Authors

ELLIOT ACKERMAN is The New York Times bestselling author of 2054: A Novel; 2034: A Novel of the Next World War; Halcyon; Red Dress in Black and White; Waiting for Eden; Dark at the Crossing: A Novel; and Green on Blue: A Novel. He also wrote the memoirs The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan and Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning. His books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, among others. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, a senior fellow at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, and a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and CIA special operations, having served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star Medal for valor, and the Purple Heart. He divides his time between New York and Washington, D.C.

IVÁN ACOSTA nació en Santiago de Cuba (Cuba). Tomó estudios secundarios en la Escuela de Comercio Pitman, Manzana de Gómez, en La Habana. Dramaturgo, compositor, director de cine y teatro y productor musical de conciertos, videos musicales y discos. En agosto de 1961 escapa de la isla en un barco junto a sus padres, hermana y otros 21 cubanos hacia Jamaica. Llega a Nueva York el 4 de diciembre (Changó) de 1961. En Estados Unidos sirve 6 años en el ejercito, como paracaidista en la División 101. Estudia cine en la Universidad de Nueva York, Estudios Sociales y Film Marketing, en la New School for Social Research University. Y producción de televisión en New York TeleVariation TV Academy. Se estrena como dramaturgo con el musical de Rock and Roll, Grito 71, el cual también es aclamado por la prensa anglosajona. En 1976 escribe y filma El ataúd/ La Jornada del Difunto, cortometraje en 16 mm, y debuta como director de largometrajes de ficción en 1985 con Amigos, cinta que cuenta las andanzas de un cubano (marielito) que ingresa a los Estados Unidos como parte del éxodo ocurrido en 1980 desde Cuba hacia este país por el puerto El Mariel. Sin embargo, es su pieza teatral El Súper (estrenada el 5 de noviembre de 1977) la que le concede la celebridad, al dar lugar al filme homónimo rodado en 1979, y que es considerada la obra teatral y la cinta más importante rodada por cubanos en el exilio, al conquistar más de veinticinco premios en la arena internacional. Es fundador del Centro Cultural Cubano de Nueva York (1972). Presidente del capítulo de Nueva York de la National Academy of Media Arts and Science. Miembro activo de la directiva del Circulo de Intelectuales por la Libertad de Cuba. Y de la Academia de la Historia de Cuba Exilio. Su documentalística se ha ocupado con frecuencia de los ritmos musicales cubanos, como pueden corroborarnos sus documentales, Cómo se forma una rumba, 50 years of Mambo in the USA, y Cándido, manos de fuego. Nueve de sus 16 obras teatrales han sido publicadas por las editoriales Universal, Arte Publico Press, Cubanacan, Revista Caribe, Alexander Street Press y Ediciones Alarcos en La Habana Cuba. Y la Editorial Colección Fugas. Su obra teatral, CUBA: PUNTO X, obtuvo 10 nominaciones, incluyendo, los Premios ACE, H.O.L.A. y ATI, como Mejor dirección y mejor actuación. Su mas reciente obra teatral, La Ventana de los Chévere, será escenificada en Nueva York en la primavera de 2026. Su libro, Con una canción cubana en el corazón/With a Cuban Song in the Heart; está siendo distribuido a través de varias universidades y plataformas literarias. Su libro, Fuacatapam, Será presentado por la editorial Colección Fugas, en la Miami Book Fair, 2025.

MEENAKSHI AHAMED is a freelance journalist and the author of A Matter of Trust: India-US Relations from Truman to Trump, a sweeping narrative history of the turbulent 70-year relationship between the two countries. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Seminar magazine, The Asian Age, and CNN. She has worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and for New Delhi Television, and served on the boards of Doctors Without Borders, Drugs for Neglected Diseases, and Vellore Christian Medical College Foundation. Ahamed was born in Calcutta, India, and received an MA from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She divides her time between New York, Los Angeles, and New Delhi.

CLAIRE AHN grew up in Seoul, Korea, and still considers it home. She moved to New York to attend university and now lives in Long Island City, New York, with her husband, daughter, and their dog, Dante. She writes about transcultural experiences and the traditions, values, and legacies that shape who we are. Follow her on Instagram @CuhlaireAhn.

ADAM ALEKSIC is a linguist and content creator posting educational videos as the “Etymology Nerd” to an audience of more than 3 million. As a linguistics student at Harvard College, he founded and served as president of the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society. He’s discussed online language on NPR and contributed repeatedly to The Washington Post, and his work has been mentioned in The New York Times, The Economist, and The Guardian. He’s lectured on language and social media at Stanford, Yale, Georgetown, and other top universities, including a TEDx talk at the University of Pennsylvania. Aleksic is based in New York, where he spends a lot of time scrolling TikTok for “research.”

