JAHA NAILAH AVERY, author of THOSE WHO SAW THE SUN

Jaha Nailah Avery is an African American woman and proud Southerner. Hailing from Asheville, North Carolina, she received her law degree from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied constitutional and civil rights law. She spent several years in the startup tech space before embarking on her professional writing career, and her work can be found in Essence Magazine, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, and more. Her aim is to always document, celebrate, and preserve the stories of Black people, communities, and history. In her first book, Those Who Saw The Sun, she interviewed survivors of Jim Crow and compiled their accounts together in one collection. Her second book, I Heard, is an illustrated poem spanning over 400 years of Black history. She is the originator, host, and director of The Corridor, a Tribeca-selected investigative podcast focusing on the history of Cancer Alley outside New Orleans.

Instagram: @jay_nailah/

gloria j. browne-marshall, author of A Protest History of the United States

A descendent of Exodusters, Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is an Emmy Award-winning writer, public scholar, playwright, and constitutional law professor at John Jay College (CUNY). Her books include A Protest History of the United States, winner of the Independent Publishers Gold Medal, She Took Justice, and The Voting Rights War. Dreams of Emmett Till received the American Film Award. Her short story Chaos in Captain America: The Shield of Sam Wilson is part of the Marvel Universe. A Harvard Kennedy School Fellow, she founded Martyrs Day, honoring slain activists (MartyrsDay.us). She is working on a short story collection and debut novel.

Browne-Marshall23.com
IG: @GBrowneMarshall
Linkedin: GloriaJBrowneMarshall

NIVEA CASTRO, author of “deep diving the blues” (short story)

NÍVEA CASTRO is a 2022 Kweli Emerging Writer Fellow and a Kweli Art of the Short Story Workshop alum. “Deep Diving the Blues” is her debut short story.

Her poems and essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Aster(ix) Journal, home to her photographic essay on Cuba. She is the curator and editor of Sinister Wisdom’s #97 edition, Soy Lesbiana y Que! Out Latina Lesbians, a Lambda Literary and Golden Globe Awards Finalist.

NAIMA COSTER, AUTHOR OF TAKE WHAT YOU CAN

Naima Coster is a New York Times bestselling author and a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honor. Her latest novel, Take What You Can, is a Good Morning America Book Club pick and was named a most anticipated book by The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, Town & Country, Time, among other publications. Her novel, What’s Mine and Yours, was a Read with Jenna pick, a statewide read for One Maryland One Book, longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and named a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, Esquire, Marie Claire, Ms. Magazine, and more. Her first novel, Halsey Street, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and named a must-read by People, Essence, Well-Read Black Girl, The Skimm, and the Brooklyn Public Library. Naima’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Elle, Time, Kweli, and The Cut, and in numerous anthologies. Naima teaches creative writing at CUNY Baruch College. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

naimacoster.com
Instagram: @naimacoster

EDWIDGE DANTICAT, author, DÉY & WE’RE ALONE

Edwidge Danticat is the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. She received her B.A. in French Literature from Barnard College and her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Brown University. She is the author of seventeen books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection, Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist, The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; the novels-in-stories, The Dew Breaker, Claire of the Sea Light, and The Art of Death, a National Book Critics Circle finalist for Criticism. She has written seven books for children and young adults, a travel narrative, After the Dance, and a collection of essays, Create Dangerously.

Her memoir, Brother, I'm Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She is the editor of The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, The Beacon Best of 2000, Haiti Noir, Haiti Noir 2, and Best American Essays 2011. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, a 2018 Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow, a 2018 winner of the Neustadt Prize, a 2019 winner of the Saint Louis Literary Award, a 2020 United States Artist Fellow, a 2020 winner of the Vilceck Prize, and a 2023 winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Her story collection, Everything Inside, was a 2020 winner of the Bocas Fiction Prize, The Story Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Prize. Her essay collection We're Alone was published by Graywolf Press.

Her newly released novel Déy from Knopf is National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.

https://afamstudies.columbia.edu/content/edwidge-danticat

DAWN DAVIS, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND PUBLISHER, 37 INK

The Poets & Writers 2019 Editor of the Year, Dawn Davis is the founding publisher of 37 INK, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. She has edited many prizewinning and New York Times bestselling books, including one of the 2023 New York Times’s 10 Best Books of the Year, Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo; How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair; The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan; Never Caught, a finalist for the National Book Award, by Erica Armstrong Dunbar; The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton; The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, by Issa Rae; Tough Love by Ambassador Susan Rice; I Can’t Make this Up by Kevin Hart, and various books by weight loss expert JJ Smith, including the 10 Day Green Smoothie Cleanse.

