Jonathan Escoffery is the author of If I Survive You, a National Book Award and PEN/Jean Stein Book Award nominee, and a finalist for the Booker Prize, the Dublin Literary Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the John Leonard Prize. In 2023, Escoffery was named among the thirty-six forces shaping the cultural conversation by Harper’s Bazaar. He is the recipient of a Stegner Fellowship, The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for Fiction, an NEA fellowship, and the ASME Award for Fiction. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Observer, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere.

Jonathan Lethem is the author of thirteen novels, including The Fortress of Solitude and Girl in Landscape, as well as more recent bestsellers, The Feral Detective, The Arrest, and Brooklyn Crime Novel. His 1999 novel Motherless Brooklyn was filmed in 2019, and his shorter works can often be found in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and many other venues. A MacArthur “genius” grant winner, Lethem is widely respected for his vivid literary style, sardonic humor, and deep understanding of American culture. His newest book is Cellophane Bricks (ZE Books, 2024).
Photo credit: Torkil Stavdal

Justin Torres is the author of Blackouts, winner of the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Southern California Book Award. His debut novel, We the Animals, won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, was translated into fifteen languages, and was adapted into a feature film. He teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Heather Scott Partington (Moderator) is a writer, teacher, and book critic. She is president of the National Book Critics Circle. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Alta Journal, among other publications. She lives in Elk Grove, California.