Aaliyah Bilal is a fiction/non-fiction writer. Previously she was a recipient of the Shansi Memorial Fellowship at Yunnan University where for two years she conducted research among Hui Zu Muslims. Her work has been published with the Asian American Literary Review, The Michigan Quarterly, The Rumpus and the forthcoming New Moons: An Anthology of Muslim American Writing. A graduate of The School of Oriental and African Studies at The University of London, she lives between Shanghai and the U.S.

​Christina Chiu is the winner of the James Alan McPherson Award for her novel Beauty, which was also selected as a Kirkus Best Books of 2020. She is also author of Troublemaker and Other Saints, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons.  Troublemaker was a nominee for the Stephen Crane First Fiction Award and winner of the Asian American Literary Award. Chiu has published in Tin House, The New Guard, Washington Square, The MacGuffin, Charlie Chan is Dead 2, Not the Only One, Washington Square, and has won literary prizes from Playboy, New Stone Circle, El Dorado Writers’ Guild, World Wide Writers. Chiu hosts the virtual Let’s Talk Books Author Series and curates and co-hosts the Pen Parentis Literary Salon in New York City. She is a founding member of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Chiu is a shoe designer.

​Susan Muaddi Darraj is a fiction writer and English professor. She teaches creative writing in the graduate programs at Johns Hopkins University and Fairfield University. Her short story collection, A Curious Land: Stories from Home, was named the winner of the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction.   It also won the 2016 Arab American Book Award, a 2016 American Book Award, and was shortlisted for a Palestine Book Award. 

Her previous short story collection, The Inheritance of Exile, was published in 2007 by University of Notre Dame Press. In 2018, she was named a Ford Fellow by USA Artists. Susan also is a two-time recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. She has also been awarded a Ruby’s Artist Grant from the Greater Baltimore Cultural
Alliance and a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation.

​In January 2020, Capstone Books launched her debut children’s chapter book series, Farah Rocks, about a smart, brave Palestinian American girl named Farah Hajjar. The series is written for 8-12 year olds. 

Follow Susan on Twitter and Insta (@SusanDarraj), where she tweets about writing, parenting, and social justice. 

Charles Salzberg is a magazine journalist and novelist. He’s the author of the Shamus Award nominated Swann’s Last Song, Swann Dives In, and Swann’s Lake of Despair, Swann’s Way Out and Swann’s Down, as well as Devil in the Hole, named one of the best crime novels of 2014 by Suspense magazine. His novel, Second Story Man, winner of the Beverly Hills Book Award, was also nominated for a Shamus Award, and a David Award. His short stories have appeared in Mystery Tribune, Down to the River, Long Island Noir, and Grand Central Noir, and his crime novellas have appeared in Triple Shot, Third Degree, and Three Strikes. As a former magazine journalist his work has appeared in Esquire, New York magazine, Elle, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, The New York Times Arts and Leisure, The New York Times Book Review, and other periodicals. He is also the author of more than 25 non-fiction books, including From Set Shot to Slam Dunk: An Oral History of the NBA, On a Clear Day They Could See Seventh Place, Baseball’s 10 Worst Teams of the Century (with George Robinson), and Soupy Sez: My Zany Life and Times, with Soupy Sales. He has been a Visiting Professor of Magazine at the S.I. School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and has taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College, the Writer’s Voice, Hunter College and the New York Writers Workshop, where he is a Founding Member. He’s also on the Board of Mystery Writers of America-NY, and PrisonWrites.

​Ravi Shankar is the founding editor of Drunken Boat, one of the world’s oldest electronic journals of the arts. He has written or edited ten books and chapbooks of poetry, including translations of the 9th century Tamil poet/saint, Andal, entitled The Autobiography of a Goddess, a collection of collaborative poems, What Else Could it Be, the 2010 National Poetry Review Prize winner, Deepening Groove, and the 2005 finalist for the Connecticut Book Awards, Instrumentality. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited W.W. Norton’s Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond, called “a beautiful achievement for world literature” by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize, been featured in The New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, appeared as a commentator on the BBC, the PBS Newshour and NPR, received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and has performed his work around the world. He is currently chairman of the Connecticut Young Writers Trust and on the faculty of the first international MFA program at City University of Hong Kong. Visit Ravi at https://www.poetravishankar.com/ 

Tim Tomlinson is co-founder of New York Writers Workshop, and co-author of its popular text, The Portable MFA in Creative Writing. He has also published the books This Is Not Happening to You (short fiction), Yolanda: An Oral History in Verse (oral history/poetry), and Requiem for the Tree Fort I Set on Fire (poetry). His work has been collected in Brooklyn Poets Anthology, A Feast of Narrative: Stories by Italian-American Writers, Long Island Noir, Poet Sounds: Poems Inspired by the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Surviving Suicide: A Collection of Poems That May Save a Life, and elsewhere. He has been published in Australia, China, India, Singapore, the Philippines, and in numerous venues in the US, including, most recently, About Place Journal, Another Chicago Magazine, ChillFiltr Review, Columbia Journal, Good Life Review, Litro, and the Passengers Journal. He's on the Advisory Board of Asia Pacific Writers & Translators. He teaches in New York University's Global Liberal Studies program. Visit Tim online at http://timtomlinson.org/.

​Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a journalist, essayist, and poet focused on issues of race, culture, justice, and the arts. Her writing has appeared at NBC News Asian America, PRI Global Nation, Detroit Journalism Cooperative, Women’s Media Center, Angry Asian Man, Cha Asian Literary Journal, Kartika Review, Drunken Boat, and several anthologies, journals, and art exhibitions. She has written three chapbooks. She teaches Asian/Pacific Islander American media and civil rights at University of Michigan, and creative writing at University of Hawaii Hilo and Washtenaw Community College. She co-created a multimedia artwork on the H-1B visa for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center Indian American Heritage Project online and travelling art exhibition. She is a 2019 Knight Arts Challenge Detroit artist, Marguerite Casey Foundation Equal Voice Journalism Fellow on Poverty, and Keith Center for Civil Rights Detroit Equity Action Lab Race and Justice Reporting Fellow on Arts and Culture. franceskaihwawang.com @fkwang