In 2020, Davis was named Editor in Chief of the Condé Nast magazines, Bon Appétit and Epicurious. She returned to Simon & Schuster in 2023.

Prior to first joining Simon & Schuster, Davis was publisher of Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins, where she edited The Known World by Edward P. Jones, which won the Pulitzer Prize; Steve Harvey’s Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, which was one of the bestselling books of the decade; and The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner.

She lives in New York City.

simonandschusterpublishing.com/simonandschuster/dawn-davis.html
IG: @dawnladavis

erica frederick, author of FIGHT IN THE NIGHT

Erica Frederick is a queer, Haitian American writer from Orlando, Florida who holds an MFA in Fiction from Syracuse University. She currently serves as Flash Editor for Split Lip Magazine. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, Tin House, VIDA, Lambda Literary, and the Hurston/Wright Foundation. Her debut novel, FIGHT IN THE NIGHT, is forthcoming from Scribner in August 2027. She lives in Brooklyn.

ericafrederick.com
IG: @efreddy

aracelis girmay, author of green of all heads & so we can know: writers of color on pregnancy, loss, abortion, and birth

aracelis girmay is the author of four full-length poetry collections including the recently published GREEN OF ALL HEADS. She is also the editor of the anthology So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth as well as How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton. Her writing has appeared in e-flux, Granta, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. Recent collaborations include performance, picture books, and a chapbook project with artist Valentina Améstica. Named a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (2018), and a recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship (2025) and the Whiting Award (2015), she served as the Editor-at-Large of the BOA Editions Blessing the Boats Selections from 2021-2025. girmay is on the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund and teaches at Stanford University. She lives in the East Bay.

aracelisgirmay.net/about

TAO LEIGH GOFFE, author of DARK LABORATORY, PRODUCER/DIRECTOR, BLACK PACIFIC, CHINESE ATLANTIC SHORT FILM

Tao Leigh Goffe is a critically-acclaimed writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York City. Dr. Goffe lives and works in Manhattan where she is an Associate Professor at Hunter College, CUNY and CUNY Graduate Center in Earth and Environmental Sciences. Dr. Goffe’s debut book on how the climate crisis is a racial crisis is called DARK LABORATORY (Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton (Penguin UK, 2025)). It has been celebrated in the New York Times, the Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, the Atlantic, and Publisher’s Weekly.

Tao Leigh Goffe’s short film BLACK PACIFIC, CHINESE ATLANTIC will have its New York premiere during the Kweli International Literary Festival. A Jamaican Chinese and Afro Asian history, the story from Jamaica to NYC to Hong Kong about a boy born to a Black mother and Chinese father between the British colonial ports of Kingston and Hong Kong. Her grandfather.

Her second book, which is forthcoming, BLACK CAPITAL, CHINESE DEBT, (Duke University Press) presents a long history of racialization, modern finance, and indebtedness. It brings together subjects of the Atlantic and Pacific markets from 1806 to the present under European colonialism. Her third book MILK: A HISTORY AND A FUTURE (Doubleday) is a memoir on the intimate economics and history of American mothering, surrogate love, and breastfeeding.

taoleighgoffe.com
IG: @taoleighgoffe

ISABELLA HAMMAD, author of OUR NAMES & ENTER GHOST

Isabella Hammad was born in London. Her writing has appeared in Conjunctions, The Paris Review, The New York Times and elsewhere. She was awarded the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction and a 2019 O. Henry Prize. Her first novel The Parisian (2019) won a Palestine Book Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Betty Trask Award from the Society of Authors in the UK. She is also the author of the novel Enter Ghost, which won the 2024 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and Recognizing the Stranger (Grove Atlantic, 2024), which was longlisted for the 2024 NBCC Award for Criticism. Hammad was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, and has received literary fellowships from MacDowell and the Lannan Foundation.

https://blueflowerarts.com/artist/isabella-hammad/

ATA HINDI, Assistant Professor of Law at the Loyola University of New Orleans College of Law

Ata Hindi is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Loyola University of New Orleans College of Law. He has spent the majority of his career working in the field of public international law, particularly in the SWANA region, and particularly on Palestine. He is currently a Kweli mentee whose debut short story will be published in Kweli's December 2026 anniversary issue.

