Garous Abdolmalekian is an award-winning Iranian poet. His poetry has been translated into several languages, including Italian, French, and German, winning prestigious literary distinctions in Europe. His debut collection in translated English, Lean Against This Late Hour, was published by Penguin Random House in 2020. Abdolmalekian is currently the poetry editor at Nashre-Cheshmeh Publishing House.

Derry Ainsworth is an award-winning photographer, videographer and digital artist from the UK. He has lived in and documented Hong Kong for the last ten years. With a background in architecture, Derry has always been creatively drawn to the urban environment. His work aims to capture the raw beauty of the city and the happenings within it.

Kazim Ali’s recent books include Sukun: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan, 2023) and Black Buffalo Woman: An Introduction to the Poetry and Poetics of Lucille Clifton (BOA Editions, 2024). He is the founder of Nightboat Books and a professor of Literary Arts and Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Gabeba Baderoon is the author of the poetry collections The Dream in the Next Body (Kwela, 2005), A hundred silences (Kwela, 2006), and The History of Intimacy (Kwela, 2018; Northwestern, 2021). Among her honors are the Elisabeth Eybers Poetry Prize, the University of Johannesburg Prize, an Extraordinary Professorship of English at Stellenbosch University, and fellowships from Bellagio, Civitella Ranieri, and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study. In 2024–25, Gabeba will be in residence at the Radcliffe Institute, where she will work on a memoir in verse, Autobiography of Sand: Relief Map of a Drifting Mind.

Bruce Bond is the author of thirty-six books including, most recently, The Dove of the Morning News (Test Site Poetry Award, University of Nevada Press, 2024), Lunette (Wishing Jewel Editor’s Selection, Green Linden, 2024), Vault (Richard Snyder Award, Ashland, 2023), Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner Award for Literature in Music, Schaffner Press, 2022), Patmos (Juniper Prize, University of Massachusetts, 2021), and Behemoth (New Criterion Prize, 2021), plus two books of criticism, Immanent Distance (University of Michigan, 2015) and Plurality and the Poetics of Self (Palgrave, 2019).

Seán Carlson is working on his first book, a family memoir of migration. His essays have been published in Full Bleed, Gulf Coast, the Irish Times, the Oxford Review of Books, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. His poetry has appeared in Dappled Things, the Honest Ulsterman, the Irish Independent’s “New Irish Writing,” Trasna, and elsewhere. Professionally, Seán runs his own editorial and communications consultancy. He is the recipient of a 2024 Cill Rialaig writing residency in Ireland and a 2024 Elizabeth Kostova Foundation poetry fellowship in Bulgaria.

May-lee Chai is the author of eleven books of fiction, nonfiction, and translation, including her short story collections Tomorrow in Shanghai (Blair, 2022), a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and Useful Phrases for Immigrants (Blair, 2018), recipient of an American Book Award. She teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her writing has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and an Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, been named a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book, and been the recipient of an honorable mention from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Book Awards.

Angela Chen is a Shanghai-born writer presently living in Providence. Most precious to her are sour fruits, clean air, and the people who raised her. Her current writing project is her bachelor’s thesis in comparative literature, which draws from her background in healthcare and interrogates the congestions and translucencies of the human body as they often emerge in modern Chinese literature. Her writing has been recognized by the New York Times; the English, literary arts, and comparative literature departments at Brown University; Plexus Literary Magazine at the Warren Alpert Medical School; and elsewhere. 

Julie Choffel is the author of Dear Wallace (The Backwaters/University of Nebraska Press, 2024), The Hello Delay (Fordham University Press, 2012), and a handful of chapbooks. Originally from Austin, Texas, she lives near Hartford with her family and teaches at the University of Connecticut.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), one of the towering figures of Russian and world literature, was a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. His five major novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868), Devils (1872), The Adolescent (1875), and The Brothers Karamazov (1881).

Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton are the translators of numerous volumes of modern Korean fiction, most recently One Left by Kim Soom (University of Washington Press, 2020) and Togani by Gong Ji-Young (University of Hawai’i Press, 2023). Chinatown, their translation of four stories by Oh Jung-hee, will be published by Penguin Random House UK in 2025. Their translations of Korean short fiction appear in journals such as Granta, Ploughshares, and the Southern Review. Bruce Fulton is the inaugural occupant of the Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation, Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia, and the editor of The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories (Penguin Random House UK, 2023).

