KB Brookins, creative nonfiction
"Pretty… is a gorgeous memoir that, despite pain and rejection, insists on hope, forgiveness, and Black trans joy...There's no doubt about it: Brookins is the real deal." – Marisa Crane

KB is a Black queer and trans writer, educator, and cultural worker from Texas. KB’s poetry collection Freedom House (2023) won the American Library Association Barbara Gittings Literature Award and the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best First Book of Poetry; they adapted Freedom House into a solo art exhibit, displayed at various museums. KB’s memoir Pretty (2024) won the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and the Dorothy Allison/Felice Picano Emerging Writer Award. They are currently the ACLU of Texas Artist-in-Residence and a Black Mountain Institute Shearing Fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Sarah Ghazal Ali, poetry
"Wrought with precision, control, and an astute humility before the wondrous, the profound and the profane, these poems feel crafted from the sum total of history, then realized at the crest of the poet's matrix of experiences." –Ocean Vuong

Sarah Ghazal Ali is a Pakistani American writer, editor, and educator. Her debut poetry collection, Theophanies, was selected as the winner of the GLCA New Writers Award and California Book Award as well as a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discover Award, among many others. Her poetry has appeared in journals including The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series. She has been awarded The Sewanee Review Poetry prize for her poetry. Currently, Ali is living in Saint Paul, Minnesota working as both an editor for West Branch and an Assistant Professor of English at Macalester College.