My Nameis Venus Black is Heather K. Lloyd’s debut novel. She spent many years working as a freelance editor and book doctor. After raising her children on the West Coast, she and her husband recently moved to New York City where she is at work on her second novel.

Bruna Dantas Lobato is a novelist and translator. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Guernica, A Public Space, The Common, and other publications, and it has been recognized with fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, Jentel, A Public Space, NYU, and Disquiet International. Her literary translations include Caio Fernando Abreu's seminal story collections Moldy Strawberries (longlisted for the PEN Translation Prize) and No Dragons in Paradise, among others. Other translations from Portuguese have appeared in Bookforum, Vogue, BOMB, The Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and The American Scholar. She serves on the Board of the Directors of the American Literary Translators Association, and holds an MFA in Fiction from New York University, and an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa and, like the protagonist of her forthcoming novel, TWO LIVES (Grove, 2024), she attended undergrad in Vermont. Originally from Brazil, she lives in St. Louis with her partner and pet bunny.

Jessica Lott, a graduate of the MFA Program in Fiction Writing at Boston University, is the author of the novel The Rest of Us (Simon & Schuster).

Violet Lumani was raised in a family of superstitious omen-watchers, absorbing the stories and myths her family brought to America with them. She holds a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University, and an MBA from UCONN and lives in Connecticut with her husband, two kids, and forever-dieting chihuahua named Kiwi. Foretold, part of the Scryer series, is her YA debut.

Siobhan MacGowan is from a family of great storytellers, the most prominent of which is her brother Shane MacGowan (of the Pogues fame) and it’s clear from this debut that she too has inherited the writer’s gene. Siobhan is a journalist and musician who lived and worked in London for much of her life but returned to Tipperary, Ireland, several years ago.

Tom Macher is the author of the memoir Halfway, recounting his time in a halfway house in Louisiana. National Book Award winner Jaimy Gordon proclaimed, “I felt an exhilaration, even a joy, in coming across a voice so brilliantly calibrated to make this life visible from inside. Tom Macher invented a unique language for the job…broken in pieces, muttered, slangy, more spat out than sung, yet eloquent, poetic in its way, and devastatingly clear.” Macher received his MFA in creative writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has twice been a fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. His short stories have appeared in the Mississippi Review, Slice, Day One, and other magazines.

Doma Mahmoud received his MFA in fiction writing from NYU, where he taught Introduction to Creative Writing. He is a writing instructor at the American University in Cairo.

Sara Majka earned her MFA from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and was a fiction fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Her short stories have been published in The Gettysburg Review, Massachusetts Review, PEN America, A Public Space, VQR, American Short Fiction, and BRICK, among others. She is the author of the critically acclaimed debut collection Cities I’ve Never Lived In, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and one of The Millions’ Most Anticipated books of 2016 (Graywolf/A Public Space).

Nana Malone is a USA Today bestselling author whose novels are enjoyed by diverse audiences around the world. She is also the creator of the Brown Nipple Challenge, an online bookclub that celebrates representation in commercial fiction.

Sabrina Orah Mark is the acclaimed and award-winning author of the book-length poetry collections The Babies (2004) and Tsim Tsum (2009), as well as the chapbook Walter B.’s Extraordinary Cousin Arrives for a Visit & Other Tales from Woodland Editions. Her collection of stories, Wild Milk, was a winner of the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Short Story Collection. Mark’s poetry and stories most recently appear in American Short Fiction, The Bennington Review, Tin House (Open Bar), The Believer, and she writes a monthly column for The Paris Review. She lives in Athens, Georgia with her husband, Reginald McKnight, and their two sons. Her essay collection, Happily, as well as a forthcoming collection of fiction, will be published by Random House.

Anthony Marra is the bestselling author of the novels A Constellation of VitalPhenomena and Mercury Pictures Presents, both New York Times bestsellers, and the short story collection The Tsar of Love and Techno.

‍

The Washington Post hailed A Constellation of Vital Phenomena as “a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles.” The San Francisco Chronicle called TheTsar of Love and Techno “Genius…a stunning masterpiece.” And the New York Times Book Review hailed Mercury Pictures Presents as “a gorgeous book,” and from the Chicago Tribune, “dazzling.”

‍

Among Marra’s many awards and honors are a Whiting Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship; two awards from the National Book Critics Circle; the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award; the Rosenfield Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the National Book Award long list; and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in fiction.

