Kamden HILLIARD is a poet and teacher who lives at a boarding school in New England. They hold degrees from The University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Kamden is the author of three chapbooks and one full length collection of poetry: MIsssettl (Nightboat Books, 2022). When Kam is not teaching creative writing, advising, walking their dog, or otherwise engaged, they can be found gardening or fishkeeping.

Mona KAREEM is a stateless poet born in Kuwait and resides in the United States. She is the author of three poetry collections, and the 2023 chapbook "I Will Not Fold These Maps" translated by Sara Elkamel and published by Poetry Translation Center in London. She is a recipient of a 2021 literary grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Kareem has held fellowships and residencies with Princeton University, Tufts University, Brandeis University, Poetry International, Arab-American National Museum, Norwich Center, Bard College, and Forum Transregionale Studien. Her work has been translated into nine languages. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton. Her translations include Ashraf Fayadh’s Instructions Within (nominated for a BTBA award), Ra’ad Abdulqadir’s Except for this Unseen Thread, and Octavia Butler’s Kindred.

Kenan ORHAN's fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, The Common, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Short Stories. His debut story collection, I Am My Country, is forthcoming from Random House April 25.