Authors

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.

RACHEL COCKERELL is a writer and historian, born and raised in London. Her first book, Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), is an experimental history about her family. Based on five years of research spanning Ohio, Michigan, Texas, New York, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv, Israel, it centers around the Galveston Movement, a long-forgotten project led by Cockerell’s great-grandfather that brought 10,000 Russian Jews to Texas pre-WWI. Melting Point is longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction. She has been featured on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and at TEDx.

HALEY COHEN GILLILAND is a journalist and the director of the Yale Journalism Initiative. She previously worked at The Economist for seven years, four of which were spent in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as the paper’s Argentina correspondent. Since her time at The Economist, she has focused on narrative nonfiction, bringing history and current events to life through fact-based storytelling. She has published long-form feature articles in The New York Times, National Geographic, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Vanity Fair, among other publications. She lives in New York state with her husband, two children, and dogs. A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children (Avid Reader Press) is her first book.

CATHERINE COLEMAN FLOWERS is an internationally recognized environmental justice activist and founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (CREEJ). A MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, Flowers sits on the board of directors of The Climate Reality Project, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Rocky Mountain Institute. She served as the co-vice chair of the inaugural White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. She is a practitioner-in-residence at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. She is the author of Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret and has written for The New York Review of Books and The New York Times, among other publications. In 2023, Flowers was recognized as one of Time's 100 Most Influential People and one of Forbes’ 50 Over 50.

ENA COLUMBIÉ, escritora y artista cubanoamericana. Licenciada en Filología. Ha escrito ensayos crítica artística y literaria, novela, cuentos y poesía, y publicado los libros: El exégeta, Ripios, Solitar, Isla, Luces, Sepia, Dossier Mireya Robles, 13 Poetas, Jazz, Confesiones de un idiota, Intimisma, Piedra, Nauseamundo, ¡Cabrón! y Aqua, entre otros. Como artista ha expuesto en varios países de Latinoamérica, Europa y EEUU. Colabora con periódicos y revistas especializadas, e ilustra portadas de revistas de arte y literatura, periódicos y libros de escritores, como: Ante-Réquiem y en camino de Ernesto Kahan, Premio Nobel de la Paz y Premio Mundial de Poesía Andrés Bello, Escribe para el Nuevo Herald.

ALEKSANDRA CRAPANZANO is a cookbook writer, screenwriter, consultant, and The Wall Street Journal food columnist. A recipient of the M.F.K. Fisher Award for Distinguished Writing from the James Beard Foundation and the Gourmand World Cookbook Award, she is the author of The London Cookbook: Recipes from the Restaurants, Cafes, and Hole-in-the-Wall Gems of a Modern City; Eat. Cook. L.A.: Recipes from the City of Angels; Gâteau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes; and now Chocolat: Parisian Desserts and Other Delights (Scribner). Her work has been anthologized, most notably in Best American Food Writing, and her recipes and essays are found in many major publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Town & Country, and Bon Appétit, and online on Food52, Epicurious, and Goop. She is married to the writer John Burnham Schwartz, and they live in New York with their son, Garrick, and their Bouvier des Flandres, Bison.

BRIDGET CROCKER is a trailblazer in women’s empowerment within the outdoor industry. A leading whitewater rafting guide, she has led remote river expeditions down many of the world’s greatest river canyons. She is a contributing author to Lonely Planet guidebooks and The Best Women’s Travel Writing series, and her work has been featured in magazines including Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Trail Runner Magazine, and Outside Magazine, as well as Patagonia’s blog, The Cleanest Line. She lives in Malibu, California.

GILBERT CRUZ is the editor of The New York Times Book Review, where he oversees news, feature, and review coverage of books. He also hosts the weekly Book Review podcast, where he regularly interviews authors and other literary luminaries. Prior to Book Review, he ran The New York Times Culture department, overseeing coverage of film, pop music, television, classical music, art, and theater. A native of the Bronx, New York, he has also worked at Time, New York Magazine's Vulture, and Entertainment Weekly.

