Authors

Leigh Newman’s debut short story collection Nobody Gets Out Alive was published by Scribner in April 2022 and longlisted for the National Book Award. Her stories have appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, One Story, Tin House, Electric Literature, American Short Fiction, and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. Her memoir about growing up in Alaska, Still Points North (Dial, 2013), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. In 2020 she was awarded a Pushcart fiction prize and an American Society of Magazine Editors’ fiction prize, as well as The Paris Review’s Terry Southern Prize for “humor, wit, and sprezzatura.” When not writing, she takes care of her two kids, two dogs, two chickens, and beloved, disgruntled cat.

Rasheed Newson is a writer and producer of Bel-Air, The Chi, and Narcos. He currently resides in Pasadena, California, with his husband and two children. In his debut, My Government Means to Kill Me: A Novel (Flatiron Books), Newson follows Earl “Trey” Singleton III, who, born into a wealthy Black Indianapolis family, leaves his overbearing parents and their expectations behind by running away to New York City with only a few dollars in his pocket. It’s there that Trey meets up with a cast of characters that changes his life forever. He volunteers at a renegade home hospice for AIDS patients, and after being put to the test by gay rights activists, becomes a member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). Along the way he attempts to navigate past traumas and searches for ways to maintain familial relationships – all while seeking the meaning of life amid so much death. My Government Means to Kill Me is a queer coming-of-age story following the personal and political awakening of a young gay Black man in 1980s New York City, coming to terms with his role in the midst of a seismic social reckoning.

Maud Newton has written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, and Oxford American. She grew up in Miami and graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in English and law. Newton’s ancestors have vexed and fascinated her since she was a girl. Her grandfather from her mother’s side was said to have married 13 times and been shot by one of his wives. Mental illness and religious fanaticism went back to an ancestor accused of being a witch in Puritan-era Massachusetts. Maud’s father, an aerospace engineer turned lawyer, extolled the virtues of slavery and obsessed over the “purity” of his family bloodline, which he traced back to the Revolutionary War. Maud’s mother, given to feverish projects, had a church in the family’s living room and performed exorcisms. In Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation (Random House), Newton writes about her fear that she would replicate their damage. So she researched her genealogy, immersing herself in census archives while yearning for deeper truths. As she exposes the secrets and contradictions of those who came before her, she argues for the transformational possibilities that facing the legacy of our ancestors offers all of us.

Phong Nguyen is the author of three novels – Bronze Drum: A Novel of Sisters and War (Grand Central Publishing), Roundabout: An Improvisational Fiction (Moon City Press), and The Adventures of Joe Harper (Outpost19) – and the short fiction collections Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History (Mastodon Publishing) and Memory Sickness and Other Stories (Elixir Press). Based on a true story set in ancient Vietnam, Bronze Drum tells the story of two warrior sisters, daughters of a Vietnamese lord in the Au Lac region. They train, study, and try to stay true to Vietnamese traditions. Trung Trac is disciplined, wise, and excellent in her duties. Trung Nhi is fierce and free-spirited, more concerned with spending time in the gardens and with lovers. Living under the oppressive rule of the Han Chinese, they are forced to adopt Confucian teachings, secure marriages, and pay ever-increasing taxes – and the country is coming to the edge of war. When Trung Trac and Trung Nhi’s father is executed, their world comes crashing down and they unite the women of Vietnam into an army and raise against the Han regime. As the champions of women and Vietnam, the sisters usher in a period of freedom and independence.