Alysia Han is a psychiatrist in the Bay Area. Her first story, “Raw Potatoes,” received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers, and she is a VONA workshop alum. Before turning to creative writing, she completed a dissertation in history at UC Berkeley and graduated from Harvard Medical School. She is currently working on a collection of essays. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and son.

Dennis Hauck’s short stories have appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review and elsewhere. As a filmmaker he wrote, produced, and directed Too Late, starring Academy Award nominee John Hawkes. The film was hailed as “a masterwork” by the LA Times, “a dazzling debut” by the Village Voice, and was a New York Times Critics’ Pick. As a singer/songwriter he is best known for the folk ballad “Halyna Hutchins,” a tribute to his late friend and collaborator who was shot and killed on the set of Rust.

Tomoé Hill’s writing has appeared in places such as Vestoj, LigeiaMagazine, ExactingClam, Socratesonthe Beach, the London Magazine, Music & Literature, and Numéro Cinq, as well as various anthologies. Songs for Olympia, a response to The Ribbon at Olympia’s Throat by Michel Leiris, was published by Sagging Meniscus Press in 2023.

Lauren Hohle is the managing editor of Conjunctions. She has previously worked for Big Fiction Magazine, Lynx House Press, Willow Springs Books, and the Gettysburg Review, where she proudly served as the managing editor from 2019–2023. She is an alum of the Community of Writers at Olympic Valley and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her fiction appears in or is forthcoming from Black Warrior Review, the Sun, Massachusetts Review, Ecotone, and other journals. Her essay “The Cardinal Way,” originally published in Santa Monica Review, is listed as “Notable” in this year’s Best American Essays.

Jang Eun-jin is a prize-winning fiction writer from the city of Kwangju, South Korea. She broke into print in 2004 and has since published three short story collections and four novels. 

Michael Kaplan received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and he is currently a fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. His work has been featured in Boulevard, Nature, and the Michigan Quarterly Review, among others.

Michael R. Katz is C. V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and East European Studies at Middlebury College. He has written two monographs and translated over twenty Russian novels into English. 

Shannon Kuta Kelly is a writer, translator, and musician. She recently obtained her PhD from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast; her creative work has appeared in such places as Poetry Ireland Review, the Irish Times, and the London Magazine, and in conjunction with the Embassy of Romania in Ireland.

Roy Kesey divides his time. 

Perry Levitch’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets 2024, the Southeast Review, the Columbia Review, and others. They are a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. They received an MFA from NYU, where they were poetry editor of Washington Square Review. Currently they’re studying transpoetics as a PhD student at Brown.

Rena J. Mosteirin is the author of Disaster Tourism (BOA Editions, forthcoming fall 2025) and Experiment 116 (Counterpath Press, 2021). She is the co-author, with James E. Dobson, of Moonbit (punctum books, 2019) and Perceptron (punctum books, 2024). Her novella Nick Trail’s Thumb won the Kore Press Short Fiction Award, judged by Lydia Davis. Her work has been published in the Common, the Rumpus, New York Magazine, the Southampton Review, no tokens, the Puritan, and elsewhere in print and online. Mosteirin is an editor at Bloodroot Literary Magazine, teaches creative writing workshops at Dartmouth College, and owns Left Bank Books, a used bookstore in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Cheswayo Mphanza was born in Lusaka, Zambia, and raised in Chicago, Illinois. His work has been featured in New England Review, the Paris Review, Hampden-Sydney Review, Boston Review, Lolwe, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Hurston/Wright Foundation, Callaloo, Cave Canem, and Columbia University. He was a finalist for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, winner of the 2020 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest, and a Creative Capital 2022 awardee, and his debut collection, The Rinehart Frames (University of Nebraska Press, 2021), is the winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle and 2021 Foreword Indies award for poetry. He earned his MFA from Rutgers-Newark.

Sam Munson is the author of the forthcoming novel The Sofa (Two Dollar Radio, 2025) and three other critically acclaimed novels: Dog Symphony (New Directions, 2018), The War Against the Assholes (Saga Press, 2015), and The November Criminals (Doubleday, 2010), which has been translated into nine languages and was made into a major motion picture. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Granta, n+1, the New York Times, the Daily Beast, the Times Literary Supplement, the National, and elsewhere. Most recently, his short story “Administrator” appeared in Guernica. 