JP Infante, author of On the Tip of Your Mother’s Tongue

JP Infante is the author of On the Tip of Your Mother’s Tongue and Aquí y Allá: Winston Vargas Photographs the Washington Heights Community. His writing has appeared in Guernica, Kweli, and elsewhere. He has been awarded scholarships and fellowships from the NY State Writers Institute, PEN America and The Center for Fiction. He holds an MFA from The New School. He is represented by Elianna Kan at Massie McQuilkin & Altman Literary Agents.

Infantejp.com
@infantejp

HONORÉE FANONNE JEFFERS, author, MISBEHAVING AT THE CROSSROADS & THE LOVE SONGS OF W.E.B. DU BOIS

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is an essayist, novelist, poet, and a student of United States’ history. She is the author of seven books spanning three genres.

Her first novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois was an instant New York Times bestseller, an Oprah’s Book Club pick, and included on President Barack Obama’s reading list. Most recently, Love Songs was included on the “Great American Novels” list of The Atlantic and the “Best Books of the 21st Century” list by Kirkus Reviews. Love Songs won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Fiction, the Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature, and the First Novelist’s Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Love Songs was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Fiction, the Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and the NAACP Image Award for Literary Work: Debut. Love Songs was longlisted for the National Book Award in Fiction and appeared on several “year’s best” lists, including Time, People, NPR, and The New York Times. Misbehaving at the Crossroads, Essays & Writings is her debut work of nonfiction (Harper, June 2025).

honoreejeffers.com
IG: @honoree_jeffers

CHELCEE JOHNS, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, STOREHOUSE VOICES, penguin random house

Chelcee Johns is an Executive Editor at Storehouse Voices. She has been a part of Penguin Random House since the fall of 2020 and spent her first four years at the Ballantine Books imprint. Prior to her time at Penguin Random House, she shepherded titles at Simon & Schuster’s 37 Ink imprint. Chelcee has worked on bestselling and award-winning titles including New York Times bestseller The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris, National Book Award longlisted Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires, The Best Man: Unfinished Business by Malcolm D. Lee and Jayne Allen, and the critically acclaimed The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton, as well as with authors such as Ntozake Shange and Alice Walker. Chelcee loves books that teem with agency, intellect, and heart. Her previous publications include the critically acclaimed Neruda on the Park by Cleyvis Natera, Amazon Best Books of 2022 Such Big Dreams by Reema Patel, 2024 NAACP Image Award winner Rootless by Krystal Zara Appiah, among others. Her forthcoming titles include Nasty Work: Resist Systems, Explore Desire, and Liberate Yourself by sexuality and social justice educator Ericka Hart and Redeem a Nation by Damario Solomon-Simmons, leading civil rights lawyer and restorative justice expert.

https://crownpublishing.com/imprint/storehouse-voices/

iwalani kim, Associate Agent, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates

Iwalani joined Sanford J. Greenburger Associates in 2018. She is seeking adult upmarket and literary fiction and select nonfiction. In fiction, she loves coming-of-age narratives, family dramas, and stories that challenge systems of power. She is often drawn to a strong sense of voice and/or place, whether the storytelling is grounded in realism or engages with a speculative element. She gravitates toward lush prose, wry humor, irreverent characters, and a sense of yearning. Iwalani is also looking for narrative nonfiction such as memoir, cultural histories, and cultural criticism. She was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai’i.

greenburger.com/agent/iwalani-kim

JORI LEWIS, Author, A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SPIRITS & SLAVES FOR PEANUTS

Jori Lewis writes narrative nonfiction that explores how people interact with their environments. Her reports and essays have been published in The Atlantic, Orion Magazine, and The New York Review of Books, among others, and she is the editor in chief of Adi Magazine, a literary magazine of global politics. The author of Slaves for Peanuts (winner of a Whiting Award, a Silvers Grant, a James Beard Award, and the Harriet Tubman Prize) and A Natural History of the Spirits, Lewis splits her time between Illinois and Senegal.

