A New Orleans native, John H. Lawrence was responsible for building the extensive photographic holdings at The Historic New Orleans Collection, where he worked for 46 years before retiring as director of museum programs at the end of 2020. As THNOC's head of curatorial collections, Lawrence oversaw holdings numbering more than half a million items.

K. Ibura is a writer, editor, and artist from New Orleans. She writes essays about identity and gender, and fantastical fiction about ancient histories and future imaginings. She is the author of two speculative fiction collections: Ancient, Ancient—winner of the James Tiptree Award, and When the World Wounds. Her most recent book is When the World Turns Upside Down, a novel about COVID and racial justice for children. She is the co-editor of the Infinite Constellations anthology.

Gregg Hecimovich is Hutchins Family Fellow at Harvard University and professor of English at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. 

Jefferson Cowie received the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2023 for his book, Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power. He holds the James G. Stahlman Chair in American History at Vanderbilt.

Libby Connolly Alexander is an experienced business leader and philanthropist who serves on the boards of several well-known businesses and organizations.  She served as Chief Executive Officer of Connolly, Inc. from 2012 to 2014, leading the company through its acquisition of iHealth Technologies.

Kurt Andersen's most recent book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America (2020) is a companion volume to the prize-winning Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, both of which were New York Times bestsellers.

STACEY ABRAMS is a New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur and political leader. She served as Minority Leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, and she was the first black woman to become gubernatorial nominee for a major party in United States history. Abrams has launched multiple nonprofit organizations devoted to democracy protection, voting rights, and effective public policy.

Emmeline Clein is a writer living in New York. Her criticism, essays, and reporting have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Yale Review, The Nation, Smithsonian, Berlin Quarterly, Catapult, and Antigravity, among other publications. Her chapbook Toxic was published by Choo Choo Press in 2022. She received her MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and teaches writing at the School of Visual Arts.

Karisma Price is an assistant professor of English at Tulane University. A poet, screenwriter, and media artist, she is the author of I'm Always So Serious (Sarabande Books, 2023). Her work has appeared in publications including Poetry, Indiana Review, Oxford American, Four Way Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, and elsewhere. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, was a finalist for the 2019 Manchester Poetry Prize, was awarded the 2020 J. Howard and Barbara M. J.