Akemi Nishida uses research, education, and activism to investigate the ways in which ableism are exercised in relation to racism, cis-heteropatriarchy, xenophobia, and other forms of social injustices. She also uses such methods to work toward cross-community solidarity for the liberation and celebration of community power. In her research and teaching, Nishida brings together disability studies, and critical race and feminist theories with affect theory. In Just Care: Messy Entanglements of Disability, Dependency, and Desire (Temple University Press, 2022), she examines public health care programs as well as grassroots interdependent care collectives and bed-space activism. The book traces the ways in which care is used as a tool for social oppression structurally under the neoliberal political economy as much as marginalized communities engage in care to activate and sustain their social change work. Prior to joining the Disability & Human Development and Women’s & Gender Studies departments at the University of Illinois at Chicago as an assistant professor, Nishida earned her Ph.D. in critical social psychology from the City University of New York. Her research has been funded by the American Association of University Women, the Linda Powell Pruitt Dissertation Scholarship, and the University of Illinois at Chicago Institute of Research on Race and Public Policy. Her work has been published in Subjectivity, Multicultural Perspectives, Disability Studies Quarterly, and Occupy! n+1. Her commitment for disability and other social justices continues outside of academia as she contributes to multiple grassroots organizations in Chicago and nationally.

Elizabeth Nunez is the author of Not for Everyday Use: A Memoir and nine novels, including Anna In-Between, Even in Paradise, Boundaries, Prospero’s Daughter, Beyond the Limbo Silence, Grace, Discretion, and When Rocks Dance. She is a co-founder of the National Black Writers Conference and executive producer of the CUNY-TV series Black Writers in America. In Now Lila Knows (Akashic Books), Nunez follows Lila Bonnard, who has left her island home in the Caribbean to join the faculty as a visiting professor at Mayfield College in a small Vermont town. On her way from the airport to Mayfield, Lila witnesses the fatal shooting of a Black man by the police. The victim was a Mayfield professor giving CPR to a white woman on the verge of an opioid overdose. The two Black faculty and a Black administrator in the otherwise all-white college expect Lila to be a witness in the case against the police. Unfortunately, she fears that in the current hostile political climate against immigrants of color she may jeopardize her position at the college by speaking out, and her fiancé advises her to remain neutral. Now Lila Knows explores our obligation to act when confronted with the unfair treatment of fellow human beings.

Tomi Obaro is a senior culture editor at BuzzFeed News. Her cultural criticism and essays have been published in BuzzFeed News, The Morning News, and The Toast. In her debut book, Dele Weds Destiny: A Novel (Knopf), three once-inseparable friends reunite in Lagos, Nigeria, for the first time in 30 years. They met at university and, despite their differences, became friends for life. Funmi is beautiful, brash, and determined. Enitan is homely and eager, seeking escape from her single mother’s smothering and needy love. Zainab is elegant and reserved, raised by her father’s first two wives after her mother’s death in childbirth. Their friendship is complicated, crisscrossed by love and losses. The old friends, now wives and mothers, are reuniting because Funmi’s daughter, Destiny, is getting married. Hosting the weekend with her wealthy husband, Funmi wants everything to go perfectly. But as the big day approaches, it becomes clear that something is not right. The complexities of their friendship – and the wisdom each has earned – come to bear on a riveting, heartrending moment.

Mirta Ojito (La Habana, Cuba, 1964) Periodista y escritora. Reside en Estados Unidos desde 1980. Ha publicado dos libros: El Mañana (Vintage Español) y La cacería (Vintage Español). Comenzó su carrera en The Miami Herald y El Nuevo Herald. En 1996, se incorporó al New York Times, donde, cinco años después, formó parte del equipo que ganó el Premio Pulitzer por una serie de artículos sobre la situación racial en Estados Unidos. Durante casi una década fue profesora de periodismo en la Escuela de Estudios de Posgrado de Periodismo en la Universidad de Columbia. Actualmente trabaja para la cadena de noticias NBC en Telemundo en Miami. Ojito conversa con la escritora española María Dueñas.

Daniel José Older, a lead story architect for Star Wars: The High Republic, is the New York Times bestselling author of the sci-fi adventure Flood City, and the monthly comic series The High Republic Adventures. Shadowshaper, part of the YA series the Shadowshaper Cypher, was named one of the best fantasy books of all time by Time magazine and one of Esquire’s 80 Books Every Person Should Read. In Ballad & Dagger: An Outlaw Saints Novel (Rick Riordan Presents), we meet Mateo Matisse. Almost 16 years ago, Mateo’s island homeland disappeared into the sea. The survivors of San Madrigal’s sinking escaped to New York and still dream of finding a way back home. But Mateo, now a high school junior and piano prodigy, just wants to get the attention of music legend Gerval. He gets his chance on the night of the Grand Fete, an annual party celebrating the blended culture of pirates, Cuban Santeros, and Sephardic Jews that once created San Madrigal. But the evil that sank the island has caught up with the survivors. After he witnesses a brutal murder, deadly secrets unravel, and Mateo awakens a power within himself that could unlock the mystery behind his lost homeland.

