melissa febos, alex gilvarry & alena graedon

Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir Whip Smart, the essay collection, Abandon Me, and a forthcoming second essay collection Girlhood (Bloomsbury 2020). The inaugural winner of the Jean Córdova Nonfiction Award from LAMBDA Literary, her work has recently appeared in Tin House, Granta, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Vogue, and The Believer. Her essays have twice received special mention from the Best American Essays anthology and have won prizes from Prairie Schooner, Story Quarterly, and The Center for Women Writers.

Alex Gilvarry is the author of From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. His second novel, Eastman Was Here, published in 2017, was nominated for the PEN Open Book Award and chosen as one of the best books of the year by Esquire magazine. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Boston Globe, Lithub, and have been broadcast on NPR’s All Things Considered. Gilvarry received his MFA from Hunter College where he was awarded a Hertog Fellowship.

Alena Graedon’s first novel, The Word Exchange, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her nonfiction has been published in many publications including The New York Times Book Review, The Believer magazine, and Guernica. A native of North Carolina, Graedon is a graduate of Brown University and Columbia University’s MFA program. She has taught at Columbia University and Monmouth University, and she lives in Brooklyn, New York.