Hannah Bonner is the author of Another Woman (EastOver Press, 2024). Her criticism has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Another Gaze, Cleveland Review of Books, Literary Hub, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Senses of Cinema, and The Sewanee Review, among others. She lives in Iowa.

hannahruthbonner.com
Instagram @hannah__bonner
X @HannahB40843697

Nicholas Glastonbury is a writer, translator, and editor from the Florida backwaters. His translations of Turkish and Kurdish fiction and poetry have appeared with or are forthcoming from Tilted Axis Press, Comma Press, Soho Press, Sandorf Passage, Nightboat Books, and elsewhere. He holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and lives in New York.

nglastonbury.com
Instagram @gayadorno

Jean Chen Ho is the author of Fiona and Jane, one of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2022, longlisted for the Story Prize, and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Vulture, Vogue, Oprah Daily, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, and Electric Literature. Her fiction, essays, and criticism appear in the New York Times Magazine, the Cut, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications. Ho is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Chapman University. She lives in Los Angeles.

jean-chen-ho.com

Emily C. Hughes wants to scare you. Formerly the editor of Unbound Worlds and TorNightfire.com, she writes about horror and curates a list of the year’s new scary books. Her first book, Horror for Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You’re Too Scared to Watch, is out now from Quirk Books. You can find her writing elsewhere in the New York Times, Vulture, Reactor Magazine, Electric Literature, Nightmare Magazine, Thrillist, and more. Emily lives in crunchy western Massachusetts with her husband and four idiot cats.

readjumpscares.com
Bluesky @emilyhughes.bsky.social
Instagram @emchughes17

Stephen Kearse is the author of the novels Liquid Snakes and In the Heat of the Light. He writes music and book criticism for the Nation, Pitchfork, NPR, the Washington Post, and other outlets. His short stories have been published in Joyland and The Deadlands. Originally from Atlanta, he now lives in metro Washington, DC, with his family.

noreasontopretend.com

Aditi Khorana is an internationally renowned author of critically acclaimed and award-winning Young Adult novels, including Mirror in the Sky (Penguin, 2016) and The Library of Fates (Penguin, 2017). Both are Junior Library Guild Selections and have appeared on many best book lists. Her debut novel is the subject of a TEDx talk, “Harnessing the Power of the Unknown.” She teaches Writing for Young People at Antioch University's MFA program, and also gives talks and teaches classes in the US and abroad on myth, narrative, and the creative capacity of language to shape our world. She is a Fellow at the Los Angeles Institute for Humanities and is currently adapting her debut novel for TV. Her work has been featured on NPR, the Los Angeles Review of Books, NBC News, BuzzFeed, EW, Bustle, Seventeen, and HuffPost.

aditikhorana.com
Instagram @aditi_khorana

Sammy Loren’s nonfiction appears in Elle, Paper, Nylon, Interview, and others. His fiction has been published in The Dry River and serialized in La Prensa, Mexico’s largest tabloid. He lives in Los Angeles and curates the reading series Casual Encountersz.

sammyloren.com
Instagram @sjlorenn / @casualencountersz
X @therealsjloren

Michael David Lukas is the author of The Oracle of Stamboul and The Last Watchman of Old Cairo. Translated into more than a dozen languages, his work has received the Sami Rohr Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, the Prix Interallié for Foreign Fiction, and the ALA’s Sophie Brody Medal. His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and the Georgia Review. He lives in Oakland and teaches at San Francisco State University.

michaeldavidlukas.com

Meher Manda is a writer of poetry, fiction, and culture criticism, editor, and educator, fully formed in Bombay, India, though currently stationed in the U S of A. She's the author of the poetry chapbook Busted Models (No, Dear / Small Anchor, 2019) and her work has been published in The Margins, the Los Angeles Review, Catapult, Epiphany, Kweli, and elsewhere. A Best New Poets and Best of the Net Anthology nominee, she is collaborating on a political graphic novel forthcoming from Hachette India in 2025. Her writing wrestles with the tensions that splinter the self from state / woman from body / singular from spectacle / guttural from ordinary.

mehermanda.com

Kelly McEvers is a two-time Peabody Award-winning journalist and former host of NPR's flagship newsmagazine, All Things Considered. She spent many years working as an international correspondent, reporting from Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. She is the creator and host of the acclaimed Embedded podcast, a documentary show that goes to hard places to make sense of the news. She has contributed to This American Life, the BBC, Marketplace, and The World. Her writing has appeared in Wired, the New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, and Slate. She began her career at the Chicago Tribune.