ADRIANNA CUEVAS is the author of the Pura Belpré Honor book The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez and The Ghosts of Rancho Espanto, an Edgar Award winner. She is a first-generation Cuban American originally from Miami. After teaching Spanish and English as a second language for 16 years, she decided to pursue her passion for storytelling. Cuevas currently resides outside of Austin, Texas, with her husband and son, where they enjoy hiking, traveling, and cooking lots of Cuban food.

JEANINE CUMMINS is the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of American Dirt, which was an Oprah’s Book Club and Barnes & Noble Book Club selection, as well as a No. 1 Indie Next pick. The novel has been translated into 37 languages and has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide. Her other works include A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder and Its Aftermath, The Outside Boy: A Novel, and The Crooked Branch: A Novel. Cummins lives in New York with her husband, their two daughters, and their dogs.

RON CURRIE is the award-winning author of five novels. He has won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, the Addison M. Metcalf Award, the Alex Award, and the Pushcart Prize. His books have been translated into 15 languages, and his short fiction and nonfiction have received recognition in Best American anthologies. As a screenwriter, he worked most recently on the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations and has developed projects with AMC Studios, Amblin Television, and ITV America. Currie lives in Portland, Maine, and teaches in the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast MFA program.

AARON JOHN CURTIS is an enrolled member of the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, which he’ll tell you is the white name for the American side of Akwesasne. He has judged for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance prizes, the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction. From 2004 to 2024, Curtis was quartermaster at Books & Books, Miami’s largest independent bookstore. He lives in Florida.

ROSIE DANAN is an award-winning, bestselling author of contemporary and paranormal romcoms whose writing has been described by The New York Times as "warmly funny and gorgeously sexy." Her work has been optioned for film as well as translated into 10 languages and counting. When she's not working on her next book, she enjoys jogging slowly to fast music, petting other people’s dogs, and competing against herself in rounds of Chopped using the miscellaneous ingredients occupying her fridge.

In addition to An Ignorance of Trees: A Memoir in Essays (Cornerstone Press), JIM DANIELS' recent books include The Luck of the Fall, Gun/Shy: Poems, and the anthology RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music, with M.L. Liebler. He has read his poetry on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion, and his poems were frequently featured on Keillor’s The Writer's Almanac. During his long career, Daniels has warmed up for singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, read poems at a Jamestown Jammers minor league baseball game, had his poem Factory Love displayed on a race car, and sent poetry into space as part of the Moon Arts Project.

EDWIDGE DANTICAT was born in Haiti and moved to the United States when she was 12. She is the editor of Haiti Noir and Haiti Noir 2: The Classics, and the author of Breath, Eyes, Memory (an Oprah’s Book Club selection), Krik? Krak!, and The Dew Breaker, among other books for adults. Her children’s picture books include Eight Days: A Story of Haiti; Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation; The Last Mapou; My Mommy Medicine; and Watch Out for Falling Iguanas. A MacArthur fellow, Danticat currently teaches at Columbia University.

ALEXIS DARIA is the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of You Had Me at Hola, A Lot Like Adiós, Take the Lead, and more. Her books have been featured on several “Best of ” lists and have received starred reviews from multiple trade publications. A former visual artist, she is a lifelong New Yorker who loves Broadway musicals and pizza.

MARLENE L. DAUT is professor of French and African diaspora studies at Yale University. She teaches courses in anglophone, francophone Caribbean, African American, and French Colonial and historical studies. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Nation, Essence, and Harper’s Bazaar. She lives with her family in New Haven, Connecticut.

CHRISTIAN DAVENPORT has been a reporter and editor at The Washington Post for more than 25 years. He was on a team that won the Peabody Award in 2010 for its work on veterans with traumatic brain injury; other collaborative reporting has named him and his colleagues Pulitzer Prize finalists three separate times. He is the author of The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos and As You Were: To War and Back with the Black Hawk Battalion of the Virginia National Guard. He is also an Emmy Award winner for his work with the Discovery and Science channels.