Sharon Olds is the author of the collection Stag’s Leap, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize and England’s T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry in 2012. She is also the author of 12 previous books of poetry, including Satan Says and The Dead and the Living, and the winner of many other awards and honors. Olds teaches in the graduate creative writing program at New York University and helped found NYU outreach programs, among them the writing workshop for Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island residents, and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for poetry, Balladz (Knopf) is a self-scouring, exhilarating volume that opens with a section of quarantine poems. “At the time of have-not, I look at myself in this mirror,” she writes. Olds sings of her childhood, young womanhood, and maturity all mixed up together. She writes about seeing her white privilege without apology. It is Olds’ gift to us that in the richly detailed exposure of her sorrows, she can still elegize songbirds, her true kin, and write that heaven comes here in life, not after it.

Toluse Olorunnipa is the White House bureau chief for The Washington Post, which he joined in 2019 and where has covered three presidencies. He previously worked at Bloomberg reporting on politics and policy from Washington and Florida. In His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Viking), Olorunnipa and co-author Robert Samuels examine the tragically familiar events of May 25, 2020, when George Floyd was added to the list of Black Americans killed by police when he was murdered outside a Minneapolis convenience store by a white officer. The video recording of his death awakened millions to the pervasiveness of racial injustice. But long before his name became synonymous with civil rights, Floyd was a father, partner, athlete, and friend striving for a better life. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews, Olorunnipa and Samuels examine Floyd’s family roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his schools, the over-policing of his community, and the callous disregard toward his struggle with addiction. His Name Is George Floyd places its subject’s narrative within the context of the country’s legacy of institutional racism.

Matthew Olzmann is the author of three collections of poems: Mezzanines, which was selected for the Kundiman Prize, Contradictions in the Design, and, most recently, Constellation Route (Alice James Books). His writing has appeared in Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Brevity, and elsewhere. He’s been awarded fellowships from the Kresge Arts Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the MacDowell Colony. In Constellation Route, Olzmann uses the letter form to explore issues related to contemporary American society: the environment, race, love, grief, friendship, violence, and spirituality. The book is, essentially, a metaphysical tribute to both the Post Office and the act of letter writing as a way to understand and create meaningful connections with the world at large.

Luis Alejandro Ordóñez (Venezuela, 1973) Narrador, editor y traductor. Reside en Estados Unidos desde 2008. Ha publicado las novelas Si me muero, abre estos archivos (Suburbano ediciones, 2021) y El último New York Times (Suburbano ediciones, 2018), traducida al inglés y publicada como The Last New York Times (Katakana Ediciones, 2020); y el libro de relatos Play (Editorial Ars Communis, 2015). Actualmente participa como mentor en el programa de mentorías para escritores de Latinx in Publishing. Coordina la mesa Amor y pasión en la narrativa de hoy.

Carolina Orloff (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1977) Traductora, editora e investigadora de literatura latinoamericana. Actualmente está asentada en Edimburgo, Reino Unido. En el año 2016, luego de obtener su doctorado en la Universidad de Edimburgo y de trabajar en el sector académico, cofundó la editorial Charco Press, en la que hoy día se desempeña como directora editorial. También es la cotraductora de Die, My Love, de Ariana Harwicz, finalista del premio Booker International (2018). Orloff conversa con las escritoras Ave Barrera y Cristina Bendek sobre las novedades de Charco Press.

