Laurie Lico Albanese is the author of two novels and a memoir: Stolen Beauty, Blue Suburbia, and Lynelle by the Sea, and the co-author of the novel The Miracles of Prato. Her books have been translated into Spanish, French, German and Portuguese. Lico Albanese earned her MFA from Stonecoast at the Univesrity of Southern Maine, where she will be leading workshops this summer. She's taught creative and formal writing to all ages and has worked in book publishing and journalism. Her travel and general-interest stories have appeared in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere.

Maria E. Andreu is a writer and speaker whose work has appeared in Newsweek, the Washington Post, NJ.com, and the Newark Star Ledger. Her debut young adult novel, The Secret Side of Empty is a Junior Library Guild Selection, a National Indie Excellence Book Award winner, an International Latino Book Awards Finalist and has been called “captivating” by School Library Journal. 

Christina Baker Kline is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller A Piece of the World (2017), about the relationship between the artist Andrew Wyeth and the subject of his best-known painting, "Christina’s World." Kline has written six other novels — Orphan Train, Orphan Train Girl, The Way Life Should Be, Bird in Hand, Desire Lines, and Sweet Water — and written or edited five works of nonfiction. Her 2013 novel Orphan Train spent more than two years on the NYT bestseller list, including five weeks at #1, and was published in 40 countries. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, and Psychology Today, among other places. She lives in Montclair NJ and on the coast of Maine.

Marina Budhos is an author of award-winning fiction and nonfiction. Her most recent YA novel, Watched, takes on surveillance of Muslims in a post 9/11 world, and received a Walter Dean Myers Award Honor. This March she publishes Eyes of the World: Robert Capa & Gerda Taro & The Invention of Modern Photojournalism, co-authored with her husband Marc Aronson. Their prior book Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom & Science, was an LA Times Book Award Finalist. Budhos is also the author of the novels Tell Us We're Home, Ask Me No Questions, The Professor of Light and House of Waiting.  She has been a Fulbright Scholar to India, received a Rona Jaffe Award for Women Writers, and fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts.  Budhos is a professor of English at William Paterson University and lives in Maplewood, New Jersey.

Michelle Cameron’s debut novel, The Fruit of Her Hands: the story of Shira of Ashkenaz relates the life of her 13th Century ancestor, Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg. Publisher’s Weekly praised the novel’s “powerful immediacy” and Library Journal its “rich details.” Her full-length novel in verse, In the Shadow of the Globe, was named the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s 2003-4 Winter Book Selection. Her forthcoming historical novel, Beyond the Ghetto Gates, will be published by SheWrites Press in Spring 2020. She joined The Writers Circle in 2011 and is now a co-director, teaching children, teens, and aspiring novelists. Learn more at https://michelle-cameron.com/.

Jen Conley’s short stories have been published in Beat to a Pulp, Thuglit, and many others. Her short story collection, Cannibals: Stories from the Edge of the Pine Barrens, was nominated for an Anthony Award in 2017.  Her latest, Seven Ways To Get Rid Of Harry, a YA novel about a 13-year-old boy who comes up with seven ways to get rid of his mom's cruel boyfriend, will be out this June from Down and Out Books. She lives in Brick, New Jersey.

Born in postwar Germany into a family of Russian refugees, Marina Antropow Cramer has been a waitress, fabric store manager, traveling saleswoman, telephone fundraiser, used book dealer, business owner, and bookseller. She holds a BA in English from Upsala College. Her work has appeared in Blackbird, Istanbul Literary Review, and Wilderness House Literary Review. She owned and operated The Cup and Chaucer Bookstore in Montclair, NJ, for sixteen years, then worked for Watchung Booksellers for the next twelve. She left bookselling in 2014 to focus on writing full-time, and now lives in New York's Hudson Valley. Roads is her first novel.  

Alice Elliott Dark is the author of three books of fiction, Think of England, In the Gloaming, and Naked to the Waist. She teaches in the MFA program at Rutgers University-Newark.

Fiona Davis is the nationally bestselling author of The Masterpiece, The Address, and The Dollhouse. She began her career in New York City as an actress, working on Broadway, off-Broadway, and in regional theater. After getting a master's degree at Columbia Journalism School, she fell in love with writing, leapfrogging from editor to freelance journalist before finally settling down as an author of historical fiction. Fiona is a graduate of the College of William & Mary and is based in New York City. For more info, visit www.fionadavis.net.

