​​Danny Abel is a documentary director and editor based in Echo Park, Los Angeles. His most recent film, The King of North Sudan, was produced by Rough House Pictures (Danny McBride, David Gordon Green, Jody Hill, Adam Bhala Lough) and was distributed in over a dozen countries. His recent editing work includes blur: To The End and Liam Gallagher: Knebworth ’22, which premiered in cinemas worldwide and on Sky Arts and Paramount+, respectively. His current film, Made for You, explores romantic relationships between humans and their AI companions.

goodmotorist.com
Instagram @deerayabel

Katya Apekina is a novelist, screenwriter and translator. Her debut novel,The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, was named a Best Book of 2018 by Kirkus, BuzzFeed, LitHub, and others and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her second novel, Mother Doll, was named a Best Book of 2024 by Vogue. She translated poetry and prose for Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky (FSG, 2008), shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award. Born in Moscow, she grew up in Boston, and currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, daughter, and dog.

apekina.com
Instagram @katyaapekina

Neelanjana Banerjee’s writing has appeared in Alta Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, Teen Vogue, the Texas Observer, and many other places. She is the Managing Editor of Kaya Press, where she just launched Kulhar Books—an imprint dedicated to South Asian diasporic literature. She teaches Asian American Literature and Creative Writing at UCLA and Loyola Marymount University, and in the Literary Editing and Publishing Program at the University of Southern California.

Instagram @neelanjanab

Sarah Anjum Bari is a Bangladeshi writer, editor, and educator in her final year of the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing MFA Program, where she has been teaching literary publishing and creative writing. She was Books & Literary Editor of The Daily Star newspaper. Sarah’s writing spans memoir, narrative journalism, and literary and cultural criticism. Her essay, “Strains,” was shortlisted for the UK's Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2024.

Bluesky @wordsinteal.bsky.social
Instagram @wordsinteal

Nicholas Bredie is the author of the novel Not Constantinople (Dzanc) and with Joanna Howard the translator of Frederic Boyer's Vaches, published as Cows (Noemi Press). His work has been featured in the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Guernica, the Believer, and Public Books, among other publications. He is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Utah Valley University.

Susannah Breslin is the author of Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment.

susannahbreslin.com

Alex Brown is a queer Black librarian, local historian, writer, and author. They are an Ignyte Award-winning and Hugo Award-nominated writer and critic who covers speculative fiction and young adult literature for Reactor magazine, Locus Magazine, NPR Books, Reader’s Digest, and elsewhere. They also write on topics such as queerness, Black history, librarianship, and pop culture.

bookjockeyalex.com
Bluesky @bookjockeyalex.bsky.social
Instagram @bookjockeyalex

Leon Hendrix III is a writer, director, and producer who has developed TV projects, written films, and worked in TV writers’ rooms for Netflix, Warner Brothers, Apple, Paramount, Universal, Amazon, HBO, and Lionsgate for nearly a decade. Recently, he was a Producer on Kurt Sutter’s Netflix western series The Abandons, and he’s currently in post-production on his first feature film as a director. Whenever he’s not writing TV and film, he teaches all things film and TV for programs such as Columbia University Film, Hampton University, Northwestern National High School Institute, and Ghetto Film School and Inner City Arts; travels the world; hikes; hunts; and explores the outdoors.

Cassandra Lane is winner of the 2020 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and author of We Are Bridges, an NPR Books pick. Her stories have appeared in the New York Times’s “Conception” series, the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, LitHub, the Millions, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and various anthologies, including Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California. A Louisiana native and former newspaper reporter, she is currently editor in chief of L.A. Parent magazine and lives in Los Angeles with her family.

cassandralane.net
Instagram @cassandra.lane71

Sam Macon is a filmmaker, writer, and photographer from Milwaukee, Wis., but he now lives in Los Angeles, Calif., for better or worse. Mostly better. He is the co-director of the documentary film Sign Painters and co-author of the companion book published by Princeton Architectural Press. In addition to directing countless commercials, music videos, and short films, he makes bootleg hats with book titles on them and tries to get better at tennis while raising a family.

sammacon.com
Instagram @sam_macon

Geoff Manaugh is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer, author of the New York Times-bestselling book A Burglar's Guide to the City, and co-author, with Nicola Twilley, of Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine, a Time magazine, NPR, Guardian, and Financial Times book of the year. Manaugh regularly writes for venues such as the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, MIT Technology Review, the New Yorker, and many others. His short story “Ernest” was adapted by Netflix into a feature film called We Have a Ghost. He is currently working on a new book, about archaeology in an age of electromagnetic sensing.

bldgblog.com

Sarah McCarry is a writer. Her newest novel, Possession Island, is forthcoming in 2026.

sarahmccarry.net
Bluesky @sarahmccarry.bsky.social
Instagram @sarahmccarry

Tomi Onabanjo is a doctoral candidate in the Dept. of History at New York University (NYU). He is also a Primary Editor at the Journal of the History of Ideas (JHI) Blog, a Burbank-Cooper Research Fellow, and a former National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Emerging Critic. His writing has appeared in The European Review of Books, the Chicago Review of Books, and Electric Literature.

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. Deesha’s debut novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, is forthcoming from Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, in September 2026.

deeshaphilyaw.com

Lilliam Rivera is an award-winning author of nine works of fiction: a dark thriller, four young adult novels, three middle-grade books, and a graphic novel for DC Comics. Her books have been awarded a Pura Belpré Honor, been featured on NPR, the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and multiple “best of” lists. Her latest novel is Tiny Threads by Del Rey Books. A Bronx, NY, native, Lilliam currently lives in Los Angeles.

lilliamrivera.com

Natalie Shapero is the author, most recently, of the poetry collection Stay Dead, long-listed for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. She lives in LA and teaches writing at UC Irvine.

natalieshapero.com
Instagram @ok.natalie.shapero

Spencer Williams is the author of TRANZ (Four Way Books, 2024) and the forthcoming poetry collection Dirt Talk (Four Way Books, 2027). She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in poetics at SUNY, Buffalo.