presented by
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Abayomi Animashaun
Abayomi Animashaun (he/him) is the author of three poetry collections and editor of three anthologies. He is an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, and a poetry editor at The Comstock Review.
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Ahsan Butt
Ahsan Butt (he/him) is a writer whose short fiction and essays have appeared in West Branch, Split Lip Magazine, the Massachusetts Review, the Normal School, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. He is currently a senior editor at South Asian Avant Garde: A Dissident Literary Anthology (SAAG).
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A. Cerisse Cohen
A. Cerisse Cohen (she/her) is a writer and editor living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal Magazine, the Nation, Artsy, and other publications. She mostly covers art and books.
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Adam Dalva
Adam Dalva’s (he/him) writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and the Atlantic. He serves on the board of the National Book Critics Circle and is the senior fiction editor of Guernica magazine.
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Nathan Deuel
Nathan Deuel (he/him) is the author of Friday Was the Bomb: Five Years in the Middle East. He is a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times and has written essays, short fiction, and reviews for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Harper’s, and the Paris Review, among others. A continuing lecturer at UCLA’s Writing Programs, he lives in Venice Beach, where the surf forecast often calls for a Poor to Fair swell of two to three feet.
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Summer Farah
Summer Farah (she/her) is a Palestinian American poet and editor who serves as the outreach coordinator for the Radius of Arab American Writers.
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Torsa Ghosal
Torsa Ghosal (she/her) is the author of a book of literary criticism, Out of Mind (Ohio State University Press), and an experimental novella, Open Couplets (Yoda Press, India). Her fiction, essays, and other writing appear in Berkeley Fiction Review, the Massachusetts Review, Catapult, Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Bustle, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor of English at California State University, Sacramento, and a host of the Narrative for Social Justice podcast.
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Calvin Kasulke
Calvin Kasulke (he/him) is the author of the novel Several People Are Typing. His work has appeared in VICE, MEL Magazine, DC Comics, and elsewhere. He lives in Queens with his dog Jeff.
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ML Kejera
ML Kejera (he/him) is an Illinois-based Gambian writer. His work has previously been published, or is forthcoming, in Strange Horizons, adda, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Nation. He was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
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Lauren Markham
Lauren Markham (she/her) is a writer based in northern California. She is the author of the award-winning book, The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life, and her stories, essays, and journalism have appeared in outlets such as the New York Times Magazine, Freeman’s, Orion, Harper’s, the Atlantic, and Guernica.
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Christina Orlando
Christina Orlando (they/them) is the books editor for Tor.com, where they get to be a book nerd all day. They are a 2019 recipient of Spotify’s Sound Up grant for people of color in podcasting and a 2021 Publisher’s Weekly Star Watch Honoree. Christina currently resides in Brooklyn, NY, with their queer found family.
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Aminah Mae Safi
Aminah Mae Safi (she/her) is the award-winning author of four novels, including Tell Me How You Really Feel and Travelers Along the Way: a Robin Hood Remix. She’s an erstwhile art historian, a fan of Cholula on popcorn, and an un-ironic lover of the Fast and the Furious franchise. Her writing has been featured on Bustle and Salon and her award-winning short stories can be found in Fresh Ink and the forthcoming Freshman Orientation (2023) and Out of Our League (2024).
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Santiago Jose Sanchez
Santiago Jose Sanchez (they/them) is the debut author of the novel Hombrecito, forthcoming from Riverhead. They’re a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where they were a Truman Capote Fellow, and a current Mellon Fellow in Fiction at Grinnell College. Their stories have been published in McSweeney’s, ZYZZYVA, Subtropics, Joyland, and distinguished in the Best American Short Stories.
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Nicola Twilley
Nicola Twilley (she/her) is co-author of Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine, named a best book of 2021 by Time, NPR, the Financial Times, and the Guardian, as well as co-host of the award-winning podcast Gastropod, which looks at food through the lens of science and history. She is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker.
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Olivia Waite
Olivia Waite (she/her) writes queer historical romance, fantasy, science fiction, and essays. She is the romance fiction columnist for the New York Times Book Review.
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Katy Waldman
Katy Waldman (she/her) is a staff writer at the New Yorker, for which she writes about books, culture, and more. Previously, she was a staff writer at Slate and the host of Slate’s Audio Book Club podcast. She won the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing in 2019 and the American Society of Magazine Editors’ award for journalists under 30 in 2018.
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Xuan Juliana Wang
Xuan Juliana Wang (she/her) was born in Heilongjiang, China, but after age seven has done most of her growing up in Los Angeles and New York. She is the author of the short-story collection Home Remedies.
Our Commentators
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Rosecrans Baldwin
TMN co-founder Rosecrans Baldwin is the bestselling author of Everything Now. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. He writes a weekly Substack about beautiful things.
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Meave Gallagher
Meave [mɛv] Gallagher is a recent graduate of Queens College with a master’s degree in library and information studies, and a certified public librarian in New York State. In a previous life, she spent nearly 20 years in journalism. She's honored to have worked with The Morning News since 2005, and been the Tournament of Books community moderator and a judgment commentator since 2019.
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Kevin Guilfoile
Kevin Guilfoile is the author of two novels, Cast of Shadows and The Thousand, that have been translated into more than 20 languages. His latest book, a memoir, is A Drive Into the Gap. He is also co-screenwriter of the feature film Chasing the Blues.
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Alana Mohamed
Alana Mohamed is a writer and librarian from Queens, NY. Her writing can be found in the Atlantic, Literary Hub, Longreads, and an assortment of now-defunct publications.
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John Warner
John Warner is the author of a number of different books about a number of different things, most recently about how we could better teach students who to write and the need to change our structures of public higher education. He writes weekly for the Chicago Tribune on books and reading, and invites you to join him and many other passionate readers at his weekly newsletter, The Biblioracle Recommends, where he’ll be happy to tell you what you should read next based on the last five books you’ve read.
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Andrew Womack
TMN co-founder Andrew Womack is always working on the next installment of his Albums of the Year series.
2023
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