Sergio De La Pava is the author of three novels: A Naked Singularity, Personae, and Lost Empress. He is also Legal Director at New York County Defender Services in Manhattan where he represents indigent people accused of crimes and advocates for large-scale criminal justice reform.

David Ebershoff ’s novels include The Danish Girl, which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander, and the #1 bestseller The 19th Wife, which was adapted into a television movie that has aired around the world. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages to critical acclaim. A former Vice President and Executive Editor at Random House, he’s edited more than twenty New York Times bestsellers, three Pulitzer Prize winners, a winner of the National Book Award, and an Oprah Book Club selection. He lives in New York City.

Pamela Erens is the author of the novels The Virgins, The Understory, and, most recently, Eleven Hours, which was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The New Yorker, Kirkus, and Literary Hub. She has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Erens’s essays and criticism have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Slate, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Reader's Digest named her one of “23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read by Now.”

Nathan Englander is the author of the story collections For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, an international best seller, and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, and the novels The Ministry of Special Cases and Dinner at the Center of the Earth.  He was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. He is Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughter. His newest novel, kaddish.com will be available March 2019.

David Galef has published over a dozen books in two dozen directions. A humor columnist for Inside Higher Ed, with a readership of over a quarter million, he’s also written humor for places ranging from the old British Punch and The Village Voice to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Satirist. His day job is professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Montclair State University.

Ann Goldstein is a former editor at The New Yorker. She has translated works by, among others, Primo Levi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Elena Ferrante, Italo Calvino, and Alessandro Baricco, and is the editor of the Complete Works of Primo Levi in English. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and awards from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Lisa Gornick is the author of Louisa Meets Bear, Tinderbox, A Private Sorcery, and The Peacock Feast. Her stories and essays have appeared widely, including in The New York Times, Prairie Schooner, Real Simple, Salon, Slate, and The Sun. She holds a BA from Princeton and a PhD in clinical psychology from Yale, and is on the faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. A long-time New Yorker, she lives in Manhattan with her family.

Sam Graham-Felsen is the author of Green, which received the American Library Association’s Alex Award, was a New York Times Editor’s Pick, and was one of the New Yorker’s “Books We Loved in 2018.” His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, the Nation, and elsewhere. He was the chief blogger on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Garth Risk Hallberg's first novel, City on Fire, was a New York Times and international bestseller, has been translated into 17 languages, and was named one of the best books of 2015 by The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Vogue. He is also the author of a novella, A Field Guide to the North American Family. His short stories have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Glimmer Train, and Best New American Voices 2008, and he has written critical essays for The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, The Millions, and Slate.

John Keene’s recent books include the story collection Counternarratives (New Directions, 2015), and several books of poetry. He also has translated the Brazilian author Hilda Hilst’s novel Letters from a Seducer (Nightboat Books, 2014). His recent honors include an American Book Award, a Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction, as well as a 2018 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He chairs the department of African American and African Studies, and teaches English and creative writing at Rutgers University-Newark.

Richard Klin's novel, Petroleum Transfer Engineer (Underground Voices), is set at the Jersey shore, circa 1983. The author of two non-fiction books, his work has been featured on Public Radio International's Studio 360 and has appeared in the Atlantic, the Brooklyn Rail, the Forward, Akashic Books' "Thursdaze' series, Flyover Country Review, and  many others. www.richardklin.com

Judith Lindbergh’s debut novel, The Thrall’s Tale, about women in Viking Age Greenland, was a Booksense (IndieBound) Pick, a Borders Original Voices Selection and praised by Pulitzer Prize winners Geraldine Brooks and Robert Olen Butler. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Archaeology Magazine, Scandinavian Review, The World & I, the literary journal Other Voices, and most recently in UP HERE: The North at the Center of the World published by University of Washington Press. In January 2010, Judith founded The Writers Circle, offering creative writing workshops for children and adults. Learn more at www.judithlindbergh.com.