PRIA ANAND is a neurologist at Boston Medical Center and an assistant professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. A graduate of Yale University and Stanford Medical School, she trained in neurology, neuroinfectious diseases, and neuroimmunology at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

SCOTT ANDERSON is the author of two novels and five works of nonfiction, including Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East, an international bestseller which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book. The New York Times Magazine devoted an entire issue to his reportage across the Middle East in August 2016 – which was published in book form as Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart – and he is a contributing writer for The Sunday Times Magazine.

DEBORAH N. ARCHER is president of the ACLU, where she serves as chair of the board of directors and executive committee. She is a tenured professor, the associate dean and the faculty director of the Community Equity Initiative at New York University School of Law. She lives in New York with her husband and two children.

RYAN BACHOO is an award-winning journalist from Trinidad and Tobago who has written on climate change and international affairs. Literature has a special place in his heart and – having grown up reading the works of great West Indian writers – he also wanted to contribute to the literary landscape of the Caribbean.

Born in Boston but more closely associated with New York, ARTHUR BAKER is an American record producer and DJ best known for his work with artists like Planet Patrol and New Order. He lives in Miami.

JAMES BARRAT is the author of The Intelligence Explosion: When AI Beats Humans at Everything. He is a documentary filmmaker who has written and produced films for National Geographic, Discovery, PBS, and many other broadcasters in the U.S. and Europe. He is also the author of Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era and Facing Suicide: Why People Kill Themselves and How We Can Stop Them.

LINDA-MARIE BARRETT is the author of Creating a Salon: The Magic of Conversations That Matter (Agate Surrey). She is a writer, editor, and book industry professional who currently serves as executive director of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA). She edited and contributed to the regional bestselling serial novel Naked Came the Leaf Peeper: A Novel, which was called “a blur, a buzz, a local-grown tall tale, and an absolute delight” by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. Barrett has been hosting her Black Swan Salon since 2017. She lives with her husband in Asheville, North Carolina.

DAVE BARRY is roughly 400 years old and has lived in Miami most of that time. He has written more than 23 million columns and 11,000 books, the most recent of which is Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up, his first and – he hopes – last memoir. You would probably enjoy it. It's much more accurate than this biography.

ADAM BECKER is a science writer with a Ph.D. in astrophysics. He has written for The New York Times, the BBC, NPR, Scientific American, New Scientist, and other publications. He is a visiting scholar at University of California, Berkeley’s Office for History of Science and Technology. He lives in California.

RICH BENJAMIN is a cultural anthropologist and the author of Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America (Hyperion). His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and elsewhere, and he’s appeared as a commentator on MSNBC and CNN. His work has received support from the Bellagio Center, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Columbia Law School, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Ford Foundation, Princeton University, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

JILL BIALOSKY is the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry, most recently Asylum: A personal, historical, natural inquiry in 103 lyric sections. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Atlantic, among others. She is the author of many novels, including The Deceptions: A Novel, and several works of nonfiction including The End Is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother (Washington Square Press), History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life, and Poetry Will Save Your Life: A Memoir. In 2015, Bialosky was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to the genre. She lives in New York. Find out more at www.jillbialosky.com.

JUDITE BLANC, PH.D., is a multilingual assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, head of community outreach at the Center for Translational Sleep and Circadian Sciences, and founding director of the Holistic Families Lab. A National Institutes of Health‑funded expert in virtual reality therapy and FemTech, she advances sleep‑health equity via structural determinants and reparative frameworks, integrating virtual reality and ethnography. Blanc serves on the State University of Haiti’s Reparations and Restitution Taskforce and is Haiti’s delegate to the Caricom Reparations Commission. As principal investigator/co-principal investigator, she leads the Realist Women Study, the Haitian Well‑Being Study, and the Cocooned Moms Study. She has more than 80 publications in American Psychologist, Circulation, and JAMA Network, with commentary on CNN and in The Washington Post, Forbes, and USA Today. A 2025 National Institutes of Health Matilda White Riley honoree, her scholarship advances community‑driven, translational solutions for women, children, and immigrant families globally.

RICHARD BLANCO was selected by President Barack Obama as the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history – making him the youngest and first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in the role – and more recently was awarded a National Humanities Medal. He serves as Education Ambassador for The Academy of American Poets and is an associate professor at Florida International University. A Woodrow Wilson Fellow who has received numerous honorary doctorates, Blanco was born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami. Cultural identity characterizes his many collections of award-winning poetry, including his most recent, Homeland of My Body: New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press).

NICHOLAS BOGGS’ writing has been anthologized in The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin, James Baldwin Now, and Speculative Light: The Arts of Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin. He is co-editor with Jennifer DeVere Brody of the 2018 edition of Baldwin's only children's book, Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood. Boggs is the recipient of a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Schomburg Center Scholars-in-Residence Program, among other honors. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

SASHA BONÉT is a writer and cultural critic based in New York. Her criticism and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Aperture, New York Magazine, Vogue, and Bomb magazine, among other publications. She is a professor of creative writing for Columbia University and Barnard College.