PABLO DE CUBA SORIA (Cuba, 1980). Escritor, editor, bibliófilo y profesor universitario. Fundador y director de la editorial Casa Vacía (Richmond, VA) y de la plataforma literaria Bookish & Company. Entre otros libros, ha publicado Canto de concentración (2018), Res adentro (2019), Rue de Rome (2022). Ha tanteado la prosa en Libro de College Station (2016) y Monsieur Ferlinguetti (2023). Reside en Richmond, Virginia, donde es profesor en Virginia Commonwealth University.

LUIS DE LA PAZ (La Habana, 1956). Escritor y periodista cubano. Es autor, entre otros, de Al pie de las montañas, La familia se reúne, Por las paredes y Bajo la memoria. Además de las compilaciones: Reinaldo Arenas aunque anochezca, Teatro cubano de Miami, Soltando sorbos de vida, La floresta interminable, Voces femeninas del PEN, Alrededor del teatro en Miami y Crónicas miamenses. Textos suyos están recogidos en Cuentos desde Miami, Palabras para un joven suicida, Viaje One Way, Miami (Un)plugged y Noir tropical Miami. Es el conductor de Viernes de Tertulia y escribe para Diario Las Américas y Libre.

KEILA DE LA VILLE Autora de las novelas Minerva (Pre-Textos 2023; Regal House 2026) y Los días animales (OT 2016, Best Novel International Latino Book Award 2018); The Animal Days (Katakana 2021, trad. R. Myers; Best Novel Honorable Mention ILBA 2023). Los libros de cuentos Ana no duerme (Monte Avila 2007, Concurso Nacional Monte Avila 2006); Ana no duerme y otros cuentos (Sudaquia 2016) y Enero es el mes más largo (Sudaquia 2021, Honorable Mention ILBA 2023). Los poemarios Viaje legado (Bid&Co 2016) y Perseo en Si bemol (Valparaíso 2023 Paz Prize Finalist 2022). Las crónicas El día en que Corre Lola Corre dejó sin aire a Murakami (Suburbano 2022). Es traductora, editora y profesora de escritura.

KEILA DE LA VILLE Autora de las novelas Minerva (Pre-Textos 2023; Regal House 2026) y Los días animales (OT 2016, Best Novel International Latino Book Award 2018); The Animal Days (Katakana 2021, trad. R. Myers; Best Novel Honorable Mention ILBA 2023). Los libros de cuentos Ana no duerme (Monte Avila 2007, Concurso Nacional Monte Avila 2006); Ana no duerme y otros cuentos (Sudaquia 2016) y Enero es el mes más largo (Sudaquia 2021, Honorable Mention ILBA 2023). Los poemarios Viaje legado (Bid&Co 2016) y Perseo en Si bemol (Valparaíso 2023 Paz Prize Finalist 2022). Las crónicas El día en que Corre Lola Corre dejó sin aire a Murakami (Suburbano 2022). Es traductora, editora y profesora de escritura.

ENRIQUE DEL RISCO ARROCHA (La Habana, 1967). Licenciado en Historia por la Universidad de La Habana y Doctor en Literatura Latinoamericana en New York University (NYU). Ha publicado, entre otros los libros Leve Historia de Cuba (Los Angeles, 2007) y ¿Qué pensarán de nosotros en Japón? (2008), ganador del V Premio Iberoamericano Cortes de Cádiz, Turcos en la niebla (XX Premio Unicaja de novela Fernando Quiñones) (Madrid, 2019) y Nuestra hambre en La Habana (Barcelona, 2022). Fue coeditor de Pequeñas resistencias 4: Antología del Nuevo Cuento Norteamericano y Caribeño (Madrid, 2005) y editor de El compañero que me atiende (Madrid, 2017).