Sam Lipsyte was born in 1968. He is the author of the story collections Venus Drive (named one of the top twenty-five books of its year by the Voice Literary Supplement) and The Fun Parts and four novels: The Ask, The Subject Steve, Hark, and Home Land, which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the first annual Believer Book Award. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.

Benilde Little is the bestselling author of the novels Good Hair, The Itch, Acting Out, Who Does She Think She Is? and a memoir Welcome to My Breakdown. A former reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Star Ledger and People magazine and a senior editor at Essence, she has written for the New York Times, and been featured there and also in the Washington Post, Essence, Jet, and People Magazine among others. She has been a creative writing professor at Ramapo College, The City College of New York and currently teaches writing at The Writers Circle.

Wayétu Moore is the founder of One Moore Book and is a graduate of Howard University, Columbia University, and the University of Southern California. She teaches at the City University of New York’s John Jay College and lives in Brooklyn. www.wayetu.com

Estep Nagy’s debut novel, We Shall Not All Sleep, was published worldwide in 2017 by Bloomsbury. It was an ABA Indies Introduce selection and was featured in the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle, Marie Claire, and many other outlets. His plays have been performed on three continents, and he is also the writer and director of The Broken Giant, an independent feature film in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He lives in Montclair.

Sigrid Nunez has published seven novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, Salvation City, and, most recently, The Friend. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Among the journals to which she has contributed are The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, Threepenny Review, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, Tin House, The Believer, and newyorker.com. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, including four Pushcart Prize volumes and four anthologies of Asian American literature.

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. Her most recent novel is Hazards of Time Travel. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Julie Orringer is the author of the novel The Invisible Bridge and the award-winning short-story collection How to Breathe Underwater, which was a New York Times Notable Book. She is the winner of the  Paris Review‘s Plimpton Prize for Fiction and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Stanford University, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in Brooklyn.

International bestselling author Brad Parks is the only writer to have won the Shamus, Nero, and Lefty Awards, three of American crime fiction's most prestigious prizes. His novels have been translated into a dozen languages and have won critical acclaim across the globe, including stars from every major pre-publication review outlet. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Parks is a former journalist with the Washington Post and the (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger. He is now a full-time novelist living in Virginia with his wife and two school-aged children. For more, visit www.BradParksBooks.com.

David Pepper is serving his second term as the Chair of the Ohio Democratic Party. Born and raised in Cincinnati, David served on Cincinnati City Council from 2001-2005, followed by a term on the Hamilton County Commission from 2006-2010.  David earned his B.A. and J.D. from Yale. David is also the author of The People’s House, a political thriller described by Politico as "the novel that predicted the Russia scandal," and its sequel, The Wingman. Between 1993-1996, David worked extensively in St. Petersburg, Russia, primarily with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he engaged directly with numerous Russian leaders, including then Vice Mayor Vladimir Putin.

Ruvanee Pietersz Vilhauer spent her early years in Sri Lanka and lived in India, Thailand, Canada and Australia before settling in the United States. Her short fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including the Kenyon Review, the Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, the Summerset Review, Quiddity, Michigan Quarterly Review, American Literary Review, Saranac Review, and the Examined Life. She won the Iowa Short Fiction Award in 2018 and the Commonwealth Short Story Competition in 2004. Her novel, The Mask Collectors, is forthcoming in June 2019. She is a clinical associate professor of psychology at New York University.

Thomas Pluck has slung hash, worked on the docks, trained in martial arts in Japan, and even swept the Guggenheim museum (but not as part of a clever heist). He is the author of the Jay Desmarteaux crime thriller Bad Boy Boogie, which was nominated for an Anthony award, and its sequel Riff Raff, to be released in October 2019 from Down & Out Books. Library Journal has called his stories "stunning”, and Joyce Carol Oates calls him “a lovely kitty man.” His latest book is the story collection Life During Wartime, which includes "Deadbeat," chosen for a Distinguished Mystery Story of 2017 by Louise Penny. 

Emma Ramadan is a literary translator based in Providence, Rhode Island, where she co-owns Riffraff bookstore and bar. She is the recipient of the 2018 Albertine Prize, a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, an NEA Translation Fellowship, and a Fulbright fellowship for her work. Her translations include Marcus Malte’s The Boy, Brice Matthieussent's Revenge of the Translator, Anne Garréta's Sphinx and Not One Day, Ahmed Bouanani's The Shutters, and Virginie Despentes's Pretty Things, among others.