Amparo Ortiz is the author of Blazewrath Games and Dragonblood Ring. She was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is also a contributor and co-editor, with Yamile Saied Méndez, of the cross-genre anthology Our Shadows Have Claws: 15 Latin American Monster Stories (Algonquin Young Readers). From zombies and cannibals to death incarnate, Our Shadows Have Claws offers something for every monster lover. A quick-witted slayer hunts bloodthirsty vampires; “el viejo de la bolsa” steals children from their beds while a military dictatorship steals their parents; and anyone you love, anyone, might be a shapeshifter. This collection reflecting Latin America and its diaspora offers bold, imaginative stories of oppression, grief, sisterhood, first love, and empowerment, and includes contributions from Chantel Acevedo, Courtney Alameda, Julia Alvarez, Ann Dávila Cardinal, Racquel Marie, Gabriela Martins, Yamile Saied Méndez, Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite, Claribel A. Ortega, M. García Peña, Lilliam Rivera, Jenny Torres Sanchez, Ari Tison, and Alexandra Villasante.

Mary Pope Osborne is the author of The New York Times #1 bestselling Magic Tree House series and co-author of the Magic Tree House Fact Tracker series, along with her husband, Will, her sister, Natalie Pope Boyce, and her friend, Jenny Laird. In Memories and Life Lessons from the Magic Tree House (Random House Books for Young Readers), Osborne celebrates the 30th anniversary of her bestselling series with heartfelt advice from her own life and her magical adventures with Jack and Annie. “Look for heroes, far and near,” “give your gifts to the world,” and “have compassion for all creatures.” These are just a few lessons that Magic Tree House fans will learn on their magical journey through this book. With quotes from the series and classic art by Sal Murdocca, Osborne, shares the wisdom gained from her own childhood and 30 years of whisking Jack and Annie away in the magic tree house.

Jessica Oublié est l’auteure de Péyi an nou (Steinkis, 2017), roman graphique documentaire sur la migration antillaise institutionnalisée et Tropiques toxiques (Steinkis, 2020), enquête sur la pollution au chlordécone en Martinique et Guadeloupe. En 2021, elle a coordonné la publication de Sargasse, histoire(s) d’une marée brune ouvrage collectif sur l’échouage des sargasses dans les territoires et pays de la Caraïbes et d’Amérique latine. Et depuis 2020, elle travaille à l’écriture de Au nom des miennes, bande dessinée témoignages sur les femmes françaises noires et métisses. Jessica Oublié is a French Guadeloupean graphic novelist. She is the author of Péyi an nou (Steinkis), about institutionalized West Indian migration, and Tropiques toxiques (Steinkis), an investigation into chlordecone pollution in Martinique and Guadeloupe. In 2021, she coordinated the publication of Sargasse, histoire(s) d’une marée brune, a collective work on the stranding of sargassum in the territories and countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. She’s currently working on In the name of mine, a comic book testimonial on Black and mixed-race French women.

George O’Connor is the New York Times bestselling author of the Olympians graphic novel series featuring the Greek gods’ tragic, dramatic, and epic lives. He is also the creator of popular picture books such as The New York Times bestselling Kapow! and If I Had A Triceratops. The Olympians saga draws to a close with Olympians #12: Dionysos: A New God (First Second), which explores the tale of Dionysos, the last Olympian and maybe, the first of a new type of God. His story is told by the first Olympian herself, Hestia, goddess of the hearth and home. From her seat in the center of Mt. Olympus, Hestia relays the rise of Dionysos, from his birth to a mortal mother and his discovery of wine, to his battles with madness and his conquering of death itself, culminating, finally, in his ascent to Olympus and godhood.

Meghan O’Rourke is the editor of The Yale Review and the author of The Long Goodbye and the poetry collections Sun in Days, Once, and Halflife. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other publications. In The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness (Riverhead Books), O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” maladies that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID. Together they represent a silent epidemic of chronic illnesses that afflict tens of millions of Americans. These are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Drawing on her own medical experiences as well as a decade of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, O’Rourke traces the history of Western definitions of illness and reveals how inherited ideas of cause, diagnosis, and treatment have led us to ignore a host of hard-to-understand medical conditions that resist easy description or simple cures. In The Invisible Kingdom, she synthesizes the personal and universal into one monumental project arguing for a seismic shift in our approach to disease – and a radical new understanding of our bodies and our health.

