Fall 2018

Andres Gonzalez is a photographer, editor, and educator based in Vallejo, California. He is a Fulbright Fellow and the recipient of a Light Work artist residency. He is also a contributor to publications such as the New Yorker, Smithsonian, and the New York Times. His most recent work, and forthcoming book, American Origami (Fw:Books, 2019), was shortlisted for the MACK Books First Book Award in 2018.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and visual artist. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the New Yorker, Tin House, American Poetry Review, BAX 2016: Best American Experimental Writing, Lit Hub, Guernica, and many others. Her most recent collection of poetry is Lighting the Shadow (Four Way Books, 2015).

Vu Tran’s first novel, Dragonfish (Norton, 2016), was a NY Times Notable Book and listed as a San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of the Year. He is the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Fellowship, and his short fiction has appeared in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007, The Best American Mystery Stories 2009, and other publications. He is currently a criticism columnist for VQR and an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Arts at the University of Chicago.

Justine van der Leun is the author of several books, including We Are Not Such Things (Random House, 2016), a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Spectator Book of the Year. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, the Guardian, and Oprah Magazine. She is an International Women’s Media Foundation reporting fellow and a reporter with the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

Kiese Laymon is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi and a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Nonfiction at the University of Iowa. Laymon is the author of the novel Long Division (Agate Bolden, 2013); a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (Agate Bolden, 2013); and Heavy: An American Memoir (Scribner, 2018), from which “Quick Feet” is adapted.