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October 7, 2025

Laird Hunt

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

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

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

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.




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