Steve Cushman is the author of three novels, Portisville, which won the 2004 Novello Literary Award, Heart With Joy, and Hopscotch. He has also published a short story collection and two poetry chapbooks. Cushman’s first full-length poetry collection, How Birds Fly, won the 2018 Lena Shull Book Award and his latest collection, The Last Time, was published in 2023. He lives in Greensboro with his family.
Tyree Daye was raised in Youngsville. He is the author of the poetry collections a little bump in the earth (forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press, 2024), Cardinal (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), and River Hymns (American Poetry Review, 2017), winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. A Cave Canem fellow and a Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellow, Daye is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award, a Kate Tufts Award finalist, and a 2021 Paterson Prize finalist. He was the 2019 Diana and Simon Raab Writer-In-Residence at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and received an Amy Clampitt Residency. Daye is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In January 2023, Daye served as Guest Editor of the Poem-a-Day series.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest is a globetrotting author from the Texas/Mexico borderlands. Her five award-winning books include the memoirs: All the Agents and Saints; Mexican Enough; Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana; and the best-selling guidebook 100 Places Every Woman Should Go. Beacon Press will publish her latest book, Art Above Everything: Global Women with a Singular Vision, in 2026. She has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, Travel + Leisure, and Oxford American. Distinctions include a Henry Luce Scholarship to China, a Margolis Award for Social Justice Reporting, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton, and a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Gold Prize. Currently the Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she has performed on five continents in capacities ranging from a Moth storyteller to a literary ambassador for the US State Department. Visit her website at www.StephanieElizondoGriest.com.
Halle Hill is the author of Good Women (Hub City Press), which was named a 2023 Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, O Magazine, Electric Literature, Book Riot, and Southwest Review. She is the winner of the 2020 Crystal Wilkinson Creative Writing Prize, the 2020 Oxford American Debut Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the 2021 ASME Award for Fiction. Her short stories have been translated into French and published in Joyland, New Limestone Review, Ursa Short Fiction, and the Oxford American, among others. A born and raised East Tennessean, she currently lives, works, and teaches in North Carolina.
Mimi Herman is the author of The Kudzu Queen, A Field Guide to Human Emotions and Logophilia. The Kudzu Queen was selected by the NC Center for the Book for the 2023 Library of Congress “Great Reads from Great Places” and longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her writing has appeared in LitHub, Michigan Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Crab Orchard Review, and many other journals. She has read at festivals, bookstores, and other venues across the country, including Symphony Space, The Southern Festival of Books, and NC Memorial Auditorium. Mimi is a member of the AWP Board of Directors, a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, a Warren Wilson MFA alumna, and a Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow. She co-directs Writeaways writing workshops with John Yewell in France, Italy, Ireland, and New Mexico. For more information visit www.mimiherman.com and www.writeaways.com.
Lisa Williams Kline is the author of Ladies’ Day (CamCat Books), Between the Sky and the Sea (Dragonblade), The Ruby Mirror (The Bridge), and ten novels and a novella for young readers. Her work has appeared in Literary Mama, Skirt, Sasee, Carolina Woman, moonShine review, The Press 53 Awards Anthology, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, and Idol Talk, among others. She attended Duke University, and received her MFA from Queens. She lives with her veterinarian husband, a cat who can open doors, and a sweet chihuahua who has played Bruiser Woods in Legally Blonde: The Musical. She treasures frequent visits with her grown daughters and their husbands. Visit her at www.lisawilliamskline.com.
Kimmery Martin is an emergency medicine doctor whose works of medical fiction have been praised by The Harvard Crimson, People, Newsweek and The New York Times. She completed her medical training at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and now lives in Charlotte, where she honors her passion for public libraries by serving on the Board of Trustees of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library. Kimmery also teaches Narrative Medicine at the local medical school and authors a column on Substack covering medical disinformation, parenting, humor, and social topics. She is a frequent speaker at libraries, conferences, medical schools, and bookstores around the United States. Her most recent novel, Doctors and Friends, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist.
Jill McCorkle has the distinction of having published her first two novels on the same day in 1984. Of these novels, the New York Times Book Review said: “one suspects the author of The Cheer Leader is a born novelist. With July 7th, she is also a full grown one.” Since then she has published five other novels—most recently Hieroglyphics (2020 Algonquin Books)—and five collections of short stories, including 2024’s Old Crimes. Five of her books have been named New York Times notable books and four of her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories. An essay, “Cuss Time,” originally published in The American Scholar, was selected for Best American Essays. McCorkle has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, the North Carolina Award for Literature, and the Thomas Wolfe Prize; in 2018 she was inducted into the NC Literary Hall of Fame. McCorkle has taught at Harvard, Brandeis, NC State, and the Bennington Writing Seminars.
Lex Orgera writes poetry, essays, and a newsletter called Yard Dragon exploring the intersections of nature, culture, and spirit. Orgera’s books include poetry collections How Like Foreign Objects and Dust Jacket, and a memoir-in-fragments, Head Case: My Father, Alzheimer’s & Other Brainstorms. A new book of poems, Agatha, is forthcoming from Jackleg Press in 2025. Orgera has run a children’s book press, edited books of all stripes, taught high school / college writing and community workshops, and is the inaugural executive director of Greensboro Bound Literary Festival.
When not researching methods of murder, Victoria Wlosok is a full-time student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who drinks way too many cups of coffee. How to Find a Missing Girl, published last fall by Little, Brown, is her debut novel.
Hananah Zaheer is the author of Lovebirds (Bull City Press, 2021). Her work appears in places such as Best of Net, Best Small Fictions, The Cut, Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Alaska Quarterly Review where she received a Best American Fiction Notable mention, and Michigan Quarterly Review, where she won the Lawrence Foundation prize for fiction. She is a Fiction Editor for Los Angeles Review, senior editor for the South Asian Avant Garde (SAAG): a dissident literary anthology and the founder of Dubai Literary Salon, a prose-reading series.