Kieran Marsh's short fiction has appeared in the Irish Times, the Irish Independent and he has had his work read by professional actors on RTE radio. He was a finalist in the Hennessy New Irish Writing competition and has been featured in many other publications. He is currently working on his first novel.

Jessica Martin is a lawyer by trade, a writer by choice, and a complete smartass by all accounts. Based in the suburban wilds of Boston, Jess shares her life with a finance geek, a precocious preschooler, and a pair of dogs named after Bond characters. She is not to be trifled with when it comes to trivia, poker, or mini golf.

Lucía Alba Martínez was born in Madrid in 1992. At the age of 5 she moved to Tunisia, where she lived until she was 18. Back in Spain, she studied Comparative Literature at the UCM. For the last few years she has been working as a literary translator - from English, French and Italian. She has published articles on literature in media such as Quimera and CTXT.

Laura Mauro was born and raised in south east London and currently lives in Essex under extreme duress. When she's not making things up she enjoys reading, travelling, watching wrestling, playing video games, collecting tattoos, dyeing her hair strange colours and making up nicknames for her cats. She's a sometime pro wrestling journalist, and current Women’s Wrestling Editor at Steelchair Magazine.In 2018, her short story “Looking for Laika” won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story.

Mark Mayer is the award-winning author of the debut story collection Aerialists. In her praise, Marilyn Robinson wrote, “Mayer writes with a luminous, wistful, elegance.”  For Carmen Maria Machado Aerialist was “one of the best collections I’ve read in years.” And Emily Ruskovich called Mayer “a magician of the American sentence.”  Mayer’s novel-in-progress is based on the life of the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras.

‍

Mayer holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD from the University of Denver, and he was awarded the Dana Emerging Writer residency at Cornell’s Center for the Literary Arts. His stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Kenyon Review, Guernica, Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, and The Best American Mystery Stories. Mayer has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and he was awarded the Dana Emerging Writer residency at Cornell University’s Center for the Literary Arts. His fiction has appeared in Guernica, American Short Fiction, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Mayer is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Memphis.

Anna Mazhirov received her MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where she won the Joyce Carol Oates Award in Fiction. She is at work on a short story collection, Annals of Our Springs. The stories feature the lives of young women whose families fled the former Soviet Republics in the wake of the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s. Set in the poorer sections of Brooklyn, her stories are the first to emerge from this new wave of immigrants, introducing us to characters we have never met before: young women–most of them Ukrainian by birth and of Jewish heritage–who are determined to navigate their way through the sometimes harsh realities of the present.

‍

Grace Dane Mazur was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She is the author of the literary non-fiction work, Hinges: Meditations on the Portals of the Imagination; the novel, Trespass; and a collection of stories, Silk. She received her MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson, and has taught at Harvard College, Harvard Extension School, and Emerson College. She served as fiction editor at Harvard Review for a decade and at Tupelo Press for seven years. Currently she is on the fiction faculty at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson. She lives in Cambridge and Westport, Massachusetts, with her husband, the mathematician Barry Mazur.

Regina McBride is the author of three novels, each published by Simon and Schuster, one Young Adult novel, published by Random House, one book of poetry, and a memoir, Ghost Songs, published by Tin House. Her latest novel Stranger Across the Sea is to be published by Green City Books in 2024. She is the recipient of fellowships from the NEA and NYFA, and teaches fiction writing at Hunter College in New York City.

Kelly McClorey is a graduate of the MFA at the University of Montana. She lives in Massachusetts, and Placebo, forthcoming from Ecco, is her first novel.

Dr Una McCormack is a New York Times bestselling science fiction author. She is passionate about women’s writing, science fiction, and helping people find their words and voices. Her latest release, the Star Trek: Picard novel The Last Best Hope, became a USA Today bestseller. Una is well known for her TV tie-in work. She has published more than a dozen novels set in franchises such as Doctor Who, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Discovery. Her audio work with Big Finish has been set in licensed properties such as Doctor Who and Blake’s 7. Her story ‘Taking Flight’ (2017) was shortlisted for the BSFA award for short fiction, and her novel Star Trek: Discovery – The Way to the Stars for a Dragon Con Award. In 2017, she was a judge for the Arthur C Clarke Award.

Claire McDougall is the author of the novel Veil of Time (Gallery Books), named a Best Book of 2014 by POPSUGAR.