Irina Reyn is the author of three novels, What Happened to Anna K., The Imperial Wife, and the recently released Mother Country. She teaches creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

Wallace Stroby is an award-winning journalist, and the author of eight novels, four of which feature professional thief Crissa Stone, whom Kirkus Reviews named “Crime fiction’s best bad girl ever.” His most recent novel, Some Die Nameless, was published by Mulholland Books / Little, Brown & Co. in 2018. A Long Branch native, for 13 years he was an editor at the Newark Star-Ledger.

Matthew Thomas's New York Times bestselling novel, We Are Not Ourselves, was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the John Gardener Fiction Book Award; long listed for the International Dublin Literary Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Folio Prize; named a Notable Book of the year by the New York Times; named as one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple, and others; and named one of Janet Maslin's 10 favorite books of the year in the New York Times. We Are Not Ourselves is being translated into 18 languages.  

Dave White is the Shamus Award Nominated author of the Jackson Donne series and thriller WITNESS TO DEATH, available from Polis Books. He has been nominated for multiple awards for both his novels and short stories. In his spare time, he's an educator. 

Steph Auteri is a writer and editor who has written about women's health and sexuality for the Atlantic, VICE, Pacific Standard, the Washington Post, Rewire.News, and other publications. Her more literary work has appeared in Narratively, The Rumpus, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Steph is the author of A Dirty Word (Cleis Press, October 2018), a reported memoir about the ways in which our culture has co-opted female sexuality. She lives in Verona, NJ with her husband and daughter.

Andrew Bayroff is a seasoned stand up comic with over 15 years experience as a comic, producer, and author. Performing for nearly 6 years in Los Angeles, including The Comedy Store, Laugh Factory, and The Ice House, with three years training at The Groundlings, Andrew returned to NYC. Andrew has performed and produced in The Edinburgh Fringe festival for two years, and is the author of “Check, Please!” A comical book about dating, relationships, and the horrible things we say to each other.” www.CheckPleaseBook.com. It’s a great book for the holidays and Valentine’s Day. You can learn and read more about Andrew here, www.andrewstandingup.com

Karen Branan is a veteran journalist whose work has appeared in Life, The Guardian, Ms., Mother Jones, Christian Science Monitor, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Woman's Day, Scholastic Teacher, Ladies Home Journal and the New York Times. Her work as a documentary filmmaker and researcher has been broadcast on PBS, CBS, CBC, CNN, and BBC. The Family Tree was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. She currently works with Coming to the Table and local community remembrance projects to investigate, educate about, and memorialize lynchings as well as to create restorative justice projects. 

Corinne Caputo is a comedian, writer, and actor. Her first book, a self -help parody titled How To Success: A Writer’s Guide To Fame and Fortune was published in March of 2017 by Chronicle Books to rave reviews (from her mother, other people have described it as “a filler for my Amazon order”). She currently hosts a monthly live game show called Astronaut Training where real scientists and real comedians compete for a spot to go to Mars. Corinne has also written scripted content for outlets like MTV and Refinery29. 

Selena Coppock is a standup comedian, book author, and storyteller based in NYC.  She is the creator of popular New York Times Wedding section parody Twitter and Instagram account, @NYTVows.  She recently released her debut standup album, Seen Better Days (Little Lamb Recordings), which premiered at #1 on the iTunes comedy chart and spent many days there.  She was a guest star in the Amazon sitcom Red Oaks and recently launched a podcast about candles called Two Wick Minimum. In May 2013, she published her debut book, The New Rules for Blondes (It Books/ HarperCollins), a collection of hilarious, personal essays celebrating and subverting the blonde stereotype.

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work has been featured by the Washington Post, NPR’s Fresh Air, The Daily Show, the New York Times, Slate, and The Atlantic, among others. She is the author of Thick: And Other Essays and Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy (The New Press) and lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Kathy Curto teaches at The Writing Institute/Sarah Lawrence College and Montclair State University. She is the author of Not for Nothing-Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood, published by Bordighera Press. Kathy contributed to the collection Listen to Your Mother:  What She Said Then, What We’re Saying Now, and to the New York Times, Barrelhouse, La Voce di New York, VIA-Voices in Italian Americana, Ovunque Siamo, and many other publications.  She serves on the faculty of the Joe Papaleo Writers’ Workshop in Cetara, Italy and lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and their four children.

