Lis Wiehl is a former legal analyst for Fox News. She is also the former co-host of WOR radio's “WOR Tonight with Joe Concha and Lis Wiehl,” has served as legal analyst and reporter for NBC News and NPR’s All Things Considered and as a federal prosecutor in the United States Attorney’s office, and was a tenured professor of law at the University of Washington. Today, she appears frequently on CNN as a legal analyst.Lis Wiehl is considered one of the nation’s most prominent trial lawyers and highly regarded commentators. She earned her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School and her Master of Arts in Literature from the University of Queensland.Wiehl is the author of 19 books including Hunting The Unabomber, Hunting Charles Manson, The 51% Minority, which won the 2008 award for Books for a Better Life in the motivational category, and Winning Every Time.

Mary Ann Winkowski, paranormal investigator and consultant to CBS’s Ghost Whisperer, is author of When Ghosts Speak (Grand Central) and co-author, with Maureen Foley, of The Book of Illumination and The Ice Cradle (Three Rivers/Crown), the first two titles in the Ghost Files mystery series.

Jim Worrad spent ten years as a terrible rock and roller before settling into life in the midlands. He's always wanted to write fantasy books. He lives in Leicester with his cat and boyfriend.

Jenny Xie is a writer and editor based in Oakland, California. Originally from Shanghai, she graduated from UC Berkeley and earned her MFA at Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in AGNI, Ninth Letter, Joyland, Adroit Journal, Narrative, The Offing, and the Best of the Net Anthology, among other publications, and she is the recipient of a Bread Loaf scholarship and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Kundiman, Aspen Words, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her debut novel Holding Pattern is forthcoming from Riverhead in 2023.

Hester Young has an MFA from the University of Hawaii and is the author of The Gates of Evangeline, The Shimmering Road, and The Burning Island (Putnam).

Heather is the author of two novels. Her debut, The Lost Girls, won the Strand Award for Best First Novel and was nominated for an Edgar Award. The Distant Dead was published on June 9, 2020, and was named one of the Best Books of Summer by PeopleMagazine, Parade, and CrimeReads. A former antitrust and intellectual property litigator, she traded the legal world for the literary one and earned her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2011. She lives in Mill Valley, California.

Emma Young is an award-winning science and health journalist and author. She has worked on titles including the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald and the New Scientist, for which she worked as a senior online reporter in London and Australasian Editor in Sydney. Now employed by the British Psychological Society as a Staff Writer, she is also a freelance journalist and author. A regular contributor to Mosaic and the New Scientist, her work is carried widely by other media outlets, including BBC and the Atlantic.

As E.L. Young, she is also the author of a series of science-based thrillers for children. Her awards include Feature of the Year, awarded by UK Medical Journalist’s Association, 2017, Australian Health Journalist of the Year (2010), Writer of the Year at the Australian magazine industry Bell Awards, and a European Online Journalism award for best news story.

Jung Yun’s work has appeared in Tin House (the “Emerging Voices” issue); The Best of Tin House: Stories; and The Massachusetts Review. She has an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Yun received an honorable mention for the Pushcart Prize and was awarded an Artist’s Fellowship in fiction from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her debut novel, Shelter, was published in 2016 by Picador.

Yara Zgheib is the author of the critically acclaimed novel No Land to Light On (Atria, 2022), which has been longlisted for the 2023 Dylan Thomas Prize and selected as an Indie Book Read. Lauded as a “masterful story of tragedy and redemption” written in “soul-searing prose,” the novel was chosen by The Washington Post, The L.A. Times, and Newsweek as one of the top books of 2022. From Alki Joshi, bestselling author of The Henna Artist, “Zgheib writes so lyrically about rootlessness, separation and a fierce longing for home.” 

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Yara’s debut novel, The Girls at 17 Swann Street (St. Martin’s Press, 2019), was a People Pick for Best New Books, which hailed it as “an absorbing page-turner,” as well as a Barnes and Noble pick for Best Books of 2019, and a BookMovement Group Read. Her new novel, Why Paris, and her essay collection An Absolute Necessity are forthcoming from Harper Via.  

Zgheib is a Fulbright scholar and holds a PhD in International Affairs in Diplomacy. She publishes a weekly essay on “The non-Utilitarian,” and her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, Glimmer Train, Lithub, Holiday, The European, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been adapted for two musical albums, Dust and Ions (2020) and City Rhapsodies (2022)

Writer and social commentator, Zhang lives in Beijing and focuses on human stories set in China. She is a regular speaker on BBC Radio and NPR, and is the author of the memoir SOCIALISM IS GREAT!

Angel Di Zhang was born in China and raised in China, England, Canada, and the USA. She was educated in the joint BA-MIA program at Columbia University and was a Pitch Wars class of 2019 mentee. She is an internationally exhibited fine-art photographer. Her first novel is The Light of Eternal Spring, excerpts of which have been awarded ten writing grants, including one from the Canada Council for the Arts. Angel lives in a secret garden on a cloud that floats above Toronto.