Briana Una McGuckin has an M.L.S., and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Western Connecticut State University. She was selected as a mentee for Pitch Wars 2020. Her fiction has appeared in the Stoker-nominated Not All Monsters anthology (Rooster Republic Press) and The Arcanist. She also maintains http://moonmissives.com, where she sometimes writes about having cerebral palsy.

Juliet McKenna started reading folk tales and Greek myths at the age of five, and written more over 15 books of epic fantasy. She has been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke and World Fantasy Awards. A mother and Black Belt in Aikido, she lives in Oxford, England.

Joanne McNeil’s was the inaugural winner of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation's Arts Writing Award for an emerging writer. She has been a resident at Eyebeam, a Logan Nonfiction Program fellow, and an instructor at the School for Poetic Computation. Her first book Lurking: How a Person Became a User was published in 2020 and her debut novel Wrong Way as well as her next nonfiction book Too Early for the Future are both forthcoming from MCD/FSG.

Elena Medel was born in Córdoba in 1985 and lives in Madrid. She is the author of three poetry collections and two works of non-fiction. At 19, she founded the poetry publishing house La Bella Varsovia, one of the most prestigious in the Spanish-speaking world. She is the recipient of the XXVI Loewe Prize for Young Poets, the Princess of Girona Foundation Arts and Literature Award 2016 for the whole of her work and the Francisco Umbral Prize for the Best Book Of The Year 2020 for her debut novel The Wonders, a bestseller in Spain that is also published in fifteen languages worldwide.

Jillian Medoff is the author of four novels, including This Could Hurt (HarperCollins, 2018), the national bestseller I Couldn’t Love You More (Grand Central), Good Girls Gone Bad (HarperCollins) and Hunger Point (HarperCollins). Hunger Point, her first novel, became the basis for an original Lifetime movie. In addition to writing fic­tion, Jillian has had a long career in management consulting and is currently a Senior Consultant at the Segal Group, where she advises clients on all aspects of the employee experience.

Carson Mell is an illustrator, an animator, a songwriter, a voice actor, and a writer and producer known for Silicon Valley (HBO), Eastbound and Down (HBO) and, of course, Tarantula (TBS). Oh, he also writes novels and novellas and short stories.

AGNI founder Askold Melnyczuk is the author of New York Times Notable Book What Is Told (Faber & Faber), Ambassador of the Dead (Counterpoint) and American Library Association Editor’s Choice The House of Widows (Graywolf). He has received a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Award in Fiction, the McGinnis Award in Fiction, and several grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Joe Milan Jr. writes fiction and creative nonfiction, and wonderful places like The Rumpus, Broad Street, The Kyoto Journal, and others have published his work. He was the 2019-20 David T.K. Wong Creative Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia, England, and a Barrick Graduate and Black Mountain Institute Ph.D. fellow at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

Robert Tate Miller is a successful screenwriter for NBC, ABC Family, and the Hallmark Channel and author of numerous books, most recently Forever Christmas (Thomas Nelson).

Nathaniel Miller received his B.A. from Amherst College and his M.F.A. in Creative Writing and M.S. in Environmental Studies at the University of Montana. He has received Associated Press awards in Colorado and New Mexico, and his writing has appeared in such periodicals as the Santa Fe Reporter, the Durango Herald, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Missoula Independent and the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Tamara L. Miller holds a Ph.D. in Canadian history and has worked in government policy. She is the President of Ottawa Independent Writers and lives with her family in Ottawa, Canada, but frequently escapes the city to explore the wilder places.

Jenny Minton is a writer, editor, and literary event curator. Prior to writing full time, Minton was a book editor at several Random House imprints: Delacorte/Dell Publishing, Knopf, Broadway Books, and Vintage/Anchor Books. She is the author of a memoir, The Early Birds (Knopf, 2007), and the daughter of Walter Minton, the storied former President and Publisher of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, who first dared to publish Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov in the U.S. in 1958. Minton lives in West Hartford, CT.

Serena Molloy is a secondary school teacher living in Galway, West Ireland. She takes inspiration for her writing from her colourful classroom experience and her own children, who educate her daily. Serena particularly enjoys writing for young adults.