jorilewis.com
Instagram & Bluesky: @jorilewis

EBONYA LIA, AUTHOR, i can feel it all over

Ebonya Lia is a 2023 Kweli Fellow. She lives in Brooklyn. Outside of writing and her job as an academic economist, she spends her time drawing and seeking answers to her chronic illness. I CAN FEEL IT ALL OVER is her debut novel.

ebonyalia.com/
IG: @ebonya.lia

VALERIA LUISELLI, AUTHOR, BEGINNING MIDDLE END & LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE

Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in South Korea, South Africa and India. An acclaimed writer of both fiction and nonfiction, she is the author of the essays Tell Me How It Ends and Sidewalks; the sonic essay Echoes From the Borderlands; and the novels Faces in the Crowd, The Story of My Teeth, Lost Children Archive, and Beginning Middle End.

She is the recipient of a 2019 MacArthur Fellowship and the winner of DUBLIN Literary Award, two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, The Carnegie Medal, an American Book Award, and has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the Booker Prize. She has been the recipient of a Bearing Witness Fellowship from the Art for Justice Fund, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Vilcek Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, and McSweeney's, among other publications, and has been translated into more than thirty languages. Her ongoing project in sound-scapes and oral histories, Echoes From the Borderlands, has been featured at the DIA Chelsea and the Harvard Art Lab, among other places.

https://www.valerialuiselli.net/
IG: @valeria_luiselli

yasmin adele majeed, author, SIDE STREAMS

Yasmin Adele Majeed is the author of Side Streams, forthcoming from Little, Brown in 2027. Her fiction appears in Narrative, Guernica, Joyland, American Short Fiction, Best Debut Short Stories, and The Best American Short Stories. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has received fellowships and support from Kundiman, McCormack Writing Center, Kweli, the Periplus Collective, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She is a winner of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa. Raised in the Bay Area and New York City, she currently lives in Brooklyn.

yasmaj.com
IG: @yasminadelemajeed

DINAW MENGESTU, author, SOMEONE LIKE US & ALL OUR NAMES

Dinaw Mengetsu is the author of four novels, Someone Like Us (Knopf 2024), All Our Names (Knopf,2014), How To Read the Air (Riverhead, 2010), and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead, 2007), all New York Times Notable Books. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, Guardian First Book Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. He is the director of the Written Arts Program at Bard College and the director of the Center for Ethics and Writing.

IG: @dinaw_mengestu

Shelbey Monae, host, shelbey and the book club

Shelbey Monae is a New Jersey-based content creator, book lover, and community builder passionate about amplifying Black authors and celebrating diverse stories. As the creator and host of Shelbey and the Book Club, she creates engaging content that celebrates Black literature across genres, connects readers with their next favorite books, and reminds everyone there’s a story for them. She co-hosts The League of Extraordinary Readers and Well Read Wool, blending her love of literature, creativity, and meaningful conversation to bring readers together. Through her work, Shelbey champions representation, builds community, and makes discovering your next great read an experience worth sharing.

IG: @shelbeymonae

abhigna mooraka, 2023 Emerging Writer Fellow with Kweli Journal

Abhigna Mooraka is a writer and educator from Bengaluru, currently living in New York City. Abhigna holds an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where she was a Graduate Teaching Fellow and finalist for the 2021 Henfield Prize. Her writing has appeared in AAWW’s The Margins, Electric Literature, Catapult, The Rumpus, and The Adroit Journal, among others. She is an alum of the McCormack Writing Center (formerly Tin House) Winter Workshop and was a 2023 Emerging Writer Fellow with Kweli Journal.

abhignamooraka.com
@abhignaaaa

ALEXIA NADER, AUTHOR, The Meaning of Daughter

Alexia Nader is the author of the The Meaning of Daughter. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New Yorker, among other publications. She was a 2023-2024 Steinbeck Fellow. She is from Miami, Florida and currently lives in San Francisco where she teaches creative writing to children and teens.

alexianader.com
@alexia_nader

cleyvis natera, author of the grand paloma resort & neruda on the park

Cleyvis Natera was born in the Dominican Republic, arrived in New York City at ten years old. She is an award-winning author, essayist, critic, and college professor. Her debut novel, Neruda on the Park, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and winner of a Silver Medal by the International Latino Book Awards for Best First Book of Fiction. Her sophomore novel, The Grand Paloma Resort, was named a best book of 2025 by ELLE, Electric Literature, and CrimeReads.

