TAYARI JONES is the author of five novels, including An American Marriage, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection and also appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list and his year-end roundup. It won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Aspen Words Prize, and an NAACP Image Award and has been published in two dozen countries. Jones is the C.H. Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing and lives in Atlanta. Her latest novel is Kin.
Jedidiah Jenkins is the New York Times bestselling author of To Shake the Sleeping Self, Like Streams to the Ocean, and Mother, Nature. He began his professional career with the nonprofit Invisible Children, where he helped orchestrate campaigns to end the use of child soldiers in central Africa. His parents, Peter and Barbara Jenkins, are the authors of the bestselling A Walk Across America series.
Roxane Gay’s writing appears in A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.
Beth Ann Fennelly, a 2020 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, was the poet laureate of Mississippi from 2016-2021 and teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi. She’s won grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States Artists, a Pushcart, and a Fulbright to Brazil. Fennelly has published three books of poetry and three of prose, most recently, Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs (W.W.
C. J. Farley is the author of “Who Knows You By Heart,” a new novel which Booklist, in a starred review, called “a timely masterpiece.” Part social thriller, part modern love story, “Who Knows You by Heart” is a sly, witty, and endlessly discussable tale of Big Tech, new money, relationships, race, and discovering what’s real in an age of artificial intelligence. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, and raised in Brockport, New York, Farley graduated from Harvard University and served as an editor of the Harvard Lampoon.
John T. Edge writes and hosts the Emmy Award-winning television show TrueSouth on the SEC Network, ESPN, Disney, and Hulu. Edge also writes a restaurant column for Garden & Gun. His 2017 book The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South was named one of the best books of the year by NPR and Publishers Weekly. Edge serves the University of Mississippi as a teacher, writer-in-residence, and director of the Mississippi Lab.
Marc J. Dunkelman is senior fellow at the Searchlight Institute, a fellow at Brown University’s Watson School for International and Public Affairs, and a former fellow at NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management. During more than a decade working in politics, he worked for Democratic members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives and as a senior fellow at the Clinton Foundation.
Calvin Duncan is the founder and director of the Light of Justice program, which is focused on improving legal access for incarcerated individuals. Falsely accused of murder at the age of nineteen, he endured a life sentence without the possibility of parole in Louisiana prisons for more than twenty-eight years. While incarcerated, he became an inmate counsel substitute, or jailhouse lawyer, helping hundreds of fellow prisoners challenge wrongful convictions and unjust sentences. His efforts have contributed to landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including Smith v.
Sophie Cull is a criminal justice reform advocate who has published on the death penalty, life sentences, and prosecutorial misconduct. As a cofounder of The Visiting Room Project, she helped create the world’s largest collection of filmed interviews with people serving life without parole. Originally from Australia, she began her career in New Orleans, assisting legal organizations defending individuals on Louisiana’s death row.
JULIETTE is a New York Times and international best-selling author of fantasy and paranormal romance. She’s a mood reader as well as a mood writer if that wasn’t obvious by her eclectic book list. As a native of Louisiana, she is inspired by the moss-laden trees and slow-moving bayou of her home as well as the Gothic setting of nearby New Orleans. She loves lazy nights with her husband, old-fashioneds, and family gatherings.
She is represented by Rachel Brooks at BookEnds Literary Agency.