A former writer and producer at NBC News and The Today Show, Montalbano is the author of the middle-grade novel Breakaway. She is a longtime soccer player and coach, and her writing has been featured on the New York Times’s Motherlode blog and elsewhere

Cole Moreton is a writer and broadcaster. His Radio 4 series ‘The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away’ won Audio Moment of the Year at the Arias and Best Writing at the World’s Best Radio awards in New York and was published by HarperCollins in 2017. Cole has made seven highly acclaimed documentaries or series for BBC Radio 4 and was nominated for Best Speech Presenter at the Audio Production Awards in 2018, winning bronze. He appears on ‘Pause For Thought’ with Zoe Ball on the BBC Radio 2 breakfast show. He was named Interviewer of the Year for his work in print with the Mail on Sunday and is the author of five highly acclaimed books.

‍

Jennifer K. Morita is a former reporter for The Sacramento Bee and is now a writer for University Communications at Sacramento State. She is an active member of Mystery Writers of America and current president of her local chapter of Sisters in Crime. THE GHOST OF WAIKIKI is her first novel.

Wanda M. Morris is a corporate attorney for a Fortune 100 company in Atlanta, Georgia. All Her Little Secrets is her first novel.

Kevin Morris’s debut collection of stories White Man’s Problems was praised by Tom Perrotta who called it a “revelatory collection that marks the arrival of a striking new voice in American fiction.” His critically acclaimed first novel, All Joe Knight, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and heralded by USA Today as “[A] two-fisted debut novel . . . Joe is John Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom revised for the Trump era.” The co-producer of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical The Book of Mormon and the producer of the classic documentary film Hands on a Hard Body, Morris has also written for The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and Filmaker.

Amelia Morris is the author of the memoir Bon Appétempt and co-creator of the podcast, Mom Rage. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, McSweeney’s, The Millions, and USA Today. Her debut novel Wildcat is forthcoming from Flatiron Books.

Tara Moss is an internationally bestselling author, human rights activist, documentary and podcast host, and model. Her crime novels have been published in nineteen countries and thirteen languages, and her memoir, The Fictional Woman, was a #1 international bestseller. Her most recent novel The Ghosts of Paris follows the The War Widow, an international bestseller and the first book in the Billie Walker series. Tara is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and has received the Edna Ryan Award for significant contributions to feminist debate and for speaking out on behalf of women and children. In 2017, Tara Moss was recognized as one of the Global Top 50 Diversity Figures in Public Life. Moss lives in Victoria with her family.

Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu was born and raised in Nairobi and moved to the United States to attend college in 1998. She has an MA in Journalism from Columbia University and has worked as a journalist in New York City, Washington D.C. and Boston. She later received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town, graduating with distinction. Her fictional work has been published in Yale Review and Adda, and she has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She currently lives in Cape Town, South Africa. Lucky Girl is her debut novel.

Raised in the Detroit suburbs, Eliza Nellums now lives with her cat outside Washington DC. Her first novel All That's Bright and Gone was named as an Amazon Editors' Pick for December, received a starred review in Publisher's Weekly and was praised in The Washington Post and Real Simple magazine. She is a member of the Metro Wriders, a weekly critique group that meets in Dupont Circle. Her short story “Changelings” was published in the anthology Magical. An amateur botanist and avid gardener, she divides her time between plants, books, and cats.

Nathan Newman is a 25 y/o non-binary writer based in London. They studied creative writing at NYU where they were mentored by Zadie Smith and their short stories have won awards (James Knudsen Prize for fiction) and been published in literary journals and anthologies. Their debut novel is due to be published by Little Brown in the UK, and Viking Penguin in the USA.

Kevin Nguyen is a senior editor at GQ. He’s written features, profiles, and criticism for the New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Millions, among others. His debut novel New Waves was published by One World in spring 2020.

Matthew Neill Null is the author of the novel Honey from the Lion and the award-winning story collection Allegheny Front, both set in his native West Virginia. Allegheny Front was named a "Best Book of Summer 2016"  by Publishers Weekly,  A "Most Anticipated Book of 2016" by  The Millions and The Masters Review, and one of "Ten Titles to Pick Up Now,"  in O, The Oprah Magazine. His novel Honey from the LIon, won the highest praise from National Book Award winner Jaimy Gordon, who wrote that Null is  “bound to become one of the most admired and influential fiction writers of his generation."

Null is the winner of the Joseph Brodsky Rome Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction, and the Michener–Copernicus Society of America Award. His stories have appeared in both The PEN /O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Mystery Stories. Null holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was a fellow at The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.