RODDY BOTTUM is a musician, writer, creator, and actor based in New York. He started the band Faith No More in San Francisco in the early 1980s and toured the world, selling millions of records. In 1992, he came out of the closet, and that same year formed the critically acclaimed band Imperial Teen. Bottum has performed and created records with The Crickets, JD Samson, Nastie Band, and Man on Man, a band with his partner, Joey Holman. He is developing his Sasquatch opera project into a musical in New York.

ANGELA BUCHDAHL is the first Asian American rabbi. She serves as the senior rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York, the first woman to lead this flagship congregation in its 185-year history. Under her leadership, Central has grown to become one of the largest synagogues in the world, with livestream viewers in more than 100 countries. She has led prayers in the White House for two U.S. presidents and is frequently featured on national news outlets including Today, NPR, and The Wall Street Journal to speak on the moral issues of the day. Buchdahl and her husband live in New York and have three children.

CHLOÉ CALDWELL is the author of Women: A Novella, the memoir The Red Zone: A Love Story, and the essay collections I’ll Tell You in Person: Essays and Legs Get Led Astray. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Bon Appétit, The Cut, MSNBC, Autostraddle, Longreads, and Nylon, as well as in anthologies including Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York and Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class and Sluts. Caldwell offers writing support at scrappyliterary.com. She lives in Hudson, New York.

PABLO CARTAYA is a sought-after speaker, actor, educator, and the award-winning author of The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora, Marcus Vega Doesn't Speak Spanish: A Novel, Each Tiny Spark, The Last Beekeeper, and Curveball. Learn more about him at PabloCartaya.com and follow him online @PHCartaya.

DAN CHAON is the author of several books, including Ill Will, a national bestseller named one of the 10 best books of the year by Publishers Weekly; the national bestseller Await Your Reply: A Novel; Among the Missing: Stories, a finalist for the National Book Award; and others. His fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, the Pushcart Prize Anthologies, and the O. Henry Collection. He was a finalist for the American Society of Magazine Editors National Magazine Award in fiction and The Shirley Jackson Award, and was the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in literature. Chaon lives in Cleveland.

THOMAS CHATTERTON WILLIAMS is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-hop Culture and Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood, and Rethinking Race. He is a visiting professor of humanities and senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, and a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Previously a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and a columnist at Harper’s Magazine, he has written for The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and Le Monde, among other publications. He lives in Paris and New York.

CATHY LINH CHE is a writer, multidisciplinary artist, and the author of Becoming Ghost: Poetry (Washington Square Press) and Split. She also co-authored the children’s book An Asian American A to Z: A Children’s Guide to Our History with Kyle Lucia Wu. Her video installation Appocalips is an Open Call commission with The Shed NY, and her film We Were the Scenery won the Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction at the Sundance Film Festival. Che teaches as core faculty in poetry at the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Antioch University in Los Angeles and is the executive director at Kundiman. She lives in New York.

ESTHER CHEHEBAR is a contributing writer at Tablet magazine, where she covers Sephardic Jewish tradition and community, and a member of Sephardic Bikur Holim, a nonprofit supporting the growing Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. She holds an MFA from The New School and her work has been featured in Glamour and Man Repeller. Her first book, I Share My Name, is an illustrated children’s book explaining the Sephardic tradition of naming children for their grandparents. She lives in New York with her husband, their kids, their Ori-Pei named Jude, and a couple of fish. Sisters of Fortune: A Novel (Random House) is her debut novel.

HEATHER CLARK earned her bachelor’s degree in English literature from Harvard University and her doctorate in English from Oxford University. Her recent awards include a Guggenheim fellowship, the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar fellowship; a Leon Levy Center for Biography fellowship at the City University of New York; and a Visiting U.S. Fellowship at the Eccles Centre for American Studies, British Library. A former Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, she is the author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, which has been translated into five languages; The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes; and The Ulster Renaissance: Poetry in Belfast 1962-1972. Red Comet was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography, and was a New York Times top 10 book of 2021. Clark’s work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Harvard Review, Time, Air Mail, Literary Hub, and the Times Literary Supplement. She lives outside of New York.

JELANI COBB is the dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and the author of several books, including The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress. He is the co-editor/editor of The Matter of Black Lives: Writing from The New Yorker and The Essential Kerner Commission Report: The Landmark Study on Race, Inequality, and Police Violence, and a producer/co-producer on documentaries including The Riot Report. He received the Peabody Award in 2020 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary. He serves on the board of directors of the American Journalism Project and The New York Public Library Board of Trustees.