She joined Montclair State University in the fall of 2024 as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing where she led efforts to develop an M.F.A. program in Bilingual Creative Writing. She’s currently part of the creative writing faculty at Barnard College and Columbia University’s M.F.A. program. Natera holds an M.F.A. in fiction from New York University and an undergraduate degree from Skidmore College.

https://cleyvisnatera.com/bio/

laura pegram, founding editor and publisher, kweli journal

Laura Pegram is a multidisciplinary artist who is influencing a new generation of aspiring writers. Author, educator, and a jazz vocalist whose cabaret performance teamed her with jazz pianist, Donald Smith, Ms. Pegram is also a painter. Her richly hued vibrant murals are part of several private collections. She has worked as a Development Associate at Scholastic Productions, Inc., as an Instructor at the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center and as an Acting Director / Instructor at the John Oliver Killens Young Writers Program.

IG: @kweli.journal

IMANI PERRY, AUTHOR, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People & South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

Imani Perry is the Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Perry is the author of 9 books, including the New York Times Bestseller South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation which received the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Perry's other award-winning titles include: May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem, Breathe: A Letter to My Sons, and Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry. Her most recent book: Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, was published in January of 2025. Perry has written for numerous publications including: The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Bitter Southerner, Harper's and Harper’s Bazaar. She is a 2023 recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. Perry has also received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Pew Foundations. Perry earned her Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an L.L.M. in 19th century property and contract law from Georgetown University Law Center, and a B.A. in American Studies and Literature from Yale College.

https://imaniperryauthor.com/about
IG: @imaniperry

tracey rose peyton, author, night wherever we go

Tracey Rose Peyton received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at University of Texas-Austin and her BA from Howard University. Her debut novel, Night Wherever We Go, was shortlisted for The Center for Fiction Debut Novel Prize and the California Book Award for First Fiction. Her short work has appeared in Guernica, American Short Fiction, and Best American Short Stories 2021. She was the 2024-2025 Rona Jaffe fellow at The Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at the New York Public Library. She lives in New York City.

traceyrosepeyton.com
IG: @traceyrosepeyton

EMILY RABOTEAU, AUTHOR, lessons for survival, mothering against “the apocalypse”

Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, public art, and parenthood. Her books are Lessons for Survival, a finalist for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, and the ASLE Book Award, Searching for Zion, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the critically acclaimed novel, The Professor’s Daughter. Since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has focused on writing longform essays about the climate crisis. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, Raboteau’s distinctions include the Climate Narratives Prize, the Deadline Club Award in Feature Reporting, and grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman, and Yaddo. She has served as nonfiction faculty at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference and is a full professor in the Black Studies Department at the City College of New York (CUNY). She lives with her family in the Bronx.

emilyraboteau.net
IG: @emilyraboteau

reena shah, author, the best american short stories 2025

Reena Shah is the author of the novel Every Happiness and the forthcoming story collection Bad Neighbors (Bloomsbury, March 2027). She is the recipient of the Keene Prize in Literature from the University of Texas in Austin, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship, and a Fulbright Scholarship. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction, swamp pink, Lit Hub, the BBC, and The Guardian, among other publications. For many years she was a kathak dancer with the Parul Shah Dance Company. She teaches at a public school in Brooklyn and lives with her family on Roosevelt Island.

reenadshah.com
IG: @reenashah111

CHIKA UNIGWE, author, GRACE

Chika Unigwe writes and teaches at Georgia College & State University, Milldegeville, GA. Widely published and translated, she has won awards for her novels and short stories. Her latest novel Grace (out in the UK, Canongate, 2026) will be out in the US in 2027.

IG: @chikaunigweauthor

LATOYA WATKINS, author, THE BOOK OF CHUCK

LaToya Watkins is an award-winning author of three books. Her short story collection, Holler, Child, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the winner of Reading the West Book Award in Fiction and the Writer’s League of Texas Book Award in Fiction. Her novels, Perish and The Book of Chuck, were published to great acclaim in 2022 and 2026. LaToya’s writing has appeared in A Public Space, Kweli, The Sun, McSweeney’s, and the Kenyon Review, among other publications.

latoyawatkins.com
IG: @drlwatkins