Pascale Armand starred on Broadway in Eclipsed, for which she received a Tony nomination, and The Trip to Bountiful with the late Ms. Cicely Tyson. Additional stage credits include Love's Labor's Lost, Hamlet, A Raisin in the Sun, The Piano Lesson, Jitney, Gem of the Ocean, Ruined, The Convert, for which she received the 2012 Los Angeles Ovation Award for Best Leading Actress, Belleville, An Octoroon, and Relevance. Her screen credits include East New York, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Terror Lake Drive, Chicago Med, Prodigal Son, The Blacklist, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Armand is an alumna of NYU's Graduate Acting Program, core member of Quick Silver Theater, and creator of her one-woman show, $#!thole Country Clapback.

Philip Estrera is a NYC-based actor whose theater credits include Discus with Hunger & Thirst Theatre, Orphan of Zhao at La Jolla Playhouse, and Lysley Tenorio’s Monstress at the American Conservatory Theater. He appeared in the Sesame Street Thanksgiving special as Anton the bus driver, which introduced the first Asian American puppet to the series. He can be seen in episodes of Blue Bloods, New Amsterdam, and the upcoming series The Adventures of Benedict Arnold. He performed and helped develop the original new musical Monstress by Emily Kitchens, which featured all original bluegrass music and showcased him acting and fiddling. Estrera is a graduate of the American Conservatory Theater’s MFA program.

Emma Kikue's film and television credits include The Adults, Josie & Jack, Love Life, The Sinner, Bull, Instinct, Elementary, Madam Secretary, The Code, and BrainDead. On stage, she has appeared in God Said This at Primary Stages, the audio play Song of the Northwoods for Audible Theater, what you are now at Ensemble Studio Theatre, brainsmash at 59e59, and Fruiting Bodies at Ma-Yi. Forthcoming screen projects include 12 Hours in the Life of Jason Bruckner and Black and White and Red All Over.

Madeline Cohen is the Director of Symphony Space’s adult literacy program, All Write! She held the position of Education Director at Symphony Space from 1989 - 2022, and has been working in arts education for 43 years as a teaching artist, staff development leader, administrator, and consultant at Lincoln Center Institute, United Federation of Teachers, and Teachers College, among others. She is a guest lecturer at Baruch College. In addition, she is a costume designer.

Yehuda Amichai (1924 – 2000) is considered to be Israel's greatest contemporary poet. Translated into forty languages, he may be the most widely translated Hebrew poet since King David.

Safia Elhillo is an award-winning poet and author. Her debut young adult novel in verse, Home Is Not a Country, was longlisted for the National Book Award and received a Coretta Scott King Book Award Author Honor and Arab American Book Award. Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, Elhillo is a Pushcart Prize nominee, co-winner of the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and listed in Forbes Africa’s 2018 “30 Under 30.” Her latest work, the novel in verse Bright Red Fruit, will be published this month.

Robert Hass’s works include A Little Book on Form: An Exploration into the Formal Imagination of Poetry; Time and Materials, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 and the National Book Award in 2008; Sun Under Wood, for which he received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1996; Human Wishes; Praise, for which he received the William Carlos Williams Award in 1979; and Field Guide, which was selected by Stanley Kunitz for the Yale Younger Poets Series. Hass also worked with Czeslaw Milosz to translate a dozen volumes of Milosz’s poetry, including the book-length Treatise on Poetry and A Second Space. His translations of the Japanese haiku masters have been collected in The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa. His essay collections include Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism in 1984, and Now and Then: The Poet's Choice Columns, 1997-2000. From 1995 to 1997 he served as poet laureate of the United States. Hass teaches English at the University of California at Berkeley.

Shirley Jackson (1916 – 1965) first received wide critical acclaim for “The Lottery,” which was published in The New Yorker in 1948 and went on to become one of the most anthologized stories in American literature. She is the author of six novels, including The Haunting of Hill House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle; five collections of short stories and essays, including Just an Ordinary Day; and two family memoirs, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. Several of her stories have been adapted for television, theater, and film, including June, based on “The Daemon Lover,” The Haunting, based on The Haunting of Hill House, and the Hungarian film Hosszú Alkony, based on “The Bus.”

Edward P. Jones is the author of The Known World, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His first short story collection, Lost in the City, was honored with the PEN/Faulkner Prize, and his second short story collection, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, was a finalist for the same award. Jones was the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship in 2005 and the PEN/Malamud Award in 2010. He currently teaches fiction writing at George Washington University.

Born in 1953, Bronisław Maj is the author of seven volumes of poetry, which have won him prestigious literary prizes, a reputation as one of the finest poets of his generation, and a place in many anthologies of contemporary poetry published both in Poland and abroad. Maj is also the author of a book about Tadeusz Gajcy, a poet who died during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. He writes newspaper columns and has edited the literary quarterly Na Głos for many years. Maj lives in Kraków and teaches at the Jagiellonian University and the School of Creative Writing.

Czesław Miłosz (1911 – 2004) was a Polish poet, novelist, essayist, translator, and diplomat of Polish and Lithuanian descent who defected to the West in 1951.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849) was a gothic writer of major influence in American literature. His signature darkness in classic stories such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of the Red Death," and poems such as “Annabel Lee” and “Ulalume” has become a tone synonymous with death for generations of American readers. His published fiction and poetry received little acclaim until 1845, when “The Raven” first appeared in the Evening Mirror to immediate fame. In addition to his well-known poems and tales of the macabre, Poe is also credited with being the inventor of the modern detective story, as in his “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”

Dr. Azila Talit Reisenberger is the award-winning author of The Other Booker Prize and its sequel, The Magic of Us. Her most recent collections of poetry include Life in Translation and Silver Highlights. Her short story collection From Here to the Cape of Good Hope was published in Israel, South Africa, USA, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Her plays Adam’s Apple and The Loving Father were staged at the International Grahamstown Arts Festival. Azila is a deeply involved social activist, associated with Women Demand Dignity, whose mission is to raise awareness and curb violence against women and children in South Africa. She is active in interfaith organizations in Cape Town, South Africa, and serves as the Chair of the Hebrew Department in the Western Province Zionist Council.