A. Van Jordan

A. Van Jordan is the author of five collections of poetry: Rise, which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award (Tia Chucha Press, 2001); M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, (2005), which was listed as one the Best Books of 2005 by The London Times; Quantum Lyrics, (2007); and The Cineaste, (2013), W.W. Norton & Co. Jordan has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. He is also a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007), a United States Artists Fellowship (2009), and a Lannan Literary Award in Poetry (2015). His latest collection, When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again, winner of the 2024 Hurston Wright Legacy Award, and a finalist for the 2024 Rilke Prize, was released in 2023 (W.W. Norton & Co). Among his many academic appointments, he most recently served as the Robert Hayden Collegiate Professor of English Literature at The University of Michigan, before coming to Stanford University, where he currently holds the Humanities and Sciences Chair in English Literature, and where he also serves as part of the inaugural faculty in the Department of African & African American Studies.

Bora Lee Reed

Bora Lee Reed was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Southern California. She holds an MA in Theology from the Graduate Theological Union and an MFA from Warren Wilson. In 2023, she was selected for the LitUp Fellowship from Reese’s Book Club. Her debut novel, Song for Another Home, was published in July of this year.

Vanessa Hua

Vanessa Hua is the author of the Coyoteland, and the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, as well as the story collection Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors’ Pick. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a California Arts Council Fellowship, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, as well as honors from the de Groot Foundation, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Asian American Journalists Association. Previously, she was an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program, Sewanee Writers Conference, and elsewhere. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. Her debut work of narrative nonfiction, Uprooted, is forthcoming.