Adriana Pacheco (Puebla, México, 1963) Escritora. Estadounidense por naturalización. Tiene un doctorado en Literatura y Cultura Iberoamericana y Latinoamericana por la Universidad de Texas en Austin. Miembro fundador del International Board of Advisors y Affiliate Research Fellow en la Universidad de Texas en Austin. Fue Texas Book Festival Feature Author. Ha editado Romper con la palabra. Violencia y género en la literatura mexicana contemporánea (Eón, 2017) y Para seguir rompiendo con la palabra. Dramaturgas, cineastas, periodistas y ensayistas mexicanas contemporáneas (Literal/Eón, 2021). Escribió y dirigió el documental Una conversación necesaria. Fundadora y productora del podcast y enciclopedia Hablemos, escritoras y Shop Escritoras. En 1987 fundó Casa del sol, para niños abandonados o en indefensión. Forma parte de la mesa Hablemos Escritoras.

Antonio Padilla is a leading theoretical physicist and cosmologist at the University of Nottingham. In 2016, he and his team shared the Buchalter Cosmology Prize for their work on the cosmological constant. He is also a star of the Numberphile YouTube network, where one of his most popular videos has been viewed more than 8 million times. In Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Padilla takes us on an irreverent cosmic tour of nine of the most extraordinary numbers in physics, offering a startling picture of how the universe works. These numbers include Graham’s number, TREE(3), whose finite nature can never be definitively proved, and 10^{-120}, measuring the mystery of our unexpected universe. Padilla explains how these unusual numbers are the key to understanding such mind-boggling phenomena as black holes, relativity, and the problem of the cosmological constant, which says that the two best and most rigorously tested ways of understanding the universe contradict one another. Fantastic Numbers combines popular and cutting-edge science in a lively, entertaining, and even funny exploration of the most fundamental truths about the universe.

Opal Palmer Adisa, Ph.D., is a Jamaica-born writer who has authored poetry, prose, novels, essays, and plays. She has 24 titles to her credit, including The Storyteller’s Return: Story Poems and Portia Dreams, a children’s biography of Portia Simpson Miller, Jamaica’s first female prime minister. She is also the editor of the anthology 100+ Voices for Miss Lou (The UWI Press). A gender specialist and cultural activist, Palmer Adisa has lectured and read/performed her work throughout the United States, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Germany, Spain, France, England, Prague, Italy, and Bosnia.

Pedro Ángel Palou (Puebla de Zaragoza, México, 1966) Narrador y profesor universitario. Actualmente vive cerca de Boston. Enseña literatura a tiempo completo en Tufts University, donde es jefe del departamento de Lenguas romances. Forma parte del Sistema Nacional de Creadores de México. Ha sido ganador del Premio Xavier Villaurrutia y finalista del Rómulo Gallegos y del Planeta-Casa de América, este último con su novela El dinero del diablo. Su trilogía histórica sobre Zapata, Morelos y Cuauhtémoc y sus novelas sobre Porfirio Díaz, Pobre Patria mía; Pancho Villa, No me dejen morir así, y Lázaro Cárdenas, Tierra roja, forman parte del renacimiento de la novela histórica mexicana. Recientemente fueron publicadas por Seix Barral sus novelas cortas reunidas bajo el título de Mar fantasma (Seix Barral), una reedición de En la alcoba de un mundo, sobre el poeta Xavier Villaurrutia, y la versión definitiva de Paraíso clausurado. Sus obras han sido traducidas al francés, italiano, portugués, inglés y coreano. Llega a la fiesta anual de los libros en Miami con México. La novela, un fresco histórico y cultural de la Ciudad de México, que abarca desde la caída de Tenochtitlán hasta el sismo de 1985.

