Boyce Upholt is a writer, editor, and “nature critic” based in New Orleans. He is the author of The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi (W.W. Norton, 2024), a national bestseller and the winner of the 2024 Willie Morris Prize for Southern Writing in nonfiction, and his magazine writing has appeared in…

Tom Mitchell is emeritus professor of Theatre at the University of Illinois and Festival Scholar for the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis. He has edited Early Stories by Tennessee Williams, available from the University of Iowa Press, and The Caterpillar Dogs: Early Stories by Tennessee Williams, from New Directions. Mitchell edited the stories, “Fin du…

Margot Douaihy’s debut mystery, Scorched Grace, won the Pinckley Prize for First Crime Novel and was named one of the Best Crime Novels of the Year by The New York Times, The Guardian, CrimeReads, and others. Her second mystery, Blessed Water, was also named a New York Times Best Crime Novel of the Year (2024)…

Tom Andes is the author of the detective novel Wait There Till You Hear from Me (Crescent City Books 2025). His stories have appeared in Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories 2025, The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year 2025, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. In 2025, his short story “Deadhead” received the Shamus…

C. Morgan Babst is a native of New Orleans. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The Washington Post, Saveur, The Oxford American, Guernica, the Harvard Review, Lenny Letter, and the New Orleans Review, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Garden and Gun. Her essays “Death Is a Way to Be”…