Ivan Hernandez recently finished a run as Abraham Lincoln in the new musical 3 Summers of Lincoln at the La Jolla Playhouse. Broadway credits include Larry Murphy in Dear Evan Hansen and Billy Flynn in Chicago. Additional New York credits include Signor Naccarelli in The Light in the Piazza at City Center, The Wolf/Cinderella’s Prince in Into the Woods at the Delacorte Theatre, Sal in The Capeman (Delacorte), Mitch in Yank! at the York Theatre, and Fred in Romantic Poetry at Manhattan Theatre Club. Audiences also know Hernandez as Franklyn from the HBO Max series And Just Like That… and as Andrés in the Netflix series Never Have I Ever. Additional television credits include Elsbeth, The Rookie, Claws, Criminal Minds, NCIS, Mom, Scandal, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Devious Maids, and Law & Order: SVU.

Nicole A. Lamy is the series editor for The Best American Short Stories and former books editor of The Boston Globe. She has written for the Globe, The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, and The American Scholar.

Richard Masur, over his 50+ year career, has appeared on TV series including The Hot l Baltimore, One Day at a Time, Rhoda, Transparent, Girls, Younger, The Good Wife/Fight, Bull, The Equalizer, and Kaleidoscope. Additional television, miniseries, and movie credits include Fallen Angel, Adam, The Burning Bed, It, And the Band Played On, 61*, and The Girls on the Bus. He has appeared in more than 60 feature films, including The Thing, Heartburn, Risky Business, My Girl, License to Drive, Tumbledown, Lonely Boys, Don’t Think Twice, Hudson, Before/During/After, and Another Year Together. Masur’s stage work includes Prayer for the French Republic, Lucky Guy, Democracy, and The Changing Room on Broadway. Off-Broadway: Dirty Laundry; Fetch Clay, Make Man, Relevance; Two Jews, Talking; Sarah, Sarah; and The Ruby Sunrise, among others.

Cynthia Nixon made her film debut in Little Darlings at 12 and her Broadway debut at 14 in The Philadelphia Story. Since then she’s appeared in more than 40 plays (a dozen on Broadway), scores of films and TV shows, and won 2 Emmys, 2 Tonys, and a Grammy. She is best known for her role as Miranda on HBO’s Sex and the City, and in the sequel series And Just Like That…. Next year she will start production on Season 4 of Julian Fellowes’ The Gilded Age (also on HBO). Nixon appeared on numerous "Best Actress of 2017" lists for her portrayal of Emily Dickinson in Terrence Davies' much-lauded film A Quiet Passion. In 2018 she ran for Governor of New York State, putting issues of economic, racial, and gender equality front and center. She and her wife, Christine Marinoni, live in Manhattan and have 3 children—Sam, Charlie, and Max. This fall, Nixon will star alongside June Squibb in Marjorie Prime on Broadway.

Lauren Acampora is the author of the novels The Paper Wasp and The Hundred Waters and the linked story collection The Wonder Garden. She has won or been nominated for the GLCA New Writers Award, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the Story Prize, and the New England Book Award, and has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, MacDowell, Ucross, Art OMI, and the Ragdale Foundation. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The Paris Review, New England Review, Missouri Review, Guernica, and The New York Times.

Celeste Ng is the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2025 and number-one New York Times bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts. Ng is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and her work has been published in over thirty languages.

Julian Robles is a Mexican (-American) writer raised in California. His work has been published in AGNI, The Drift, Post Road, and Washington Square Review. He is managing editor of poetry.onl.

Jessica Treadway is the author of four novels and three story collections, including one that received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. “An Early Departure” is part of her fourth collection, I Felt My Life With Both My Hands, forthcoming next year from Cornerstone Press. Treadway is a longtime faculty member in the creative writing programs at Emerson College in Boston.