Carey Baraka is a writer based in Nairobi, Kenya. His fiction has appeared in The Common, Slice Magazine, and Gay Magazine, and he has received fellowships from Macdowell and the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program.
Sabrina Jaszi is a literary translator working from Slavic and Turkic languages, primarily Russian and Uzbek. Her published translations include the fiction of Reed Grachev, Nadezhda Teffi, and Alisa Ganieva. Currently, she is completing a dissertation about Central Asian literature at UC Berkeley. In 2023, she received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship to translate Semyon Lipkin’s Dekada. Together with Roman Ivashkiv, she translated Ukrainian author Andriy Sodomora’s collection of short stories The Tears and Smiles of Things (Academic Studies Press, 2024).
Anna Juul is a screenwriter and novelist, satirist and board member with the Danish Mental Health Fund. Her most recent book, Supervillain, was published by Lindhardt & Ringhof.
Karim Kattan was born in 1989 in Jerusalem, grew up in Bethlehem, and holds a doctorate in comparative literature. His 2017 short-story collection Préliminaires pour un verger futur, from which “Salt Air” is drawn, was a finalist for the Prix Boccace. The Palace on the Higher Hill, his first novel, won the 2021 Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie, and his most recent novel, Eden at Dawn, was shortlisted for the 2024 Prix Renaudot.
Ahmed Naji is a bilingual writer, journalist, documentary filmmaker, and official criminal from Egypt. His novels are Rogers (2007), Using Life (2014), And Tigers to My Room (2020), Happy Endings (2023), and most recently, a memoir, Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in Prison (McSweeney’s 2023), which was a Finalist at the National Book Critics Circle. Presently, he is exiled in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is the editor, most recently of Egypt +100 from Comma Press. More about his work: Ahmed Naji – وسع خيالك
Francesco Pacifico is the author of the novels The Story of My Purity (FSG, 2014), Class (MelvilleHouse Books), a NY Times Critics’ pick for 2017, and The Women I Love (FSG, 2021). He is a founder and editor at iltascabile.com, and a contributor for La Repubblica and n+1. His work has appeared on New Left Review, White Review, and McSweeney’s. He has translated works by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Ralph Ellison, Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Miller, Dave Eggers, Hanya Yanagihara, Chris Ware, Alison Bechdel, and Matt Groening. His new novel, The Boss, is out next year with McNally Editions.
Imogen West-Knights is a writer and journalist based in London. She writes most regularly for the Guardian, the FT, Slate and the New York Times. Her debut novel, Deep Down, is out now from Little, Brown. She also writes video games.