Maulik Pancholy is an actor whose career has spanned hit TV shows (Only Murders in the Building and 30 Rock), animated favorites (Phineas and Ferb, Sanjay and Craig, and Mira, Royal Detective), Broadway, and films. His debut novel, The Best at It, was a Stonewall Honor Award winner. In Nikhil Out Loud (Balzer + Bray), 13-year-old Nikhil Shah is the beloved voice actor for Raj Reddy on the hit animated series Raj Reddy in Outer Space. But when his mom temporarily moves them to a small town in Ohio to care for Nikhil’s sick grandfather, Nikhil feels as out of orbit as his character. His fame lands him the lead in the school musical – only he can’t sing. And when a group of conservative parents protests that an openly gay TV star is the musical’s lead, Nikhil wishes he could be Raj Reddy full time. Then Nikhil wakes up one morning and hears a crack in his voice, and he knows his job playing Raj will now end. Life on Earth – with new friends, a sick grandparent, and the need for the courage to speak out – doesn’t wrap up neatly between commercial breaks.

Diana Pardo (Bogotá,Colombia) Periodista y narradora. Residente en Miami desde 1999. Abogada por la Universidad de los Andes, en Bogotá; tiene una maestría y un doctorado en Relaciones internacionales de la Universidad de Miami. Es consultora de comunicaciones y columnista del diario El Tiempo y colaboradora ocasional para otros medios. Algunos de sus relatos han sido publicados en Inficciones. Relatos de escritoras en confinamiento (Ediciones Aguamiel, 2020) y Vacaciones sin hotel (Ediciones Aguamiel, 2021). Recientemente publicó Más allá del abismo. Relatos de líderes sociales que abren camino (Publicación independiente, 2021), donde reúne los testimonios de diez dirigentes de comunidades y grupos minoritarios que realizan un trabajo social muy importante en Colombia; con este libro llega a la Feria del Libro de Miami 2022.

Ramón París (Caracas, Venezuela, 1969) Ilustrador, diseñador y animador. Reside en Barcelona desde 2003. Estudió Comunicación social en la Universidad Central de Venezuela, donde comenzó su carrera en el mundo de la ilustración, labor que combina con el diseño para revistas y otras publicaciones. Atraído por las imágenes en movimiento, empezó a trabajar en audiovisuales y animación computarizada. Ha ilustrado obras dirigidas a los niños como Cuentos bailables (2022), Zooilógico (2019), La caimana (2019, Premio Fundación Cuatrogatos, Lista de libros internacionales sobresalientes de la IBBY de Estados Unidos y listado de los Mejores libros para niños y jóvenes del Banco del Libro de Venezuela), Duermevela (2017), Estaba la rana (2016), Un perro en casa (2012, incluido en la selección White Ravens de la Biblioteca Internacional de la Juventud y Premio Fundación Cuatrogatos) y Un abuelo, sí (2011, Lista de Honor de IBBY y listado los Mejores libros para niños y jóvenes del Banco del Libro de Venezuela). Sus ilustraciones para Duermevela fueron exhibidas en la Feria del Libro Infantil de Bolonia, donde ganó la distinción Favorito de la audiencia. Sus trabajos han sido expuestos Italia, Estados Unidos y España. Libros ilustrados por él han sido traducidos al inglés, francés, portugués, alemán, coreano, mandarín, japonés y catalán. Interviene en el 9.º Seminario de Literatura infantil y Lectura con la charla Creación de un álbum ilustrado.

Jack Parlett is a writer, poet, and professor. He completed a Ph.D. at Cambridge University on gay cruising in New York poetry. His poems have appeared in Hotel, Blackbox Manifold, and the BFI Flare zine, and his essays and reviews have appeared in Poetry London, the Cambridge Humanities Review, on Literary Hub, and elsewhere. Fire Island, a thin strip of beach off New York’s Long Island coast, has long been a vital space in the queer history of America. Both utopian and exclusionary, healing and destructive, the island is a locus of contradictions, all of which coalesce against a stunning ocean backdrop. In Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise (Hanover Square Press), Parlett tells the story of this iconic destination – its history, meaning, and cultural significance – through the lens of the artists and creators who sought refuge there. Figures as divergent as Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, Patricia Highsmith, and Jeremy O. Harris relay a tale of a queer space in constant evolution. Fire Island is the definitive book on an iconic American destination and an essential contribution to queer history.

