Michael Morse teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York and has taught at The University of Iowa and The New School. His first book, Void and Compensation, was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He has published poems in various journals—including A Public Space, The American Poetry Review, Field, The Iowa Review, and Ploughshares—and in anthologies including The Best American Poetry 2012 and Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days. Honors include fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. He received his MFA in Poetry from The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is a poetry editor for The Literary Review.

Vi Khi Nao is the author of many books and is known for her work spanning poetry, fiction, play, film, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Her forthcoming novel, The Italian Letters, is scheduled for publication by Melville House in 2024. In the same year, she will release a co-authored book titled The Six Tones of Water with Sun Yung Shin through Ricochet. A former Black Mountain Institute fellow, Vi Khi Nao received the Jim Duggins, PhD Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize in 2022. https://www.vikhinao.com https://twitter.com/vikhinao https://www.instagram.com/vikhinao/ https://www.facebook.com/vikhinao

Marc Nieson is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and NYU Film School. His background includes children’s theatre, cattle chores, and a season with a one-ring circus. He’s earned a Raymond Carver Short Story Award, Pushcart Prize nominations, and been noted in Best American Essays. His memoir is Schoolhouse: Lessons on Love & Landscape (Ice Cube Press). He teaches at Chatham University, edits The Fourth River, and is at work on a new novel, Houdini’s Heirs. More at www.marcnieson.com.

Caryl Pagel is the author of three books of poetry—Free Clean Fill Dirt (University of Akron Press), Twice Told (University of Akron Press), and Experiments I Should Like Tried at My Own Death (Factory Hollow Press)—as well as the essay collection Out of Nowhere into Nothing (FC2). Pagel’s writing has appeared in Brick, Denver Quarterly, The Iowa Review, The Mississippi Review, and The Paris Review, among other journals, and she is the recipient of grants and residencies from the Headlands Center for the Arts, The Hermitage Artist Retreat, and the Ohio Arts Council. Pagel is a publisher and editor at Rescue Press and the director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. She is an associate professor at Cleveland State University, where she teaches in the NEOMFA program.

Kathleen Maris Paltrineri is a poet and literary translator. Her translation of Norwegian poet Kristin Berget’s og når det blir lyst blir det helt fantastisk is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press. She has taught Literary Translation, Creative Writing, and Literature at the University of Iowa; Creative Writing at Cornell College; and English as a Second Language at the University of New Hampshire. She is currently the coordinator of the University of Iowa’s Center for Translation and Global Literacy.

Rachel Pastan is the author of four novels, most recently In the Field. Based on the life of Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Barbara McClintock, the novel was selected for the National Book Foundation’s 2022 Science + Literature award. Pastan’s 2014 novel Alena was named an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times Book Review. She is also the author of two other books, Lady of the Snakes and This Side of Married.

Juliet Patterson is the author of Sinkhole: A Legacy of Suicide (Milkweed Editions, 2022) and two full-length poetry collections, Threnody (Nightboat Books, 2016), a finalist for the 2017 Audre Lorde Poetry Award, and The Truant Lover (Nightboat Books, 2006), winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize and a finalist for the 2006 Lambda Literary Award. A recipient of an Arts & Letters Susan Atefat Prize in nonfiction and a Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, she has also been awarded fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Minneapolis-based Creative Community Leadership Institute (formerly the Institute for Community and Creative Development).

Sarah Saffian (MFA, Columbia) is the author of Ithaka, her memoir of being an adoptee who was found by her birth family. Formerly a journalism professor at NYU and the New School, and a memoir teacher at Sarah Lawrence, Sarah has written for publications including The New York Times, Smithsonian, and Yoga Journal, and has been a writer-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Millay Colony. As a psychotherapist (LCSW-R, NYU), Sarah counsels individuals and groups, and blends her areas of interest and expertise in Therapeutic Writing, using memoir prompts to encourage reflection, processing, and discovery. This is Sarah’s thirteenth summer at the Festival. Please visit: http://www.saffian.com

Zach Savich is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, including a memoir, Diving Makes the Water Deep, and, most recently, the poetry collection Momently (Black Ocean, 2024). His work has received the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Colorado Prize for Poetry, the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s Open Award, Omindawn Publishing’s Chapbook Award, as well as recognition from the Poetry Society of America. He has worked as an editor and manuscript consultant on many projects. He is currently co-editor of Rescue Press's Open Prose Series. Savich teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art and in the University of the Arts' PhD in Creativity. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Suzanne Scanlon is the author of Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen (2024); Her 37th Year, An Index (2015); and Promising Young Women (2012). Scanlon’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Granta, BOMB, Fence, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ox-Bow Artists’ Residency, and the Ragdale Foundation.

