Wajahat Ali is a tired, middle-aged father of 3 who drives a Hyundai Minivan and shops at Costco. He is the editor of The Left Hook on Substack and a columnist at The Progressive. His essays, interviews, and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The New York Review of Books. He is the author of the play The Domestic Crusaders, and his critically acclaimed memoir, Go Back To Where You Came From, was published by W.W. Norton & Company in 2022.

Ruthie Ann Miles is a Tony Award–winning actress and singer. She most recently starred in The Seat of Our Pants at the Public Theater, earning a Lucille Lortel Award nomination, and made her solo concert debut with Perfectly Imperfect for Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series in March. Her notable stage credits include the roles of Lady Thiang in The King And I, for which she won a Tony Award and Grammy and Olivier Award nominations, Beggar Woman in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, earning a 2023 Tony Award nomination, and Imelda Marcos in Here Lies Love, winning the Lucille Lortel Award. Her film and television credits include Sherri Kansky on CBS’ All Rise, Young-Hee Seong in FX’s The Americans, and Mother in the Netflix Oscar–nominated feature Over the Moon. Beyond her artistic achievements, Miles has been recognized for her work empowering women, teaching students, and uplifting the Asian-American performing community.

Conrad Ricamora is an award-winning actor-singer-writer. He was most recently seen as a series regular in the Hulu comedy How to Die Alone, created and co-starring Natasha Rothwell. He was a series regular for six seasons opposite Viola Davis on ABC's How to Get Away With Murder. He also played a recurring role on FOX's The Resident. On the film side, he most recently portrayed Will—aka Mr. Darcy—in the Emmy-nominated, Gotham Award–winning film Fire Island with Bowen Yang and Joel Kim Booster. Conrad is also a Tony and Grammy–nominated Broadway singer and actor. He recently starred in the critically acclaimed Broadway hit Oh, Mary! at the Lyceum Theater. Before that he starred in Broadway's Here Lies Love written by David Byrne and FatBoy Slim. Additional credits include Seymour in The Little Shop of Horrors at the West Side Theater and The King and I at Lincoln Center. As an activist, Conrad has won the Visibility Award from the Human Rights Campaign and Equality California.

Rita Wolf was featured in Richard Nelson's The Michaels and What Happened? The Michaels Abroad, at The Public Theater. Additional theater credits include An Ordinary Muslim at New York Theatre Workshop, The American Pilot at Manhattan Theatre Club, for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award, and the World Premiere of Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul at New York Theatre Workshop and BAM. She appeared in Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance with the Transport Group and Out of Time at The Public Theater, both co-productions with The National Asian American Theatre Company, and was a recent Beinecke Fellow at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale while appearing in Caryl Churchill's Escaped Alone at Yale Rep. She appeared in Stephen Frears/Hanif Kureishi's film My Beautiful Laundrette filmed for Channel 4 in the UK, which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary and has been re-released in cinemas worldwide.

BD Wong has been a “Selected Shorts fave” for years, having discovered that unicorn of programs way back in the (Symphony Space Founder) Isaiah Sheffer days and returning to the program steadily ever since. He succeeded Mr. Sheffer as host of the live event, so the spirit of Selected Shorts (and Symphony Space) is installed in his creative identity. BD is a Tony-winning and Emmy-nominated actor who worked for eleven seasons on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He has also appeared in two Broadway plays, two Broadway revivals, four Jurassic movies, two Mulan movies, and two Father of the Bride movies. Among BD's many currently developing projects is an upcoming new production of Tennessee Williams’ classic play The Glass Menagerie, reimagined as a solo performance featuring himself as Tom Wingfield conjuring the haunting memories of his mother, his sister, and the night that changed their lives (Philadelphia Theater Company, Spring 2027). He is also the co-creator of the musical adaptation of the beloved film Mr. Holland’s Opus, for which he wrote the book and lyrics with composer Wayne Barker.

Jules Chung is a former lawyer who is obsessed with the border between intimacy and friction. Jules writes about the impact of immigration and capitalism on the Korean diaspora. Her work has been supported by the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the One Story Writers’ Conference, VONA, The Cabins Retreat, Catapult, and The Seventh Wave. Currently, Chung is querying a novel inspired by her twenties and is working on a novel about love in the Second Gilded Age. You can find her stories at juleschungwriting.com.

Ken Liu is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards for his fiction, he has also won top genre honors abroad in Japan, Spain, and France. Liu’s most characteristic work is the four-volume epic fantasy series The Dandelion Dynasty, in which engineers, not wizards, are the heroes of a silkpunk world on the verge of modernity. His debut collection of short fiction, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been published in more than a dozen languages. A second collection, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, followed. He also penned the Star Wars novel The Legends of Luke Skywalker. His most recent book, All That We See or Seem, was published last fall and is the first novel in the Julia Z series. Liu is often involved in media adaptations of his work. Recent projects include The Message, under development by 21 Laps and FilmNation Entertainment; Good Hunting, adapted as an episode in season one of Netflix’s breakout adult animated series Love Death + Robots; and AMC’s Pantheon, with Craig Silverstein as executive producer, adapted from an interconnected series of Liu’s short stories. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. He frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, machine-augmented creativity, history of technology, bookmaking, and the mathematics of origami. His newest collection of short stories, The Passing of the Dragon and Other Stories, is set to be published this coming September.

Aarti Monteiro is a fiction writer and holds an MFA from Rutgers University–Newark. A Kundiman Fellow, her work has been published in Epiphany Magazine, the Chicago Quarterly Review, and Joyland, among others. Her linked short story collection explores the effect of a double migration, the loss of home, and the stigma of mental illness on a multi-generational family. She was born in south India and currently lives in Chicago.

Weike Wang is the author of Chemistry, Joan Is Okay, and most recently, Rental House. She is the recipient of a PEN/Hemingway Award and a Whiting Award for Fiction, and was noted in the National Book Foundation’s 5 under 35 list. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, and The Best American Short Stories, and has won two O. Henry Prizes. She earned her MFA from Boston University and additional degrees from Harvard. Wang currently lives in New York City and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Barnard College, and Boston University.