Pamela Paul is the editor of The New York Times Book Review and also oversees book coverage at the Times, where she hosts the weekly Book Review podcast. She is also an author whose books include My Life with Bob; How to Raise a Reader; By the Book; Parenting, Inc.; Pornified; The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony; and Rectangle Time, a book for children. Before joining The New York Times, she was a contributor to Time and The Economist, and her work appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Vogue. In her most recent book, 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet (Crown Publishing Group), Paul’s musings turn to modern life and its absolute entrenchment in the digital space. Today we exist, for the most part, in the filtered and isolated corners of the internet – a place that has all at once become our local library, office, bar, movie theater, and concert hall. While the internet has put an entire world at our fingertips, it has also taken away many of the fundamental human experiences that sustain us.

Ralph Penel Pierre réalise ses premiers croquis dès son plus jeune en reproduisant les personnages de Marvel Comics. Il participé, tout juste adolescent, à plusieurs concours de dessins où il se distingue. Engagé aux éditions Henri-Deschamps comme infographiste/illustrateur en 1998, il contribue notamment à Couleurs, un livre de contes pour enfants à succès coédité par Hachette-Deschamps et Edicef. En 2006, il participe comme exposant au Comic-Convention International à San-Diego, États-Unis. En 2013, il devient professeur à l’École Nationale des Arts ENARTS. En 2019, il esté en résidence d’auteur en Martinique, invité par la mairie de la Trinité. Il collabore avec la majorité des agences de communications en Haïti et offre son expertise en communication visuelle à plusieurs institutions. Son œuvre (Les Frères Lobo) est présenté dans un dossier pédagogique à l’Université de Rio, Brésil, adresser aux professeurs universitaires du réseau de L’Agence universitaire de la Francophonie AUF, sous le thème : La bande dessinée comme outil pédagogique. Il a œuvré comme chargé de mission en communications visuelle à la Primature haïtienne et au Palais National, ainsi que comme directeur des arts visuels à la Chambre de Commerce haïtiano-américaine (HAAMCC) en Floride, États-Unis. Ralph Penel Pierre is a Haitian graphics designer, illustrator, and educator. He made his first sketches when he was very young, reproducing Marvel Comics characters. As a teenager he participated in several drawing competitions, where he distinguished himself. Hired by Éditions Henri-Deschamps as a graphic designer/illustrator in 1998, he notably contributed to Couleurs, a successful children’s storybook co-published by Hachette-Deschamps and Edicef. In 2006, he participated as an exhibitor at San Diego’s Comic-Con International; in 2013 he became a professor at Haiti’s Ecole Nationale des Arts; and in 2019 he was selected as an author-in-residence in Martinique, invited by the town hall of La Trinité. He collaborates with the majority of communications agencies in Haiti and offers his expertise in visual communication to several institutions. His Les Frères Lobo work is presented in an educational file at the University of Rio, Brazil, addressed to university professors of the network of the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie AUF under the theme: The comic strip as a teaching tool. Pierre has also worked as a visual communications officer at the Haitian Prime Minister’s Office and the National Palace, and as director of visual arts at the Haitian American Chamber of Commerce (HAAMCC) in Florida.

Luis Pérez Oramas (Caracas, Venezuela, 1960) Ensayista, poeta y curador. Vive en New York. Tiene un doctorado en Historia del arte por la Escuela de Altos Estudios en Ciencias Sociales de París. Fue curador de arte latinoamericano en el Museo de Arte Moderno de Nueva York y director curatorial de la Trigésima Bienal Internacional de Arte de Sao Paulo. Ha publicado varios libros de ensayo y los poemarios Poemas (1978), Salmos (y boleros) de la casa (1986), La gana breve (1994), Gacelas y otros poemas (1999), Prisionero del aire (2008), La dulce astilla (2015), Animal vesperal (2022) y La mano segadora, publicado por La Poeteca en 2022, libro que Pérez Orama nos trae a esta cita literaria y en donde ha reunido versos de siete títulos suyos dados a conocer anteriormente y de otros cuatro inéditos. Todos ellos dan testimonio de una voz singular que "hila los acontecimientos y hace de la vida poesía y viceversa".