Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer and critic at The New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize Finalist. He co-hosts the podcast Critics at Large, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Fader, Vulture, The Awl, and McSweeney’s. A former staffer on Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign and in his White House, Cunningham has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Yale School of Art, and Columbia University’s School of the Arts. His début novel, Great Expectations, was on numerous 2024 Best Books of the Year and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award/John Leonard Prize for Best First Book.

Mira Jacob is a novelist, memoirist, illustrator, and cultural critic. Her graphic memoir Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award, and named a New York Times Notable Book. Her novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing was a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick and named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus Reviews, The Boston Globe, and Goodreads. Jacob is a professor at The New School and a founding faculty member of the MFA in Writing at Randolph College. Her next novel, We Killed Anji Alexander, about the murder of a white-passing Indian actress, will be released in 2027 with Ecco Press.

Min Jin Lee is the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award, runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and a New York Times "100 Best Books of the Century.” Lee's third novel, American Hagwon, is forthcoming in September 2026. Lee serves as the New York State Author Laureate from September 2025 through 2027. She is the 2024 recipient of The Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Excellence. Lee has received the Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Bucheon Diaspora Literary Award, and the Samsung Happiness for Tomorrow Award for Creativity from South Korea. She is the recipient of fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Lee is an inductee of the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame and the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. She served as the Editor of Best American Short Stories 2023. Lee’s essays and criticism have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Vogue, and The Times of London. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College. She lives in Harlem with her family.

Jay O. Sanders has narrated audiobooks and documentaries. His stage credits include Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1 and 2 at Theatre for a New Audience, the title roles in Cyrano de Bergerac at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and Uncle Vanya at the Hunter, Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee in Purlie Victorious on Broadway, Primary Trust, Girl from the North Country, This World of Tomorrow, Any Minute Now, and all 12 plays of Richard Nelson’s Rhinebeck Panorama. He and wife, Maryann Plunkett, received a joint New York Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award. On screen, Sanders has recently been seen in Azazel Jacobs’ His Three Daughters and forthcoming in M. Night Shyamalan’s Remain.

Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island, an Oprah’s Book Club Pick; The Magician, winner of The Writers' Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; and Nora Webster, as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and was named the 2022–2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. He was shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize. He was also awarded the Bodley Medal, the Würth Prize for European Literature, and the Prix Femina spécial for his body of work. A collection of his short stories, The News from Dublin, will be published in March.

Ernest Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer of his time. Publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established Hemingway as one of the greatest literary lights of the twentieth century. His classic novel The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. His life and accomplishments are explored in-depth in the PBS documentary film from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Hemingway. Known for his larger-than-life personality and his passions for bullfighting, fishing, and big-game hunting, he died in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961.