Jiayang Fan is a staff writer at the New Yorker. She is at work on her memoir, Motherland, forthcoming by FSG.

Francine Prose is the author of twenty-two works of fiction including the highly acclaimed The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.

Katie Roiphe is the director of the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University. She is the author, most recently, of The Power Notebooks and The Violet Hour. She is currently a columnist at The Wall Street Journal and has contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Esquire, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and The Paris Review.

Sarah Ruhl is an award-winning American playwright, author, essayist, and professor. Her plays include Eurydice, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2010); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); Passion Play (Pen American Award), Orlando; and Letters from Max (based on her book with poet Max Ritvo). Her plays have been produced on Broadway and across the country as well as internationally, and translated into fourteen languages. Her books include Smile, a memoir, and 100 essays I don’t have time to write. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a PEN Center Award for mid-career playwrights, a Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, and a MacArthur “genius award” Fellowship. She teaches at the Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Xochitl Gonzalez is the New York Times bestselling author of Anita de Monte Laughs Last, a Reese’s Book Club Pick longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the award-winning Olga Dies Dreaming, named a Best of 2022 by The New York Times, TIME, Kirkus, Washington Post, and NPR. Gonzalez is a staff writer for The Atlantic and was recognized as a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Commentary. A native Brooklynite and proud public school graduate, Gonzalez holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.