Justin Maxwell teaches playwriting in the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans. His playwriting book The Playwright’s Toolbox was published by Applause Books in May 2024. Currently, he’s adapting Tennessee Williams’ novel Moise and the World of Reason into a full-length play. His “100 MDQs for Plays of Praise” was presented as…

Boyce Upholt is a journalist and essayist whose writing has appeared in the Atlantic, National Geographic, the Oxford American, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among other publications. He is the winner of a James Beard Award for investigative journalism, lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is the author of The Great River: The Making and Unmaking…

Kate Segriff (she/her) is stunningly awkward but has an excellent game face. She is a Toronto-based writer and filmmaker, and her work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Greensboro Review, Prism International, and Best Canadian Poetry, among others. She won the Edinburgh Story Prize, the London Independent Story Prize, and the Connor Prize for Poetry, among…

Marcie R. Rendon is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation. Rendon is the best-selling author of Where They Last Saw Her (Penquin/Random House), and the Pinckley Prize author of Murder on the Red River in the Cash Blackbear series, the most recent of which is Broken Fields (Soho Press). Rendon’s poetry, Anishinaabe Songs…

Mari Kornhauser is an award-winning writer/director/playwright who splits their time between Southern Louisiana and Southern California. Mari has had three feature films produced, and their produced television credits include episodes of HBO’s Peabody Award-winning Treme. They have written on assignment for studios, actors, producers, and directors. A tenured Full Professor in the Creative Writing Program…

Yuri Herrera (Actopan, México, 1970). His first three novels have been translated into several languages: Kingdom Cons, Signs Preceding the End of the World, and Transmigration of Bodies. In 2016 he shared with translator Lisa Dillman the Best translated Book Award for the translation of Signs Preceding the End of the World. That same year…

Adrianne Harun is the author of two short story collections, The King of Limbo, a Washington State Book Award finalist, and Catch, Release, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award. Stories from her collections have been listed as Notable in both Best American Short Stories and Best American Mystery Stories. Her first novel, A Man Came…

Gwen Florio “is one of those writers who regularly publish series and stand-alones that leave a lasting impression,” says the New York Times. Her fiction draws on a lengthy journalism career that took her across the country and overseas to several conflict zones, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. Her debut novel, Montana, won the national…

Peter Cooley has published twelve books, the most recent Accounting For The Dark (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2024). For 43 years he served as Director of Creative Writing at Tulane University and is now Professor Emeritus. He was Poet Laureate of Louisiana from 2015-17.

Eric Cook is the Executive Chef and Owner of award-winning New Orleans restaurants Gris-Gris and Saint John. A six-year U.S. Marine Corps combat veteran, Cook entered the culinary world and worked in many of the city’s most well-renowned kitchens before building a culinary empire of his own. Cook has appeared on Top Chef New Orleans,…