Deborah Davis is the author of 10 books, including Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X; Party of the Century: The Fabulous Story of Truman Capote and His Black and White Ball; Gilded: How Newport Became the Richest Resort in America; The Oprah Winfrey Show: Reflections on an American Legacy; Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation, which won the prestigious Phillis Wheatley Award for best work of history in 2013 and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award; Fabritius and the Goldfinch, which Amazon named one of the Best Books of 2014; The Trip: Andy Warhol’s Plastic-Fantastic Cross-Country Adventure, and the memoir My Love Story, which she wrote with music legend Tina Turner.

Glory Edim is the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, a Brooklyn-based book club and online community that celebrates the uniqueness of Black literature and sisterhood. In fall 2017, she organized the first-ever Well-Read Black Girl Literary Festival. She received the 2017 Innovator’s Award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes for her work as a literary advocate. Her first anthology collection,Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves, is an inspiring collection of essays which highlight the importance of recognizing ourselves in literature. She serves on the board of New York City’s Housing Works Bookstore and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Arielle Ekstut is co-founder of The Book Doctors. She is the author of nine books including The Secret Language of Color: The Science, Nature, History, Culture and Beauty of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue & Violet. She is also an agent-at-large at the Levine Greenberg Rostan 
Literary Agency, where for over 20 years, she has been helping hundreds of talented writers become published authors. Lastly, Arielle co-founded the iconic company, LittleMissMatched, and grew it from a tiny operation into a leading national brand, which now has stores from coast to coast, everywhere from Disneyland to Disney World to Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Dionne Ford is co-editor of the anthology Slavery’s Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation (Rutgers University, May 2019) and author of the memoir Finding Josephine, forthcoming from Putnam. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, LitHub, More, Rumpus and Ebony among other publications and won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen’s Club of New York. A 2018 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing she lives in New Jersey with her family.

A retired senior writer at The New York Times, Margalit Fox is considered one of the foremost explanatory writers and literary stylists in American journalism. As a longtime member of the newspaper’s celebrated Obituary News Department, she has written the front-page public sendoffs of some of the leading cultural figures of our age. (Conan Doyle for the Defenseis in many ways a fond belated obituary—for the long-overlooked Oscar Slater, an immigrant Everyman treated inexcusably by history.) Fox’s previous book, The Riddle of the Labyrinth, won the William Saroyan Prize for International Writing. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, the writer and critic George Robinson.

Jack Kelly is a journalist, novelist, and historian, whose books include Band of Giants, which received the DAR’s History Award Medal and Heaven’s Ditch. He has contributed to national periodicals including the Wall Street Journal and is a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow. He has appeared on The History Channel and interviewed on National Public Radio. He grew up in a town in the canal corridor adjacent to Palmyra, Joseph Smith’s home. He currently lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Nina Khrushcheva is the author of Imagining Nabokov and The Lost Khrushchev, and a Professor of International Affairs at New School University, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times among others.

D.T. Max is a graduate of Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. His book, Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, published in 2012, was a New York Times bestseller. He is also the author of The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, their two young children, and a rescued beagle who came to them named Max.

Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno is an activist, writer, and lawyer. She is the Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the US fighting to end the war on drugs in the United States and beyond. Previously, Maria held several positions at Human Rights Watch, including as the organization’s senior America’s researcher, covering Colombia and Peru, and as co-director of its US program. She grew up in Lima, Peru, and now lives in Brooklyn.

Suketu Mehta is the New York-based author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award. He has won the Whiting Writers’ Award, the O. Henry Prize, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. Mehta’s work has been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Granta, Harper’s Magazine, Time, and Newsweek. Mehta is an Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University. His book about global migration, This Land is Their Land, will be published by Farrar Straus & Giroux in June 2019.

Chi Adanna Mgbako is clinical professor of law and director of the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic at Fordham Law School. Chi and her students work on human rights projects focusing primarily on gender justice in many countries, including Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Mauritius, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Uganda, and the United States. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia University, she has published widely in academic journals and the popular press, including the New York Times, the Guardian, HuffPost, Harvard Human Rights Journal, Yale Journal of International Affairs, and Georgetown Journal of International Law.