Leslie Schwartz has written two award-winning novels, Jumping the Green and Angels Crest, and a memoir, The Lost Chapters: Finding Recovery and Renewal One Book at a Time. She won the James Jones Award for best first novel for Jumping the Green and was named Kalliope Magazine’s Woman Writer of the Year. She has also been the recipient of many awards, including three artist-in-residence grants from the L.A. Department of Cultural Affairs, the West Hollywood/Algonquin Award for Public Service in the Arts, and a California Council for the Humanities Fellowship. Her two novels have been published in 13 languages. Angels Crest was also adapted for the screen and premiered in theaters in 2013. Her essays and articles have most recently appeared in Salon, LitHub, The Rumpus, Brevity, The Washington Post, Great Weather for Media, Pithead Chapel and Narratively Speaking. She has taught writing at various universities and creative institutions, and currently offers private mentoring and editing services. Schwartz holds an MFA in Writing and is at work on her fourth book, a novel. For the past three years, she has also been working on a project that includes digital media, an art installation, and writings on silence and creativity. She lives in Iceland, and in a remote cabin in Mt. Hood, Oregon. Visit her online at www.leslieschwartz.com.

Robert Anthony Siegel is the author of a memoir, Criminals, and two novels, All Will Be Revealed and All the Money in the World. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian Magazine, The Paris Review, The Drift, The Oxford American, and Ploughshares, and has been anthologized in Best American Essays 2023, O. Henry Stories 2014, and Pushcart Prize XXXVI. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan, a Mombukagakusho Fellow in Japan, a Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and a Paul Engle Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a BA from Harvard. His website is www.robertanthonysiegel.com

Carol Spindel is a writer, potter, ACLU activist, and grandma living in Urbana, Illinois, who retired after teaching creative nonfiction for more than twenty years at the University of Illinois. Her most recent book is I Give You Half the Road, a nonfiction account of the lives of five people she has known since they were children in Ivory Coast, West Africa. Her essays have touched on many topics, been published in many places (including Guernica, The Washington Post, and Oxford American), and aired on her local NPR station, where one of her commentaries won a PRNDI Award for Best Writing. When her first memoir, a New York Times Notable Book, went out of print, she republished it herself (see carolspindel.com). A longtime Festival teacher, she is delighted to see the Festival return to Iowa City.

Zoe Tuck was born in Texas, became a person in California, and now lives in Western Massachusetts with her partner, Britt, and their dog, Peach. She is the author of Bedroom Vowel (BUNNY Presse, 2023) and Terror Matrix (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2014), in addition to the chapbooks The Book of Bella (Doublecross Press), bound in a dos-à-dos edition with Emily Hunerwadel’s Peach Woman, and Vape Cloud of Unknowing (Belladonna* Collaborative). She co-edits Hot Pink Magazine with Emily Bark Brown. She teaches creative writing and literature classes through Threshold Academy and elsewhere.

Anthony Varallo is the author of What Did You Do Today?, winner of the 2023 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. His other books include a novel, The Lines (University of Iowa Press), as well as four previous short story collections: This Day in History, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award; Out Loud, winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize; Think of Me and I’ll Know (Northwestern University Press); and Everyone Was There, winner of the Elixir Press Fiction Award. He is a professor of English at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC, where he directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing and serves as fiction editor of swamp pink literary journal. Find him online at @TheLines1979.

 Alisa received a BFA in Drama and MA in Educational Theatre from New York University, and a PhD in Anthropology from Syracuse University; she also studied at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and conducted dissertation research on a Fulbright-Nehru scholarship. Among her other writing, she authored scripts for India’s Sesame Street, Galli Galli Sim Sim, and is currently at work on an ethnography on tailors working in Jaipur, India. A co-founder of Home Ec. Workshop in Iowa City, she often teaches knitting and sewing to crafters of all ages. At the University of Iowa, she teaches an anthropology course on fashion and culture, and previously served as youth programs coordinator for the International Writing Program.

Danielle was the 2010-2011 Rona Jaffe fellow in Poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she earned her MFA. Her work can be seen in places like Image Journal, diode, and elsewhere. She currently coordinates online learning for the Magid Center for Writing at the University of Iowa and is at work on a collection of essays.

Bart Yates is the author of seven novels, including Leave Myself Behind (winner of the 2004 Alex Award), The Language of Love and Loss, and, writing under the pen name of Noah Bly, The Third Hill North of Town. Two of his books have been translated into Italian and one into Dutch, and his most recent novel, The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl, will be released in July 2024. Yates is a professional musician as well as a writer, and plays clarinet, saxophone, and bass guitar. He lives in Iowa City and shares his home with the world’s finest and most discerning cat.