ANJANETTE DELGADO nació en Santurce, Puerto Rico, y escribe sobre la violencia contra lo femenino, el sexilio y el desarraigo de lo violentado. Ganadora de un Emmy por su periodismo de interés humano, es autora de dos novelas y editora de Home in Florida: los escritores latinos y la literatura del desarraigo, Medalla de Oro en los Latino International Book Awards. Su obra periodística y literaria ha aparecido en The New York Times, Boston Review, NPR, Prairie Schooner, Distropika y Tupelo Quarterly. Posee maestría en escritura creativa de la Universidad Internacional de Florida. Su nuevo libro es El sexilio (LaCriba Editores, 2024).

CAROLE DEMESMIN is a celebrated Haitian singer, storyteller, and cultural advocate whose repertoire honors rara, folk, and devotional song. Born in Léogâne, Haiti, and raised in Port‑au‑Prince, she moved to the U.S. as a teen and later earned a music degree from Berklee College of Music. In the early 1980s she returned to Haiti to deepen her work with traditional arts, studying Vodou and ultimately being initiated as a priestess. Guided by poet‑lyricist Jean‑Claude Martineau, Demesmin’s recordings span decades – from early classics like Min Rara to recent projects including Maroulé – and her performances have carried Haitian heritage to stages in the Caribbean, North America, and Europe. She teaches, records, and curates programs that connect music with healing, memory, and civic pride, encouraging audiences to value Creole language, women’s voices, and ritual knowledge. She continues to collaborate with community groups and media to amplify Haiti’s living traditions and the artists who sustain them.

KIRAN DESAI is the bestselling author of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard: A Novel and The Inheritance of Loss: A Novel, which won both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Born in India, she came to the U.S. when she was 16 and now lives in New York.

JASON DIAMOND is the author of Searching for John Hughes: A Memoir and The Sprawl: Reconsidering the Weird American Suburbs, and the co-author of New York Nico's Guide to NYC with Nicolas Heller. His work has been published by The New York Times, Esquire, The New Yorker, GQ, The Paris Review, and many other outlets. He publishes the newsletter The Melt, was born in Skokie, Illinois, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughter. Kaplan’s Plot: A Novel (Flatiron Books) is his first novel.

JAQUIRA DÍAZ is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, a Whiting Award winner, a Florida Book Awards gold medal winner, a Lambda Literary Awards finalist, an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce selection, an Indie Next pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, a Library Reads pick, and a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize. She has written for The Atlantic, The Guardian, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and elsewhere. She teaches in the writing program at Columbia University.

RUTH DICKEY has spent more than 25 years working at the intersection of community building, writing, and art, now as executive director of the National Book Foundation. She previously had the pleasure of leading organizations in Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Cincinnati, and Seattle. An ardent fan of dogs and coffee, she served as a fiction judge for the 2019 National Book Awards. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a B.S. in foreign service and M.A. in Latin American studies from Georgetown University. She is the author of the full-length collections Our Hollowness Sings and Mud Blooms, and the chapbook Paper Houses, Sky Ceilings.

BARRY DILLER’s business career has ranged from the end of the golden age of Hollywood to the frontiers of media and technology. He began his career at ABC in the 1960s, where he invented the Movie of the Week format, revolutionizing television programming. He later became the CEO of Paramount Pictures from 1974 to 1984, where he oversaw the production of classic films such as Saturday Night Fever, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Grease. In 1984, Diller joined 20th Century Fox, where he launched the Fox Broadcasting Company, introducing hit shows such as The Simpsons, Married… with Children, and Cops. In 1995, he founded IAC, a conglomerate focused on e-commerce, media, and internet companies. Under Diller’s leadership, IAC has grown into a digital powerhouse, owning brands such as Vimeo, Angi, and the Match Group (Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid). He also chairs Expedia Group, one of the world’s largest travel companies. Diller, who is married to fashion designer and businessperson Diane von Furstenberg, lives in New York City.