Michael Scott Moore is a journalist and a novelist, author of a comic novel about L.A., Too Much of Nothing, as well as a travel book about surfing, Sweetness and Blood, which was named a best book of 2010 by The Economist. He’s won Fulbright, Logan, and Pulitzer Center grants for his nonfiction, and a MacDowell Colony fellowship for his fiction. Mr. Moore was kidnapped in early 2012 on a reporting trip to Somalia and held hostage by pirates for 32 months. The Desert and the Sea, a memoir about that ordeal, is out now from HarperCollins.

Irene O’Garden has won or been nominated for prizes in nearly every writing category from stage to e-screen, hardcovers and literary magazines and anthologies. Her critically-acclaimed play Women On Fire, (Samuel French) played sold-out houses at Off-Broadway’s Cherry Lane Theatre and was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award. O’Garden won The Pushcart Prize for her lyric essay “Glad To Be Human,” (Untreed Reads.) Her new memoir Risking the Rapids: How My Wilderness Adventure Healed My Childhood was just published by Mango (January 2019) Harper published her first memoir, Fat Girl and Nirala published Fulcrum, her first poetry collection in 2017.

Nell Irvin Painter is the award-winning author of many books of history, including Sojourner Truth, Southern History Across the Color Line, Creating Black Americans, The History of White People, and Standing at Armageddon, as well as the memoir Old in Art School. She is currently the Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University and lives in Newark, New Jersey.

Zara Phillips is a singer/songwriter, author, and actor, who started her career as a backing vocalist for Bob Geldof and various bands in the UK, and went on to write record and tour with her own music. She wrote and performed I’m Legit with Run DMC Darryl Macdaniels to bring awareness to open records for adopted people in the USA. Her one woman show, Beneath My Father’s Sky, directed by Eric Roberts, won Best Direction at the United Solo Festival. She is the author of the memoirs Mother Me (2008) and Somebody's Daughter (2018).

Dawn Raffel's new book is The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies. It’s the true story of the “incubator doctor” of Coney Island and Atlantic City who saved premature infants by placing them in sideshows on the boardwalk. NPR chose it as one of the great reads of 2018, describing it as “a mosaic mystery told in vignettes, cliffhangers, curious asides, and some surreal plot twists as Raffel investigates the secrets of the man who changed infant care in America.” Previous books include an illustrated memoir, The Secret Life of Objects, a novel, and two story collections.

Rob Reich is professor of political science and, by courtesy, professor of philosophy and at the Graduate School of Education, at Stanford University. He is the director of the Center for Ethics in Society and co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review), both at Stanford University. Reich is a New Jersey native and attended Pequannock Township High School. More details at his webpage: robreich.stanford.edu

Lisa Romeo is the author of Starting with Goodbye: A Daughter’s Memoir of Love after Loss (University of Nevada Press, May 2018). Her short work is listed in Best American Essays 2018 and BAE 2016, and published in popular and literary venues, including the New York Times, O The Oprah Magazine, Longreads, Under the Sun, Brevity, The Nervous Breakdown, Inside Jersey, Hippocampus and many others. Lisa teaches with Bay Path University’s MFA program and formerly taught with Rutgers and Montclair State Universities. Lisa lives in northern New Jersey with her husband and sons.

Mark Rotella is the author of Amore: The Story of Italian American Song and Stolen Figs and Other Adventures in Calabria and wrote the introduction to the classic Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi (all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux). He is the senior editor at Publishers Weekly magazine.

Dale Russakoff spent 28 years as a reporter for the Washington Post and is now a freelance writer, focusing on education and immigration. She is the author of The Prize -- Who's in Charge of America's Schools (Houghton Mifflin, 2015), a New York Times best-seller about Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million gift to the Newark schools. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, ProPublica and elsewhere. Dale and her husband have lived in Montclair for 25 years and have two grown sons who attended Montclair Public Schools.

