Donna Lynne Champlin, best known as Paula Proctor on the Emmy award–winning Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, is an Obie, Drama Desk, and Gracie Award–winning actress. Additional film and television credits include Feel the Beat; Law & Order; The Blacklist; Submissions Only; The Good Wife; Birdman; Younger; Downsizing; Another Period; Yes, God, Yes; Star Vs. the Forces of Evil; and The First Lady. Champlin has appeared on Broadway in James Joyce’s The Dead, By Jeeves, Hollywood Arms, Sweeney Todd, and Billy Elliot: The Musical, and off-Broadway in My Life with Albertine, First Lady Suite, Flight of the Lawnchair Man, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, As You Like It, Working, and The Taming of the Shrew. She can be heard on the podcast series In Strange Woods.

Brandon J. Dirden most recently appeared on Broadway in Skeleton Crew, for which he received a Drama Desk nomination, and the Tony Award–winning production of Take Me Out. He also starred as Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Tony Award–winning production of All the Way with Bryan Cranston, and as Booster in the Tony Award–winning revival of August Wilson’s Jitney. Additional Broadway credits include Clybourne Park, Enron, and Prelude to a Kiss. His many off-Broadway appearances include The Piano Lesson, for which he won Obie, Theatre World, and AUDELCO awards, and Lessons in Survival with The Vineyard, an online theatrical event where theater artists came together to reinvestigate the words of trailblazing artists and activists who survived and created in times of revolution in our country. On-screen, he has appeared in The Good Wife, The Big C, Public Morals, Manifest, The Get Down, The Accidental Wolf, Blue Bloods, The Quad, For Life, Mrs. America, and four seasons of The Americans. Dirden recently directed his wife, Crystal Dickinson, in Wine in the Wilderness at Two River Theater. He is a proud member of the Actors Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, and Fair Wage on Stage.

Marlon James is the author of the New York Times–bestselling Moon Witch, Spider King, which is recently out in paperback. He is also the author of the National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, and The Book of Night Women and John Crow’s Devil. In addition to the Booker Prize, his novels have won the American Book Award, the Los Angeles Times’ Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Born in Jamaica, James lives in New York City.

Debra Monk is an Emmy, Tony, Obie, and Drama Desk Award–winning actress, known for her performances in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Curtains, Steel Pier, Picnic, Redwood Curtain, The Time of the Cuckoo, and Assassins. She’s starred in the recent series The Gilded Age and New Amsterdam, and previously on Bull, Mozart in the Jungle, Damages, Tell Me a Story, Dietland, Grey's Anatomy, and NYPD Blue. Her films include Standing Up, Falling Down; This Is Where I Leave You; The Devil’s Advocate; Center Stage; and The Bridges of Madison County.

Jake Morrissey is an executive editor at Riverhead Books, where he edits both fiction and nonfiction, including the novels of Marlon James. While he also likes Charles Dickens, he knows that Marlon is 100% wrong about Anthony Trollope and a great deal more besides—and isn’t shy about telling him so.

Thom Sesma recently appeared in the acclaimed off-Broadway revival of A Man of No Importance at Classic Stage Company. He has appeared on screen in Instinct, Jessica Jones, Madam Secretary, The Good Wife, and more. Broadway and national tour credits include The Lion King, Man of La Mancha, and Miss Saigon. Among his many other off-Broadway credits are A Sherlock Carol at New World Stages, Letters of Suresh at Second Stage, and Unknown Soldier at Playwrights Horizons and the title role in Sweeney Todd at the Barrow Street Theatre.

Heather Alicia Simms is an Obie and Audie Award–winning actress who has appeared on Broadway in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and A Raisin in the Sun. Her off-Broadway credits include Des Moines, Richard III, Fairview, Fabulation, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Barbecue, and Born Bad. She has appeared in the television series Swarm, Single Drunk Female, Kings of Napa, Luke Cage, Bull, Blue Books, High Maintenance, and The Last O.G., and in the films Red Hook Summer, The Nanny Diaries, Broken Flowers, and Head of State. Simms is a recipient of the Fox Foundation Fellowship and a graduate of Columbia University School of the Arts.

Jean “Binta” Breeze (1956 – 2021) was a Jamaican dub poet and storyteller, acknowledged as the first woman to write and perform dub poetry. She worked also as a theater director, choreographer, actor, and teacher. Her poetry collections include Riddim Ravings and Other Poems, On the Edge of An Island, The Fifth Figure, and Third World Girl: Selected Poems. Breeze received numerous accolades over her career, including an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Leicester, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jamaican Poetry Festival, and a silver Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica.

Nadine Gordimer (1923 – 2014) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. Born in South Africa, Gordimer wrote extensively about her homeland, both during and after apartheid. Her many novels include The Pickup, None to Accompany Me, A Sport of Nature, The Conservationist, which was awarded the Booker Prize in 1974, July's People, My Son's Story, and No Time Like the Present. Gordimer’s short story collections include Loot: And Other Stories, Six Feet of the Country, Not for Publication, A Soldier's Embrace, and Jump and Other Stories. She was the Vice-President of PEN International.

Roger Mais (1905 – 1955) was a Jamaican journalist, novelist, poet, and playwright. He was the author of short story collections Face and Other Stories and And Most of All Man, as well as the novels The Hills Were Joyful Together, Brother Man, and Black Lightning. In 1968, Mais was posthumously awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal by the Institute of Jamaica, and in 1978, he was awarded the Order of Jamaica.

Michael F. Moore is the translator, most recently of the 19th-century Italian classic The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni. His other published translations range from twentieth-century classics—Agostino by Alberto Moravia and The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi—to contemporary novels. Moore is the former chair of the PEN/Heim Translation Fund and has a PhD in Italian from New York University. For many years he was also an interpreter at the United Nations and a full-time staff member of the Permanent Mission of Italy to the UN.

Jay Rubin is an American academic and translator and is one of the main translators of the works of Haruki Murakami in English. He is the author of Making Sense of Japanese and a biographical literary analysis of Murakami. Rubin's translation of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami won the 2003 Noma Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature.

Alberto Savinio (1891 – 1952) was a Greek-Italian writer, painter, musician, journalist, essayist, playwright, set designer, and composer. He was the author of the novels Hermaphrodito, La Casa Ispirata (The Haunted House), Angelica o la Notte di Maggio (Angelica or the Night in May), and Infanzia di Nivasio Dolcemare (The Infancy of Nivasio Dolcemare).

Hoshi Shin’ichi (1926 – 1997) was a Japanese novelist and science fiction writer. He published more than 1,000 of his signature "short-short" stories. Hoshi's most famous book is Bokko-chan. His other works include the collection Oi-detakoi and the novel Koe no ami. Shin’ichi won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for his book Mōsō Ginkō in 1968.