MARIA REVA writes fiction and opera libretti. She is the author of Good Citizens Need Not Fear, set in an apartment block in Ukraine, as well as the novel Endling (longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, winner of the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize). Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, The Wall Street Journal, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. Maria’s opera libretti have been commissioned by organizations including City Opera Vancouver, Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Opera Roadshow, Ad Astra Music Festival (Russell, Kansas), Musique 3 Femmes, and most recently, Opéra de Montréal.

KAWAI STRONG WASHBURN was born and raised on the Hamakua coast of the Big Island of Hawai’i. His first novel, Sharks in the Time of Saviors, won the 2021 PEN/Hemingway award for debut novel and the 2021 Minnesota Book Award; it was also longlisted for the 2020 Center For Fiction First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Former US President Barack Obama chose it as a favourite novel of 2020, and it was selected as a notable or best book of the year by over a dozen publications, including the New York Times and Boston Globe. Washburn lives with his wife and two daughters in Minneapolis.