Mary Otis is the author of the short story collection Yes, Yes, Cherries. Her stories and essays have been published in Best New American Voices, Tin House, Electric Literature, McSweeney’s, Zyzzyva, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books Special Fiction Issue, and in numerous other literary journals. A graduate of Bennington College, she was a Walter Dakin Fellow and has received a Getty Foundation Scholarship. A professor of fiction, she lives in Los Angeles and her novel BURST is forthcoming from Zibby Books.

D. Wystan Owen is the author of the story collection Other People’s Love Affairs, set in the fictional seaside town of Glass on the English coast. Praising the collection, Garth Greenwell wrote, “Owen writes exquisite stories that lodge somewhere in my chest and keep detonating—loudly, devastatingly.” From Yiyun Li: “Writing in the tradition of Chekhov, William Trevor, and Alice Munro, Owen's stories remind us that the thrills and the dangers of living oftentimes go hand-in-hand with the everydayness of life.” And from Pam Houston, “This book is strong medicine for a heart-broken world.” Owen received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is at work on a novel, A Disorderly House.

Janika Oza is an award-winning writer who has received support from The Millay Colony, Tin House Summer and Winter Workshops, VONA/Voices of Our Nation, and the One Story Summer Writers Conference, and her stories and essays have appeared in publications such as The Best Small Fictions 2019 Anthology, Catapult, The Adroit Journal, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Cincinnati Review, Anomaly, and The Malahat Review, among others. Her debut novel, A History ofBurning, is forthcoming in 2023 from Grand Central Publishers (US), McClelland & Stewart (Canada), and Chatto & Windus (UK).

Ann Packer is the acclaimed author of two collections of short fiction, Swim Back to Me and Mendocino and Other Stories, and three bestselling novels, The Children’s Crusade, Songs Without Words, and The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, which received the Kate Chopin Literary Award, among many other prizes and honors. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and in the O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies, and her novels have been published around the world. She and her husband divide their time between New York, the Bay Area, and Maine. Her new novel, SOME BRIGHT NOWHERE, is forthcoming from Harper in 2026

‍Gemma Ruiz Palà (Sabadell, 1975) is a Catalan journalist and a writer. She has worked on the news desk at Televisió de Catalunya since 1996, specialising in cultural affairs. Her debut novel, Argelagues (Proa, 2016) became a literary phenomenon with twelve reprints so far and excellent critical reception. Her second novel, Ca la Wenling, was simultaneously published in Catalan (Proa, 2020) and Spanish (Destino, 2020) and has been translated into English (Heloïse Press) and Italian (Voland).  In 2023 she won the best endowed and the most prestigious prize in Catalan Literature, the Sant Jordi Award, for her third novel Les nostres mares (Proa, 2023).‍

A second-generation Cuban-American, born and raised in the exile community in Miami, Florida, Raul Palma is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Ithaca College. His work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Alimentum, Chattahoochee Review, Greensboro Review, Smokelong Quarterly, and Sonora Review. His short fiction was selected by Aimee Bender for inclusion in Best Small Fictions 2018. His collection of short fiction, IN THESE WORLDS OF ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT was awarded Indiana Review’s 2021 Don Belton Prize, having previously been a finalist for the Review’s Blue Light’s Book Prize, and a semi-finalist for the Iowa Short Fiction Prize.

Andrew Palmer has written about The Bachelor for Slate and The Paris Review Daily. His work has also appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Salon, the San Francisco Chronicle, Indiana Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the Toast, and the New Yorker's daily "Shouts and Murmurs.” A former Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University. His debut novel The Bachelor is forthcoming in 2021 from Hogarth.

Seth Panitch is a playwright, screenwriter, and filmmaker. He is a Professor of Theatre and heads the MFA Acting program at the University of Alabama. Antique is his first book.

Nishita Parekh, a software programmer, lives in Texas with her husband and son.

Janice Pariat is theauthor of the novel Seahorse, the bestselling novella The Nine-Chambered Heart, and the short story collection Boats on Land. She was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013. Her art reviews, book reviews, fiction, and poetry has featured in a wide selection of magazines and newspapers across India. In 2014, she was the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Kent, UK, and most recently, in 2019, a writer-in-residence at the Toji Cultural Foundation, 21 South Korea. She teaches creative writing and the history of art at Ashoka University and lives in New Delhi, India, with a cat of many names.

‍

Patricia Park is the author of the debut novel Re Jane, a contemporary Korean-American retelling of Jane Eyre (Pamela Dorman Books/Penguin-Viking). Her essays have been published in the New York Times, the Guardian, and Slice Magazine, among others.