Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis is curator of Asian Pacific American Studies at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, where he oversees the Smithsonian Literature + Museum Initiative, devoted to rethinking collective responsibility for what we write and read, and why. The lead organizer for the Asian American Literature Festival, co-hosted by the Smithsonian, Library of Congress, and Poetry Foundation, he is also a co-founder of the pop-up Center for Refugee Poetics and co-founding director of the arts antiprofit The Asian American Literary Review. 

Chika Unigwe is the author of Better Never than Late (Cassava Republic, 2020) and Night Dancer, On Black Sisters’ Street (Random House, 2012). Her work has been translated into several languages. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Guardian, the New York Times, Al Jazeera, Guernica, Kenyon Review, AGNI, and Mslexia. Born in Enugu, Nigeria, she has taught at Brown University and Emory University and is currently an assistant professor of writing at Georgia College and State University and the creative director of the Awele Creative Trust. Her next novel is forthcoming in 2023.

Deepa Varadarajan is a legal academic and a graduate of Yale Law School. Her debut novel, Late Bloomers, will be published by Random House in 2023. Raised in Texas, she now lives in Atlanta with her husband and two children.

Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh, an accomplished continent-hopper and culture-straddler, grew up in the Shah’s Iran, attended university in the post-Watergate United States, returned to Iran to witness the Islamic Revolution, and later spent large portions of her life in Spain. Paradoxically, her permanent home is a six-acre farm she owns in Woodstock, Georgia. A lifelong teacher, she holds a BA in philosophy from Stanford University and an MFA in creative writing from Boston University. Her work has appeared in Fiction International, Glassworks Magazine, Narrative Northeast, Mobius, Quiddity, and elsewhere.

E. M. Tran is a Vietnamese American writer. Her debut novel, Daughters of the New Year, is forthcoming this fall from Hanover Square Press. Her stories, essays, and reviews can be found in such places as Prairie Schooner, Joyland Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Thrillist, and Harvard Review Online. She completed her MFA at University of Mississippi and a PhD in creative writing at Ohio University. She was born, raised, and currently lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Samuel Kọ́láwọlé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, Gulf Coast, Washington Square Review, Consequence, Harvard Review, and The Hopkins Review. Kọ́láwọlé studied at the University of Ibadan and holds an MA in creative writing from Rhodes University, South Africa. A graduate of the MFA program in writing and publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts, he returned to VCFA to join the MFA in writing faculty. He is currently working toward his PhD at Georgia State University and has a novel forthcoming from Amistad/Harper Collins.