John Freeman is the editor of Freeman's, a literary annual of new writing, and executive editor of Literary Hub. His books include How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing, as well as Tales of Two Americas, an anthology about income inequality in America, and Tales of Two Planets, an anthology of new writing about inequality and the climate crisis globally. He is also the author of two collections of poems, Maps and The Park. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. The former editor of Granta, he teaches writing at New York University.

Sandra Cisneros is a poet, short story writer, novelist, and essayist whose work explores the lives of the working class. Her numerous awards include NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, the Texas Medal of the Arts, a MacArthur Fellowship, the PEN/Nabokov Award for International Literature, and the National Medal of the Arts, awarded to her by President Obama in 2016. Her novel The House on Mango Street has sold over six million copies, has been translated into over twenty languages, and is required reading in elementary, high school, and universities across the nation. A new book, Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo, a story in English and in Spanish, will be published in 2021. Cisneros is a dual citizen of the United States and Mexico and earns her living by her pen.

Manuel Muñoz is the author of two collections of short stories, Zigzagger and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, which was shortlisted for the 2007 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. His first novel, What You See in the Dark, was published in 2011. Three of his short stories have received the O. Henry Prize, and one was chosen for inclusion in Best American Short Stories. The Consequences, Muñoz’sthird collection, will be published by Graywolf Press.

George Saunders is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize; Congratulations, by the way; Tenth of December, a finalist for the National Book Award; The Braindead Megaphone; and the critically acclaimed short story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.

Helena María Viramontes is the author of The Moths and Other Stories; Under the Feet of Jesus: A Novel; and the co-editor, with Maria Herrera Sobek, of two collections: "Chicana (W)rites: On Word and Film and Chicana Creativity and Criticism." Her latest novel is Their Dogs Came With Them. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the 2006 Luis Leal Award and the John Dos Passos Award for Literature, her short stories and essays have been widely anthologized and her writings have been adopted for classroom use and university study. A community organizer and former coordinator of the Los Angeles Latino Writers Association, she is a frequent reader and lecturer in the U.S. and internationally. Born and raised in East L.A., Viramontes now lives in Ithaca, New York, where she is Professor in the Department of English at Cornell University.

Manuel Muñoz is the author of The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, a collection of short stories. Zigzagger, his first short-story collection, was published by Northwestern University Press in 2003. He is the recipient of a Constance Saltonstall Foundation Individual Artist's Grant in Fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship for 2006. His work has appeared in many journals, including Rush Hour, Swink, Epoch, Glimmer Train, Edinburgh Review and Boston Review, and has aired on National Public Radio's "Selected Shorts." A native of Dinuba, California, Manuel graduated from Harvard University and received his MFA in creative writing at Cornell University. He now lives in New York City, where he is at work on a novel.