Dan Musgrave was raised by animals in rural Kansas. He holds an MFA from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and his writing has earned recognition from the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Iceland Writers Retreat, Best American Science and Nature Writing, and elsewhere. A 2023 trip to Vietnam with his father and brother forms the basis of his memoir-in-progress, exploring the intergenerational consequences of his father’s combat experience. He can be found online at danmusgrave.com.

JoAnna Novak’s latest book is Domestirexia: Poems (Soft Skull, 2024). She is the author of the memoir Contradiction Days: An Artist on the Verge of Motherhood (Catapult, 2023). Novak’s short story collection, Meaningful Work, won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest and was published by FC2. She is also the author of the novel I Must Have You (Skyhorse, 2017) and three additional books of poetry: New Life (Black Lawrence Press, 2020); Abeyance, North America (After Hrs Editions, 2019); and Noirmania (Inside the Castle, 2018). Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, the New York Times, the Atlantic, and other publications.

Meg Pokrass is the author of nine collections of flash fiction and two novellas in flash. Her work has been published in three Norton anthologies, including Flash Fiction America, New Micro, and Flash Fiction International; The Best Small Fictions(2018, 2019, 2022, 2023); Wigleaf Top 50; and numerous literary magazines, including Electric Literature, McSweeney’s, Washington Square Review, and Passages North. Her most recent collection, The First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories, was published by Dzanc Books.

Flora Qian is the author of South of the Yangtze, winner of the 2022 Proverse Prize. The novel was published by Proverse Hong Kong in 2023. She lives in New York with her husband and daughter.

Zen Ren is a queer first-generation Chinese-American writer in Austin, Texas. Their stories, essays, and poems are published in Electric Literature, swamp pink, Nimrod, Boulevard, Curbed, and others. They were a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and won Nimrod’s New Writer Fiction Award. They are currently working on their first novel, speculative literary fiction about two android best friends and rivals. When not writing they’re knitting, sewing, or skateboarding. Say hi at zenrenwrites.com!

Siavash Saadlou is a Pushcart Prize–nominated writer and literary translator whose work has appeared in Massachusetts Review, the Margins, and Southeast Review, among other journals. He is the winner of the 2024 Susan Atefat Creative Nonfiction Prize, the 2023 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize, and the Cole Swensen Prize for Translation.

Burnside Soleil grew up in a houseboat on the bayou but these days is a pilgrim in New Orleans. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and elsewhere. His first collection, to be published by Texas Review Press in 2026, is entitled The Berceuse International Youth League & the St. Herménégilde Society for General Upkeep & Social Benefaction Presents a Melancholic Fantasia in the Tradition of Lonely Swamp Pop, a Collage of the Culture & Peculiar History of Our Parish as Figured in the Tragicomic Soleil Family, Especially Our Unofficial Town Poet Laureate, Burnside Soleil, in Conjunction with Gus Babineaux, an Historian of Dubious Origins & Compiler of This Fine Book, Berceuse Parish.

Maggie Su is the author of the forthcoming novel Blob: A Love Story (Harper, 2025). She holds a PhD in fiction from University of Cincinnati and her short fiction has appeared in DIAGRAM, Four Way Review, TriQuarterly Review, and elsewhere. She lives in South Bend, Indiana, with her partner, cat, and turtle.

Jessica Tanck is the author of Winter Here (University of Georgia Press, 2024), winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize. Born in Chicago but raised in Wisconsin, Jess now lives and writes in Salt Lake City, where she is a PhD candidate in English literature and creative writing at the University of Utah. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Gulf Coast, and Kenyon Review, among others.

Kathleen Wheaton grew up in California and worked for twenty-five years as a journalist in Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Bethesda, Maryland. Her first collection, Aliens and Other Stories, won the 2013 Washington Writers’ Publishing House Fiction Prize. A 2024–2026 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she is at work on a second story collection and a novel.

Nathan Xie’s writing appears in the Southern Review, the Rumpus, and more, which can be found at nathan-xie.com. He is a recipient of One Story’s Adina Talve-Goodman fellowship and support from Lambda Literary, the Periplus Collective, Tin House, and Yaddo. 

Corey Zeller is the author of Man vs. Sky (YesYes Books, 2013) You and Other Pieces (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2015) and coauthor of There Is Only One Ghost in the World (FC2, 2023), winner of the 2022 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest.

Nicole Zhu is a writer and engineer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Epiphany, Catapult, Electric Literature, the Margins, and elsewhere. She was the winner of the 2022 Pigeon Pages Flash Contest and is a 2023–2024 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow. She has received support from Tin House, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

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