Negin Farsad is the host of the podcast Fake the Nation and a regular panelist on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me! She is the director of the films Nerdcore Rising and The Muslims Are Coming!, and her romantic comedy, 3rd St. Blackout, is streaming on Peacock. She was selected as a TEDFellow for her work in social justice comedy and can be seen in Birdgirl, Not Okay, and Hillary Clinton's Apple TV+ show, Gutsy. Farsad's debut memoir, How to Make White People Laugh, was nominated for the Thurber Prize for Humor.

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women, and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is at work on television and film projects. Gay also has a newsletter, The Audacity, and a podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda. Her latest work, Opinions, was published in October 2023.

Lyris Hung began her violin studies at the age of three, attended the Juilliard Pre-College Division, and went on to earn degrees from the Juilliard School and Columbia University. She has performed and recorded with artists from many genres, such as Bryan Adams, Bono, Quincy Jones, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Jay-Z and Beyoncé, Questlove, Ornette Coleman, Toshi Reagon, and many others. She founded the progressive death metal band HUNG, which released several records, most recently on The End Records. Her trip-hop comedy/music duo with Kate Rigg, Slanty Eyed Mama, has performed around the world, including the Perth International Arts Festival, The Smithsonian Institute, Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, Vancouver International Comedy Festival, Grand Performances L.A., and the New York Asian American Heritage Festival. They were also featured on PBS' Race in the Place. Hung has been touring and recording with Indigo Girls since 2010 and streams regularly on Twitch at twitch.tv/Lyris.

Debbie Millman is host of the Webby award–winning podcast Design Matters, one of the first and longest-running podcasts in the world, Chair of the first-ever Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts, Co-owner and Editorial Director of PrintMag.com, and the author of seven books on design and branding. She has worked on the design and strategy on more than 200 of the world’s largest brands. Millman is the recipient of a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award and a Lifetime Achievement award from AIGA, the Professional Association for Design.

Those familiar with Lucy Wainwright Roche are aware of her bell tone voice, her unshakable melodies, and her knack for wise, wry lyrics. It’s no surprise that Wainwright Roche is the daughter of Suzzy Roche (The Roches) and Loudon Wainwright III, half sibling to Rufus and Martha Wainwright. Lucy has carved out her own career as a touring singer/songwriter and recording artist, with five critically acclaimed solo recordings released on her own label: Eight Songs, Eight More, Lucy, There’s a Last Time for Everything, and her most recent, Little Beast, which won the Independent Music Award for Best Singer/Songwriter. Additional recordings include a collaboration with her sister Martha Wainwright on Songs in the Dark, a collection of lullabies. For over a decade, as a solo act, armed with a guitar, a deadpan sense of humor, insightful songs, and a voice that makes tough guys cry, she’s built a solid following across the U.S. and Europe. As an opening act she has often appeared with such luminaries as The Indigo Girls, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Neko Case, and her brother, Rufus.

Suzzy Roche is a singer/songwriter/performer/author and founding member of the singing group The Roches. She has recorded over eighteen albums, written music for TV and Film, and toured extensively for forty years across the U.S. and Europe. She has performed with the experimental theater troupe The Wooster Group for over twenty years. Her children’s book Want to Be in a Band? was published in February 2013. Wayward Saints is her first novel and was a selection of the Spring 2012 B&N Discover Great New Writers Program. Her most recent novel, The Town Crazy, was published in August of 2020.

Suzzy Roche and Lucy Wainwright Roche released their latest recording, I Can Still Hear You, in the fall of 2020. The album was largely recorded in the darkest hours of the Covid shutdown in the spring of 2020 in NYC. After starting the recording in Nashville, the mother-daughter team went back to New York City just as the city closed up. They set up studios in their bedrooms—Lucy in Brooklyn, Suzzy in Manhattan—and finished the record. Hailed as “one of the year’s best” by Americana Highways, the new album has been met with high praise. Suzzy and Lucy have recorded two albums previously, Fairytale & Myth and Mud & Apples, which was nominated for an Independent Music Award.

Poet and literary scholar Evie Shockley thinks, creates, and writes with her eye on a Black feminist horizon. Her books of poetry include suddenly we, semiautomatic, and the new black. Her work has garnered the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award twice and been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She publishes nationally and internationally, and has been translated into French, Polish, Slovenian, and Spanish. Her honors include the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, and the Stephen Henderson Award, and her joys include participating in poetry communities such as Cave Canem and collaborating with like-minded artists working in various media. Shockley is the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, among other books. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and is a faculty member in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a one-year, non-credit intensive in the novel.