "10 Best Books of 2016" by The New York Times. Karan's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker Online, The New Republic and other venues. From 2018-2019 he will be a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at teh New York Public Library. A graduate of Stanford University and the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.
April 16, 2018

April 16, 2018 Authors

Jason Reynolds

Jason Reynolds is a New York Times bestselling author, a Newbery Award Honoree, a Printz Award Honoree, National Book Award Honoree, a Kirkus Award winner, a two time Walter Dean Myers Award winner, an NAACP Image Award Winner, and the recipient of multiple Coretta Scott King honors. Reynolds was the American Booksellers Association’s 2017 spokesperson for Indies First, and will serve as the national spokesperson for the 2018 celebration of School Library Month in April 2018, sponsored by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL). Jason’s many works of fiction include When I Was the Greatest, Boy in the Black Suit, All American Boys (cowritten with Brendan Kiely), As Brave As You, For Every One, the Track series (Ghost, Patina, Sunny, and Lu), and Long Way Down, which received both a Newbery Honor and a Printz Honor. He lives in Washington, DC. You can find his ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com.

Lisa Ko

Lisa Ko is the author of The Leavers, which was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction and won the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2016, The New York Times, BuzzFeed, O. Magazine, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. Born in Queens and raised in Jersey, she lives in Brooklyn.

Danez Smith

Danez Smith is a Black, queer, poz writer & performer from St. Paul. They are the author of [insert] boy, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Danez’s second full collection, Don’t Call Us Dead, was selected as a 2017 National Book Award finalist. Danez is the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and is a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Their work has been featured widely on platforms such as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Buzzfeed, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.

Moderated by Mat Johnson

Mat Johnson is the author of the novels Loving Day, Pym, Drop, and Hunting in Harlem, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the comic books Incognegro and Dark Rain. He is a recipient of the American Book Award, the United States Artist James Baldwin Fellowship, The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. Mat Johnson is a Professor in the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.
April 24, 2017

April 24, 2017

John Lewis

John Lewis John Lewis co-authored the third volume of the graphic memoir March Trilogy with Andrew Aydin, drawn by Nate Powell. Lewis is Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District Representative and an American icon widely known for his role in the Civil Rights Movement. He is the author of Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, published in 1999, which won numerous awards; and Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change, published in 2012. The first volume, March: Book One, received a 2014 American Library Association (ALA) Coretta Scott King Book Award Author Honor, an ALA Notable Children's Book designation, was named one of YALSA's 2014 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens, and became the first graphic novel ever to receive a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. March: Book Two was awarded the comic industry's highest honor, the Will Eisner Award, as well as two Harvey awards among other honors. March: Book Three became the first comics work to ever win the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. In January 2017, March: Book Three made history again by winning four ALA Youth Media Awards, including the Printz Award, the Sibert Medal, the Coretta Scott King Author Book Award, and the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award, becoming the first book to ever win four Youth Media Awards in a single year and cementing the March Trilogy's place at the pinnacle of comics and young adult literature.

Andrew Aydin

Andrew Aydin, an Atlanta native, grew up reading and collecting comic books. After college, upon taking a job with Congressman Lewis, Andrew learned that the civil rights legend had been inspired as a young man by a classic 1950s comic book, Martin Luther King & The Montgomery Story. They discussed the impact that comic books can have on young readers and decided to write a graphic novel together about the civil rights era. A few years later, the March series was born. Today, Andrew serves as Digital Director & Policy Advisor to Congressman Lewis in Washington, D.C.

Nate Powell

Nate Powell, called by Booklist magazine “the most prodigiously talented graphic novelist of his generation,” was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. In addition to the March series, his work includes Rick Riordan’s The Lost Hero, You Don’t Say, Any Empire, Swallow Me Whole, The Silence of Our Friends, and The Year of the Beasts. Nate’s work has received copious honors, including the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Novel, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize nomination, and four “Great Graphic Novels for Teens” from the American Library Association. His animated illustrations in Southern Poverty Law Center’s documentary Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot have reached one million students in over 50,000 schools across the nation, and he is currently preparing a new graphic novel, Cover.
March 18, 2015

March 18, 2015

Noelle Stevenson

Noelle Stevenson has been nominated for a Harvey Award and was awarded the Slate Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Webcomic in 2012 for Nimona. A graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, Noelle is the co-writer of Lumberjanes. She lives in Los Angeles.

Ada Limón

Ada Limón is the author of three previous collections of poems: Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, and Sharks in the Rivers. Her poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry Daily, and American Life in Poetry, among other publications. And her essays and articles have been published in Oxford American, Hemispheres Magazine, Guernica, the Poetry Foundation, American Poetry Society, and VIDA. She lives in Kentucky and California.

Angela Flournoy

Angela Flournoy is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the University of Southern California. She has taught writing at various universities and has worked for the D.C. Public Library. She was raised in Southern California by a mother from Los Angeles and a father from Detroit.