Conversation-Leading Fiction Authors

Kristen Arnett is the author of With Teeth: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2021) and the NYT bestselling debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction. She is a queer fiction and essay writer. She was awarded Ninth Letter's Literary Award in Fiction, has been a columnist for Literary Hub, and was a Spring 2020 Shearing Fellow at Black Mountain Institute.

Patricia Engel is the author of, most recently, the story collection The Faraway World. Her novel Infinite Country was an instant New York Times Bestseller and a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Big Read. Infinite Country is the winner of the New American Voices Award, was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Sequoia Nagamatsu is the author of the National Bestselling novel, HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK (2022) and the forthcoming GIRL ZERO (William Morrow/HarperCollins and Bloomsbury UK), as well as the story collection, WHERE WE GO WHEN ALL WE WERE IS GONE (Black Lawrence Press).

Matthew Salesses is a novelist, scholar, and Korean adoptee who has written and spoken widely on the subjects of adoption, race, Asian masculinity and parenting. His acclaimed first novel, The Hundred-Year Flood, was an Amazon Bestseller and, among other honors, a Best Book of the season at Buzzfeed, Refinery29, and Gawker. His newest novel, The Sense of Wonder, was recently published to great acclaim and optioned by HBO.

Susan Abulhawa speaks widely on the subjects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the power of storytelling, particularly for marginalized communities. Susan is one of the most widely-read Arab authors. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, is a multigenerational family epic spanning five countries and more than sixty years.

Ladee is an award-winning author and scholar. Her critically-acclaimed novel, The Talented Ribkins, was awarded the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for the Debut Novel and the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, among many other honors, and garnered her an appearance on Seth Meyers.

Kai Harris is the author of the acclaimed debut novel What the Fireflies Knew (Tiny Reparations, 2022), a Silicon Valley 2023 Read, A Marie Claire Book Club pick as well as being an NAACP Image Award nominee and longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. She is a writer and educator from Detroit, Michigan, who uses her voice to uplift the Black community through realistic fiction centered on the Black experience.

An acclaimed Nigerian novelist, poet, and a professor of Creative Writing at George Mason University, Helon Habila speaks nationally and internationally on the subjects of immigration, art and activism. He has delivered at the DeGraaf Lecture at Hope College and has spoken at the Abantu Lit Fest in South Africa. Habila’s first novel, Waiting for an Angel, received the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book

Bridgett M. Davis is the author of the memoir, The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life In The Detroit Numbers, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a 2020 Michigan Notable Book, and named a Best Book of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews, BuzzFeed, NBC News and Parade Magazine. She is writing the screenplay for the film adaptation of the book, which will be produced by Plan B Entertainment and released by Searchlight Pictures.

Gloria Muñoz is a Colombian American writer, translator, and advocate for multilingual literacy. She is the author of This is the Year, Your Biome Has Found You, and Danzirly, which won the Ambroggio Prize and the Gold Medal Florida Book Award. Her other honors include an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellowship, Hedgebrook Fellowship, being a Macondista, Highlights Foundation’s Diverse Verse Fellowship, Lumina’s Multilingual Writing Award, and a part of Las Musas. She is proud to be St. Pete's first Latina poet laureate. 

An award-winning illustrator and scholar of black comics, John is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside; he is also the publisher of Megascope, an imprint of Abrams ComicArts dedicated to publishing works exploring the experiences of people of color. He speaks widely on the subjects of Afrofuturism and Black Comix.