Author Bios

Anna Malaika Tubbs is a scholar and author whose debut book The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation, published in 2021, became a New York Times bestseller and an important work of historical recovery. Born in Los Angeles, Tubbs earned her bachelor’s degree…

Jessica Goudeau is a writer and author whose book After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America, published in 2020, was named a best book of the year by numerous publications and became an essential text for understanding the contemporary American refugee resettlement system. Based in Austin, Texas, Goudeau spent…

Ann Napolitano is an American novelist whose 2021 novel Hello Beautiful won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making it one of the most celebrated works of American literary fiction of the decade. Born in New York City, Napolitano studied at Middlebury College and earned her M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University, where she…

Patricia Lockwood is an American poet, essayist, and novelist whose work defies easy categorization — combining surrealist imagery, internet-age wit, and profound emotional intelligence in ways that have made her one of the most singular literary voices of her generation. Born on May 26, 1982, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, she grew up as the daughter…

Thi Bui is a Vietnamese American author and artist best known for her graphic memoir The Best We Could Do, published in 2017, which became a New York Times bestseller and is widely regarded as one of the most significant works of graphic nonfiction about the Vietnamese refugee experience. Born in Vietnam in 1975, she…

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is an Ecuadorian-American author and essayist whose debut book The Undocumented Americans, published in 2020, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction and is widely recognized as one of the most important and original works of reportage about undocumented immigrant life in the United States. Born in Ecuador and…

Ashley C. Ford is a writer and author whose debut memoir Somebody’s Daughter, published in 2021, received immediate and widespread critical acclaim, debuting at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and winning the Goodreads Choice Award for Memoir and Autobiography. Born in 1985 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Ford grew up in circumstances…

Cathy Park Hong is a poet and essayist whose 2020 book Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning became a cultural landmark, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography and sparking widespread conversation about Asian American identity, racism, and the politics of feeling. Born in Los Angeles to Korean immigrant parents, Hong grew up…

Roxane Gay is one of the most prolific and distinctive voices in contemporary American letters — an essayist, cultural critic, fiction writer, editor, and memoirist whose work spans a remarkable range of genres and subjects. Born on October 15, 1974, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Haitian immigrant parents, Gay grew up largely in the Midwest and…

Ishmael Beah is a Sierra Leonean-American author and human rights advocate whose debut memoir A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, published in 2007, became an international bestseller and one of the most powerful accounts of child soldiering ever written. Born in 1980 in Mogbwemo, Sierra Leone, Beah was twelve years old when…