Jonathan Santlofer is a writer and artist. He has published 5 novels, including the bestselling The Death Artist, and the Nero award-winning Anatomy of Fear, and numerous short stories. He has been both editor and contributor for 6 notable anthologies, among them the New York Times bestseller, Inherit the Dead, and most recently, from Touchstone/Simon & Schuster It Occurs to me that I Am America, a collection of original stories and art concerning what it means to be an American, in support of the ACLU. His artwork is in major public and private collections in the US and abroad. He has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, among them two National Endowment for Arts grants, Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, and he serves on the board of Yaddo. His bestselling memoir, The Widower’s Notebook, was published by Penguin Books, and has appeared on numerous "Best Books of 2018" lists. He lives in NYC where is at work on a new novel.

Before he was Rolling Stone's chief TV critic, Jersey native Alan Sepinwall spent 14 years covering television for Tony Soprano's favorite newspaper, the Star-Ledger, then worked for digital sites HitFix and Uproxx. He's the author or co-author of The Sopranos Sessions, Breaking Bad 101, TV (THE BOOK) and The Revolution Was Televised.

David Henry Sterry is co-founder of The Book Doctors. He is the author of 16 books on a wide variety of subjects, from memoir to middle grade fiction, sports to reference. His work has been translated into over a dozen languages, optioned by Hollywood, and appeared on the cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post. Before writing professionally, David was a comic and an actor. His one man show, based on his memoir, Chicken, was named the number one show in the United Kingdom for its entire run at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, Fringe by The Independent.

Rachel L. Swarns is a journalist, author and professor, who writes about race and race relations for The New York Times and has covered immigration and politics and reported from Russia, Cuba, Guatemala and southern Africa, where she served as Johannesburg bureau chief. She is the author of American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama’ and a co-author of Unseen: Unpublished Black History from The New York Times Photo Archives. She is an associate professor of journalism at New York University and her forthcoming book about Georgetown’s roots in slavery will be published by Random House. 

Stephan Talty is the New York Times bestselling author of ten acclaimed nonfiction books, including Empire of Blue Water and The Black Hand. He’s also written two detective novels, Black Irish and Hangman, set in his hometown of Buffalo. Two of his works have been made into films, the Oscar-winning Captain Phillips and Only the Brave. His next book, an untold story of the Holocaust and the Mossad, will be published in 2020. Talty lives outside New York City with his wife and two children.

Richard Thompson OBE is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He made his début as a recording artist as a member of Fairport Convention in September 1967. He continues to write and record new material and frequently performs live at venues throughout the world. His new album,13 Rivers, made many record of the year lists for 2018.Thompson was awarded the Orville H. Gibson Award for best acoustic guitar player in 1997; his songwriting earned him a lifetime achievement award from BBC Radio in 2006; and in 2011 he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to music. His book Beeswing, a memoir of the years 1967 to 1974, will be published by Algonquin Books in spring 2020.

Craig Unger is the author of the New York Times bestselling books House of Trump, House of Putin and House of Bush, House of Saud. He frequently appears as an analyst on CNN, MSNBC, the ABC Radio Network, and other broadcast outlets. The former deputy editor of the New York Observer and editor-in-chief of Boston Magazine, he has written for Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. He lives in New York City.

Sarah Weinman is the author of The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World, named a notable book of 2018 by the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, Vulture, NPR, and more. She also edited the anthologies Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s (Library of America) and Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories From the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense (Penguin), and her work has most recently appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and New York Magazine. She is at work on a new book, forthcoming from Ecco/HarperCollins and Knopf Canada.

Dr. Warren Zanes is the Executive Director of Steven Van Zandt’s Rock and Roll Forever Foundation (RRFF). A former VP of Education and Programs at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Warren has taught at several American universities, including Case Western Reserve University, University of Rochester, New York University, and The School of Visual Arts.  He is a New York Times bestselling author, currently teaching at New York University, whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, the Oxford American, and more.  He is the editor of collections on Jimmie Rodgers and Tom Petty, has written books including Dusty in Memphis, Revolutions in Sound: Fifty Years of Warner Bros. Records, and Petty: The Biography, which Rolling Stone named one of the top ten music books of 2015. A former member of Warner Bros. recording artists The Del Fuegos, he has released three solo recordings, including the most recent, I Want To Move Out in the Daylight!, and a fourth, The Biggest Bankrupt City in the World, coming soon.