Kelly McEvers @ NPR

Ivy Pochoda is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, These Women, and Sing Her Down, which won the LA Times Book Prize. She won the 2018 Strand Critics Award for Best Novel and the Prix Page America in France, and has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, among other awards. For 11 years, Ivy has taught creative writing in Los Angeles’s Skid Row. She is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California Riverside-Palm Desert low-residency MFA program. She lives in Los Angeles.

ivypochoda.com

Max Read is a journalist, screenwriter, editor, and the owner-operator of Read Max, a weekly newsletter guide to the future. His work concerns the weird ways the internet makes us think, feel, and organize ourselves. His writing has appeared in various publications with the words “New York” in the title, including New York magazine, the New York Times, and the New York Times Magazine. He's also the former editor of multiple defunct websites, including Gawker and Select All. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.

maxread.substack.com

Alena Saunders, a writer, artist, and photographer, received her BFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her MS in journalism from Columbia University, though she hasn't figured out quite how to use either of those yet. Her photography has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Guardian, Sixtysix, GoodTimes Santa Cruz, Literary Hub, and Fiction Writers Review. She started making and selling jackets during the pandemic because she was bored and broke, and one of the jackets ended up in an article in the New York Times. She is currently working as a bookseller at Skylight Books in Los Angeles.

alenasaunders.com
Instagram @alena.mae.saunders

Bobuq Sayed is a writer, editor, and organizer. They have lived in Perth; Melbourne; Washington, DC; Istanbul; Berlin; and, most recently, New York City. Their debut novel, No God But Us, is forthcoming from Harper Books in 2026.

bobuqsayed.com

Molly Templeton writes a lot of things for Reactor Magazine, including news, reviews, and “Mark as Read,” a column about the reading life. Her writing has also appeared in BuzzFeed and Esquire, and she was the arts and music editor for the Eugene Weekly for too many years. A former bookseller and publicist, she currently works for the Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation.

mollytempleton.com
Bluesky @mollytempleton.com

Mary Turfah is a writer and surgical resident trained in anthropology at Yale and Middle Eastern South Asian and African Studies at Columbia, where her research focused on trauma memory and the margins of the Nakba.

maryturfah.com

Director, writer, and actor Hannah Pearl Utt grew up a largely feral autodidact in Santa Barbara, Calif. (the Mike Mills version, not the Nancy Meyers version), and came to filmmaking through her love of community, beauty, and eccentricity. Her latest feature film, Cora Bora, starring Meg Stalter, premiered at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival, and was theatrically released by Brainstorm Media. Her first feature film, Before You Know It, which she also co-wrote and starred in, premiered in competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, where she was listed as one of IndieWire’s 25 Female Filmmakers to Watch. In addition to her feature work, Hannah directed, co-wrote, and starred in the Super Deluxe digital series, Disengaged, alongside Jen Tullock following the success of their Sundance short film, Partners. Hannah has been selected to participate in numerous programs through the Sundance Institute, including their inaugural Catalyst Women’s Initiative, Screenwriter and Directors Lab, and Film Two, and as a mentor for Ignite.

Instagram @whuttsthebigdeal

Rosecrans Baldwin is a co-founder of the Tournament of Books and The Morning News. He’s a correspondent for GQ and the bestselling author of Everything Now, winner of the California Book Award. 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.

rosecransbaldwin.com

Meave Gallagher keeps busy in Brooklyn, NY, knitting baby clothes, fostering kittens, and trying to become a public librarian while the libraries still have funding. In another life, she worked far too long in journalism. She’s honored to have contributed to The Morning News since 2005, and been the Tournament of Books community moderator and a judgment commentator since 2019.

meavegallagher.com

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.

@kevinguilfoile

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.

alana-mohamed.com

John Warner is the author of More Than Words: How To Think About Writing in the Age of AI, a weekly books columnist for the Chicago Tribune and has an associated newsletter, The Biblioracle Recommends where he’s happy to tell you what to read next if you tell him the last five books you’ve read.

@biblioracle

Andrew Womack is a co-founder of the Tournament of Books and The Morning News and writes a weekly newsletter about new music.

linktr.ee/andrewwomack